Q141 Ian Swales: What about the troops underneath such people: do we have adequate qualified resources to do the kind of things that you are talking about?
Bernard Gray: You start at the top of the organisation, and work your way down on these things. Why do I say it is a matter of time? We know, in my study and in a bunch of other places, that we do not have sufficient finance-qualified staff, partly as a result of the difficulty of attracting them at the rates that we pay. So half of my management accounting staff are not CIMA qualified management accountants, because I cannot get them at that rate. I definitely have an issue with all those functional skills, and some of the changes that we will be bringing in are designed to increase our programme and project management, finance, commercial supplier management and engineering expertise-all those areas. The first step is to get myself the finance director who is going to do that.
Ian Swales: It is very important.
Ursula Brennan: One of the few areas that we have exempted from our recruitment controls has been financial experts. We have already increased the size of our cost accountants and assurance service for that reason.
Q142 Nick Smith: Ms Brennan, do you have plenty of high powered finance people down your end of the corridor too?
Ursula Brennan: I have a qualified Director General Finance, yes.
Q143 Nick Smith: What about further down the line?
Ursula Brennan: He has, below him, been putting in place a structure to ensure that all the directors at the next level down are also financially qualified. That is a programme he has been undertaking since he joined us a couple of years ago. Yes, the programme is working its way through from the bottom and from the top.
Q144 Chair: I am going to draw it to a close. To sum up a bit: things look better than they did last year. However, we have not talked about aircraft carriers or Sentinel; these are decisions that have been taken at a massive cost to the taxpayer. It is clear that scrapping, delaying, changing result in massive costs to the public purse. I hope your optimistic planning assumptions are not the only basis on which you are planning for the future, because, if they are, I dread to think what we will be looking at in two or three years' time.
Bernard Gray: I hear you.
Ursula Brennan: Indeed.
Chair: Thank you very much.