14 In the event that the Department could not reach agreement on the transfer of risk, the Department planned to implement an in-house proposal, known as DE&S Plus (DE&S+). It would decide how to improve DE&S within the public sector should the GoCo proposal not proceed. Moving to a DE&S+ organisation would present far lower risk to the Department. However, it was unlikely to maximise the commercial benefits compared with the GoCo option.
15 When the GoCo competition was halted in December 2013, the DE&S+ proposition was not implemented. Although scrutiny had raised concerns up to October 2013 that DE&S+ was insufficiently resourced, it remains unclear why the Department did not complete development of DE&S+ and implement it as the anticipated fall-back option. Instead, the Department built on previous work undertaken for the Materiel Strategy and developed a third option, the bespoke trading entity.
16 At the point the GoCo competition was halted, the Department had spent £33 million on the Materiel Strategy, including £25 million on contractors and advisers.