Speeches by Pollard.

“I am not in the NAO, so I cannot comment on what they think about it, but they have been working with the Ministry of Defence throughout this period. We are working with them as part of the review process. Whether that gives them a Scooby Doo or not, I am not certain, but we are working with them.”

“There are effectively three questions that you have asked me. First, why the most amount of capital spending now? One of the really big reasons why we are doing that is because of the massive capital investment we are having to make in the Defence Nuclear Enterprise. We are renewing not just our hunter-killer fleet, bu…”

“It would be for John to answer to the remarks he made. I have been in front of your Committee and the public many times and said that defence is an engine for growth, if we spend it correctly. An increase in the defence budget, in my mind, should be spent more with British companies, creating more jobs in the United Ki…”

“The defence equipment plan largely put categories of expenditure together. We have broken those down to line items of individual capabilities, but we have not gone into the full detail of those because much of that is not information that we would like in the public domain. In respect to the National Audit Office, we h…”

“Yes, but when that is regarded as a cut to capabilities and framed as a negative, it is important that we are clear that the choice we have made is to pivot from old capabilities to new ones. The Wildcat is a good example of that, because it is designed to fly over a frontline, assess enemy positions and then fly back.…”

“I think it was the speed of transition from old capabilities to new. You mentioned frigates; I am the MP who represents Devonport, where they are based. We took the difficult decision to bring forward the retirement of a number of Type 23 frigates, because the material state of the frigates is no longer suitable for th…”

“On capabilities, which is the area I worked on for the previous year on this, we did adjust some of the capabilities in the period between the two Defence Secretaries. For instance, we brought forward more low-cost effectors, rather than having the spend largely being in the complex weapons space, which means more expe…”

“Can I just talk about—”

“I do not entirely buy the argument that there is not detail.”

“It is, deliberately so.”

“There were decisions on capabilities made in advance of that. For example, the Wildcat, the Type 83 and the Type 32 were decisions that were taken previously.”

“Indeed. The Type 83 and the Type 32 were just PowerPoints with no budget attached to them that we inherited from the previous Government. The Wildcat is a battlefield reconnaissance helicopter that you fly across the frontline.”

“There were changes in the choices. For example, one of those was around whether to proceed with new build Storm Shadow or whether to move to other munitions. That was set out in the DIP. That was an example of that. The high-low mix, between complex weapons and more low-cost—”

“For me personally?”

“Although I do not recognise those precise figures, what we have been doing in this process is taking the unfunded elements of the equipment plan that we inherited from the last Government, which added up to a larger total, even though there was no money attached to them, and then matching those to the recommendations o…”

“I was not involved with those precise discussions because they were held by the former Secretary of State and the Treasury. That might be one that I could usefully hand over to the Chief Secretary to answer.”

“Roughly two weeks-ish.”

“Let me put the changes in two buckets, as I see them personally. One was on capabilities. The tilt that took place between the two capability offerings was broadly about increased readiness—so moving money so that we have additional spend on readiness—which was a concern raised largely in the public domain. It was some…”

“Yes, absolutely. The defence equipment plans dealt with a very narrow section of defence spending. The DIP has not just the equipment we are buying and sustaining, but sections on people—the armed forces personnel that we have in our civilian workforce—our estates and our infrastructure. We are moving towards warfighti…”

“Yes. We have a defence optimisation programme, which we inherited from the previous Government. That sets out broadly what we own, what we need to keep, what we need to invest in, and what we need to dispose of. The defence housing strategy that we published last year set out quite a lot of the land disposal opportunit…”