‘CUTS KO FOR SHIPS & JETS’ £178bn defence plans ‘at risk’

PLANS for new warships, planes and armoured vehicles may be put at risk by the Ministry of Defence’s struggle to find £7billion in savings.

MPs on the Commons Defence Committee said they “seriously doubt” the MoD’s ability to make the necessary cuts.

The cross-party parliamentary group said the MoD had proved incapable of making similar savings in the past.

And it backed the findings of spending watchdog the National Audit Office that the UK’s defence equipment plan was at “greater risk” than at any time since 2012.

The £178bn programme set out in 2016 involves defence spending over OH what fun it was to ride as Santas took to their bikes on London’s Oxford Street yesterday. More than 600 turned the shopping street into a sea of red and white as they pedalled along to collect cash for St Thomas’ Hospital in the capital. Lovable alien E.T. even came down to earth for the day to join in the ride.

10 years. It includes purchasing new equipment including eight Type 26 frigates, new mechanised infantry vehicles and nine Boeing

P-8A maritime patrol aircraft. But it rests on finding £7.3bn of efficiency savings, on top of £7.1bn previously announced.

And the MPs warned about the MoD’s ability to “generate efficiencies on the scale required to deliver the equipment plan or detail how it would proceed to do so”.

They said: “Even if all the efficiencies are realised, there will be little room for manoeuvre, in the absence of sufficient financial ‘headroom’ and contingency funding.”

And they added: “This is not an adequate basis for delivering major projects at the heart of the UK’s defence capability.”

The committee’s Tory chairman, Julian Lewis, said: “It is extremely doubtful that the MoD can generate even more efficiencies from within its already stretched budget on the scale required to deliver its equipment plan.

“This will inevitably lead either to a reduction in the numbers of ships, aircraft and vehicles or to even greater delays in their acquisition.”

The committee’s report is published against a backdrop of Tory unease about the prospect of reductions in military spending.

The cuts are part of a security capability review being carried out by National Security Adviser Mark Sedwill.