Westminster waste drives tank through criticism of ferries disaster

Sir, – The Ferguson Marine procurement disaster has quite rightly highlighted the catastrophic failure in the management of the ferries known as 801 and 802 being constructed at this yard in Port Glasgow.

That was the conclusion of the Holyrood committee chaired by Tory MSP Edward Mountain

Each ferry was to cost £48.5 million so for both that is £97m but that has now reached a shocking £209m.

The thorough report has called for the root and branch overhaul for the procurement for any new ferries in Scotland.

The good news is that both ferries will be completed next year, the yard was saved from administration so hopefully more orders will be awarded and jobs saved in Port Glasgow.

The extra costs are indeed horrific with the first minister being called to account for this debacle, alleging jobs for the boys as well as the ministerial code being broken by her.

So is this the worst loss making procurement project ever by any UK or devolved government?

Sadly it is not. A study by Mott Macdonald has revealed 39 other infrastructure projects have exceeded costs, all at Westminster.

So lets focus on one. The Ajax tank programme.

The project was signed in 2014 between the MOD and American company General Dynamics to build 589 of these vehicles for a total cost of £5.5 billion in a factory in Wales.

The National Audit Office has reported that £3.167bn has been spent so far on 324 hulls with only 26 completed.

None of these delivered to the Army are fit for purpose with many problems, including the gun cannot be fired when the tank is in motion.

The MOD has missed its finish target date by four years and cannot give a new end date for completion either.

The National Audit Office has declared that if the project continues it will now cost at least £10bn to complete.

The project is currently languishing in defence procurement purgatory while engineers are trying to resolve the plethora of problems.

Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Commons public accounts committee which scrutinises government spending, said this is getting beyond a joke as the Army requires a capability to engage in a land war in Europe and branded the Ajax debacle as the biggest defence procurement failure of the past decade.

The Tory Government are failing British troops and taxpayers.

So has any prime minister or secretary of state for defence (and there has been several) been asked to account for these losses alleging jobs for the boys, cover-ups, breaking ministerial codes, interfering with the design after contract was signed or sheer incompetence by any Westminster committee?

Sounds similar to the ferries fiasco but the answer is no-one has been held to account so I suspect any report if submitted will be like the Sue Gray report, binned in No 10.

Well, that is democracy for you but we don’t have one, as we now reside in an autocracy.

Wonder what Unionists make of this as they have been noticeably silent so far concerning this catastrophe but have made plenty noise over the ferries scandal.