UK plan to outsource military buying ditched: Defence secretary
Iran Press TV
Tue Dec 10, 2013 3:27PM GMT
The responsibility for buying 159 billion pound military equipment for the UK army will no longer rest with private companies, the country's defence secretary has announced.
Philip Hammond on Tuesday confirmed earlier reports of the cancellation.
'We do not have a competitive process," he said, explaining why the plan was ditched.
"I have therefore concluded that the risks of proceeding with a single bidder are too great to be acceptable.'
Earlier on November 19, PA Consulting and PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of two bidders for the military contract, pulled out and only a consortium led by US engineering group Bechtel was left in the competition.
Addressing the lawmakers after the announcement, Hammond said that he is instead establishing a new government trading entity to buy equipment and supplies for the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
He added that the new body will be able to recruit and manage staff 'along commercial lines.'
MPs also heard that the abandoned process of bidding for a buyer had cost £7.4 million.
Hammond was accused by Vernon Coaker, the shadow defence secretary, of being forced into an "embarrassing U-turn" after only one private bidder was left in the process to take on running the department's procurement wing.
Coaker said that Hammond's "flagship reform of defence procurement has come crashing down around him."
Britain has been heavily criticised for its sometimes chaotic weapons programme. The costs of two new aircraft carriers, one of the biggest British defence projects ever, has risen dramatically and the project has been bedeviled by construction and design problems.
MOL/HMV
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