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Integrated Review: Defence Command Paper

I read that report—of reports I have read in my time, I think I would give it one out of 10. [Interruption.] First of all, four members of that Committee accumulated over a decade in the Department that bought the armoured vehicles. There was no sense whatsoever about that irony in the criticism I just heard from my right hon. Friend—none at all. [Interruption.] Since I got into the Department, the first thing I did was commit to signing up Boxer, which had not been done. It had sat on the shelf for a bit. I made sure we developed Boxer, signed it up and got it delivered, and it is going to be made in the United Kingdom in a partnership between BAE and Rheinmetall. I took decisions—he may not like the decisions—about the Warrior upgrade programme. It had been, as he knows, wandering around for many, many years, including the years that he was in the Department. TRACER, if he remembers as far back as I do, was cancelled by the United States, of which we had been a partner in the mid-90s. FRES, if he remembers—I am sure he does, but it does not seem to appear in the report—was affected by the changes to the attacks on personnel by

the proliferation of basic anti-armour capability into the hands of the likes of the Taliban. That is why FRES had to be up-armoured, changed in size and changed in scale—the threat changed. [Interruption.] He might not have liked the consequence, but would he rather—I was not in that Department, and I am sure this would be his defence when he was in the Department—have progressed with an inadequate vehicle, where soldiers got killed, or took the decision to potentially cancel it and move on? The Boxer—

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
691 c656 
Session
2019-21
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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