For the record, we are about to lose one of the best Defence Secretaries we have ever had. He will be sorely missed in this House, and in the Department. He knows that we have discussed what is wrong with defence procurement on many occasions, and he knows that the Public Accounts Committee and the Defence Committee have published a number of reports saying that it is broken. The most recent, entitled “It is broke—and it’s time to fix it” was published only last Sunday, and on Tuesday we see the DCP refresh, whose acquisition strategy has effectively accepted some of the 22 recommendations in our report within 48 hours. I humbly submit that that is some kind of world record for a Select Committee report.
However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Let me, in all seriousness, encourage the Defence Secretary, when he does his handover to whoever succeeds him—accompanied by his excellent team of junior Ministers—to impress on his successor the fact that we really do need to bring about this reform, not just for industry and not just for our armed forces, but for the whole security and defence of the realm. And with that, we wish him well.