Accusations Against Ministry of Defence

A review of the budget and spending of the Ministry of Defence has shown that the Ministry is making efforts to ensure that the ‘funding gap of £21 billion’ is closed in the near future. Despite this seeming improvement in budget management, many officials have maintained that there is no gap at all. This has resulted in suggestions that the Ministry of Defence is delaying short term projects to save money which will ultimately push up the costs of defence in the long run.

MP James Arbuthnot stated that he felt tax money was being wasted by the way in which the Ministry is managing its funds. He stated: "What I point the finger at is not a specific project, but at a system within the Ministry of Defence, which consists of perverse incentives to buy the wrong thing, to buy it more expensively than it needs to be bought, to take longer over it and to buy something that does less than was originally intended."