Statement from PAC Chair on NAO report on Aircraft Carriers

This is a deeply worrying report from the National Audit Office and raises many questions that the Committee will seek to address next Monday when the MOD Accounting Officer is in front of the committee.

The report raises three clear issues on cancellation, transparency and cost.

When the Prime Minister made a statement to the House on Tuesday 19 October 2010, he said that “we were left in a situation where even cancelling the second carrier would cost more that to build it. I have this in written confirmation from BAE systems.” The NAO has discovered that this is not the full story and that cancellation was feasible and offered significant medium term savings.  The report shows that cancelling one carrier in the long term would save £200 million and cancelling both would deliver £1.2billion in savings over the same period.  In addition it is clear that the military judged the carriers to be of secondary priority to other maritime capabilities.

On transparency, the NAO do not fully understand how these decisions were made by the National Security Council because, despite their statutory rights under the National Audit Act 1983, they were not given access to particular cabinet committee papers which they needed to understand the way in which the cost, affordability, military capability and industrial implications of the alternative carrier strike options were drawn together to support the decision. This lack of transparency over such a crucial and costly decision is not acceptable.

On costs, the SDSR decision radically changed the carrier concept and left the country with a gap in maritime capability for a decade. There are new cost and value for money risks which have yet to be quantified and which in the current financial climate are clearly unaffordable. The carriers may once again be a victim of the need to balance the books in the short term.

The report is available to read on the National Audit Office website