Stuart Tootal, former commanding officer of 3rd Bn Paras, writes in today's Telegraph of how repeated demands for more helicopters in Afghanistan “fell on deaf ears.” He explains how this shortage “increased risk for his paratroopers” since it meant they had to “drive into combat when we should have been flying”. He writes about soldiers trapped on minefields without enough helicopters to come to the rescue.
In Thursday's Commons debate, I highlighted how this helicopter procurement scandal had left British soldiers waiting on minefields in Afghanistan , and of how “the price of protectionist procurement was paid in English blood in Helmand”.
Rather than rhetoric, I outlined the facts I’ve uncovered after months of research. And they do not paint a pretty picture. I quote from Hansard in the two sections below:
"In 31 July last year, Lord Drayson admitted that the MOD had not run a competitive tender process to replace the Lynx [helicopter]. It was, he wrote, “the judgement of the department that a competition...would cause delay”. Thus the alternatives were never fully considered.
Thus a £1 billion contract to build helicopters was awarded for a helicopter that cost almost 50 per cent. more than the alternatives, and which would not be ready until at least 2012."
That, Stuart Tootal, explains the delay. But it's worse;
"Sir Kevin Tebbit, who was the permanent under-secretary at the MOD when the decision to exclude rival bids was made, did not have to wait anything like that time before he joined the board of the company that got the contract.
It is ironic that the helicopter that eventually lifted Corporal Mark Wright and his comrades off the minefield in Helmand was apparently an American Sikorsky—precisely the kind of alternative never considered by the MOD. Those who think that procurement policy should be about protecting jobs should perhaps remember that. Sikorsky tells me that it wrote to the MOD, offering to supply some 20-plus lift helicopters within months. It tells me that it took Sir Kevin’s former Department longer to respond to the offer than it would have taken the firm to fulfil it.
You get that? In other words, MoD officials didn't even respond to the offer to supply you and your men with helicopters quickly.
Tootal concludes his article by saying "commanders have been disfranchised from the equipment procurement process, which remains in the hands of civil servants". He is absolutely right.
Defence procurement policy is run in the interests of a few contractors - not our armed forces. It is better at putting money on to the balance sheet of big corporations than at equipping our armed forces. No amount of friendly lobbying by the big contractors can change that fact. Noone can improve procurement without recognising the fact.
Something seriously stinks with defence procurement - and for the sake of our armed forces, we need to put it right.
