House of Commons - Defence

Select Committee on Defence Eighth Report

EIGHTH REPORT

The Defence Committee has agreed to the following Report:—

MAJOR PROCUREMENT PROJECTS SURVEY: THE COMMON NEW GENERATION FRIGATE PROGRAMME

Annual Survey

1. The Defence Committee has traditionally kept a watching brief on major procurement projects. In particular, it monitored the Trident programme virtually from its inception[1] and has kept a close eye on the Eurofighter programme in its various stages. We have decided to continue and develop this tradition. Additionally, as part of its monitoring of the implementation of the Strategic Defence Review, the Committee decided to examine on an annual basis the progress of a selection of major equipment programmes, some of them chosen with a particular view to examining the success or otherwise of the 'smart procurement initiative'. The portfolio of programmes to be monitored may change over time, but initially we have selected:[2]

The new aircraft carriers[3]
The Future Carrier-Borne Aircraft (FCBA)[4]
The Common New Generation Frigate (CNGF)
Additional sealift capability[5]
The BOWMAN communication system
The Tactical Reconnaissance Armoured Combat Equipment Requirement (TRACER)
Eurofighter[6]
The Beyond Visual Range Air-to-air Missile (BVRAAM)
The Advanced Short Range Air-to-air Missile (ASRAAM)
Airlift programmes—the Hercules Rolling Replacement Aircraft tranche-2 (HRR2), and the Short Term Strategic Aircraft (STSA)[7]

2. Our first step was to request from the MoD a memorandum setting out the history and context of each of our selected programmes, and a statement of their progress to date. In future, our aim is to review annually a progress report from the MoD on these programmes, take supplementary oral evidence on a selection of them, and produce a report in time for the newly established annual debate on defence equipment.[8] We recommend that the next defence equipment debate should take place in early June 2000, and that the MoD provide its next progress report before Easter 2000 to allow us time to report our conclusions to the House.

3. In this first year, however, the MoD's memorandum on the monitored programmes was produced in May 1999, after the previous month's defence equipment debate.[9] We have decided therefore to publish a declassified version of the MoD's useful memorandum,[10] and at this stage to examine further only one of the projects covered—the Common New Generation Frigate programme (CNGF). The programme comprised two distinct elements—a new warship ('Horizon') and its Principal Anti-Air Missile System ('PAAMS'). The CNGF programme was chosen because of the announcement, in the defence equipment debate itself,[11] that its three collaborative partners would not proceed further with the Horizon warship component. We commissioned a further memorandum on the CNGF programme from the MoD,[12] and took oral evidence from the MoD's Chief of Defence Procurement (CDP) (also Chief Executive of the new Defence Procurement Agency) in June 1999.