The Ministry of Defence’s decision to spend £104 million of taxpayers’ money on a state-of-the-art aircraft repair centre in Wales that is now facing closure a year after it opened, was “incomprehensible”, a report by the Commons Defence Committee said yesterday.
To make matters worse, the MoD was now investing large sums of public money to renovate existing facilities at RAF Marham in Norfolk instead of making use of the aviation centre known as Red Dragon, at St Athan, near Cardiff. The MPs on the committee described the MoD’s decision as “perverse and wasteful”.
The report said that the improved facilities at RAF Marham for repairing the RAF’s Tornado GR4s would never match those available at St Athan.
The MPs recommended that the National Audit Office and the Wales Audit Office investigate whether public money had been properly spent.