Bureaucracy, inefficient working practices and poor contracts will be targeted in a new defence review with the savings to be invested in the front line, Gavin Williamson indicated yesterday.
The defence secretary, setting out to MPs his plans for the review — officially called the modernising defence programme — hinted that he would also ask the Treasury for more money to ensure the military was fully trained and kitted out to combat intensifying global threats.
“In order to secure competitive advantage over our potential adversaries we need to ensure that we can move quickly to strengthen further our capabilities in priority areas and reduce the resources we devote elsewhere,” Mr Williamson said in the Commons.
Making the Ministry of Defence more efficient is the primary focus of the review. “I want it to do better and to drive efficiencies so that the money can be put into the front line for our armed forces,” he said. Mr Williamson said that his review would not be “fiscally neutral”. “It will look at how we can get the armed forces we need to deal with the threats that we face,” he told MPs.