---

Maritime Surveillance

I am sure that a previous Minister with responsibility for defence acquisition would always be happy to take responsibility for all the decisions that he made, even if he was not always fully aware of that at the time.

As our report on acquisition makes clear, the MOD must learn the lessons of past acquisition decisions. I think that I speak for the whole Committee when I say that, although we welcome the Government’s progress on acquisition, we are not convinced that they have learned all the lessons yet. There is still more work to be done. Perhaps the Minister will say more about what improvements can be made, in the light of those lessons.

The third responsible party is BAE Systems. It should not sit around and blame the MOD, the RAF and the two Governments, and try to get by without accepting some responsibility for its decisions. The Minister nods, and I welcome the fact that there is acceptance on both sides of the Chamber that BAE was not an exemplar: in much the same way as I have been critical of Lockheed Martin’s approach to the strike fighter, I consider that BAE Systems bears some blame.