Gibbon wrote that the Roman Empire collapsed under the weight of its own stupendous
fabric. So too is the Ministry of Defence. An investigation by the Times (£) has revealed that bureaucratic
intransigence has cost the taxpayer £6bn and several servicemen their lives. We have been here before with the Nimrod disaster and the subsequent Gray and Haddon-Cave reports. ‘A culture of optimism’ in procurement and
maintenance leads to unsustainable costs, expensive delays, and, occasionally, the indefensible loss of life. At last, the Commons Public Accounts Committee is volubly shocked and has called for
urgent reform.
The Times and the Committee blame the labyrinthine complexity of Whitehall’s last great monolith, and successive governments’ failure to enact systemic reform. With singular absence of mind, the issue under consideration is lost in a plethora of MoD committees, sub-committees and consultations, a system designed to stymie accountability and obstruct scrutiny.
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