This morning Labour published a “Dossier of Waste in the Ministry of Defence 2010 – 2021“, which attempts to show how the government wasted £13 billion over the past decade on defence spending. A damning revelation… except roughly half that figure is drawn from two projects commissioned and primarily managed by Labour themselves the last time they were in government…

The first, the Nimrod aircraft project, was in fact cancelled by the coalition in 2010 after 13 years of delays under New Labour had seen costs balloon to £3.7 billion – as cited in Labour’s own report today. The report also claims that the second project – the Queen Elizabeth Carrier –  wasted £2.7 billion over several years. £1.6 billion of which, according to a National Audit Office report, came from Gordon Brown’s decision to delay it…

After reading the briefing, Labour also has a questionable definition of ‘waste’: apparently the MoD’s Reaper drone programme, which is still used in the Middle East, constitutes “waste“, yet so does the retirement of the 30-year-old Sentry aircraft. Either equipment needs to be replaced, or it doesn’t. Labour can’t seem to make up their mind. 

Of course, the report conveniently ignores the fact that the National Audit Office found that by the time Labour left office, defence projects were £35 billion over-budget. “The Ministry of Defence has a multi-billion pound budgetary black hole which it is trying to fix with a ‘save now, pay later'”, it said…