§ LORD ORR-EWINGMy Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
§ The Question was as follows:
§ To ask Her Majesty's Government how many quality assurance personnel were employed by the Ministry of Defence (or its agents) in each of its last five years.
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR DEFENCE (LORD CARRINGTON)My Lords, the figures for April 1 in the years 1968 to 1972 were 16,150, 15,350, 14,900, 14,350 and 13,780.
§ LORD ORR-EWINGMy Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether he is aware that money spent on hardware for the three Services during the last four years, in 1972 pounds, has fallen from £933 604 million to £628 million, which is a cut of 33 per cent? Ought not therefore the number of quality assurance officers to have been cut by a similar percentage, rather than by about half that proportion?
§ LORD CARRINGTONMy Lords, I do not know whether those figures would be absolutely accurate. In the last two years we have cut the numbers by 1,200, but I agree that there should be a further reduction. I can tell my noble friend that further considerable reductions of staff are expected in the near future.
§ LORD ORR-EWINGMy Lords, may I press my noble friend a little further on this matter? Mr. Rayner, in the Rayner Report, said that when the Procurement Executive was set up there would be a very considerable reduction and that it was quite vain for Ministry of Defence officers to try to monitor the production and quality of sub-contractors—this was an unproductive process—and that if people produced inefficient equipment they should lose future contracts rather than have large and expensive monitoring organisations sitting over them all the while.
§ LORD CARRINGTONThat is perfectly right, my Lords. That is exactly what Mr. Rayner said. One of the ways in which we are reducing staff and will seek and will in future get a considerable reduction in staff is to place increased responsibility for quality assurance on contractors.