§ Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Secretary of State for Defence how many research requirement committees, or their equivalent, there are in his Department; what subjects they are concerned with; how many senior and other officers are involved with such committees; and what amount of money each one is concerned with individually and in aggregate.
§ Mr. William RodgersIn the Ministry of Defence there is one principal research Committee, the Defence Research Committee—DRC—which provides policy guidance on the research programme which is designed to meet the Services' requirements for future conventional weapons and equipment. The Chairman is the Chief Scientific Adviser, and there are 13 members representing the central staffs, the Service users and the Procurement Executive. The Treasury and 419W Department of Industry also attend. However, the control of financial resources devoted to research is vested not in the DRC but in the Chief Executive, Procurement Executive, through his Controller of Research and Development Establishments and Research. In 1973–74 expenditure on the defence research programme amounted to about £70 million.