§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence what assessment he has made of the adequacy of equipment supply to the armed forces. [114809]
§ Mr. IngramWe have the mechanisms in place to supply the equipment that our armed forces need. Equipment is held to meet the requirements of a range of possible scenarios. Additional equipment and supplies for specific operational needs can be obtained direct from our commercial partners, where necessary through the Ministry of Defence"s tried and tested urgent operational requirement process. The recent operation in Iraq, for which an equivalent quantity of material to that supplied for the first Gulf conflict was deployed in half the time, demonstrated the overall adequacy of supply. However, action is in hand to identify lessons from this operation and we will publish the results in due course, subject to the usual constraints on force protection and security.