Military procurement has always been out of control

Many people will have missed a story in this weekend's Financial Times, but it is crucial to know about to understand the debate over the militarisation of Europe.

From 1 to 8 of February this year the UK's most senior defence staff and 60 commercial lobbyists for the arms industry spent a week at a luxury ski resort at the expense of a charity – which is funded by the arms industry. Shortly afterwards all involved decided to massively increase the amount of taxpayer money spent on weapons.

Among the military involved were head of the British military Sir Rich Knighton, deputy chief of the British Army Lieutenant General David Eastman, interim chief executive of Defence Equipment and Support Lieutenant General Simon Hamilton and deputy commander of Nato Land Command Lieutenant General Jez Bennett.

Among the corporate interests who attended were AirTanker, Balfour Beatty, BMT, Endace, 3DOT, Airbus, Anduril, Palantir, Bain & Co., PwC and BAE Systems. Corporate lobbyists and defence staff alike enjoyed their week in the French Alps resort of Méribel, staying in the rather pleasant hotels Hôtel L’Eterlou and Hôtel La Chaudanne.

Now, was the conflict of interests that simple it would be bad enough, but that is not the end of reasons for concern. Take David Arthurton who attended (with his wife) in his capacity as air vice marshal and MoD director of strategy and military digitisation. That is not what he does now; since his return he is managing director for combat air, UK & Europe for US drone manufacturer Anduril.

Another attendee was Kata Escott. You may possibly know her from her role as MoD strategy director and Cabinet Office national security secretariat director – or you may know her in her new role as managing director of Airbus Defence and Space UK. Likewise Polly Scully, either MoD strategy director or UK defence lead for US data intelligence group Palantir, depending on whether you go back two years or three.

The whole thing is organised by UK Armed Forces Winter Sports Association, a winter sports charity for servicemen which is funded by the defence sector, meaning this whole even is a joint exercise between the military and corporate interests. In almost any other part of the public sector, this would be considered an unacceptable conflict of interests, but the defence industries operate by their own rules.

Then again, if any other part of the British public sector was unable to account for billions of pounds of expenditure then we would all have heard about it, yet when billions go missing from the UK nuclear weapons programme, it is barely taken as noteworthy by the UK media.

In fact there have been many, many reviews of military procurement and they virtually all arrive at the same conclusion – it is broken, unaccountable and lacking in transparency with massive amounts of money being wasted. For example a Public Audit Committee in 2021 concluded on a cross-party basis that military procurement was a “broken” system that needed an “urgent rethink”.

That review found £18 billion of wasted money and concluded that there now needed to be a radical overhaul. There wasn't, and two years later another, separate and new investigation found exactly the same thing. In fact there have been so many of these reviews by so many respected parliamentary committees and agencies over the years that Labour produced a handy guide – which it then ignored when the militarists took over the party.

If Britain was serious about its defence then it would identify the lobbyists for the defence industry as one of our most significant national threats. Again and again we have wasted enormous sums of money buying whatever they have been selling – useless aircraft carriers, spiralling nuclear costs that are out of control, tanks that don't work, body armour that isn't fit for purpose...

The evidence of failure is not new but goes back decades and decades – yet there is never reform, because as soon as someone says 'national security', everyone is expected to stop asking questions. Britain isn't lacking in defence because we have given arms manufacturers too little money but because we have given them too much for too little return.

With social security it is expected that fraud and waste be rooted out, even when it is minor, before any new funding is given. Why is corruption in the military the norm, and why does no-one do anything about it?