David Cameron is to "check out" claims that the Ministry of Defence spent £715 delivering one pair of boots from Oxfordshire to Northern Ireland. The Prime Minister was questioned on the matter by Plaid Cymru MP Elfyn Llwyd during Prime Minister's Questions.
"At the beginning of last month, a serviceman from Northern Ireland asked for a non-urgent pair of boots costing £45," said Llwyd.
"They were dispatched from a defence base Bicester by private courier to Northern Ireland, at a cost of £714.80. Is it not time the Prime Minister got a grip of this?"
The Prime Minister responded: "One of the things we are trying to do in the Ministry of Defence is recognise that there is a huge amount of back-office and logistics costs, and we want to make that more efficient so that we can actually spend money on the front line,"
Without question this is an example of poor value for money. The Prime Minister points to substantial back-office and logistic costs, and no doubt this will eventually become an issue of the wasteful civil service. What needs to be remembered here is that in this instance the problem arose from an already outsourced service. How much choice the MoD had when wanting to transport these boots is open to question.
We all know instances where outsourced contracts, particularly in IT, leave the MoD with very little choice but to accept excessive costs for simple procedures. Admittedly it’s likely that a civil servant signed the contract for this type of outsourced service, it would be interesting to see the contract and see the options and restrictions within it. What would be equally interesting would be to see the other competing bids, but particularly if any in-house bid was made (or even allowed). We won’t hold our breath.
