[devilincarnate]

Originally Posted by Damien

Yeah. Heard about this yesterday. Kind of embarrassing for the government but not a lot has been made of it.

Not too sure about that?

The cost of the U-turn is likely to be about £100m, he told BBC News.

The estimated cost of fitting the "cats and traps" system to HMS Prince of Wales had risen from £950m to £2bn "with no guarantee that it will not rise further".

But, he revealed, the government had spent between £40m and £50m on design and assessment work and there would also be penalty costs associated with scrapping the F-35C deal.

'Incompetence'

He told MPs the eventual cost of the U-turn would be "nowhere near" the £250m claimed by Labour and warned "fiscal incontinence" over defence procurement would undermine "the support we should offer our armed forces".

When pressed about the cost of the rethink on BBC Radio 4's The World at One he said it would be in the region of £100m. Labour has called on Mr Hammond to publish the full costs.

Unveiling the decision to "mothball" one of the carriers and order the F35-C in October 2010, as part of the government's defence review, David Cameron attacked Labour's "appalling legacy" on defence procurement and said decisions were "now being made in the right way and for the right reasons".

Shadow Defence Secretary Jim Murphy: "Nothing has been gained. Two years have been wasted"

Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy said Mr Cameron should now apologise for the government's "incompetence", saying that the prime minister had ignored warnings from the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office about the "high risk and high cost" of opting for the F-35C.

"It is as incoherent as it is ludicrous," he said. "The prime minister's decisions have cost British time, British money, British talent and British prestige.

"Describing this government's defence strategy as an omnishambles would be a compliment.

"The previous Labour government got it right and this government's policy has unravelled."

He said the government should never have scrapped its Harrier jump jets, which he said had been "sold off to America for a fraction of their value" - a decision he said risked "international ridicule".

Labour peer and former security minister Admiral West described the U-turn as a "shambles".

"It is extraordinary, it does smack of total incompetence. I'm just utterly amazed," he told the BBC's Daily Politics.

'Expensive cul-de-sac'

Lord Stirrup, who was head of the armed forces when the 2010 decision was made, said the government had made a "perfectly rational decision" to backtrack after discovering the "true nature of the costs and the risks that are involved".

But former Labour defence secretary Bob Ainsworth said the 2010 decision "was taken in the face of clear advice" and the facts had not changed in the way Mr Hammond claimed.

"I reviewed this decision, taken by my predecessor. The fundamental facts were there at the time and have not changed.

"We have been in an extremely expensive cul-de-sac for the last 18 months as a result of a shambles of an SDSR and I can only congratulate you for bringing some sanity to it," he told Mr Hammond in the Commons.

Mr Hammond insisted the risks associated with the F35-B were "dramatically different now" to what they were in 2010 when there was a possibility it would be cancelled due to technical problems.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18008171

Not too sure now after these comments?