Taxpayers are on the hook for a £25million repair bill for the Royal Navy’s stricken aircraft carrier, MPs were told tonight.
Estimated costs for fixing the propeller on the 65,000-tonne HMS Prince of Wales have climbed by £5m in just three months.
In March, reports suggested they would come to £20m and the Royal Navy was optimistic BAE Systems - a key partner in the £3.1billion ship’s construction - would fund the repair.
However, the Commons Defence Sub-Committee on Defence Equipment and Support today heard that “in the first instance”, the Navy would be billed because the Government opted not to take out an “extended warranty”.
Asked who would foot the repair bill, Defence Procurement Minister James Cartlidge initially told MPs: “I don’t think we’ve made a final decision on that.”
But he was corrected by the Ministry of Defence’s top civil servant, permanent secretary David Williams, who said: “In the first instance, the cost of the repair will come out of the Navy’s budget.”
The revelations came in a parliamentary hearing about ongoing scandals in MoD procurement.
The department is regularly blasted for ordering billions of pounds worth of gear and kit which arrives late, over-budget and faulty.
Mr Drax demanded to know why companies involved in building Prince of Wales were not funding the job.
Andy Start, chief executive of Defence Equipment and Support, an arm of the MoD, claimed paying the £25m was cheaper than taking out an “extended warranty” on the vessel, which is designed to last 50 years.
He told the committee: “There is a strategic decision we need to make as a department whenever we buy stuff, rather like when you buy a car, as to whether or not you buy the extended warranty.
“Those extended warranties on things like carriers … are really expensive.
“The cost of the repair was a tiny, tiny proportion of what it would have cost us to have the equivalent of an extended warranty.
“It is better value for us not to buy an extended warranty and better value for us to pay for it as we go, and that’s what we are doing.”
Naval chiefs suffered deep embarrassment when Prince of Wales broke down off the Isle of Wight hours after leaving Portsmouth Naval Base last August.
She was due to sail across the Atlantic for training exercises with the US Navy alongside the Royal Canadian Navy and United States Marine Corps.
Instead, she limped back to her home port for emergency checks which revealed a fault with her 33-ton starboard propeller.
It was removed and the warship headed up the North Sea for repairs at a dry dock at Rosyth, where she was assembled.
She is due to return to the sea in the autumn for planned exercises.
Mr Start said any attempt to claw back cash from firms which built the warship were “complicated by the fact that in the end the carrier was delivered by an alliance of which we were a full partner”.
The arrangement to share work among major firms was thrashed out by the Government for delivering Prince of Wales and her sister ship, Queen Elizabeth.
Senior Conservative MP Richard Drax also questioned Mr Cartlidge and officials over claims from a marine engineer that the “wrong grade of fuel was being put into our aircraft carriers … which damages the engines”.
Mr Cartlidge insisted it was “the first I’ve heard of that”, adding: “It’s not come across my desk before.”
Mr Start said: “I’d not heard that one before.”
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