Member

My final point is on funding. Fear not—this is a plea not for more funding but for consistent funding. The Ministry of Defence has one of the most complicated accounting processes that I have ever met. To try to simplify it, it is split into two: CDEL, or capital funding, and RDEL, or revenue funding. Within revenue funding, we have committed spend and uncommitted spend. Rightly, the pay and salaries of our regular Armed Forces come under committed spend; it cannot suffer in-year savings. While the pay rise is welcome, that goes into an increase in committed spend, which means that the amount of uncommitted spend reduces.