The Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has said it is "perfectly legitimate" for the Ministry of Defence to hire in consultants, but conceded that proper procedures had not always been followed.

Mr Hammond told the Today programme that it was legitimate for the MoD to hire technical specialists to do work such as design validation and airworthiness certification.

But he said the MoD had a "culture of sloppiness around financial discipline" and that guidelines and procedures had not been followed properly in all cases.

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