The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has relied too much on the emergency procurement of equipment, a report from MPs has said.

The Commons public accounts committee says the department has been “too reliant” on using the emergency buying process, the Urgent Operational Requirements programme, to provide equipment for frontline troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As a result, the report states, kit is sometimes insufficiently tested, with problems only becoming apparent when it is deployed.

Committee chair Edward Leigh admitted that most of the urgently procured equipment had performed well, but added: “The serious downside is that problems with reliability have sometimes emerged only after the kit has actually been deployed,” Leigh said. “The MoD’s high degree of reliance on this procurement process must be questioned.”

“Both ground vehicles and helicopters have suffered from shortages of spare parts. Helicopters back home have had to be cannibalised; and our forces in theatre have been compelled to rely on contracted and coalition helicopters.”

There were also concerns over the working of the department’s supply chain targets for delivering equipment to frontline troops, with MPs describing current logistics information as “inadequate”.

But the committee praised performance on the provision of medical support to soldiers in theatre, which had resulted in an “increasing number of unexpected survivors following severe battlefield injuries”.