Examination of witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
WEDNESDAY 10 FEBRUARY 1999
MR KEVIN
TEBBIT, MR
COLIN BALMER,
AIR MARSHAL
SIR JOHN
DAY and MR
JOHN HOWE
Mr Hancock
20. A piece of land sold, probably one of
the nicest pieces offered in Greenwich, the real estate owned
by the Royal Navy, sold off not to the highest bidder. This is
publicly known. That the highest bidder did not buy the site.
When the question was asked: how much did the person pay who actually
purchased this site and what were the reasons why you did not
accept the highest bid? the answer was, "We aren't going
to tell you."
(Mr Tebbit) This may be a very specific issue
and I would be very happy to look into it
Mr McWilliam
21. A more general point. We have had a
letter from the Secretary of State obviously explaining to us
how he thinks the new information we are going to be presented
with is going to be done. But there is another aspect of this
as well. The Government have made it clear that in the near future
they are going to produce a Freedom of Information Bill. Now,
are you absolutely certain that your new method of producing and
presenting information will be fully compliant with a Freedom
of Information Act?
(Mr Tebbit) I am absolutely certain it will be
compliant with whatever provisions finally emerge in the Act.
I think there are two different things. We are volunteering information
in order to explain how we are using £22 billion, in terms
of reporting on how we are achieving our objectives.
22. That is not the thrust of my questioning.
(Mr Tebbit) Obviously individuals have the right
to ask questions.
23. No, the thrust of my question is: the
Secretary of State has given us a letter about how he intends
to proceed in the future. My question is: will that method of
proceeding be fully compliant with the Freedom of Information
Act which was in the Government's manifesto?
(Mr Tebbit) The answer would be yes. However,
I am a little puzzled about the link which you make.
Mr McWilliam: You
have only to look at the document you have given us to see why
I am making that linkage, and my colleagues' questions.
Mr Hancock
24. What caveats have you asked to be put
in? What have the Ministry of Defence said about the Freedom of
Information? I sit on a Select Committee which is looking at that.
We have been told that the Ministry of Defence have been very
hard at asking for exemptions. I would like to know what exemptions
you have asked for.
(Mr Tebbit) There will be certain exemptions requested
on national security.
Mr Hancock: Other
than security.
Mr Cohen
25. My colleague, Mike Hancock, raised the
issue of the 44 agencies. Are there any examples of significantly
poor performance, in your opinion, that you can tell us of?
(Mr Tebbit) Within the agencies?
26. Yes, within the agencies.
(Mr Tebbit) I am not aware of particular poor
performance in that context.
(Mr Balmer) If I could pick up the point about
what agencies publish. All agencies are required to publish to
Parliament, usually by an Answer to a Question, what their key
targets are for the year. Those are published by each and every
agency. They are required to deliver against those targets and
they produce a report and in some cases full accounts at the end
of the year. They are required to list where they have not achieved
the targets. In the case of some of our agencies all targets are
being met. In the case of some others some targets are fairly
narrowly missed. I am not conscious of any of our agencies where
we have had to say, "You have so badly and significantly
missed targets that it is judged to be poor performance."
I might need to remind myself of all 44 reports, but I am not
conscious of any agency where we have had to call them in and
castigate them for their performance.
Mr Colvin
27. I raised the question of Resource and
Accounting Budgeting earlier and I wish to thank Mr Balmer for
the briefing which he gave to the Committee. RAB will come in
for the year 2001/2002 but the new Performance Report is earlier
than that. Are you anticipating RAB in deciding the precise Report
the performance format shall take, or are you accepting that you
are going to have to adapt the Performance Report in order to
take account of the changes associated with RAB when it is introduced?
(Mr Tebbit) I will start with the new framework.
As I say, dividing our outputs into three: the Department of the
State policy function; Military Capability; and Equipment. We
will progressively get to the stage where we can link money very
firmly to the individual sub-elements within that.
28. You take each of the nine objectives
separately?
(Mr Tebbit) We do not do it as nine objectives.
They will be reformulated under Resource Accounting and Budgeting.
However, to start with, we will not be able to communicate costs
precisely from sub-elements through to the final output because
we will not have the full RAB system in place until, as you say,
2002. Before that we will have to use a degree of estimating to
attribute the money until we have a full RAB system operating.
We are moving to the system now. The transition occurs over the
next three years. We will be moving to full cost communication
to outputs by 2002.
(Mr Balmer) We can certainly expect to see the
shape and nature of this Report change over the next few years
as we become more sophisticated in understanding outputs. Again,
one of the features of Resource Accounting and Budgeting under
the Treasury proposals is the production of what is called an
Output and Performance Analysis. Those are documents which would
accompany the resource accounts and set out in quite a lot of
detail what the outputs of the Department have been and our performance
against them. As Mr Tebbit said, we are not yet good enough to
do that. We do not have the information systems in place yet.
What we are trying to do in the next year or so is begin to work
out how those will look based on today's information. We are in
discussion with the Treasury at the moment about what our current
Output Performance Analysis should look like. This is a document
which we may publish. The Treasury are contemplating publishing
today's version of these documents later in the spring.
29. Mr Tebbit, you raised the question of
the form in which future reports are going to take place, the
two reports to Parliament. We have had a letter from the Secretary
of State, which the Chairman mentioned earlier, dated 5 February,
telling us that the "Statement on the Defence Estimates"
is now going to be replaced with a Defence White Paper. We can
expect the first one to take account of the Washington Summit,
and then the Departmental Performance Report. In the Secretary
of State's letter he says: "[It] will assess the MoD's activities
over the past year and will contain most of the factual information
published previously in the Statement on the Defence Estimates."
What is going to be left out?
(Mr Tebbit) We will be providing more information.
It is a question of balancing that information and the information
we provide in October/ November.
30. So there will be no duplication?
(Mr Tebbit) No, no.
31. In other words, combine the two. We
are going to be receiving more information in a more understandable
form than we have received previously?
(Mr Tebbit) The emphasis will be on linking it
to the outputs. That is the important thing so you know what we
are delivering.
32. Can we, please, year on year, try and
retain the same format. This is because comparing one year with
the next becomes a great deal easier if we can do that.
(Mr Balmer) We will, of course, continue to publish
our volume of statistical information which is published during
the summer. This used to be part of the White Paper but it is
now a separate document. That contains an awful lot of detailed
information of the sort which Parliament have shown an interest
in over the past years.
33. The Secretary of State also mentioned
in his letter, which you may have seen, that: "This new approach
to the White Paper will enable us to give policy issues a deeper
and more thoughtful treatment than has been possible in past Statements
on the Defence." Could you elaborate a bit on what you think
he means by that.
(Mr Tebbit) What he means is exactly what he says.
We are trying to engage in a bigger debate, based on the process
in the Strategic Defence Review, of explaining what it is we are
trying to achieve. What our aims are in carrying out the various
defence functions. Whether it is the classic defence role or the
more expansive acting as a force for the good in the world, or
indeed the defence diplomacy activities. We have a varied range
of activities now because we are able to bind our defence functions
around our foreign policy objectives rather than simply reacting
to a clearly defined threat. Therefore, there is more flexibility
in the options available to the Government. The Secretary of State
wishes to set these issues out more fully in that form.
34. And, presumably, with fewer constraints,
as far as security is concerned, since the fall of the Iron Curtain.
(Mr Tebbit) I think the policies have always been
relatively unconstrained. It is the detail which is the problem.
35. Come off it! We normally go to the United
States of America to find out what is going on inside the MoD.
(Mr Tebbit) I think I did explain at the beginning
that I thought what we had done on nuclear weapons was really
quite transparent. I have yet to see any other country in the
world have as transparent a nuclear policy as this country.
Mr McWilliam
36. Where is it in here then? It is missing.
(Mr Tebbit) I must say, Chairman, you chose to
ask me to come and talk about this particular Report. I am very
happy to do so but I am also happy to talk about the Strategic
Defence Review, on which you have had a very full discussion already.
I do not think there has been a lack of information available
to the Committee recently.
Mr Blunt
37. I want to take up some of the more detailed
issues about military capability. You did explain that one of
the reasons why this Report was, in a sense, so thin in detail
was that the SDR was happening at the same time. You described
the SDR sea change in strategy. I am not sure that this is a description
that many commentators would recognise about the SDR: a confirmation
of the existing strategy and an elaboration of the development
of it rather than a sea change. Perhaps this Report could have
been more detailed. However, let us examine the issue of military
capability. When you were asked about how you evaluate this, you
spoke about force elements and readiness being the two elements
of it. Would you not accept that deployability and sustainability
are as important?
(Mr Tebbit) Yes, I think that is true. If I were
to articulate it more fully, the methodology we use to measure
readiness asks itself whether a force element has the following
components to meet objectives within a given element: whether
it has sufficient manpower; whether it is suitably trained individually
as well as collectively; whether it has the necessary equipment
to do its job; and whether it is able to deploy and be sustained
in a particular field of operations. All of those things have
to be met within a given readiness time.
38. How does the Ministry of Defence evaluate
that?
(Mr Tebbit) On the assumption that we are not
actively engaged in operations it is through exercises, through
simulation - increasingly these days.
39. No, not how you achieve it, how you
evaluate it.
(Air Marshal Sir John Day) The process basically
starts through the setting of performance indicators, through
the setting of objectives, all the way down to unit level. At
unit level individuals will have training requirements set for
the year. They will be assessed by their own superiors. The unit
training will have objectives to achieve. Unit training will then
move up into larger formation training—I am talking generically,
this applies to all three Services—moving then on up into
joint Service training, coalition training, and finally into operations.
There have been times perhaps when we have not been doing many
operations but we are now. At every level there is an evaluation
process against the objectives set. All exercises have a lessons
learned process. The bigger the exercise, the more that the MoD
becomes involved in assessing those lessons learned and reacting
to them. We also have within the Navy, Flag Officer Sea Training,
whose staff evaluate Performance against set criteria. Within
the Royal Air Force, we have the NATO Tactical Evaluation System,
which has been going for many years and which has been modified
over the last two or three years to take account of the change
in the kind of operations we are doing. Similarly, for the Army.
We also have the Director of Operational Capability, who works
directly for the Secretary of State, who carries out a lessons
learned process on operations. So for any operations we mount,
right from the outset we lay down the requirement for a lessons
learned process. I actually sign off a note each time detailing
who and what is to be collated so that we can learn. All that
then feeds back down. We clearly have to get the balance right
between the amount of training we do because there is no point
in wasting time on activities which we are good at. It is getting
that balance right. The exercise programme for all three Services
is put together in a methodical manner. We have an exercise policy.
The policy documents are currently being revised and will go before
the Chiefs of Staff within the not too distant future. We are
revising it because of our continual effort to make sure we get
the right policies laid down, so we can get the balance between
individual unit training, joint training with all three Services,
training with other allies, training in different parts of the
world. It is a continual process which I believe suits our purposes.
The proof of the pudding is shown today by the number of operations
that British military forces are involved in. Our capabilities,
our deployability and our sustainability are held in very high
esteem by our allies. Indeed, I hope by the nation itself. That
does not mean to say there are not areas which we do not need
to improve upon, but we are taking steps to improve upon them.
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