Examination of Witnesses (Questions 532
- 539)
WEDNESDAY 19 JANUARY 2000 [Morning]
MR JOHN
SPELLAR MP, AIR
MARSHAL MALCOLM
PLEDGER, VICE
ADMIRAL SIR
IAN GARNETT,
GENERAL SIR
ALEX HARLEY,
AIR MARSHAL
SIR ANTHONY
BAGNALL AND
COMMODORE PETER
WYKEHAM-MARTIN
Chairman
532. Welcome, Minister. I think, at the end
of the day, having seen yourself and your witnesses, your colleagues
and the Secretary of State we will have witnessed the biggest
collection of top brass and military, bureaucratic and political
personnel since the ending of the Cold War. Thank you very much
for coming. We have a very long agenda. It is very difficult for
a Welshman to urge precision of speech but I am afraid we are
going to have to in order to complete such a broad agenda. Would
someone like to introduce your team for the Shorthand Writer?
(Mr Spellar) Yes, I will. If we can move
from left to right, we have the Director of Naval Personnel Corporate
Programming, Commodore Peter Wykeham-Martin, representing the
Second Sea Lord. Sitting next to him we have Vice Admiral Sir
Ian Garnett, the Commander of Joint Operations. To my immediate
right we have Air Marshal Malcolm Pledger, Deputy Chief of the
Defence Staff, responsible for personnel. Next we have General
Sir Alex Harley, who is the Adjutant General, and on the far right,
for the Royal Air Force, we have the Air Member for Personnel,
Air Marshal Sir Anthony Bagnall.
533. Have you anything you would like to kick
off with?
(Mr Spellar) No. I do take your point, Chairman, that
you will have a large number of issues to cover over a wide range,
and I thought you would want to move straight in.
534. Perhaps you can direct the questions; there
is no need for everyone to join in, unless it is necessary. A
couple of years after the SDR, how would you see what was written
in relation to undermanning, overstretching—whichever way
you like to see it (I know what my view is)—two years after
the SDR?
(Mr Spellar) Two years on I think there are two key
points to make. One is that I think we need to give "overstretch"
a proper definition. That is, there has undoubtedly been an increase
in the pace of operations, driven by external events, and for
a number of individuals, because of their personal circumstances,
and for a number of units, because of requirements or shortfalls,
that leads to overstretch. However, it is a variegated picture
across the armed forces, as I am sure the Committee has found,
and a lot of that, as I said earlier, relates to people's personal
circumstances. That is why we need to tailor responses to that
to respond to many of those circumstances. It is certainly the
case that many of the circumstances that we envisaged during the
SDR—and we looked at a programme for rectifying those deficiencies
and moving, essentially, in summary, from a Cold War structure
to a more expeditionary structure—and for which we were
tailoring our forces happened in a much shorter time frame than
had been anticipated while we were actually making those changes.
There is no doubt that that has added to overstretch. The rectifying
measures that we have taken had also been taking place, and are
still taking place, but with events also providing additional
pressure.
535. With this wonderful benefit of hindsight,
would you have written anything else two years ago? What would
you have done had you looked in a crystal ball? What would you
have substituted for what?
(Mr Spellar) I think what you are seeing is events
moving at a rapid pace, external security and foreign policy events,
and those actually, therefore, driving force and operational requirements,
and undoubtedly that has placed extra pressure. It is not a pressure
that the forces have been unable to respond to, because they have
responded magnificently, but we do accept that there have been
pressures, particularly on families. There are a number of measures,
both with regard to the service personnel and also with regard
to their families (which I hope we will outline in some detail
during the course of this evidence) which we are hoping will start
to alleviate that position, and, indeed, are already having a
favourable effect.
Chairman: You really do have to get it
right, because we think it is becoming fairly serious. Unless
you get it right, you are in deep, deep trouble.
Mr Blunt
536. Is it your view that the assumptions that
underlay the SDR were and remain valid?
(Mr Spellar) Yes, indeed.
Chairman
537. In July of last year we were told that
forces on deployment as well as those training for or recovering
from operations represented 28 per cent of the Navy's trained
strength, 11 per cent of the RAF's strength and 47 per cent of
the Army's. That is forces on deployment. Do you have target percentages
for the proportion of the forces deployed from each service below
which you would consider problems of overstretch to have been
solved?
(Mr Spellar) With the Army we are, in fact, now back
to 28.5 per cent either currently deployed, about to deploy or
recovering from operations, which is almost within 1 per cent
of the figure that we came in with in 1997. You are absolutely
right that this figure went up to 47 per cent at the height of
the Kosovo conflict, which is precisely why we have been taking
a number of measures and making a number of decisions to draw
down our forces not only there but also in Bosnia and elsewhere,
in order to alleviate that pressure. As I said in my introduction,
those were decisions that were driven by operational requirements
driven by security and foreign policy necessity.
538. So, on current plans, when do you envisage
the proportion of our forces committed to operations reaching
a generally satisfactory level?
(Mr Spellar) Towards the middle of this year we would
be hoping to be down to satisfactory figures, particularly for
Bosnia and Kosovo. We have made some reductions, as you know also,
in the Falklands as well, so we are looking then at getting into
a figure that is in balance and which prevents the disruption
to individuals' lives and extending very significantly their tour
intervals. I will ask the Chief of Joint Operations to come in
here.
(Vice Admiral Sir Ian Garnett) Chairman, I would agree
with the Minister because in the reductions we are making in Bosnia,
the reductions we have made in Kosovo and in the three overseas
commands, we are continually looking at ways—and in my last
year we carried out manpower surveys in all three overseas commands,
Cyprus and the Falklands—to make quite sure that only those
people we needed to be there to do the mission are involved. With
the Balkans in mind, broadly speaking we hope to be down by the
middle of this year, between Bosnia and Kosovo, to about a brigade's
worth of people being deployed.
Chairman: Thank you.
Mr Colvin
539. I would like to develop the question of
the pressures on the Navy, in particular. The memorandum which
the Ministry of Defence supplied us with[1]
set out the background to the Navy's minimum time ashore as a
result of the monitoring that has been carried out, but it is
a little thin on some of the information. I appreciate that the
minimum time ashore varies from one rank to another—from
5 to 18 months—and although the standards for minimum time
ashore have not been breached for the last two years, more than
a fifth of the staff categories are down to a minimum—that
is 60 categories out of 280. What categories are under most pressure
in terms of personnel being given insufficient time ashore at
the moment?
(Mr Spellar) As you say, in general terms
the Navy works on a 40/60 sea/shore ratio and they expect that
to remain the same in the future, but I will ask Commodore Wykeham-Martin
to fill in the details.
(Commodore Wykeham-Martin) Mr Colvin, the branch which
is probably under the most pressure is the Warfare Branch Ratings.
They are the ones where we have had shortages. We are pulling
that up now by increasing recruiting and that situation is slowly
getting better, but that is the branch that I think it is fair
to say is under the most pressure in terms of the Able Rate for
the minimum time ashore. However, it is spread across some 60
branches, but, as you mentioned, they are all coming down to that
level. What we have to be careful about is that we do not breach
that level and we make sure that we stay on that minimum time
ashore. Of course, what it does mean is it puts pressure in terms
of gapping in some places, but, as we top up that manpower, that
situation is improving.
1 See p. 191. Back
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