Examination of Witness (Questions 100
- 119)
WEDNESDAY 8 MARCH 2000
PROFESSOR SIR
KEITH O'NIONS
100. Have there been any significant problems?
(Sir Keith O'Nions) I think after two months in the
job I really cannot put my finger on things where I can say "this
has been a huge problem" because a lot of the research is
long term and runs for many years. I am not aware of any major
problems so far but you cannot take that as saying there are none.
Again, if you address that question to me in a year's time I think
I can give you a fuller answer and will be well prepared to do
so.
Chairman: I will send you a list of my
A-Z of procurement foul-ups, Sir Keith, it is interesting.
Mr Cann: You did not get an X though,
Chairman, did you?
Chairman: No, it was the V I left out.
I should have said Vickers' Challenger I which should have been
the first on my list but I forgot to include that.
Mr Cann
101. Two questions. I am going to read the first
one because it is difficult. To what extent do you take the lead
in shaping the research programme, and to what extent do you just
respond to the requirements determined by the MoD equipment customer?
(Sir Keith O'Nions) That is a good question. Shall
I give you an expression of intent?
102. Please.
(Sir Keith O'Nions) Because being new in the job I
view it as my role to lead and determine and approve what the
research programme should be.
103. Yes. That is it? We will have to have this
gentleman back in a year's time, Chairman.
(Sir Keith O'Nions) Formally I do have delegation
for the whole RBB budget, which is the CRP and the ARP, and I
am the Chairman of the Defence Research Committee so formally
it must be my job. It is not my nature to lean back and let the
world roll over me. Is that a sufficient answer at the present
time?
104. Yes. Secondly, ABM, because we were briefed
quite comprehensively in Washington about the Americans' fear
of North Korean technology enabling rogue states like, say, Iraq,
to actually land missiles, certainly on their continent and of
course on us.
(Sir Keith O'Nions) Yes.
105. They are proposing to bring in two intercepter
sites with about 100 intercepters on each and they are saying,
also, we understand, that if we wish to join in we could have
a site set somewhere in North Europe which would enable us to
do the same, at a cost of about £3 billion spread over ten
years between the nations of the European Union. It would not
be too much of a burden, one would have thought. You must have
been doing some work on this matter. Are you worried about the
fact that when the Americans tested it, I think four out of five
missiles missed?
(Sir Keith O'Nions) Yes. Let us not stray into areas
that we ought to have a more confidential discussion about.
106. Sure.
(Sir Keith O'Nions) The present posture of the UK
is I believe the correct one and that is that we are actively
assessing the threat, we continue to be assessing the threat,
and through a programme called TRRAP, which you may well have
come across—it is a Technology Readiness and Risk Assessment
Programme—this programme is really to assess the technology
that is required and to acquire the knowledge that is necessary
if it is deemed necessary to deploy for this. This seems to be
a very sound thing to do so that we really have knowledge and
we are making a technical assessment of what is involved in ballistic
missile defence in the broad. At the moment the view is that any
decision to deploy would be premature and I think that is correct.
Now, beyond that, how much further would you like me to go?
107. Just who is in the lead in monitoring this
business?
(Sir Keith O'Nions) I am the principal for an agreement.
I will get this right. I will look at my notes for the first time
so far which means I have got a chance of at least getting one
thing right.
Chairman
108. You will be reminded if you have made other
mistakes, not by us.
(Sir Keith O'Nions) Do you think so?
109. I am sure the gentleman behind you will
tell you you should not have said that.
(Sir Keith O'Nions) Chairman, I feel you are on my
side. I am the principal for a 1985 Strategic Defence Initiative
Memorandum of Understanding with the United States in the area
of BMD, ballistic missile defence. As the principal of that I
will meet with my counterpart in the United States periodically
and share information and exchange on collaborative research and
so on. I think probably what this tells you is that we are engaged,
we are assessing things properly and I think the present posture
that I expressed is the right one.
Mr Cann
110. We are asking the right fellow.
(Sir Keith O'Nions) I think you may be asking the
right person. I hope you will accept it probably is not sensible
to go further on the point.
Mr Brazier
111. I would like to move the spotlight back,
if I may, to the Equipment Approvals Committee.
(Sir Keith O'Nions) Sure.
112. You have already partially answered quite
a large chunk of the question I was going to ask. Could you remind
us briefly who exactly is round the table and what they are each
bringing to it? You have mentioned several of the members already.
(Sir Keith O'Nions) Yes, I did it from memory before.
113. Absolutely.
(Sir Keith O'Nions) Now I will give you the facts.
If the two agree I will be absolutely delighted, it will suggest
I still have a few connected neurones. On the Equipment Approvals
Committee I am the Chairman, and it is really my job to ensure
that the advice that goes to Ministers is comprehensive and balanced.
114. Yes.
(Sir Keith O'Nions) Obviously I would bring to that
Committee detailed advice on scientific and technical matters
and particularly technical risk assessment and so on but, as Chairman,
my job is broader than that rather than to represent a particular
interest.
115. Right.
(Sir Keith O'Nions) The other members, there is a
military customer interest, and this is the Vice Chief of the
Defence Staff, Sir Peter Abbott. The interests of the accounting
officer, the Accounting Officer for Military Defence is Kevin
Tebbit, the Permanent Under Secretary. The interests of the accounting
officer are met by the Second Permanent Under Secretary, Roger
Jackling. The supplier is represented by the Chief of Defence
Procurement, Sir Robert Walmsley. In terms of support and whole
life costs, and it is extremely important that we look at whole
life costs of things, the Chief of Defence Logistics, CDL, General
Sir Sam Cowan is present for that. That is it, that is the Equipment
Approvals Committee. What I add to that is that most of the work
that is done is actually done outside of Committee. The Committee
receives a lot of high quality advice and cannot do better than
the very high quality advice, technical assessment, risk assessment,
cost estimate of whole life costs and so on that is done, that
is fed to it. It is the quality and depth of what is done outside
Committee that enables that small group to operate, but that is
presently the membership.
116. Thank you. In fact, you hinted that you
do not see any conflict between, on the one hand, bringing your
scientific background to the Committee but, on the other hand,
the much broader role that you have to achieve as Chairman to
deliver the Committee?
(Sir Keith O'Nions) As a person I have no problem
with it whatsoever. I have chaired many, many committees with
lots of very able people on them and I hope I bring an integrity
to it which is welcome in a personal sense. In terms of looking
at it from the outside as a Committee, does that have the right
sort of balance, the right structure and so on? I think it is
not bad. I think there has to be some merit in having a Chairman
who is clearly representing technical fairness and could not be
seen to have a particular service allegiance. That is not suggestion
for a moment that any of them would, but I think in terms of an
outside view of the balance of that Committee I think it looks
pretty good.
117. Just focusing for a moment on the issue
of consensus and reaching a common view. As somebody who wrote
about it when it was most heavily restructured, and I know it
has been since in 1986, it has been twice since, it seems to me
that the members look a pretty well balanced lot. The query I
have for you though is if you compare what is going on in the
EAC at the top with all the various structures underneath that
have scientific and technical advice, as gradually they all become
joined up, I put it to you there is a worry that there is going
to be a consensus that starts at the bottom and works all the
way up to the top. The old single service for all their faults,
I am not defending the old system but the one real merit of the
old system of having single service approaches was that a radical
view could be pushed by one service and the debate could be heard
right up to top table.
(Sir Keith O'Nions) That is interesting because it
may well be that there is a little more adversary and adversarial
behaviour at the lower levels now which is extremely healthy.
For example, people in the CSA area have a role in scrutiny and
analysis of making an independent view of what comes from the
customer and the procurer. This may be based on some of the same
evidence that is emerging low down which may well come from DERA
for example, but it is set up in a way where there really is an
independent assessment of that evidence by people in the CSA area
that is undertaken in another area. I can assure you that the
gloves come off down there. This is a very healthy thing. It is
the quality of what goes on down there that is essential to the
smaller group of people reaching a sound consensus of view quickly
because if great uncertainties are left, if the Committee is faced
with "Well, group A thinks this and group B thinks this and
we do not know how to bridge that gap" then the Committee
cannot operate as effectively if there are those tensions.
118. It does always reach a common view?
(Sir Keith O'Nions) I do not know if it always does
because I have only been involved in one. I can happily tell you,
and I do not think I am divulging anything that I should not,
the last Equipment Approvals Committee reached a consensus in
quite good time and was unanimous in its conclusion.
119. Can I just go back to something you have
just said. I gave a very bad example supporting my colleague Julian
Lewis then by looking at an example, the issue of the Apache,
of somebody trying to stop something. The process you have just
described is about individual impartial scrutiny which is a good
thing but it could be argued that there is almost too much of
it now in MoD, the story about the project team in the PE who
have been audited by seven external and internal different bodies
with different briefs in less than 12 months. A much better example
is to look at a particular radical idea. It is very easy to have
outside people stopping something, my worry about the present
system is that with so little left at the single service levels
it is very difficult for a radical idea, a radical positive idea
that the consensus does not like, to be promoted and championed
to the point where it ever has a chance to fly. Let me give you
a very old historical example, the views that the Royal Artillery
took immediately before the last war about having integral spotters
developing spotter planes and so on for use within the Royal Artillery
which eventually became the Army Air Corps. Now the air force
at the time obviously had a very strong vested interest in stopping
that and one could see a joint committee thinking "this is
a bad idea" and killing it. Where are the right ideas going
to come from from outside the consensus in this structure?
(Sir Keith O'Nions) I do not think I want to go down
that avenue very far because I do not have enormously helpful
things to say other than the present structure, under which we
operate, which I have given endorsement to. To the extent that
I have seen it so far, maps off very clearly the goals set out
in the Strategic Defence Review, in the SDR, which have been well
accepted by many of our allies and are viewed as something of
a model where an important element of that is cross service consideration
and deployment and so on. The present structure maps clearly from
that, and I believe is effective. I do not think it is right for
me to say more than that, not that there are vast things that
I am not prepared to divulge, it is merely that I have not been
part of the history prior to the SDR. I am much more a creature
of the SDR world.
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