Examination of witness(Questions 132-139)
ADMIRAL SIR
MICHAEL BOYCE
GCB OBE ADC
WEDNESDAY 6 NOVEMBER 2002
Chairman
132. Sir Michael, I apologise for the slight
delay in your appearing. I suppose it did give the fire authorities
a chance to exercise any action that might have taken them out
of reality and not fantasy! Thank you for coming. Our questions
will largely centre around the New Chapter of the SDR. It has
now been two years since I and Mr Hancock saw you last because
the last time you came was in front of the old Committee as opposed
to the present Committee. Is there anything that you would like
to say by way of introduction?
(Admiral Sir Michael Boyce) No, thank
you, Chairman.
133. What was your personal and your staff involvement
in the work of the New Chapter?
(Admiral Sir Michael Boyce) The Ministry of Defence
work in teams which work on the New Chapter and make sure that
the Chiefs of Staff and the committee which I chair were being
apprised of the work as it progressed. Of course, many of the
team working in New Chapter are uniformed officers as well as
civil servants and of course there is my membership and co-chairmanship
with the Defence Management Board which also finally approved
the work for the Secretary of State. Clearly, that particular
Committee was totally involved. So, Chairman, I think the answer
really is that I am involved in the root and branch of the whole
process.
134. Personally, did you sit in on any meetings
or did you have to approve the framework and then approve the
final document?
(Admiral Sir Michael Boyce) Yes, we approved the framework
and then the teams would come back as the work was being developed
and it would be iterated as it went through the Department and,
at an appropriate level, we would take it when it came to the
Chiefs or before the Defence Management Board.
135. The New Chapter identifies a number of
new and additional things that the Armed Forces might be called
upon to do and it considered what changes in force structure and
equipment they would need. When you appeared before our predecessor
committee 18 months ago, you said that you very much saw your
job as being to keep an eye on the pressure—budgetary, quality
of life, operational and legislative—which our Armed Forces
have to live with. Do you believe that these pressures have increased
on your watch?
(Admiral Sir Michael Boyce) Yes, they have. It has
been an extraordinarily busy 18 months. We have had a variety
of operations to undertake both outside this country such as in
Macedonia and the Balkans and Afghanistan obviously, all the events
on from 11 September, and Sierra Leone, as well as domestic pressures,
if you like, in the Armed Forces such as foot and mouth disease
which we contributed towards and currently, for example, standing
by to help on the Fire Brigade side of life should we be required.
So, it has been a very busy time for our people and certainly
all the things you mentioned there are what I keep my eye on.
The reason I keep my eye on those is to fulfil what I believe
is my aim which is to make sure that my people remain fit to fight
or, if not actually fighting, discharging whatever duties they
are undertaking in a highly efficient, competent and grownup sort
of way.
136. Have the budgetary pressures been eased,
slightly eased or increased? I know we have had a small increase
but has that made things any better or has it made any difference
because, with the increased budget, you have additional functions
to undertake anyway?
(Admiral Sir Michael Boyce) Yes. I think the very
fact that we have the best defence budget for some 20 years in
the Summer of this year as part of Spending Round 02 was an enormous
fillip to the morale of the Armed Forces. It was a recognition
of the hard work that they are doing and they felt because of
it, but you are quite right, it has not taken away all the pressures
that are on us budgetary-wise particularly in the light of the
way we need to address the new challenges that we have been looking
at since 11 September of last year and how we are going to conduct
what we call sometimes the global war against terrorism which
requires us to focus on attributes which we had not previously
been giving the sort of attention they deserve.
Mr Hancock
137. When you came last time, you talked about
the pressures on the Armed Forces and the need for us to realistically
assess the commitments and what-have-you that we were facing and,
since 11 September of course, there has been more pressure and
the New Chapter suggests that we are going to be doing more of
that, that there are going to be more frequent operations. Are
you confident that we are actually doing the right sort of training
to ensure that we can actually deliver on that commitment?
(Admiral Sir Michael Boyce) Yes. We need to watch
the balance of commitments against the resources, in other words
the manpower and kit we have, and that is why we try very hard
when we get involved in operations to complete them in an expeditious
way and pull out as soon as we sensibly can, and I think the brilliant
operation that was conducted in Macedonia last August was a very
good example of that and likewise in our operation in Kabul when
we actually ran the first of the ISAF operations, the international
security system operations, which again was an outstandingly well
conducted operation. We try to draw down when we can and that
is why, in working in the Balkans at the moment, trying to treat
the Balkans as a region rather than as separate provinces, we
have been able to reduce one battle group there in the last few
weeks and have pulled another 1,000 people out. So, we are looking
the whole time to cut our cloth, if you like. Also, yes, we will
have to be learning new techniques to deal with this new threat
because the nature of the terrorist threat is that you have no
build-up in the way you have with the conventional operation.
You will have a very fleeting opportunity given to you through
intelligence or whatever and you must react very, very quickly
when that fleeting opportunity occurs to take the action required
to dowse it, snuff it or whatever the case may be. So, we need
to be a little more agile and we have to have the right equipment
to allow us to be more agile.
138. There has been a widespread reduction of
the number of exercises right across all three services and that
must be having a serious effect on the ability of people to actually
train for this new style and commitment that you want. What plans
do you have to ensure that the competence level of these young
men and women who are taking on these operations for us are getting
the training that they really need?
(Admiral Sir Michael Boyce) You have put your finger
on one of the dichotomies I have in saying that I want to be "fit
to fight". One of the challenges which I find are there to
stop me realising my aim actually are operations themselves because,
if you are very busy doing something such as Sierra Leone, what
you are doing there is an excellent job in training, for example,
the Sierra Leone army, but what you are not doing is your battle
group training with your infantry battle group or your brigade
above that or, if you are on a ship on counter-narcotics operations
in the Carribean, you are doing a cracking job, as we saw a couple
of weeks ago pulling in £100 million worth of cocaine or
whatever it was, but what you are not doing is any anti-submarine
warfare. So, it sounds a dichotomy, it sounds counter-intuitive,
but operations can be very much against my requirement to make
sure we are fit to fight on all fronts. We have had to draw down
on our exercise because of the pressures in going to Afghanistan,
for example. We must try to make sure that we measure very carefully
where our people are falling behind in their training schedules
and try and make room in the programme without further wrecking
their quality of life. You must actually manage the pace.
139. Who is exercising the right control over
that? Five years ago, we had more service personnel and less deployments.
We have now less personnel and more deployments. We have ships
on sea on active deployments undermanned, dramatically undermanned.
We all know that we are pilots short on many squadrons in the
RAF, but we now have a serious undermanning on our ships at sea,
ships that are about to be or that could be involved in action,
if they were required to be, fairly quickly.
(Admiral Sir Michael Boyce) The management of this
is done by myself through my single service Chiefs of Staff and
in turn from them through their Commanders in Chief. They have
to watch on the one side the balance of quality of lives so that
people are not working their socks off 24 hours a day and, on
the other hand, to recognise that they must be doing a certain
amount to make sure that their skills are being maintained. So
we look at the exercise programme, we judge it against the operational
programme and try to do the best we possibly can.
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