Examination of Witnesses (Questions 314
- 319)
WEDNESDAY 13 FEBRUARY 2002
MR DESMOND
BOWEN, MR
COLIN DAVENPORT,
COMMODORE ANDREW
DICKSON, BRIGADIER
NICK HOUGHTON
AND AIR
COMMODORE RON
COOK
Chairman
314. Welcome, gentlemen; I am sorry we delayed
you slightly. Mr Bowen, I understand you would like to make an
initial statement. I must say to those who are not giving evidence
or who are members of the Committee and those authorised to be
here that it is highly likely that some of the questions will
only be answered in private session. If we ask a question that
you do not wish to answer in public, then please inform us, as
I am sure you will and we will make a note of it and then towards
the end of our session we will move into private session. So,
Mr Bowen, would you introduce your team please?
(Mr Bowen) Thank you very much, Chairman.
First of all, myself: I am Desmond Bowen, I am the Director-General
of Operational Policy in the Ministry of Defence. I have got with
me Brigadier Nick Houghton, on my right, the Director of Military
Operations; next to him is Commodore Andrew Dickson, the Director
of Naval Operations; I have got Air Commodore Ron Cook, from Air
Operations at Strike Command and I have Mr Colin Davenport, Head
of the Home Secretariat, on my far left.
315. Thank you. Your opening statement please.
(Mr Bowen) If I can just make a few comments please,
Mr Chairman, just to set this in context. First of all, we are
here obviously to help in your inquiry and in particular we are
here to explain the contribution that the MoD makes to defence
and security in the UK. In its broadest form that could involve
taking the fight to the terrorist and that means, for example,
what we have been doing in current operations in Afghanistan.
Our ability and willingness to participate in operations and tasks
abroad with partner countries in mutual self-defence was confirmed
as a key policy in the Strategic Defence Review and that remains
the case today. The defence of the UK, which contributes significantly
to the security of the UK, rests on the ability of our armed forces
to undertake missions overseas and that is their primary role,
that expeditionary capability which is absolutely at the forefront
of the armed forces' abilities. I believe the focus of your inquiry
is the capability within the UK to defend against and deal with
the terrorist threat, that is on the home ground. Whatever its
source, terrorism is a criminal activity and consequently the
operational lead, quite rightly in constitutional terms, remains
with the police. Both they and the Home Office, who, as you are
aware, take the policy lead in central government on counter-terrorism,
call on the support of a great number of other departments and
agencies, including of course the Ministry of Defence and the
armed forces, and our contribution, I think, in the Ministry of
Defence and the armed forces, is significant but it should not
be regarded as the only solution—the only contribution—to
deal with the threat. This threat is not new; it has been given
added prominence and impetus by the events of 11 September, and,
as the Committee itself noted, the scale itself was new and significant.
Much of what we have to describe today in answering your points
and questions pre-dates 11 September. We were not unprepared then,
nor have we been complacent since. A great deal of work has been
done to ensure that the contingency plans already in place could
withstand the new scale—the new challenge—of this
terrorism that we witnessed on 11 September. On the whole, in
reviewing our contingency plans we found that we had the right
sort of plans and precautions in place but there has been refinement
since then. I am sure that you, Mr Chairman, will want to get
into that. But I would mention by way of introduction that we
have strengthened our air defence posture and the ability to respond
to rogue civilian aircraft, we have made improvements to our chemical
and biological defences and, as was demonstrated just before Christmas,
we have demonstrated an ability to respond to what was perceived
as a terrorist threat from the sea. I will add by way of confirmation
of your comments, Mr Chairman, that many of these plans and precautions
involve current and classified operations and these operations
could be called upon at any moment, and clearly the one thing
we do not want to do is to give any comfort to terrorists by giving
them insights into what those precautions are and as a result
we will, I think, want to move into private session at some stage
and we will certainly signify to you straightaway if questions
are taking us down that path.
316. I think we appreciate your dilemma—one
does not want to give unnecessary information to any terrorist—but
on the other hand the balance is one wants to give reassurance
to the public that even though you may not talk about things you
are actually doing things that matter. That is the dilemma and
maybe on the margins of this argument we may slightly disagree
as to what should be made public, but at this stage what you would
like said in private will be said in private. If I might kick
off, we are aware that Mr Hoon will be giving details of the progress
of the SDR New Chapter in the debates on defence policy tomorrow.
It will be pretty surprising if the three single service Directors
of Operations before us are not heavily involved in the New Chapter
work. Could you tell us—but not too much, otherwise it will
be career-terminating for you in preceding the Secretary of State—what
your involvement has been to date and what your main input has
been? We do not want to know the content—well, we do want
to know the content but we are not going to ask for the content,
we shall wait until tomorrow—can you just give us some indication
as to where you have been fitting into the process?
(Mr Bowen) Mr Chairman, I think I will probably turn
over to the Directors of Military Operations very shortly but
I think the main point is the work that is being done has been
to try to scope the extent of the challenge—the range of
questions. I know that the Secretary of State himself has, as
it were, tabled some questions that he wants to have answered.
In a way it is the scoping of those questions and trying to understand
what the inwardness and the implications of those questions are
that has been the focus of the work. But perhaps I could ask Brigadier
Houghton to say what his involvement has been in the process.
(Brigadier Houghton) When the SDR work was set up
it was put into two phases really, the first of which is a conceptual
and policy phase and after that that will then inform, after a
more public debate, whatever options there might be which then
go forward and would become costed options. Within the policy
of the conceptual element of this Strategic Defence Review new
chapter, which is just about reaching its conclusions now before
it goes public, the work was broken down into five main strands
for which a two-star civil servant or officer was put in charge.
Those five strands—and there is nothing sensitive about
them—are first a military assessment, but with wide input
from other places, on what the changed strategic environment is
post-11 September. Second, there was a strand on international
relations and the role that defence diplomacy might take in the
global war on terrorism. Third was a strand specifically on home
land security. Fourth was a strand on what you might call conventionally
deployed military operations, and finally a strand on what you
would call special military operations. From my own perspective,
my principal involvement has been on the third strand, that of
home land security. That has looked at a number of areas of which
certainly the integrity of UK airspace, the integrity of UK territorial
waters are a part, and then the potential roles for the armed
forces in support of the civil authority in maintaining home land
security. Those have been the areas which we have studied.
(Commodore Dickson) The Brigadier has described the
overall organisation and how it was looked at, and really the
other Operational Directorates, and more widely than just the
Operational Directorates, supported that work. The main area of
input from our Naval Operations Directorate was into the home
land defence, and particularly territorial waters and the integrity
of the waters around the UK. Additionally, because of the expertise
that is available within the Directorate, we provided specialist
advice in other areas to support.
(Air Commodore Cook) Similarly with Strike Command
we provided Royal Air Force expertise in those areas; particularly
on UK air defence where our knowledge and expertise was required.
So both the Plans Division at Strike Command and the Director
of Air Operations in the MoD have been fully engaged with those
committees.
317. Thank you. After what we have heard and
what you have done—and of course I am asking a very difficult
question to respond to—how confident are you that the response
of each of your services in response to the events of 11 September
are adequate?
(Mr Bowen) That is a difficult question, Mr Chairman,
and I think that is one of the reasons why the Secretary of State
for Defence wants to have a consultation process to see whether
the thinking that has been done matches up to expectations and
indeed to the challenges of others; this Committee clearly but
more widely. I am not sure that we can really answer that and
I think it will come out in the wash of the process that will
be undertaken, I hope, as from tomorrow.
(Chairman) I will let you off the hook with that evasive
and very diplomatic reply but I assure you that that is the most
important question we will be asking in this report, and our unwillingness
to harry you for a better answer will not be replicated with any
of the successors in your chair who give such a non-committal
reply to a very adequate question.
Mr Jones
318. In terms of the context of your work, obviously
you are looking at the threats and the preparation of each service.
Have any parameters been put down in terms of the cost or budget,
or is it basically a blank piece of paper to map out what the
idea is?
(Brigadier Houghton) As I said, the
first phase of the SDR New Chapter is really a policy and concepts
phase and in that respect there is no resource constraint placed
on it. This was against the background—perhaps the foolish
aspirational background—that new resources would be made
available were this to lead to a requirement for new forces or
new capability. But clearly as part of the second phase our findings
from the first phase will go through a costed options process
to find out whether or not some of those capabilities could be
afforded or else achieved through a re-balancing.
Chairman
319. Of course you will send us a copy of that
first, undiluted, disguised, limited option, Brigadier. A brown
envelope would be appreciated! Then we can see where the eventual
decision matches up to the initial advice given. That, I think,
is what we shall be exploring more fully but it will be at political
level. Can you tell us a little more about the Defence Crisis
Management Centre and are you regular members of that Centre?
(Mr Bowen) I think I shall start by saying the Centre
is the physical location in the bowels of the Ministry of Defence.
It is the organisation, I think, that is actually of interest
in terms of bringing together all the relevant people from throughout
the Ministry of Defence in order to handle a crisis; but I think
probably the Brigadier would be better placed than I to speak
on that.
(Brigadier Houghton) Yes. The actual Centre itself
is clearly housed in Pindar, within the main building of the Ministry
of Defence. The Defence Crisis Management Organisation goes beyond
that and includes representatives from the front-line commands,
from PJHQ and wider within the Ministry of Defence, but principally
it is populated by officers and civil servants working within
what we generically call the Commitments Area of which four of
those represented here as witnesses are part. The nature of that
Defence Crisis Management Organisation in effect serves two functions.
One is, as it were, anticipatory and preparatory in nature in
using a variety of sources looking out for potential crises on
the horizon and, when those crises are identified, doing work
that will flesh out what the potential military involvement might
be in the handling of that crisis—its management or resolution—and
in that respect provide advice and guidance to ministers as to
what our role as armed forces might be in that management or resolution.
That is the upward element. The downward element quite simply
would be to translate political aspiration into military tasking
and it is through the machinery of the Defence Crisis Management
Organisation that the political requirements that are placed on
the armed forces are turned into military orders, and operations
if necessary, and managed.
(Mr Bowen) An additional point that I think is worth
making is that it is an enormously flexible organisation; it is
geared to the crisis that needs to be managed. We have a different
arrangement of people and a different constellation in the Crisis
Management Organisation for dealing with Afghanistan as opposed
to dealing with a different crisis in a different place or indeed
dealing with something on the home territory. It is that flexibility
that brings people together and makes sure that all the co-ordination
is done and that the orders are transmitted.
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