Oral evidence

Taken before the Defence Committee on Wednesday 11 June 2003

Members present:

Mr Bruce George, in the Chair
Mr James Cran
Mr David Crausby
Mr Mike Hancock
Mr Gerald Howarth
Mr Kevan Jones
Jim Knight
Patrick Mercer
Syd Rapson
Rachel Squire

__________

Witness: GENERAL SIR MICHAEL WALKER, GCB CMG CBE ADC, Chief of Defence Staff, Ministry of Defence, examined.

In the absence of the Chairman, Rachel Squire was called to the Chair

Q1  Rachel Squire: Can I give a very warm welcome to General Sir Michael Walker, Chief of Defence Staff. Thank you very much indeed for agreeing to come and give evidence to the Defence Committee this morning. Can I give the apologies of the Chairman of the Defence Committee, Bruce George, who has been delayed but is aiming to arrive as quickly as he possibly can. I have been asked to hold the fort whilst he gets here. Can I ask you, before I open up to the Committee with their various questions, whether there is any opening statement that you would like to make or whether you want us to go straight in with questions?

General Sir Michael Walker: Thank you, Madam Chairman. It is nice to be back even if it is in a different guise. I imagine that my appearance before you today is for you to get some idea of the cut of the jib of the new CDS as much as anything else. I am privileged to have been given this task. There is no doubt in my mind that the institution of which I am temporarily the custodial head has delivered to this nation in a remarkable way over the last ten years, and the task I have been given is a very exacting and exciting one. I am delighted to be here and delighted to answer any questions which you may have for me.

Q2  Rachel Squire: In that case, perhaps I can kick off and ask you what specific objectives you have set yourself for your term as Chief of Defence Staff?

General Sir Michael Walker: You probably know that my task essentially is to be the director of military operations for any deployed tasks that we are undertaking at the moment, on the one hand. On the other hand my task is to work together with our chiefs of staff, with the Government, with the ministers and with our officials for the future of defence, a future which is difficult to predict but one which certainly needs to be planned for. In that context my focus will probably be as follows, although we never quite know what is round the corner and one may have to make adjustments as time goes on. On the operational front clearly the highest of my priorities is to make sure that our troops who are currently deployed on operations are doing what is required of them and that we are sustaining them to do so in the proper manner, but also making sure that our plans for the future deliver appropriate modern Armed Forces able to cope with whatever it is that we may throw at them. Forces have to be properly manned, properly trained, properly sustained, properly structured and at the right degrees of readiness to undertake whatever tasks we may call them to undertake. That, of course, includes the learning process. After each modern operation is undertaken we make sure we blend those new perspectives into the table of our forces. People, I think, is an important area because we continue to need to offer our folk a career of first choice in the Armed Services; they need to get a square deal from the Armed Services; they need to understand that we welcome diversity; they need to understand that merit is the only criterion by which they will advance and that, indeed, they get life education as part of that deal. However, there is a bit of a dilemma here because, having first recruited our people, how do we reconcile the requirement that we have on a collective basis for people to train and be used in unique and demanding circumstances and to care for them on the one hand, whilst on the other hand as individuals. These are people who are wishing to enjoy the fruits of a society which we all represent in this room which is broadly at ease with itself and this is an individual aspiration. So we have this dilemma for our people and I think it is important that we take the work forward to make sure that the individual and collective needs are met in both cases. The next one really is the question of training. I think our Armed Forces are amongst the best trained in the world. That means that our training regime is a very, very good one; it is probably second to none. It is born of many years of hard-won experience, turning that experience into good doctrine and being able to train people through good processes again. We need to capitalise on that. More than that, we need to export that best practice to our allies around the world and to those armies with whom we have engagement. Equipment is important and the balance between people and equipment I think is always going to result in an intense debate. Of course, thanks to my predecessors, we have a good equipment programme and a very forward looking equipment programme. Modernisation is the theme, but in particular the asymmetric threats that we face these days and the requirement for this new so-called network enabled capability to allow us to get inside any potential enemy's decision making cycle I think is going to be key so that we can respond with precision. The development of that capability will certainly be high on my list. Our estate - I am sure you have all seen parts of our estate, both our working and living accommodation including that for our families - has suffered over the last couple of decades from a general lack of investment. We are making significant inroads to this already, but the trouble with estate is that you cannot say to your people that you can have everything always and now. It is important in this context to continue to press forward for improvements in this area to become visible. Then we have our Reserves. They have done us proud over the years. They have done us particularly proud in recent years. They have to be part of the new thinking as we take our forces forward and we need to look at how we can modernise and transform those forces, and they must be very much part of that. I think I have plenty to do; I shall be well occupied in the course of the next few years and there may even be other matters that I have to focus on some day.

Q3  Rachel Squire: Thank you very much indeed for a very succinct but comprehensive programme. You certainly touched on many areas that I know are of considerable interest to this Committee. Can I, as a follow up, ask you what are the principal concerns that have been expressed to you by the single service chiefs since you have taken up your appointment?

General Sir Michael Walker: I think all three service chiefs would fit within those broad categories. Clearly things like manning, recruiting, retention at one end, to making sure that the modernised equipment programme is taken forward. It is people and equipment really that people are most anxious about. Levels of commitment are a part of the people issue and that is one of the areas we need to depress to the harmony guidelines that we talk about when we talk about making sure people can live their lives within this profession.

Q4  Mr Howarth: Sir Michael, as Chief of Defence Staff you are the senior military adviser to ministers, but at the same time you lead the Armed Forces. How do you see the balance between those roles? Do you see it as being your responsibility to advise ministers and to stand up for the Armed Forces? Or do you see your role as being to carry out the political objectives as defined by your political masters?

General Sir Michael Walker: All of those things, really.

Q5  Mr Howarth: It is a question of trying to determine how you see that balance.

General Sir Michael Walker: I am under no illusions. I do not regard this as being two separate organisations; we are all part of the same one. Clearly the role in military headquarters at the Ministry of Defence is one where the chiefs of staff - of which I am the chairman of the committee - run the single Armed Services and they do that within the context of government policy. Not only do we have to do that, but equally we have to give advice to the Government as to the way in which that policy should go to achieve those objectives. In terms of balance of what I do, I do not think there is a percentage balance that I can give you. What I can say is that the two are so interwoven at the top that I do not have any difficulty with the concept either of giving firm advice to the Government that we can or cannot do something, nor, indeed, responding to a Government intention to undertake whatever operations they want to do. It is always going to be a matter of priorities in making a judgment. I do not see it being as clear cut as you would like it to be.

Q6  Mr Howarth: I do not think it is clear cut at all. I think your predecessors have wrestled with this issue. It is a difficult one when you have constitutional Armed Forces as we do. You will remember Sir Michel Graydon spoke out vigorously under the last Conservative Government about concerns that he had for the Royal Air Force. Your predecessor was not shy either. I just wonder whether you think it is right for you, as Chief of Defence Staff, to articulate those concerns - which do from time to time arise - publicly, rather than expressing them privately.

General Sir Michael Walker: As you know, a chief, as an individual, has right of access to the Prime Minister on these issues. It is only when he feels that something is happening which is causing his own service to get into a situation which he cannot put up with that he will take that step and be prepared to do that. It has happened very rarely. In the context of our activity, I have to say that my experience over the years has shown that our own ability as military men to undertake the military task is of a different nature than those that I see in other nations. We, by and large, are given a military task. If we say that we do not think that it is either sensible or feasible, that advice is normally taken. Once we embark on that task - whatever it may be - we are broadly left to get on with it without interference at a political level. We get clear direction and then we get on with it. That does not always happen in other contexts. It seems to me in those contexts - unless it comes down at the end of the day to a major shift of resources - that the chances of our single service chiefs putting their hands up and saying they cannot put up with something are pretty slim. The same applies to me. I think that in the context of a properly funded programme, in the context of commitments which we have had the ability to fashion in terms of the design and concepts, and in the context of actually going and doing military operations with capable and first-class military forces, the chances of the sort of situation that you are talking about developing are pretty slim.

Q7  Mr Crausby: In the light of the different challenges that we face in the 21^st Century, are you satisfied that the organisation and structure at the top of the Ministry of Defence provide the best mechanism for delivering our defence needs?

General Sir Michael Walker: I think it would be somewhat immodest of me to say that I think they are the best, but I think they are as good as anywhere. I notice at the moment that as we go into the difficult operations as we have done recently the inter-governmental work that we undertake, the way in which we run our committee structures in the Ministry of Defence, the inter-departmental flow of information is as good as any other country that I have come across. That does not mean, of course, that it is as good as it can be. Indeed, we are always seeking ways to improve on it. I have been impressed particularly with the way that we can, as a country, pull together what military contributions we are making in a very rapid and agile way and in a way that all departments agree. So at the very top level that is fine. The development of the new permanent joint headquarters - it is not new any more, of course, it was delivered in the early to mid-90's - has transformed our ability to manage, command and control operations wherever they are around the world. I think we have the framework which is a very sound and good framework. It does not mean that there is no room for improvement, and I am sure we will be looking at what the lessons of each operation tell us about how we can improve it.

Q8  Mr Crausby: I have a specific question on the Defence Management Board and jointery. Does the Defence Management Board, which is represented by the single service chiefs, treat jointery as a priority, and how is it translated in practical actions in the Defence Programme?

General Sir Michael Walker: The Defence Management Board is one of the two principal committees, the other being the Chiefs of Staff Committee. Membership is common to a certain degree, although some members of the DMB are not members of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and vice versa, but the principal members are the same. We put a high value on jointery. If you look at what has happened over the last eight or nine years, we have joint headquarters, we run a joint staff college, we have a joint helicopter command, we have a joint NBC regiment, we have the joint helicopter support agency and wherever there is a good reason to go joint then we will go joint. I would just add that I think that the capabilities of the single services and the excellency of the single services do require us to make sure that people within those services join the service. I do not see them wanting to join a great organisation called Defence; a sailor wants to be a sailor, similarly for an airman and a soldier. What we have to do is to tread that fine line between making the organisation and functional structures joint without destroying the spirit and ethos that builds up in each of the single services. At each of those committees jointery is probably on the lips of the members most days.

Q9  Mr Cran: I wonder if I could just follow up a question that my colleague Mr Howarth asked you, and that is essentially about the fact that you are, I guess, the principal advisor for the secretary of state on military matters, but you are also a public figure in that sense. Therefore, because you are a public figure, you simply cannot abstract yourself from the media. The question is, what is your intention with regard to treating the media? I ask that question against the background that the UK is now routinely undertaking very significant commitments in defence in foreign affairs terms, and the question of overstretch will occur from time to time. How do you intend to treat the press against that background?

General Sir Michael Walker: I would like to think that I could call the tune here but you know better than I that that is not possible. At a personal level I have always had a good relationship with the press. I do not see any reason to change that. At a personal level again, I keep a very low profile. I do not need to be in the press unless there is a requirement for me to speak on behalf of the services. I think one has to realise these days that the media is an integral part of everything that we do. There is no doubt about that. If we look at the Iraqi operation that we have just undertaken I think we had something like three hundred embedded journalists in the British forces and then about seven hundred across the theatre as a whole. That is always part of all planning that we undertake. If a young military officer is writing a plan at the major level, there will always be a portion of it talking about how the media handling is going to be. I think we just have to accept that that is part of the process and we welcome it and we do not always get it right. We do have a somewhat schizophrenic relationship, I think, with the press. My view is that by and large the press are very supportive of this country's Armed Forces, but that does not mean that they are not prepared to take particular issues to task and that is, of course, quite right. It is getting that balance right. The fact is that on every occasion we consider anything we need to consider what the media perception will be and we do that as a matter of routine.

Q10  Mr Cran: I do not think we have got quite where I want to be yet. That was a good start. The point is that your predecessor - who was not originally known as somebody who actively spoke to the press - did feel at the end of the day that (to use the words you have used), unless there is a requirement to speak on behalf of the services, he clearly did feel there was a requirement to stand up and be counted with the best possible motives to explain to the Government that they could not keep on accepting commitments without giving the resources to match them. That would be the same with any government; it is not a party political point. In those circumstances where would you be and what do you mean by saying "unless there is a requirement to speak on behalf of the services"?

General Sir Michael Walker: If there is a requirement for the services' case to be put forward clearly then I would be prepared to do it.

Q11  Mr Cran: Could you explain to the Committee what that actually means, the words "unless there is a requirement to speak on behalf of the services"? What would that encompass, for example?

General Sir Michael Walker: As you appreciate there is a clear cut requirement for Armed Forces in any society as sophisticated as ours to be under political control. This brings tensions into the relationship clearly that exist with the media. On the one hand the Government itself must run its own media operation and we have, to an extent, to fit inside that. When it comes down to a military man in uniform standing up in front of the world press then what he needs to do is to be credible, he needs to be able to say what the facts are, he needs to be able to answer questions that are put to him that are believable both by the people in the country and his own internal constituency. Any judgment about making a statement in front of the press has to take all of those into account. I cannot come up with some sort of hypothetical situation that you are seeking to say that this is the circumstance in which I would do it. These are judgments that people at my level in the business have to make on a daily basis.

Q12  Mr Cran: I understand that and I do not think the Committee is trying to get you to hypothecise, but you yourself did use the words - and I took the words down because I thought they were significant - "unless there was a requirement to speak on behalf of the services". Those words either mean something or they do not. If they do mean something, what circumstances would you foresee that you would have to speak on behalf of the services?

General Sir Michael Walker: Now you are asking me to hypothecise.

Q13  Mr Cran: But you used the words, not me. If you had not used those words I would not have cause to pursue them.

General Sir Michael Walker: I understand, but the reality is that there will be a number of different occasions. The most obvious one is the occasion when you have operations going on and you have British Armed Services deployed around the country and there will be a press brief. Then it would be entirely appropriate for the Chief of Defence Staff - or a representative if he is not available - to be party to and be prepared to brief people as to what is going on. That is at one end of the scale. The other end of the scale is much more hypothetical and I am afraid I am not prepared to give details of circumstances.

Q14  Mr Hancock: You spent three years as head of the Army and you have now spent just over a month as head of the whole of the Armed Forces. During those three years - September 11 obviously occurring in that period of time - did you believe that there needed to be a fundamental reappraisal of the role of the British Armed Forces in the way in which they were deployed around the world and the way in which they might be required to embark on expeditionary excursions and operations in parts of the world which would put enormous pressure on the army in the first instance but probably the other two services as well?

General Sir Michael Walker: The answer is no. We looked at it pretty carefully and we had - if you remember during the strategic defence review - set our course of events in train which, in real terms, were validated by what had happened. We had already moved to the requirement

to have agile forces readily deployable on the joint rapid reaction force context which gave us the opportunity to deploy troops and air force elements at readiness building up to a capability at the other end. There was, of course, a requirement for us to relook at what we called rather euphemistically in the Cold War days "home defence" and the arrangements there. We did do that hence the new chapter which included that but also included some of the shifts in emphasis which were required to take the strategic defence review both off-shore and on-shore. In broad terms I think we did feel that we were heading in the right direction although there needed to be the odd touch on the helm.

Q15  Mr Hancock: During that time did you make representations to your predecessor as Chief of Defence Staff about the severe pressure you felt the Army was being subjected to?

General Sir Michael Walker: I did not really need to make representations to him. He knew instinctively what those pressures were. I think you need to have some idea about how the chiefs work. This is not a sort of process by which there are three organisations who knock on the door occasionally and talk to the chief. We spend a lot of time, as the chiefs, in discussion together, both in the Chiefs of Staff Committee, the DMB, and there is not a day goes by that I am not talking. He was well aware of the pressures on various parts of all three services including the Army. Of course, when you get an issue that develops and you are being asked to see whether you need to deploy British Armed Forces at a level which is more than you have been mandated to as a matter of routine, that is the time when you have to make those serious judgments. I would say the judgments about increasing the pressures on the Armed Forces were joint judgments. These were not the judgments of one particular man. In the debate everybody got fair hearing and it was an agreement between the four rather than somebody having to vote and find themselves outvoted or overridden.

Q16  Mr Hancock: We, as a Committee, were very welcoming of the idea of the creation of a Civil Contingency Reaction Force but we were expressing our concerns on several occasions about the disappointing way in which the MoD were unwilling to commit regular forces to that deployment. I am interested to know where you stand on that now in your new role.

General Sir Michael Walker: I think you must have been misled. The reality is that the Civil Contingency Reaction Force - there are fourteen of them around the country which operate to the Regional Brigade Headquarters and the troops are under the hand of the regional brigadier who will link into the government offices who are setting up civil contingencies of one sort or another - are both regular and reserve. The brigadier will deploy from his region whatever is appropriate to deal with the consequence management or the prices. It is not only going to be the Civil Contingency Reaction Force. He does have regular troop commitments to that. As part of defence policy we have never specifically structured force elements for doing things at home. It would be ridiculous to keep nineteen or just over eleven thousand troops available for firefighting purposes. There is always this double-hatting. If there is a crisis which arises here we have a very solid arrangement with increased manning at the brigade headquarters, the Civil Contingency Reaction Force, which are reservists on parent battalions, but all other troops in country at the time are available to commanders to be able to solve whatever problem it has to.

Q17  Mr Hancock: I would be interested to know whether the fourteen units round the country are now up and running and all in place. It would be interesting if you could confirm whether that has happened or not. One of the officers leading one of those units did give evidence to us when we were in Portsmouth taking evidence. It was interesting that there was very little real evidence that there was a commitment from regular forces to his ability to deploy very quickly. Most of it was heavily dependent on the Territorial and Reserves being available. The timescales that he had to react to were pretty short and were also placing some pretty difficult problems for the Reserve Forces in that context.

General Sir Michael Walker: I do not know who you have spoken to down there. It is true that the footprint of our regular and reserve army around the country is certainly not a consistent one. Various parts of the country will have fewer troops available than in other parts. Of course, the Navy and the Air Force are also linked into this. There is a command arrangement, rather like the PJGQ, which is run by the commander of regional forces down at Wilton and he has with him a commander-in-chief of personnel training command and they provide the overlook in the same way that the PJGQ does for off-shore operations, for on-shore maritime and land requirements. It is through that mechanism that people are generated to undertake and if you take, for example, the foot and mouth outbreak, those people were generated from regular sailors and regular airmen and regular soldiers as much as it was from the Reserves.

Q18  Patrick Mercer: I think I speak for the Committee when I say we have been disappointed by the level of initiative from regular units in this potentially on-going fight against terrorism rather than issues like foot and mouth. For instance, Mr Hancock makes reference to the senior naval officer in Portsmouth who said that he did not perceive there to be a threat. I could go into detail but I will not bore you. When fireman here, who gave us our only nuclear biological and chemical recovery facilities, were on strike the regular troops that replaced them had not brought any of their equipment with them and had not been warned that they might need to do this task. There seems to be a mismatch between the dedication of Reserve Forces - which I am not criticising at all, just the contrary - and the lack of initiative from the Regular Forces who cannot be dedicated to that but clearly should, in our view, be expected to take up the cudgels as and when necessary.

General Sir Michael Walker: They are expected to take up the cudgels as and when necessary. I do not know the detail of the firemen's strike and what happened there. We had the standard squirt the water at the fires and then we had the rescue teams who did have some of the kit. If there was a requirement for CBRN we do have a number of organisations separate to all of that. There is an organisation which is run within the engineers, a very small capability, and there is of course our joint NBC regiment which is available. Where an expertise like that sits within a government department - and most of it does, as you know, sit within the fire service and the police - it is not always possible to replicate the capabilities. You can turn up with your suit and mask, but essentially what you are doing is providing a body of formed disciplined manpower that has limited capabilities. We saw that with the fire strike. It would have limited capabilities and self-protection with anything to do with CBRN at that stage other than these two specialist organisations of which I talked. You cannot overnight replicate what is a seriously trained organisation which delivers that. I would like to expand on what sort of initiative you were expecting regular troops to take.

Q19  Patrick Mercer: I will expand on that example. A high level of threat pertains to these buildings here. We are aware that if there is a CBRN attack now the only protection and recovery we have is from a limited number of firemen that are available. It struck the Committee as being strange that when a regular battalion was deployed here to take the place of those firemen that there was no contingency plan at battalion level to deal with that emergency which is much more likely to occur here than in more remote areas. That had not been thought through. Those troops, all of whom were trained to a greater or lesser extent at NBC warfare, had not brought their equipment with them. There is just a perception that things like the Civil Contingency Reaction Force focus on that - quite rightly - but more could be done by greater use of initiative from the Regular Forces.

General Sir Michael Walker: I am afraid it is not a matter of initiative from our Armed Forces because the security of this country sits in the Home Department and with our police. We act only in support of those government departments and act at the request of the chief constable. If there is to be a requirement for a counter-terrorist activity here we only deploy in support of the Home Department police forces at the request of the Government. We cannot take an initiative in that sense. Indeed, this is why the Civil Contingency organisation is setting up to deliver that so that the regional military commander can plug into that organisation. I take your point about the battalion not turning up with its NBC kit, but there was nothing very much that it could have done in counter-terrorist mode even if it had it because all it was doing was bringing self-protection equipment along and being able to operate as a formed body.

Mr Bruce George resumed the Chair.

Chairman: I am sorry I am so late. I do have a very good excuse, I have just returned from Kyrgistan. There were no problems as far as Heathrow was concerned, but I am afraid it was the M4 that caused my delay. I do apologise to my colleagues and to yourself, General.

Q20  Jim Knight: I want to push a little more on the question of Reserves. It would seem we are relying on them and developing them more and more. On the one hand we are developing the CCRF so that we have a capacity that the civil powers can have some certainty about calling on because these are regulars but, as we have understood it, it is dependent on whether or not they are there. At the same time we have seen in Iraq and elsewhere an increasing use of reservists for specialist skills but also to fill in to make up the numbers. We have reservists still deployed in Iraq as we speak. It has been put to me by commanders of a TA unit that they are almost being used as a disposable asset now because the calls on them are so great. Employers are becoming increasingly fed up about it because they are being asked, once the war is over, to be deployed. There must be a limit to how long we can sustain this level of activity unless we rebalance the use of Reserves. What do you think about that?

General Sir Michael Walker: The Reserves have done us proud. We have gone to making a greater use of their greater integrated capabilities. There is no doubt that when you go through the most difficult part of an operation which is that early bit where you are actually fighting a high intensity war that your numbers need to be boosted to give you, in each part of the formation, the right number of people to be able to do it. For example, if you take an artillery battery you would need to increase the numbers so they have people to handle the ammunition and so on. There is certainly an element of that in that process. The war is not entirely over. The aftermath, the phase four type of operation, the stitching back together of the nation is probably as difficult and as manpower intensive - indeed more manpower intensive I would claim in many respects - because it is those very men and their interface with the local community and the ability to make things happen on the ground that really begins to allow the country to be stitched together. I do not have any difficulty with the notion that we do require reserves in this aftermath. However, I do understand the difficulties with employment and the difficulties the individuals face in being able to go away, do an operation for six months and then come back to their employer. However hard we try and however good the law is - and the Reserve Forces Act does make provision in various ways - we are never going to be able to provide an answer for everybody. If you have a small company and you have two or three men away, I understand why the employers do find it difficult. I have always felt that we need to do more on behalf of the relationship between the employer and the employee, particularly where it belongs to the Territorial Army. It is not an uncommon difficulty. Although the American system, through their National Guard, is not dissimilar in some ways, equally they find this relationship directly with the employer - even though their laws are better and their money is better - is quite difficult in some circumstances. It is an area we need to try to take on board.

Q21  Jim Knight: Do you think, given the development of the role of Reserves and increasing deployment overseas, it is time to review whether or not we carry on calling them the Territorial Army because that perhaps suggests to employers a different role to the reality that they are now being used for?

General Sir Michael Walker: I had not heard the suggestion before. I need to go away and think about it. I sometimes feel that re-branding does not always work. Everybody knows what they are; everybody has become familiar with the Territorial Army. Re-branding sometimes goes hand in hand with major structural change which gets people suspicious. Of course, our Reserves are wider than just the Territorial Army; there are the individual Reserves. I will go and talk it over with my Director of Reserved Forces and Cadets.

Q22  Mr Hancock: You mentioned the role of the Reserve Forces and the TA. Do you think we are possibly asking too much of them under the current structure and the way it is organised, for these individuals - both men and women - to be able to take a risk with their futures in joining? Recent occurrences where there have been significant pressures on individuals because of their commitment to the Armed Forces have put their future employment at risk. There have been stories of people suffering. Do you think we have to review what we expect of these men and women?

General Sir Michael Walker: The evidence would point in the opposite direction in the sense that people both enjoy coming and putting a uniform on and it is something they can see very clearly is in the nation's interest. It does seem to me that what has changed since 11 September, whereas it tended to be off-shore expeditionary deployment it is also seen by many that being a member of a CCRF organisation, at a time of crisis, is just the sort of thing they would wish to participate in. However, I do think - as I said in my opening statement - that the way in which we transform and modernise our Armed Forces as a whole must include the way in which we integrate and use our Reserves. There is a case to make sure that they are appropriate in terms of the arrangements we have for using them. They have done remarkably well. You will always get the spectacular and indefensible chap who did not get his pay on time, but the vast majority of Reserves that I have spoken to have a seriously cracking good time. The important thing is that they have been indistinguishable from their regular counterparts in all three services. I think that speaks volumes.

Q23  Mr Hancock: I am sure that everyone here who has met members of the Reserved Forces has been impressed by the lack of "them and us" and the way in which all of them have spoken very highly of what they have gained from the experience and what they got out of it rather than just what they had been expected to put in. How do you feel the Reserve Forces would develop over the next five years? Do you see the use of sponsored Reserves - the strategic tanker fleet and other PFI initiatives - being more of a role for the Reserve Forces and being directly linked to these sort of arrangements?

General Sir Michael Walker: I am a supporter of the notion of sponsored Reserves because I think it is a very good solution for an organisation to have a workforce that does things more widely than just the Armed Services business in peace time and can then come together and go to wherever is necessary. I am a big fan of the concept of sponsored Reserves. There are some capabilities that lend themselves very comfortably to that, whether it is flying aeroplanes, whether it is doing some of the maritime stuff or whether indeed it is driving tank transporters or whatever. I would like to see that developed further. In terms of the wider issues, you do not reshape things overnight. I think what we need to do is to look very carefully at the lessons of this latest large deployment. It is the largest deployment we have undertaken since the 1991 Gulf War. We need to identify the lessons and then try to work out which of them really are appropriate for the type of operations we are going to have to undertake, and then begin to introduce those sort of changes within all our Forces, including our Reserve Forces. We have been moving forward. The CCRF, as you know, came on stream on 31 October last year. There is a general evolution of the Force structure and the nature of what it is they are asked to do over time as these lessons get drawn in. I see this as being an evolutionary process; I do not see us throwing the whole lot in the air and coming down with a new answer.

Q24  Mr Hancock: Would it be something that you, in your new role, would want to see move forward quite considerably over the next three years?

General Sir Michael Walker: Yes, it is. As I said right at the beginning, the important thing is that it is no good putting them off in isolation; they are integrated in the whole. What we have to do, as we look towards the sort of structures that we are developing - to handle agility, to handle new network enabled capability ideas, to handle the lightening up of some of the expeditionary force capabilities so that they can get into strategic areas and get to places - is to take into account the Reserve component of that. I see this as a direction that we will go in as a whole rather than specifically with the Reserve part of the Army, taking account of the sort of anxieties that have been expressed here by Mr Knight.

Q25  Mr Jones: Can I come on to future deployments. You just mentioned the fact that the recent deployment was one of the largest since 1991. Is it not the case that future deployments are going to be smaller and possibly there will be more of them round the world? I am thinking particularly, for example, of the recent speculation about deployment to the Congo. What challenges do you think should be set for the Armed Forces in terms of them being able to react - sometimes at quite short notice - to these small deployment? In terms of this, particularly on the Congo and with our other commitments in different parts of the world, have we got the forces to be able to continue keep deploying in different parts of the world as the Prime Minister or the camp decides that we should?

General Sir Michael Walker: I think the first thing is we have to recognise is that planning assumptions assume we will either be able to do a large scale divisional deployment or two medium scaled deployments of brigade size. When I use these terms I am talking about the package rather than just a single brigade because one of the interesting things that I think has become very apparent to us is that we are talking about capability of deployments here, we are not talking about deploying a brigade with three battalions, two ships and aircraft; we are talking about putting a capability in deployment. It has become apparent that the small scale ones are the ones which, during the past ten years of history, have shown us they are the most probable. The first thing is that we are actually looking in terms of the handling of our Force structures to be able to respond to that. If you think about it, it is a process that we already have with the Joint Rapid Reaction Groups, with very high readiness forces at the sharp end of the arrow. This is exactly the sort of thing that gives us that capability. Of course we need to make sure that we have the strategic element; we need to make sure we have some communications and intelligence capabilities that go with it to make it into a package. I think there are some challenges there, but I think we are well placed to be able to develop them. In the context of how many and shall we go to the Congo now, et cetera, there are always going to be pressures for us to participate. What is very interesting is that the small scale type of operation normally is of a shorter duration than the bigger ones. If you look at the Balkans, if you look at Afghanistan (although that went towards the medium scale as we went in there) they tend to be rather more enduring. The small scale ones, in many respects, can often be like a cracking good exercise. If you think about what happened in Sierra Leone, East Timor and these sort of places, the pressures on people are less for those small scale ones in many respects. Of course they are not less if you run out of people to be able to conduct them, but that clearly is the point at which one has to hold one's hands up and say that we can do no more. We have done that on a number of occasions where there has been a requirement to consider becoming involved somewhere and the chief's advice has been: sorry, this one is beyond and above what we can manage.

Q26  Mr Jones: Can I ask about that in terms of the political process in terms of commitment. At what stage are you brought in before a commitment is given to deploy troops? Can you talk us through what the actual process is?

General Sir Michael Walker: What would normally happen is that the intelligence indicators point to there being a problem in some strange part of the world. That having been identified, the radar screens start flickering in the military world and we ask ourselves what this is going to mean for us. If you like, at that level people are already aware that there is a problem here. There may be some traditional link which this country has with that part of the world; there may be other allies who say that they and us should go and do to this. So for a number of reasons it could become apparent that a UK contribution to this effort would be welcome. At the same time, down the political chain, things are happening as well. Of course they come together at a number of committees. These opinions come together within the Chiefs of Staff Committee - we have a member of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who is a permanent member of our Committee - with other agencies. Slowly but surely the problem becomes apparent; the potential response becomes apparent. If that potential response includes in it the possibility of a UK contribution then our planning staff work out what might be a sensible contribution. As part of that work they will decide what the force, structure and composition should be, what capabilities are needed, what the time-lines are and parallel with that it will be judged against what capabilities we have available. At the point at which the availability is clearly not going to be there, we will say that we cannot do this. You then go back and see if there is some other way you can help, perhaps by providing some air transport or providing some communications equipment. By and large it is really driven by our foreign policy interests, but military advice in my experience is accepted as being the answer.

Q27  Patrick Mercer: We are moving on now to the stresses and strains on the manpower of all three services and the question of manning. In your view which parts of the three services are currently under the greatest strain and why, particularly in terms of function or skill or rank?

General Sir Michael Walker: There is no doubt about it there are what are commonly known as pinch point areas. If we look at the three services at the moment we are probably talking about four to five per cent down for the Army, two per cent for the Navy and the Air Force; that sort of order. The actual figures are probably in decimal points. Certainly the manning situation changes as the years pass. For instance, when I became Commander-in-Chief six years ago we had a desperate shortage of infanteers. You will remember it well, you commanded one of the few battalions that were up to strength at the time. However, that has moved away now. The infantry are making great inroads. What you are left with is looking particularly at the difficult areas, medical areas - in the Army, nurses as well as consultants - you are looking at some of the communicators where there is a shortage of people largely, I think, because quite a lot of them are attracted outside to some of the burgeoning communications where the rewards are greater and the lifestyle more humdrum. In the other two services I know the submariners are in short supply. There was an aircrew problem but it is getting better. There are undoubtedly, in each of the specialist areas, key folk who are absent. I do not have the complete list. If you want me to give you a complete list I can let you have it.

Q28  Patrick Mercer: That would be helpful, thank you. If we could just focus on one thing you said there about the problem going away from the infantry, it is interesting to look in detail at the way that 7 Brigade was sent to the Gulf. Some regiments are clearly better off than others, but some are in a desperately bad state. For instance, the Black Watch deployed essentially two rifle companies out of the three rifle companies and one support company. We keep hearing this. We keep hearing that the infantry are about two thousand men under strength, and yet battalion after battalion after battalion suffers from gross - I use the phrase advisedly - undermanning. How does that balance?

General Sir Michael Walker: I think I need to send you some facts and figures because I am afraid you are wrong. It is true that the Black Watch have had a difficult manning problem but if you went out and saw, for example, the Duke of Wellingtons, they were involved in one of these small commitments with one company sitting in the Balkans. The infantry manning problem has not been solved, but it certainly has improved dramatically from the days of the 2000's. I do not have the figures, but I will certainly let you have them. We are well less than 2000 across the infantry now and it is just a matter of keep plugging away. When you build a force structure for somewhere like Iraq there are things - as you will well know - that also take your men away. You always have to leave somebody back at home on these occasions and if you are going into the war-fighting bit you need to add in the old war establishment reinforcements to make sure your numbers are up. Again, this is where the Reserves and the multi-cap badges come in.

Q29  Patrick Mercer: We had a very interesting presentation from the Army Training and Recruiting Agency. If we focus just on the Army where the problem is largest, it seemed that full manning is going to be extraordinarily difficult to reach. One could be tempted to think that as manning targets reduce and still the recruiting targets are failed to be met year on year, this is going to be almost impossible and with the Army's establishment - correct me if I am wrong - of 108,500 actually running at about 101,000 or 102,000 there seems to be no possibility of that gap being closed. How much of a concern is that? Is that right, first of all?

General Sir Michael Walker: In broad terms you are not far wrong. I think it is about 106,500 as the actual strength, the target for full manning, and we are about 102,000. The reality is that we do not talk about absolute manning now; we talk about manning balance. You ran a battalion; your manpower was never the same on any day, somebody was always going or somebody was always coming back. Manning balance for the Army is, I think, that it should be plus one to minus two per cent. Providing people are fitting in that balance that is what one generally terms as having the Army in manning balances. There are similar figures for the other two services although they have less of a problem, as you know. The availability of 16 to 24 year olds between now and 2009 is more than this country, apparently, requires. In about 2007/ 2008 the graph goes down sharply. I know that the plan is to fill the ranks of the Army as best it can, to get it up to a manning balance. It is rather like an overdraft. If you can get in that balance it is easier to keep it there than it is always to be chasing to get the overdraft away. If we do not achieve it by then we have some anxiety for competition for those 16 to 24 year olds. I am more sanguine; I do think it is possible to achieve manning balance. Indeed, over the last six years, having had it as the highest priority on its radar screen, people now recognise that it is a high priority but not necessarily the highest because the trend lines are heading in the right direction. However, there will inevitably be shortages in some of these specialist areas about which I have spoken.

Q30  Patrick Mercer: General, the gap remains. What you are saying now is exactly the same as was being said when I was working in Army Training and Recruiting.

General Sir Michael Walker: Yes, but at that stage the percentages were down by eight or nine per cent and it is now four or five. There has been a very clear trend upwards.

Q31  Patrick Mercer: But the manning targets continue to fall. There seems to be a suspicion that the 108,000 is now 106,000 and the size of the Army is reducing almost by stealth, if you will forgive the phrase.

General Sir Michael Walker: It is a very complex business. Are you sure you want to get into it? What happens is there are some seriously good staff officers - like yourself - sitting round having bright ideas all day who add ideas about aspirations into this. That forms what you call the liability which is the top figure that needs to be manned. Actually, as technology is delivered, as new ways of doing things - such as sponsored Reserves - come in, the requirement for men has reduced. This is not a fudge. This is an Army figure that has been reached which is 106,500. It has come down from the 108,000 which was discussed at the time of the SDR. However, that is very much part of this process of planning and continuing on a daily basis. People decide that now we have the UAV in we do not need all these chaps looking through some other bit of radar. It is a dynamic process. The figures speak for themselves. I think there are something like 1,200 more people in the Army in May this year than in May last year. The trend lines are up.

Q32  Patrick Mercer: What further steps can be taken to improve recruiting?

General Sir Michael Walker: I do not think recruiting actually is the difficulty. People are interested. We are getting more expressions of interest. We have deliberately, for many years, homed the Recruiting and Training Organisation to deliver the requirements that we have and I think, as much as anything else, it is the retention that we have to work at. Of course there are a number of devices. It is quite a difficult art. Measuring the success of introducing some new technique to attract and then retain people is never something that you can make a hard measurement on. Judgments have to be made by the Recruiting Organisation. The trend lines are up and I think there is a general feeling that the trend lines are in the right direction. The message at the moment is more of the same rather than adopting some cracking new initiative and some great new approach.

Q33  Mr Hancock: I would now like to move on to Afghanistan and the possibility that we did actually learn some lessons from that operation. I would be interested to know whether you would tell us what you believe to be the principal lessons of that operation and also whether or not those lessons were learned in sufficient time to be able to put them into place for the latest expedition to Iraq.

General Sir Michael Walker: It is difficult to say whether we identified specific lessons - I am talking about strategic level lessons here, not tactical lessons - in Afghanistan that were not other than a reinforcement of things we already knew. What it did show us was that the sooner you can get together across the piece and get your people into the corridors of power as precursor to any deployment the better. Whilst it is not exactly a lesson of the type you are talking about, the fact that we had managed to position people in all the key areas of the American command and control structure - which was essentially the same command and control structure which ran in Iraq - served us hugely well in that context. I suppose a lesson identified there is that it is almost better to have people permanently in these posts for such an occasion. I think we relearn some operational and tactical lessons about operating in hot environments, about speed of deployment, getting people out to these various places, about the requirement to ensure that the allied plans blend together, but in terms of any serious lessons that we learned from operation Telic I do not think I could put my hand on my heart and say there were any that we had not learned from other operations.

Q34  Mr Hancock: Do you then think that it was easier to launch the exercise in Iraq because of Afghanistan?

General Sir Michael Walker: I would not have said so, no. It was not an exercise, of course, it was a war. I think it made the war in Iraq easier; easier is perhaps the wrong word. I think it helped hugely because we had, purely by fortuitous chance, been on training exercise in the Oman. That helped, too, with the deployment to Afghanistan.

Q35  Mr Hancock: What about the situation in Afghanistan? Do you foresee a situation where there will be a requirement of the UK to increase - above what it has already been increased to - the level of our involvement in Afghanistan? If so, what sort of deployment would you see occurring?

General Sir Michael Walker: The answer is that I do not know at the moment. Do you know what our level of commitment is there? Are you aware? We have about 300-plus in the ISAF Force in Kabul. A provincial reconstruction team is deploying to Masar-e-Sharif. It is true that there has always been an understanding that if there was a major problem in Afghanistan then those allies that took part in the major operations would also be approached for subsequent involvement. At the moment it does not look as though there is any possibility of that happening so I would see that our main efforts are going to continue to be to support ISAF. As you know, the new headquarters there is going to be provided from NATO so we will continue to support that. We will certainly put a lot of our effort into the work activities and products of the provincal reconstruction team.

Q36  Patrick Mercer: There has been a considerable increment recently in the shape of a company group from the 2^nd Battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment, a Regular company going out to replace not all but part of the Territorial platoon group that was out there. That sounds like a substantial increment to me.

General Sir Michael Walker: No, this is a training team. They are training the Afghan national army. You are right, I should have mentioned them. The Afghan national army are looking for various folk to train various levels of their people. This is part of the security sector reform in which the national army is being developed. I think it is a very productive way. They are there showing them how to be good NCO's in a typical British way which hopefully will benefit us in the longer term.

Q37  Jim Knight: Afghanistan was an initial foray into the use of network enabled capability by the combat operation. I would be interested to know your view on the implications of network enabled capability for doctrine and structures and how much of a change this revolution in military affairs represents for you now.

General Sir Michael Walker: Network enabled capability is the term we give to the process by which we are trying to transform these forces into being able to be agile, to be able to get inside the enemy's decision cycle, to increase the precision and decrease the time that it takes for somebody to sense that something needs to be done to the delivery of the effect at the far end. Of course, quite a lot of the things that we already have contribute to that. This is nothing new; we have been doing this for many years. I think what has sparked the imagination in terms of describing this as a new concept is that in essence, with things like the global war on terrorism, it has become very clear that if you are going to try to reach out in a war against terrorists you have to be agile enough to see the problem, get there with the right forces and deliver the effect. So quite apart from the actual physical means to do all of that the next thing you have to do is to make sure your forces are structured to be able to deliver that. You have to have people standing at the right degrees of readiness, you have to have the right force package available for a very short response time. You also have to make sure that what equipment they have is transported by the fastest possible means. One of the requirements is to get slightly smaller vehicles which pack a good punch into the back of air transport. Then, of course, all of that requires you to link this across the battle space to ships, aircraft and so on, so you get this wonderful knitting of electronic activity that allows you and all your sensors to first of all identify and then be scrutinised for the right information, for that information to be delivered to the point where the effect can then be delivered from. At the moment we have, if you like, the framework of that developing. The bits that we really have to focus on are the integration of it all with our coalition allies. We need to develop quite a lot of the equipment to make sure that that is network enabled friendly. We then need to ensure that the software, the protocols and everything we use is appropriate to those allies with whom we imagine we are going to be doing business. Clearly the Americans are a step ahead in all of this, but we are pacing them in terms of trying to keep up with what it is they are doing. That will be one of the big areas, I think, where we will have some difficulty.

Q38  Jim Knight: So given our level of jointness - which is pretty good even in comparison with the Americans - it is more of an evolution than a revolution.

General Sir Michael Walker: Yes, the thinking has changed so the revolution is there. The implementation of course has to be evolutionary. You cannot throw your current equipment out of the window and get a whole new lot; it is a long business, as you will appreciate. If you look at some of the unmanned aerial vehicles we have Phoenix, Phoenix is the first generation of this and has done us extremely proud both in the Balkans and out in Iraq but these things are spawning in large numbers and it will be a time before we can get our hands on yet more of them. There is a classic piece of equipment where we are going on to the next generation. We need to make sure we get something that we can share its use, if possible, with our allies, but at the end of the day we have to get on and get it. That will be a four or five year programme in its own right. So the revolution is more in thinking; delivering, the evolution, is in implementation.

Q39  Jim Knight: It is tempting to pursue questions of leaving some of our allies behind with this increasing capability, but I had better return to the script. In Afghanistan we simultaneously carried out combat operations and post conflict work. Do you think ISAF's work was made more difficult and dangerous by the fact that the UK was also engaged in combat operations elsewhere?

General Sir Michael Walker: That is a very good question. I think probably at first sight the answer would be yes, but on reflection, if you look at how the modern expeditions develop we have an expression now; it called a "three-block" war. I will let you into a secret about the "three-block" war. It is the vernacular that military men now give to a theatre of operations - perhaps quite a small theatre of operations - in which, at one and the same time, high intensity battles are taking place in point A, peace support operations are taking place at point B and peace keeping is taking place at point C. We have exactly that set of circumstances in Iraq at the moment. In the corridor that stretches north of Baghdad American Third Infantry Division are actually fighting the nearest thing that is going on there to a war. It is not quite high intensity, but they are in their tanks. If you go down to Basra you have the hearts and minds campaign being run along very clear lines. So the "three-block" has become, I think, a feature of the doctrinal approach that we will be anticipating in all these countries. Afghanistan was a classic example of it. I feel that the danger there was more in outside perceptions than real. Yes, of course, the troops are at risk; yes, of course, there were people who had ill intent in Kabul. However, the reality was that what ISAF was able to do was to give a stable platform for a very, very embryonic transitional authority to get to live and start doing business. Even yesterday the Afghan national army were engaging people on the southern border with Pakistan while the troops in ISAF were getting on with the business of doing it. I think this is a reality for the future and I think it is something we have to recognise.

Q40  Jim Knight: I am very interested in what you have said about the "three-block" war and shifting the doctrinal approach which seems to be something that we were better at in the Basra type operation than, for example, the Americans were when they moved very quickly with their war fighting and arrived in Baghdad and suddenly found that they did not have anyone there to do the phase four stuff to create a secure environment and to rebuild that society there. I do not expect you to criticise our coalition partners, but do you think the same shift in the doctrinal approach towards the "three-block" war is going on with our allies as it is with our own forces?

General Sir Michael Walker: I know it is. We do not want in any way to underestimate how brilliantly they fought that war. The divisional move up to Baghdad was amazing. The other thing we have to realise is that Baghdad is a totally different kind of problem to Basra. Baghdad is much bigger, it is the symbolic centre of gravity in Iraq as much as everything else. It is the heart of the Ba'athist regime; the Ba'athist elements are still there; crime is, as in any big city, a problem but it was a particular problem there. I do not think that one wants to imagine that had that race up to Baghdad been done by British troops who then found themselves there that the situation would have been markedly better than it is now. You probably know that the Armed Forces have been engaged in operations around the world in strange places ever since the Second World War, I think there was only one year when they were not. That has given people such a breadth of experience which has been taken into the doctrinal way of doing things and there is something about the British character too that is different which gives all that training the ability to produce somebody who can stitch very rapidly, take his helmet off and get on with talking to people. I think that is a particular characteristic that we want to cherish. I mention that in my training regime. I suspect operations in the future are going to demand that sort of approach.

Q41  Mr Cran: Your predecessor was quoted - we are back to the press again I am afraid - as saying that Britain could not undertake an operation or war similar to that in Iraq for at least eighteen months, certainly within a year, and that we would be hard pressed to undertake any other type of operation. Is this a proposition with which you agree?

General Sir Michael Walker: I do not really like commenting on any of my predecessors, but I will answer the question if I may. Of course there has to be a period of recuperation as in any war-like happening. One clearly has to get people, kit and supplies sorted out and back together again and, of course, we are still engaged down there. This is not over. We are down to about 16,000 there. When we get to steady state there for however long it turns out to be, we will be down to about 12,000. So we have a big engagement there. We do have a big engagement in Northern Ireland still, we have 14,000. There is a limit to what anybody can achieve. In terms of recuperating all of that and getting people back on the road, it is our intention to get the sharp end of the spear up and running by the middle of this year so that we have something. We cannot leave the nation devoid of any response capability. Indeed, we have one now, but in terms of the way in which we structured it, it does not have all the capabilities we would wish. I think we would then be looking to try to develop a medium scale capability, a brigade level capability over and above our other commitments in about the sort of time frame that was mentioned, about eighteen months. This is a dynamic process. The first thing we have to find out is what state the stores that we are now backloading from Iraq are in before we can make a judgment as to how long it will take to refurbish them ready for use again. There is some time to go before we are going to be absolutely clear what the mathematics says about it. I think a judgment at that stage was a perfectly fair one.

Q42  Mr Cran: One could have asked that question for a whole variety of reasons, but the reason I asked it was simply this, that you have got enormous responsibilities on your shoulders - which I am sure you are very happy to shoulder - and that is to make sure that unsustainable demands are not placed on Britain's Armed Forces. I say that not in reference to this Government but in reference to any government because they are all the same, they are all trying to get a quart out of a pint pot and therefore how are you going to ensure that the old pressure is not put on you to agree to do the impossible?

General Sir Michael Walker: One makes it sound as if we are in a rather combative environment than we are in; it is not. I have to say that our governments have been remarkable and over the years I have worked with all colour of government and they have been remarkably good at listening to the military advice they are given. If we say, as military men, that we can do something, then that is fine. If we say that we cannot do something and here are the reasons, I have no experience of cases where that advice has been overridden. On the commitments front I do not have an anxiety. Of course there will be aspirations. Every general wants more soldiers, every admiral wants more ships, every air marshal wants more aircraft. When one comes into the resource game then some of the arguments are more finely balanced. In terms of the commitment of British Armed Forces overseas I have no anxiety that the advice given by the chiefs of staff to our Government is going to be freely overridden.

Q43  Mr Cran: Just so that I understand this, in answer to Mr Jones, you set out the structure of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and on it is the Foreign Office representative and so on and out of this comes a consensus. In my own experience of the spheres I have operated in, life just is not quite like that. It just does not happen, that a nice consensus is arrived at and so on. Usually I have found that somebody comes along and says that they do not want to listen to the problems, they want to hear solutions, get on with it. What I just want to hear from you is how, in a difficult set of circumstances, you would deal with that, and are you absolutely satisfied - so that the Committee may be satisfied - that you would be listened to? I was so interested in what you said that I wrote it down. You said "military advice by and large accepted". I guess that is correct at one level, but it clearly cannot be at all levels otherwise chiefs of staff, your predecessors, would not have said what they have said.

General Sir Michael Walker: I can give you an assurance that I do not have any anxieties about military advice that I give to the Prime Minister that we have discussed in quite lively debates - there is no doubt about that - but by and large we come to an agreed position. Actually, the way that military business is undertaken these days most of these answers are pretty obvious from the outset. We have a recuperation problem of some magnitude to sort out after Iraq. That actually means that we are physically incapable of doing certain things until we have established just how those logistics could support whatever it is. Some of the answers present themselves. The Chiefs of Staff Committee is not one in which everyone spends hours rankling because most of the situations are fairly clear. What we would get is a clear steer from our Government. They would tell us what they would like to do and they ask us to say whether militarily that is possible. I am pretty confident that if I went back and said it was not possible that would be accepted. We may ask what else we could do to help, but my experience so far both as a member of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and as recently arrived Chief of Defence Staff who has only just taken his "L" plates off, I can give you that assurance absolutely.

Q44  Mr Cran: If the Government - any government - came to you and your colleagues and said that foreign policy dictates that we do this, that and the other and this will have the following implications for the Armed Forces, can I be clear in my mind that you would be able to look the boss in the eye - whoever the boss may be - and say that you could not do it?

General Sir Michael Walker: I am obviously failing to get my message across. I think the answer is absolutely yes.

Q45  Mr Cran: You are not failing to get it across. I am just seeking to be absolutely clear in my mind.

General Sir Michael Walker: I am obviously not producing the right form of words otherwise you would be writing them down.

Q46  Mr Cran: You have clarified it.

General Sir Michael Walker: I have, yes.

Q47  Mr Crausby: We have some 13,000 military personnel committed to Northern Ireland. First of all, do you expect to be able to reduce that commitment in the foreseeable future?

General Sir Michael Walker: I jointed the Army in 1964. I first went to Northern Ireland in 1967. Any predictions about that military operation are ones that I avoid like the plague for obvious reasons. However, in purely doctrinal terms, if a peace settlement actually does produce both an act of completion from the IRA followed by a return to normality - and you need to try to work out what you mean by normality in Northern Ireland; Northern Ireland never has been like Yorkshire so I suppose we are saying that it needs to return to what it was when there were no troubles there - then at that stage we would undertake a review of all our commitments there, all our structures, all the infrastructure, to see how we would convert Northern Ireland to look like the other regions of the United Kingdom.

Q48  Mr Crausby: It is obvious - and you have already touched on it - that the experience of the Armed Forces is invaluable in these support operations. As and when the temple does fall how do you intend to keep hold of it?

General Sir Michael Walker: It is quite interesting. It is a particularly Army thing because it is mostly military on their feet on the ground and there is a thing called the Operational Training and Advisory Group which lives down on the south coast. That has, over the years, developed into the Training Organization that captures all the techniques and procedures that you use in a place like this. When we take a young battalion which may not have been to Northern Ireland - maybe it only has 10 per cent of people who have been there before, which is unusual but let us assume that is the case - filled with young men who have just joined the Army, what is remarkable is that those young men, through that training regime, are transformed into the sort of soldier you would recognise on the streets of Northern Ireland. What I am saying is that I do not think you actually have to have been there several times yourself to have gained the techniques and the practices. Of course that experience is helpful for people as they go up through the system, but we have captured the training techniques and I think we can hang on to them. In addition to that, there are a number of other capabilities that we have developed, particularly for Northern Ireland, which we are discovering have much wider utility as capabilities across all the operations we do. Where they are operating in Northern Ireland using those capabilities we are embedding those back in our main structure as well so that we can capture them and use them in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

Q49  Syd Rapson: Moving on to international issues, particularly NATO, the Committee welcome the enlargement of NATO and are still keen on that happening and hopefully everything will go straightforwardly. The Prague summit in November 2002 offered real advances in capabilities, especially with the NATO Reaction Force and co-operation in the war against terrorism. But leading up to Iraq there were problems between our European allies in NATO and we remember specifically Turkey's request for support was turned down. How damaged to you think that NATO has been as an effective military alliance by the events leading up to the Iraq campaign?

General Sir Michael Walker: That is rather like Mr Cran's comment about everything going smoothly and consensus round the Chiefs of Staff table. There are always, it seems to me, going to be these sorts of issues. Undoubtedly there was some difficulty over this. However, what I have seen even since then is actually people are prepared to let time heal and to get together to try and do some of these things. If you look at NATO having decided to take on the running of ISAF 4, business is moving on. The NATO Reaction Force concept is being developed; people are making contributions to it. At the Ministry on Thursday we are about to discuss the new NATO command system. All of that has moved forward so whilst of course there has been, if you like, some minor turbulence - a bump in the road and perhaps quite a big bump in that context in terms of its immediacy - my belief is that it is such a strong and powerful organ that it is going to take a heck of a lot to stop it working sensibly. Actually, I find the new partners quite a catalyst in all that process; they are very keen to get on with things. They bring an enthusiasm and a dynamism to these meetings which can only be helpful. I am an optimist.

Q50  Syd Rapson: I take it that you are very much in line with our thoughts, that the enlargement process and the new partners are going to give a new impetus to NATO to re-establish itself and overcome the previous squabbles between larger nations.

General Sir Michael Walker: I do not think you will ever get rid of all the squabbling. Any international organisation will have a bit of that. However, I do think that it is a secure enough organisation and confident in its own right and with a sufficient group of people who are sensible, reasonable people who man NATO and its internal structures. I do not think it is going to become a long term issue. I can see that NATO is transforming to approach the new world. You know they have agreed the two new levels. They have the old SACEUR post and they have the Allied Command Transformation - which was the old SACLANT post - so it is modifying itself to face up to the new circumstances. I think it will still stay relevant and I think it still is genuinely the only show in town in that context.

Q51  Syd Rapson: What is the scope for further development of the European Security and Defence Policy? There must now be chances of looking at it afresh and broadening it.

General Sir Michael Walker: What we have is an agreement that the European Union will provide essentially political advice over the top of NATO forces who have been released by NATO to be used or alternatively for a force to be deployed without NATO involvement. Indeed, we have a situation like that at the moment. The Congo, for example, a French framework nation, having initiated the deployment are now moving it in step by step to become a European operation so that the PSC will give the political direction and the forces that take part will be European not NATO in this context. Equally, they could use the NATO forces as well. I think we are going to see the very first example of the use of a European force. There is a little one down in Macedonia but it has not had quite the same reaction capability. That was a rather more carefully established one. There is also talk about Europe taking on the role of the forces in Bosnia at some stage in the future. So it is developing. What we have to make sure of is that people feel comfortable with it. I think the French deployment and the transfer of authority from the French government to the European Committee will be a good test of the processes and the machinery.

Q52  Syd Rapson: The prospect of final completion of capability for the European Rapid Reaction Capability is supposed to be imminent. Helsinki Headline Goals declared that in 1999. Is that likely to take place? Are we near to completion? Although you have indicated we are setting off on operations of that sort, is the actual completion of the capability ready or is that going to take a lot longer to arrive?

General Sir Michael Walker: It is not entirely ready. What we have said is that the European Operating Capability is capable of carrying out some of the Headline Goals but it is constrained by not having all the capabilities it needs to do those at the upper end of the spectrum. Those are developing. We, amongst others, are trying to put a great deal of pressure on our European allies to fill the capability gaps. They are essentially reconnaissance, command and control, a bit of airlift and so on. There is a variety of things and until all those are in place we, as a nation, are not prepared to sign up to the full Capability statement until we have all those capabilities in place.

Q53  Syd Rapson: Have you any guess at how long that will be? Presumably there is a road map for this.

General Sir Michael Walker: I think we have reached the point where we now need to get somebody to say that they will give us this capability as part of their contribution. I think we will now have a good old battle to try to get the people to deliver what they have undertaken at the capability conferences. You did ask if I could give you a judgment. The answer is that I cannot, really. What I think would happen is that as more use is made of the EU force and the political process that will help develop it as well.

Q54  Jim Knight: Just to pick up on the capability gap, there is a danger, is there not, that we strive to keep up with the US - and with our desire to prevent them drifting off into unilateralism we need to have forces that can work with them - but in doing so we leave the Europeans behind because they are not spending enough on defence? Is that a bleak scenario?

General Sir Michael Walker: I think it is a real risk. We are not going to be able to match the American investment in network enabled capabilities that they may have. So what do you do? You ask how we can gain a degree of inter-operability across the piece. I would claim that both within the air piece and the maritime piece we are not bad. We operate consistently alongside each other's ships all over the world. Our air power has been integrated consistently into American command and control. As we speak at the moment that is not bad. The land piece is the more difficult bit. What you have to decide is whether you are going to integrate absolutely with your allies, in other words have Britain and America standing side by side with their tanks working together, or whether you are going to select a level at which you wish to engage with them. For example, let us make an assumption - this is not defence policy, I am thinking aloud here - that you would have a British division as part of an American operation. Your inter-operability problems at that level - and particularly for NEC - are different to if you want to go down to the brigade level of integration or the battalion level of integration. Yes, you can make those judgments and so we are never going to be able to deliver what they can deliver in NEC, but what we have to do is to make sure that we have the key bits in place. Actually, that should be all manageable for quite a lot of our European allies. What we need to do then, if they want to participate in these things - which they do - is to start developing them. The Scandinavians are putting quite a lot of effort into network enabled capabilities. I think we will see the Dutch coming in. Indeed, in the maritime and air pieces, quite a lot of it is there already. It is really putting it all together and coming up with a coherent package. There is a risk that some of the other allies will not be able to do that.

Q55  Jim Knight: It seems that the UN is moving away from direct involvement in peace support operations, preferring to provide the mandate under which other groups, for example the EU in the Congo, can operate. Do you think that is a welcome development or does it reflect a failure of the UN and its members to generate any capacity to do the job themselves?

General Sir Michael Walker: I would not say moving away. There is a trend for some of that to happen, but there are something like 14 or 15 UN operations going on around the world with quite a lot of peace keepers involved. Indeed, in many cases the sort of things that we find ourselves doing in support of the UN are to do that ab initio involvement to create the conditions for a UN peace keeping force to come in.

Q56  Jim Knight: We punch above our weight within the P5 countries and the Americans, for example, do very little.

General Sir Michael Walker: That is true, but at least they pay now which is quite helpful. There are so many different groupings now which you can turn to try to help solve problems involving military armed forces, that it does seem to me that we are going to have to come up with a very clear international view about what are the best bits to solve, which particular problem at a time. I am a great supporter of the UN. We do a lot to try to work with them on the peace support operational side because that is their métier really. We are not talking about them fighting intense wars. If we have difficulty in the decision making process in our little groups within NATO and the EU, you know how much more difficult is that at UN level. It is true to say that it has been a very interesting process watching the development of a mandate for Iraq over the years. From the military point of view we would still regard it as absolutely essential that we should give all the support we can to the United Nations.

Chairman: Thank you very much. The interest of the press I am sure was to see whether you were prone to gaffs. The lack of writing indicates that you are not, I suspect. We wish you the best of good fortune in the years ahead and we greatly appreciate your evidence.