Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
WEDNESDAY 15 SEPTEMBER 2004
RT HON
GEOFF HOON
MP, SIR KEVIN
TEBBIT KCB CMG AND
GENERAL SIR
MICHAEL WALKER
GCB CMG CBE ADC GEN
Q20 Chairman: They were all being
considered for merger? They were all considered at the time—?
General Sir Michael Walker: Before
the recommendation was made for the White Paper.
Chairman: Okay, so equal misery for all.
Q21 Mr Havard: Can I just follow
this up. This business about language has meaning to me, maybe
not for a lot of other people but it does to me. Disbanding things
has a particular relevance to soldiers, does it not? Disbanded;
it is disgrace, it is dishonour to a lot of people. "Merging
regiments together" is a different process altogether. Can
I be very clear, we are not talking about disbanding any regiments
in the original sense, are we?
General Sir Michael Walker: As
I understand it, the intention is to bring together in a divisional
structure the number of battalions that are probably currently
there, reduced by the number, I cannot remember exactly, but I
think it is one in Scotland and three in England, so those divisional
structures will come down. Whether that is called a "merger",
whether it is called "bringing together", whether it
is called at the end of the day a "disbandment" when
the recommendation is made to the Secretary of State I think we
must leave that to the Army Board, but disbandment to me is you
take an organisation and you get rid of it lock, stock and barrel,
and none of its accoutrements, none of its traditions, none of
its uniforms or anything live on, and I do not think that is the
intention in any way.
Q22 Mr Havard: You challenged me
about talking to people, I spent last week in Afghanistan talking
to a lot of people, particularly a lot of Green Howards who were
bending my ear about this, that and the other, which is perfectly
legitimate, and other people supporting them and there is a lot
of concern about these particular issues. They were saying, "We
are coming back to Chepstow and we do not know what the future
is. Are we going to be disbanded?" So there is a lot of disquiet
and I think language is important in this regard as to what is
actually happening because your esprit de corps and all
the rest of it, you know how this works, so I think that is particularly
important as to what is being considered, whether it is dissolution
or some sort of reorganisation.
Mr Hoon: I understand that and
it was part of the risk that I recognised that I was taking by
allowing this process of consultation because the risk of consultation
always is that everyone believes that they are affected when at
the end of the day, as we have indicated, it will only be four
battalions. It was a judgment I made that it was better to allow
people this opportunity of looking at this process and making
their representations rather than simply announcing what we had
decided. As it is, this is an opportunity for the Committee and
all those affected to make their observations, but can I say that
within this structure—and I know, rightly, a lot of people
are concerned about the identity of existing single battalion
regiments—I see no reason for example, should the Army Board
choose to recommend it, why in Scotland the existing regimental
name should not be bracketed after whatever title is given to
the Scottish Division if it is a single regimental structure,
and the Black Watch therefore will continue to be a particular
battalion within that larger Scottish structure. That seems to
me to preserve both their history and their identity. They can
still recruit in the same areas. Indeed, one of the things that
I think has been seriously overlooked in these proposals is that
by basing the Army more consistently in particular parts of the
country it will add to the local connection not take away from
it because one of the problems of arms plotting is very often
regiments that have an identity and a connection with a particular
part of the country find themselves located somewhere entirely
different. General Walker's regiment, the Anglians, I recall when
I was first appointed as Secretary of State, were based in Chepstow
and most of the recruits were from Leicester and Northampton and
the eastern part of the country and most weekends from Chepstow
they would spend their time driving across the country. That is
not good for them and it is certainly not good for recruiting.
It is not very good either for the important civic connection
that I know Members of Parliament are concerned about but by agreeing
to what we are proposing that civic connection will be stronger
rather than weaker.
Q23 Chairman: The word "poaching"
was extremely widespread in Eastern Wales I have to say. Two brief
questions. These decisions are going to be announced at the end
of the year you say. Once announced how long will it take for
them to be implemented and when will the arms plot be ended?
Mr Hoon: The arms plot cannot
be ended overnight. It will have to taper off as we identify the
locations. There is also a significant consideration as far as
I am concerned which is that it is important we improve the estate
because clearly if particular regiments are going to be based
more consistently in a particular part of the country then I have
to be confident that their accommodation is decent and up to a
proper standard, but again the end of the arms plotting, in my
opinion, will contribute to that because one of the difficulties,
frankly, about Army accommodation in particular is that if a regiment
is based for only two years in a particular barracks, they have
less incentive, if I can put it this way, to ensure that that
accommodation is treated properly because if they spend money
on that accommodation the chances are they will not benefit from
that spending, and therefore having a more consistent approach
to basing, recognising that it is important that all the bases
therefore achieve a particular standard will mean in the longer
term that the quality of the accommodation is both maintained
and, I expect, improved. I think it would take to something like
2008-09 before finally the last element in the arms plot will
have been concluded.
Q24 Chairman: My last question before
I call Rachel is this, and you almost answered the question, Secretary
of State: it will take more than the retention of the museum and
cap badge to convince anyone that the regiment has survived whatever
the process is going to be called Options for Change II, III or
IV. Can I just say is there enough thinking going on within the
Ministry of Defence that if there is going to be an association
of three single battalion regiments that there can be more than
the museum and the cap badge. There will have to be a member of
staff who will be associated with the regiment, not just the externals
and the pretence that the regiment is surviving but there will
be something that survives. If that could be done, if assurances
could be given that when my local regiment celebrates its 300th
anniversary it will not be just the name Staffordshire Regiment
that will survive but there will be something associated with
that battalion that is going to be within a larger organisation,
if that could be done then I suspect a lot of criticism you are
now hearing will abate.
General Sir Michael Walker: I
have to repudiate what you are saying, Chairman. I come from a
large regiment. I joined it the moment it had become the amalgamation
of the Norfolks and the Suffolks. We respect our traditions just
as much as the single battalion regiments of today. The Norfolk
Regimental Comrades' Association, the Suffolk Regimental Comrades'
Association and the Royal Anglian Regimental Comrades' Association
have come together now to do all the things that you are suggesting.
The interests of those comrades are looked after in exactly the
same way. All I can say is that I am afraid that the reality is
that once the transition has occurred all these things live on
and what we do not want to do is have two sides of the argument.
We have a model which many people in the armed forces have said
we should have gone down the full road many years ago in 1960
when the first one was done, and in times between then and now
there have been discussions about going to a larger regiment model.
I think that the Army has taken a very brave decision to do this.
They do not need to lose all the things that you are all worried
about because they do survive.
Chairman: We will see who is right. Rachel?
Q25 Rachel Squire: If I could pick
up on General Walker's point and also the Secretary of State's
point and also admit that the Black Watch is my local regiment
so I am very glad it has been mentioned because of its outstanding
reputation. I am interested in hearing what evidence you have
to convince you that going for larger regiments and forming two
or three battalions will actually be operationally more efficient
and exhibit other advantages so that we will not in any way diminish
the very high standards and professionalism that our armed forces
have in every part of the world. Coming particularly to my local
regiment of the Black Watch, how do you see your proposals benefiting
a regiment that served in the Balkans in 2002, in Iraq in 2003,
that was supposed to be spending two years now at Warminster but
has been called back to serve in Iraq? How do you see your proposal
actually benefiting a regiment that has that level of current
commitment, one might even say overstretch?
General Sir Michael Walker: For
a start, it will be much better off in the context of the way
you are describing it. Imagine a regiment of three battalions
of which the Black Watch uniformed department is one. They will
have them in stable bases where their wives will have jobs, where
the continuity of life for the family is good, where the kids
can go to the same schools without having to be moved on every
year, where training can be done away from barracks but people
come back to that, so they do not have to always move around the
world to do that, where deployments would be at six months away
on operations and then back to the same home base, and because
not everybody inside the Army was moving around on an arms plot,
the Holy Grail of a two-year tour interval is something that should
be readily achieved by them, so there will be more stability for
all. Career courses will be better and people's ability to continue
their professional careers will be better. So that is where the
advantage is seen. There is nothing new about this. It has always
been known that if we could break the link between an arms plot
and the need to move regiments around the world and the operational
activities it undertook we would always be better off and that
is why I think it is a very brave decision the Army have taken.
It is about time and many people will applaud this decision around
all the armed forces. Those who least applaud it are the ones
who are taking counsel of fears that, in my view, simply do not
exist. I come from a large regiment, I have seen it work. The
system itself has begun to move people around within the large
regiments. The First, Second and Third Battalions of the Royal
Anglian Regiment, each of which came from different parts of the
country, recognised, although not forced to do so, the value of
being able to switch people from a light role battalion in Colchester
to an armoured infantry battalion based in Germany to a battalion
in Northern Ireland and the amount of people who moved because
they wanted to go and be part of that organisation from one battalion
to another, even though an Essex man found himself surrounded
by Lincolnshire Poachers, was significant. I can only assure you
that my personal experience is that you need have no fear that
this is going to be the case. You will find that once people have
got into the new system they will find a) they will have more
time for themselves and their families and the professions and
b) it is a much better system in the way it works.
Q26 Chairman: That is very reassuring,
but your three battalions became two and I can think of some mergers
where three battalions became one—
General Sir Michael Walker: I
think that is unfair. We became two, as did a number of the larger
regiments that lost a battalion in the Options for Change. One
of the worries always was that the large battalions, because they
had three identical battalions, were always much more vulnerable
to change than the single named battalions, the sort of debate
that is going on now. You should be delighted that your infantry
of the future is going to be more useable, it is going to be better
trained and it is going have happier people in it notwithstanding
the anxiety that lives on, probably largely in the warrant officers'
and sergeants' mess at having to go through the transition.
Mr Hoon: Sometimes in conversations
with colleagues when I use phrases like "arms plotting"
I wonder whether it might be helpful if General Walker were to
explain why we move people around as we do at the present time.
It is an enormously complex, difficult, time-consuming process.
I know members of the Committee will be very concerned that at
the end of it we should have more useable capability. In addition,
there are all of the family-friendly factors the General mentioned.
There is no doubt that one of the pressures on an experienced
soldier who has been in the Army, say, for ten years, has settled
and had a family, is what then happens if at the end of the two
years where he and his family have been settled in a particular
place they are then required to move sometimes literally to the
other end of the country. It is justifiable and has been justifiable
on the basis of ensuring that each unit should have proper training
and should not be stuck in one particular role indefinitely, but
this is why there is the challenge in a sense to all those who
say they support an end to the arms plot of finding a new structure
that allows all of the variety and diversity of training that
is necessary to exist but it cannot do so if we persist with 19
single battalion regiments. That really is the crunch. I would
hope the Committee would look carefully at the existing arrangements
for arms plotting before they come to conclusions about these
new proposals because it is only against the backcloth of the
damage to operational capability and indeed, in my view, to morale
and to retention, that arms plotting needs to move on.
Chairman: Perhaps you could drop us a
note. Most of us are familiar but you could refresh the knowledge
that we have. Mike Hancock?
Q27 Mr Hancock: Just one point going
back to the deployable availability of troops moving from 27 battalions
to 36 under the changes that are proposed and back to your first
statement about the overstretch that has occurred and the pressure
on the logistics and signallers and everything. If you move from
27 to 36 with a reduced overall number in the Army the pressure
on the logistics efforts to support 36 deployable units must be
greater so how do you cover that?
Mr Hoon: I think actually the
General has already covered that. The point is that with more
operational battalions available to us that ought to allow us
to increase tour intervals to mean that we are not using as many
of those operational battalions as often as we have been doing
in the past. The fact is—and this is crucial to what I have
been outlining—that if we then at the same time increase
the numbers of logisticians and so on available to support those
battalions we actually have an all round increasing capability,
we have more operational battalions available, we have more logisticians,
so it ought to allow us to support more operations should we choose
to engage upon them.
Q28 Mr Hancock: Is that the plan,
to increase the number of logisticians and other supporting elements?
Mr Hoon: Yes.
Q29 Mr Hancock: And yet reduce the
overall numbers in the Army to the numbers you have given, and
that will be achieved, will it?
Mr Hoon: That will be the consequence.
Again, I have consistently invited the Committee to look at the
effects that we can create. Simply preserving a system that means
that large numbers of soldiers spend a great deal of time re-roling,
moving, travelling the country not available for operations is
certainly not sensible. It is certainly not sensible in the 21st
century.
Q30 Mr Blunt: Secretary of State,
you and the CDS have put the case for the changes but surely it
is also right to acknowledge the costs of ending the arms plot
and ending 19 single battalion regiments because that is in effect
what is going on. General Walker's experience is from a large
battalion seeing the history of the Norfolks and the Suffolks
taken into three battalions of the Royal Anglians and now two
battalions of the Royal Anglians. It is surely fair to acknowledge
that the links between the county, between the community and the
Army through those regimental links are inevitably going to be,
in your view, a necessary casualty to some extent of what you
are doing because that is why the Army has presumably for so long
kept 19 single battalion regiments and not had a single corps
of infantries.
Mr Hoon: I do not accept that.
My constituency recruits for the Worcesters and Sherwood Foresters.
I have to say I have my ear bent regularly on behalf of the Sherwood
Foresters. There has been no loss of identity. They regard the
Worcestershire element as a necessary combination from the past.
Q31 Chairman: We would have preferred
the word you were thinking of using!
Mr Hoon: I paused but I do not
detect that they have lost their identity.
Q32 Mr Blunt: No, but the position
you are taking is that there is absolutely no down side to what
you are doing at all but the fact is for all people who belong
to those single battalion regiments, have served in them, have
supported them, the communities they come from and everything
else, there is a rather serious down side. There will no longer
be a Staffordshire regiment that is sitting there on duty somewhere
around the world. There will no longer be the Cheshires, the King's
Own Scottish Borderers and the 19 other names. That does have
quite a significant impact. Obviously the Committee will have
to come to its own views as to the merits of what you are putting
forward and come to a view on the balance but there is a balance,
there is a palpable disadvantage in some areas to what you are
doing, surely? Or are you going to maintain to us that there is
absolutely no down side to this at all and that it is all benefit?
Mr Hoon: There is always a consequence
of change and I am not going to pretend otherwise, but you have
put the case I think for tradition, for the past, for the way
in which traditionally county regiments were organised. We have
a rather curious position today, as General Walker has indicated,
that half the Army has moved towards a more modern structure,
the other half remains with county regiments. I accept particularly
amongst those who have served in those regiments in the past that
there is concern. Those people tend to be resident in the particular
county and the particular area. However, as far as those who are
serving are concerned, it seems to me that there is overwhelming
advantage in what we are proposing without any loss of identity.
Q33 Mr Blunt: Will arms plotting
continue for the Royal Armoured Corps?
General Sir Michael Walker: It
is going to have to for a bit while we have troops based in overseas
parts of the world but, as you know, the length of tours has increased
to such an extent that it is not as frequent as the others. On
top of which of course they do not have the same pressure on them
as the infantry. They are doing some dis-mounted tasks in places
like Cyprus and so on but most of their roles are being able to
be contained within the recognised tour interval.
Q34 Mr Havard: I want to ask this
question. Given Sir Michael Jackson's "rounded" infantrymen
of the future juxtaposed with your argument about more certainty
and less movement and so on, how are these going to work because
people are going to have to gain this experience in terms of their
capability to become this rounded infantryman so they are not
going to be stuck in the same place all the time, are they? How
do you fit the two together?
Mr Hoon: That is the whole point
about bringing them together, that is absolutely right.
General Sir Michael Walker: The
whole point about having a large regimental system is that you
move the individuals around within it rather than up sticks and
move the regiment across the piece. There is no doubt about it
that if you look back over the years the British regimental system
such as we know it has had to be nudged into modernity time and
time and time again. The finest bits about it are the bonds which
exist between people who know each other well. Most of them are
fighting probably for their platoon and, I agree, for a regimental
accoutrement of some sort. They probably do not even know the
name of their commanding officer for the first couple of years.
They certainly get to know their company commander well. This
is small team stuff. The creation of that as you move around a
bigger family has been proven time and time again. I know you
mentioned, Ms Squire, the track record of the Black Watch but
if you go to any of the large regiments' track records over the
same period you will find just as much success by the first battalion
of large regiment A or large regiment B so it is there, it can
exist. What I would do is ask you to go and look see. Do not focus
on the small; recognise there is advantage. All I would say, Crispin,
about your comment is, yes, of course there is going to be a sense
of loss at a single battalion name and regiment but that does
not mean, in my view, that that sense of loss, painful and sad
though it is going to be, is of sufficient weight to cause us
not to modernise the infantry. That would be daft.
Q35 Mr Blunt: I think that is a perfectly
reasonable position to take and we will then have to see what
the proposals are. Secretary of State, you did say at the opening
part of your remarks that the proposals put forward were proposals
from both the military and civilians in the MoD. I rather thought
you forgot within that the qualification "within the resources
made available by the Treasury" because there have been a
number of remarks from very senior officers from all services
that this is not necessarily where they would wish to go in an
ideal world but they have to recognise that they are having to
put these proposals forward within the limits that the Government
have chosen to apply to them.
Mr Hoon: Your question inevitably
is right in one sense but does not apply to the restructuring
of the Army, because in the proposals that I have set out—
Q36 Mr Blunt: No, I was meaning in
the context across the board.
Mr Hoon: I did not want anyone
to imagine from your observation that this was driven by financial
considerations, because the restructuring is—
Q37 Mr Blunt: The restructuring of
the infantry cannot be exempt from that, but as far as the operational
changes to the armed forces, if we can move on to now, this is
the unhappy compromise that the chiefs are always forced to when
you and your colleagues are doing battle with the Treasury for
resources, and to put up the presentation that this is you and
the chiefs and Sir Kevin and the civil servants all united and
that this is the ideal situation is perhaps slightly to misrepresent
the fact that they very properly have to operate within the financial
decisions that you and Parliament impose upon them?
Mr Hoon: You will forgive me,
Crispin, that is a statement of the obvious, and you are making
it. You are not, for example, making it in the context of a budget
that has increased more than in the past 20 years. In your time
in the Ministry of Defence, you were not able to point to the
kind of substantial financial increases we have made available.
Notwithstanding that, it still follows that, even allowing for
this increase in the Defence budget, necessarily we have to look
carefully at our capabilities. If we want to acquire new capabilities,
and I assume the Committee would want us to do so, then we have
to look hard at existing capabilities as to whether they fit into
our modern strategic requirements, and those that fit in less
well necessarily have to be removed if we want to go on increasing
capabilities by the acquisition of new equipment. It is not something
new. As we have discovered since 1997, this is a process that
has gone on and gone on and needs to go on in the Ministry of
Defence if we are to supply our armed forces with the kind of
training and equipment that makes them the best and most effective
in the world. There is nothing new about what you have just said.
Q38 Mr Blunt: I appreciate that,
but I think they are the Government's proposals and you must take
responsibility for them and for the money that is being made available
to the MoD, and I think it is pulling the servicemen and the civil
servants—
Sir Michael Walker: I have to
come in here. We have a very integrated system now in the Ministry
of Defence. We have a thing called the Defence Management Board,
and the chiefs are Board members of that. We make these decisions
collectively. I think you should be pleased that we have what
is essentially a very sophisticated system for looking at how
we bring equipment in, what structural changes we need to do,
into the services, and it is done across the board; and I have
to support the Secretary of State absolutely; he is not responsible.
I have to support him because actually we did not make that decision.
Of course we are constrained by resources. As the Secretary of
State, there is nothing new about that; that has always been the
case. We have to make judgments about priorities. We were as party
to those priorities as anybody.
Q39 Mr Blunt: That is absolutely
necessarily right and proper, and you must support the Secretary
of State within the resources available. If you think Defence
is being undermined to such an extent, you obviously then have
the option to lay down your battle—
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Can I add—
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