Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280
- 299)
WEDNESDAY 3 NOVEMBER 2004
GENERAL SIR
MIKE JACKSON
KCB CBE DSO ADC GEN
Q280 Mr Roy: I think that most of
the pain that you speak about has actually increased, with the
fact that an awful lot of people think that these are changes
that are Treasury-driven rather than military.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I cannot
help what view people take of it, but I have tried to lay out
to you as clearly as I can that the Army Board has thought this
through in great depth, and I hope some intelligence. I know people
who would not agree, but there we are. It is something we have
taken on very deliberately. It is not driven by money, because
I have given you the reasons for why we are doing it. The way
we run the infantry at the moment does not offer a proper structured
career progression. You can be lucky, the way the cards come off
the arms plot pack, as to whether you go on an operation or you
do not. You can get the guy with the right experience moving up
to be a commanding officer or an RSM—if the cards come off
the pack in the right way. If they do not, it is wasted. I am
not sure that in 15 years' time army families will put up with
the amount of moves they do at the moment, some of them caused
by the arms plot. I was talking to somebody the other day who
had done four moves in two and a half years—something like
that. We cannot go on like this.
Q281 Mr Roy: The public outcry that
we see in Scotland at the moment—does someone take cognisance
of that? Does someone listen to what has been said, listen to
the radio, read the papers, watch the television, and take some
feedback?
General Sir Mike Jackson: I am
not normally a masochist, but I have sent down from Edinburgh
the Scottish press cuttings every day. So I think that I am well
aware of the feeling. What I regret is that I see little analysis
in the Scottish press of why these half dozen people who are towards
the end of their careers on the Army Board are putting themselves
through what is quite an uncomfortable experience. We are not
doing it for no point at all. I would be encouraged to see more
intellectual analysis of this, rather than the inevitable and
understandable emotional reaction—with which, as I have
already said, I hugely sympathise.
Q282 Chairman: Are you contrasting
the emotional individuals who want to retain the present system—the
old-timers in the regiments and battalions—with perfect
rationality on the other hand within the Army Board?
General Sir Mike Jackson: And
in the Army itself, Mr Chairman.
Q283 Chairman: I find that an absurd
contrast. If previous amalgamations are true to form, then there
will be some dirty pool being played. Those who are making the
decisions are going to make damned certain that their units, their
regiments, will come out of this really well. That is why I asked
for the regimental associations and links of the people making
the decision, because we will be watching to see if the decision
made is rational. Perhaps the director of infantry, whoever it
is—and I referred to 1991—has his regiment looked
after, and I can think of a number of regiments who are not even
going to be in the frame. My local regiment faces the chop, but
I am sure that a number of regiments are absolutely sacrosanct.
I find that really galling. Anybody who wants to preserve the
300 year-old regiment is seen as some kind of aberration who does
not understand reality. I find that—no criticism, General,
but other people say this—a little patronising.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I am
sorry?
Q284 Chairman: Some people use this
argument about people wanting to preserve a regiment. Even meeting
your criteria to an extent, I cannot see why the Government wants
to go through the pain of having the abuse in the Scottish newspapers.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I think
that you have said some things to which I ought to respond, Mr
Chairman.
Q285 Chairman: Please, I would be
delighted.
General Sir Mike Jackson: The
first thing is that I can assure you that no regiment was sacrosanct.
The Army Board has looked at each and every one.
Q286 Chairman: The Guards' regiments?
General Sir Mike Jackson: They
have been looked at.
Q287 Chairman: And they have discarded
it, as single battalion regiments.
General Sir Mike Jackson: We are
not there yet, Chairman. I do not want to pre-empt where we are
going to be, but if you are saying that certain regiments have
had a bye in all of this, no, sir. I can assure you we have looked
at each and every one. We have looked at the manning statistics;
we have looked at the demographic statistics; can these battalions
recruit, not only today but in the future? It has been, I promise
you, a very thorough process.
Q288 Chairman: Your Parachute Regiment
has taken a few hits as well—
General Sir Mike Jackson: I am
sorry?
Q289 Chairman: First Battalion Parachute
Regiment—we have done a statistical analysis. They have
hit rock bottom in terms of recruitment. Are they scheduled for
the chop?
General Sir Mike Jackson: No,
they are not.
Q290 Chairman: No, I bet they are
not.
General Sir Mike Jackson: But
I need to say a bit more on that. I think that the figure you
have got there is a single ten-year average. I think that is what
it is.
Q291 Chairman: I am sure that the
Scots would argue that; the Staffordshire Regiment would argue
that. We will come back to it.
General Sir Mike Jackson: We will
come back to this, because it is not quite as black and white
as you infer.
The Committee suspended from 3.50 pm to 4.20
pm for a division in the House.
Q292 Chairman: Right to reply—although
leave the bit about your old regiment, because James Cran has
some questions on it and so you can reply to that.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I think
where we were, Chairman, was you were trying to establish the
criteria which the Army Board is using to spot where these four
battalions will have to come from. We used a number of criteria.
Obviously manning is a very important one, and it is statistical:
you track back manning records, which we have done over ten years,
to see where the trends lie. Also part of this is the demographic
base from which recruiting takes place. There are some stark figures.
For example, it takes in Scotland about 50,000 of the youngsters
we want to produce one battalion. That is how the sums work out.
In England, this is done from 100,000. I am using very broad figures.
So demography does not get you everywhere, because you then also
have—if I can put it in this way—the propensity to
be a soldier, to be an infantry soldier. Arguably the propensity
in Scotland, historically, is higher because they have produced—
Q293 Chairman: Careful!
General Sir Mike Jackson: No,
it is true.
Q294 Chairman: You are going on to
quite dangerous territory there!
General Sir Mike Jackson: No,
it is absolutely true, historically. Sadly, however, that trend
is going down and the manning in the Scottish battalions is not
as good as we would wish. That is true of elsewhere as well. I
only say that because manning figures alone are not the whole
story. There is therefore an element of judgment in this as well.
It is also, more broadly, worth my saying—because I think
this is quite important—that half the infantry, or almost
half the infantry, are on a large regiment basis now, and very
successful they are too. I would defy anybody to make a distinction
in terms of military competence between those who followed the
Army Board's wishes some 25 years ago, whenever it was, and formed
large regiments and those who chose not to. So we need to bear
that in mind: that we are not talking about the infantry as a
whole; we are only talking about half of it. The other thing which
I would like to put to you—since you gave me a shot across
the bows when it came to those, shall we say, who are no longer
serving in the Army—is that my sense of the serving Army's
view of all of this is to get on with it. They understand pretty
much the logic which lies behind these moves. It may be worth
my pressing that point, if I may. I found myself speaking to the
Joint Staff College about a week before the Secretary of State
made his July announcement. After that was done, I spoke then
to the Army students alone and told them pretty much what was
coming up. Quite unsolicited, I had a letter from all the infantry
students there saying, "You've got it right. Get on with
this". So views do differ—within the serving Army,
within the retired Army, within local communities. All of that
I understand.
Q295 Chairman: So that is all the
criteria?
General Sir Mike Jackson: I am
sorry?
Q296 Chairman: They are all of the
criteria? You said demography, recruitment over a ten-year period,
and the fact that the Army are prepared to accept it. That is
it, and you are now going to close down four regiments on the
basis of those factors. Does finance, budgetary requirements,
go into it? Are you being told that you have to cut the numbers
down, and you are making a good fist of it?
General Sir Mike Jackson: The
budgetary dimension, in my view, is the one that results first
of all in the allocation of public funds to defence. That is a
matter for the Government. Then the process by which, within the
MoD, the split of that public funding between equipment in use,
future equipment, numbers of personnel, the balance between various
capabilities—this is a complicated business, the outcome
of which was an Army of about 102,000, as we have covered. Our
job, the Army Board's job, is then to ensure, within that ceiling,
that we have the best capability we can get from that number.
The other dimension to this, of course, are the defence planning
assumptions. I know that the Committee will be very familiar with
this. The force attribution tables, which you have at the back
of the White Paper, are on the hallowed assumptions of two mediums
and a small, one medium and two smalls, and a large. That arithmetic
is crawled over in great detail, and the outcome of all of that
was that 36 battalions was the maximum that the future Army would
need. It is hard. I do not want to see four battalions go, but
we have to cut our cloth according.
Q297 Chairman: So finance as well
is a factor?
General Sir Mike Jackson: In that
broad sense. You are trying to pin me down in a way which I am
not going to be—if you forgive me.
Q298 Chairman: I have been through
this before, General. Minister after minister came before us and
said, "We have to merge regiments. We don't need all these
regiments. We don't need the numbers any more, because the Cold
War is over. We are entering now into a different world where
we don't require these infantrymen"—and that was not
right. Now we are being obliged to sign up for a concept of the
future that could be as spurious in the projections of the armed
forces or the Ministry of Defence now as it has been in the past.
It is all partly dependent on peace in Northern Ireland—that
can change very quickly.
General Sir Mike Jackson: Partly.
Q299 Chairman: It seems to me absurd
that we are now going to have a teeth-to-tail ratio/ It is rather
strange. Obviously the Army needs logisticians and communications
experts, but how many infantry will we have now? 35,000? 30,000?
General Sir Mike Jackson: In numbers?
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