Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
31 MARCH 2004
RT HON
GEOFFREY HOON
MP AND SIR
KEVIN TEBBIT
Q120 Mr Cran: Another two or three questions
on home defence. There is no doubt the Committee formed a very
clear view when we did our inquiry into Defence and Security in
the UK, that civilian authorities we spoke to wanted a predictable
response from the Armed Forces. There is no doubt about it; that
is what they want. What worried me last week, and perhaps other
members of the Committee, was the question on this general subject
from the Chief of the Defence Staff. He said "The truth of
the matter is that normally when a request comes through from
a chief constable or one of the civil emergency agencies there
is something that can be found somewhere around the country".
I want to give you the opportunity just to tighten that up a little
bit. Anybody listening to that just might imagine that it is rather
too casual. In addition, the Chief of the General Staff said "
. . . as CDS says, the first soldiers available could be five
minutes away, if it is in more remote areas then there may not
be a regular forces footprint there and that is more difficult
then". We really do need to tighten this up.
Mr Hoon: I actually fundamentally
disagree with you because I think that it would be absurd to have
highly trained regular Armed Forces waiting for a task which might
or might not emerge as a result, say, of a terrorist incident.
What we have—and this is the emphasis in this White Paper—is
the flexibility to deploy forces to deal with whatever problems
arise. Those problems will be different according to the particular
crisis that we have to handle. Sir Kevin just gave illustrations
of Fresco. What we needed actually at the time of dealing with
foot and mouth were logisticians. Logisticians made the biggest
contribution; the actual disposal of the carcases, burying and
so on, were largely carried out by civilian contractors. The people
who actually organised the change of scale, from essentially civil
servants dealing with the problem to a large-scale operation,
were logistics experts and that is their job inside the Armed
Forces and they do it superbly. They were able to bring that expertise
to bear. I think that is a much better and more flexible and actually
a more practical way of dealing with the problem. We could react
very quickly, as we have done on a number of occasions to domestic
crises, but I do not think the idea of holding forces available
to provide the predictable response, as your question implies,
is a particularly sensible use of scarce, highly trained resources.
Q121 Mr Cran: Then clearly I did not
make my question clear enough.
Mr Hoon: It may be my fault.
Q122 Mr Cran: I did not mean and I could
not support that we have large numbers of troops allocated for
a purpose who just sit around and wait for something to happen.
Of course not; we cannot possibly have that. That is not what
I mean. I mean that in my judgment the civil authorities want
to know that what you say you can deliver you can deliver. As
you have made clear, there are 14 regional CCRFs, each of which
of course has 500 reservists in each brigade region. It has come
to the Committee's attention by one means or another, by wandering
all over the place, including MoD establishments, that this 500
probably is not going to be 500 at all; it is probably going to
be nearer 250 to 300, simply because of all the double-hatting
which is going on, the pressures which you have to allocate troops
for all the commitments, most of which I support. That is the
danger the civilian authorities are worried about. This is your
opportunity to allay them.
Mr Hoon: Obviously the idea of
the CCRFs is to provide a very short-term rapid response in support
of the civilian authority in any given region. I would not anticipate
that that is it. Once that initial response is available, predictably
we hope, then we would make a judgment in the light of whatever
request we received as to what further capabilities were required.
As the Chief of Defence Staff indicated, we would find them. Communications
and transport are extremely good in the United Kingdom and we
would be able to get people very quickly to a crisis, according
to the nature of the request which had been received.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: We are now exercising
this. The first exercise was last autumn, again co-ordinated by
Sir David Omand. I cannot recall the details, but I know we are
exercising it. We have aligned our military regions to the police
regions and it may be that the CCRFs are not necessarily the first
and certainly would not be the only resources called upon. We
do plan on speed of reaction. The Chief of Defence Staff was actually
making a different point, not "Goodness knows how it is going
to happen" but "We would use all the flexibility available
to us to make it happen".
Q123 Mr Cran: I think civil authorities
who read your answers will be reassured by some of that. Just
so we are clear about it—I do like clarity in these things—you
are absolutely clear in your minds that the CCRFs are not under
strength, nor will they be under strength.
Mr Hoon: Each of them have declared
their readiness as of the end of last year. If the Committee has
any evidence that is not the case, I would be very pleased to
see it. I can take it up with the appropriate authorities.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Some of the
individuals who might be in the CCRFs might also at certain times
be reservists who would be called up to engage in operations overseas,
but my understanding is in very small numbers, very small proportions.
You would need to ask the chiefs of staff about this, but I am
not aware of a significant issue there.
Q124 Mr Cran: Moving on, has the government
ever given any thought at all to a home command which would apply
itself to what may become, we hope not, home defence tasks which
none of us wants to see, but which may occur? Is that something
you have ever thought about? Would it help?
Mr Hoon: I do not know whether
in your question there is a confusion, because home defence sounds
like the days of the Cold War and a threat to the territory of
the United Kingdom.
Q125 Mr Cran: No, I do not mean that.
Mr Hoon: Exactly; that is why
I am anxious to avoid misrepresenting your position.
Q126 Mr Cran: May I make it clear that
I do not mean that.
Mr Hoon: The most likely threat
we have to face up to is some sort of civil disaster, whether
that is caused by an explosion of a peaceful kind or some terrorist
attack on the United Kingdom. The most likely response therefore
which would be required from the armed forces is for people to
go to assist the civil authority with perhaps just the straightforward
task of adding extra numbers to whatever reaction the civil authority
has made through the police, the fire service and the other emergency
services. I cannot see—back to the point I made earlier—the
benefit of having home defence in quite the traditional sense
that the phrase implies, which is why we talked about a reaction
force and why at the end of the day this is not the primary responsibility
of the Ministry of Defence. We are in there as a support of the
Home Office, whose job it is, rightly, on the territory of the
United Kingdom to deal with civil disasters.
Q127 Mr Cran: I think, as I made clear
to you, I do not want traditional solutions either. I am not saying
traditional threats either. We are all entitled to examine what
you are doing to see whether it meets the challenges ahead.
Mr Hoon: What I am trying to resist
is back to the standing force argument. What I think we are developing
is the flexibility to be able to respond according to the nature
of the disaster which we have to deal with. We have had lots of
examples this afternoon, whether it is foot and mouth, floods,
we have not had famine and fire, but certainly a terrorist incident
and it is those kinds of issues which we have to deal with.
Q128 Mr Cran: Without treading on the
bailiwick of the Home Secretary, which none of us here would wish
to do, nonetheless is it the case that the 14 regional CCRFs are
in some way joined up, or are they just very free standing? Does
any collective thinking go in between them?
Mr Hoon: I have no doubt, and
this was the point Sir Kevin was making and by implication so
was the CDS last week, that if in a particular region there were
a requirement in the timescale for more than the forces available
in that region, I am confident we could make others available.
That flexibility is important.
Q129 Mr Cran: I have read your statement
to the Committee and under the heading of concurrency you say
"Our experience of the pattern of operations since the SDR
shows us that we should plan to be able to support three concurrent
small-and medium-scale operations" and so on. What worries
me, and I am not a defence expert I am just a civilian, about
that confidence is simply that it is not the predictable things
which I would worry about, it is the unpredictable things which
I would worry about. Therefore I have no doubts whatsoever that
that statement stands within predictable things. What if the unpredictable
happens? What planning do you have for the unpredictable?
Mr Hoon: I am not quite sure how
many times the word flexible or flexibility occurs in this White
Paper; I suspect a word count might suggest that it appears too
often. However, it does emphasise the answer to your question,
which is that this is designed to give us a degree of flexibility
because I accept that one of the challenges we face in the modern
world is that we cannot see the Soviet Union building up its forces
along the East/West German border. We did not, nor were able to
anticipate the attack on New York and Washington on 11 September,
so I accept that there is a need to be able to develop forces
to deal with that unpredictability. Operating on a small scale,
rapidly, at great distance and being able to support and sustain
forces there seems to me the right configuration to deal with
those unpredictable threats.
Q130 Mr Cran: So you are confident that
you can meet the unpredictable.
Mr Hoon: Confidence is always
a challenge, but I am absolutely convinced that this White Paper
sets us in the right direction for the kinds of challenges we
face.
Q131 Mr Cran: Carefully chosen words.
One last question on manning. Is there a minimum level of numbers
for the armed forces below which you would not be able to achieve
the government's foreign policy aims? I am not going to throw
Lord Boyce at you; he has been thrown at you often enough this
afternoon, but he is clearly quite worried about it. Is there
an irreducible minimum?
Mr Hoon: There must inevitably
be an irreducible minimum, although clearly what the technology
does achieve is that it allows us to do more with the same number
of people. If there were a catastrophic reduction in our recruiting
or our retention, which might justify the background to your question,
then clearly it is something I would have to address directly.
Actually retention is extremely good and recruitment is even better
at the moment, so the problems we have been having to deal with
over the last 12 months have not actually been the problems of
some fall-off in recruitment; on the contrary, they have been
the problems of having to manage rather larger numbers coming
into the armed forces than we had anticipated or planned for,
which is a very healthy state to be in and one for which I am
extremely grateful, apart from when I look at the costs.
Q132 Chairman: Leading quite nicely to
my question. In the early 1990s I and others were involved in
rearguard action to minimise the consequences of the last government's
proposals to merge regiments, some quite ridiculously and thankfully,
in relation to four regiments, they were added back. Now we have
a very small infantry, technology is very helpful but ultimately
it requires boots, which we are not very good at supplying, and
people able to fit inside them. I have been hearing some rather
worrying rumours north of the border and rather further south
that a decade later the army is going to face another set of potential
cuts. Is there any thinking going on which has hit internal papers
which actually says that there is going to be a reduction in the
size of the infantry, which will mean a further cut in regiments
or further mergers of existing regiments? Please give some assurance
that I need not get involved in a reactivation of my campaign?
I wrote a book on the subject which sold like hot cakes in Dudley,
Walsall and Lichfield and I do not want to have to spend another
year writing another book on another campaign. Please reassure
the Scottish battalions and the Staffordshire Regiment and others
that they are not once again under threat of either merger of
disbandment.
Mr Hoon: I would simply say that
in the context of what has taken place in the period since then,
when inevitably there have to be adjustments in numbers, in the
organisation of our Armed Forces and I have given one example
today of looking to be able to deploy more light forces as against
the very heavy forces, to give that absolute blanket undertaking
would not make sense and, Chairman, you know it would not make
sense, because you are thoughtful and considerate in defence policy.
You know full well that those changes are part of the evolution
of the Armed Forces. They have gone on for hundreds of years and
the idea that I sit here and give you that blanket assurance would
not make sense. If I did give you that blanket assurance, I would
expect the Committee to criticise me for doing so, because we
would then be preserving our Armed Forces in aspic, we would then
be an historical debating society rather than a forward-looking
organisation which the Ministry of Defence is. Those evolutions
must go on.
Q133 Chairman: In other words, I had
better start looking for a publisher. Thank you very much.
Mr Hoon: If the Committee wants
to write about the history of Britain's Armed Forces, then they
will exact that undertaking from a future Secretary of State,
because I shall not give it and we shall essentially preserve
our Armed Forces in a way which would not be good for them and
would not be good for the defence of the country. I know that
you would not want that to happen.
Q134 Chairman: No, I would not want to
take the Committee's time for a parochial issue, but one of the
lessons of history which you remember—
Mr Hoon: I have been to Lichfield
and I think it does an extremely good job.
Chairman: Absolutely. However, one of
the things one must remember is that historically the Ministry
of Defence and the War Office before it, for one reason or another,
has driven down the number of infantry until there is a crisis.
Then they go through the process of re-activating regiments which
is very, very difficult. We have a very small infantry—a
very small infantry—with an increasing number of tasks and
therefore I would caution you against going through the process
again of busting all new regiments which at some stage . . . and
I went through this conversation with Archie Hamilton, who sat
there and gave exactly the same arguments that you are using;
exactly the same. Eventually the government had to change its
mind. I am merely trying to save you the embarrassment by reaching
the conclusion before it is necessary.
Q135 Mr Roy: On the same point, this
has obviously been raised by some of the Scottish regiments and
some people attached to those regiments will be watching this
broadcast. I do not think they would expect a blanket assurance,
or blanket coverage, but they would like some sort of comfort
blanket to emanate from you in relation at least to some sort
of steer of comfort. If you do not, then let me tell you, you
are going to set a hare out in the Scottish media, because so
far you have not really addressed the concerns the Chairman put
to you or the concerns I know I will get from people in Scotland
and my colleague Rachel Squire will get tomorrow morning from
Scotland. Maybe you should just take some time to give not blanket
coverage but at least a comfort blanket. Please give us some more
steer.
Mr Hoon: But all that happens
is that if I then cut the blanket up and give assurances for any
part of the United Kingdom or any particular regiment, we will
simply go round the table and we will have the same in the south,
the same in the west of England and Mike will ask about the east
of England and we end up in the same position. I think it is very,
very important that we recognise that there has been a constant
process of evolution. Although the Scottish newspapers and other
newspapers in the country may be concerned about next day's headlines,
I would expect the sophisticated members of this Committee to
argue the case for the kinds of changes which I have set out generally
in these documents. Those changes are necessary to deal with the
strategic environment that the country faces. If ever we get to
the point where, instead of producing White Papers on the future
of our defence forces, we produce White Papers which say that
nothing is ever going to change and it is all going to remain
as it was, then we are going to be in big trouble. It is not something
which any responsible Secretary of State should ever say.
Q136 Chairman: The establishment of the
field army is 105,000. We have been told that the army is going
to be deployed in an endless number of locations. It is not being
excessively parochial to say that the size of the army and the
infantry is too small, in my view, to meet commitments which lie
ahead. It is not pandering to our constituency orientations to
say if you give a commitment to one then you have to go round
the country and give other commitments. I would have thought that
105,000 soldiers puts us dangerously low in the number of commitments
we are going to have in future. If you cannot give that assurance,
fine, I will accept that. I am merely making the point to you
that it will not simply be the regimental system being defended,
the arguments will be that you are getting down too low, dangerously
low for all of the commitments.
Mr Hoon: I have already made the
point that recruitment is going extraordinarily well, the full-time
trained strength of the Armed Forces was around 1,700 higher this
year than it was this time last year. There has been steady progress.
At a time of very high economic activity, when we have more people
in work than ever before in British history, when traditionally
there has been an association between high recruitment in the
Armed Forces and unemployment, it is a remarkable success that
in this competition for young people—and we take in about
25,000 young people every year—the Armed Forces continue
to be such an attractive place for young people to go to get training
and education. I think that is a remarkable testimony to the success
of what we are doing. We are not talking about massive reductions
in numbers; we are actually talking about steady increases and
that is going extremely well. I am sure that the Committee would
not want us to say that those increases should be directed for
all time into the present structures. Those structures have always
evolved and I have set out already today a further evolution which
I announced some time ago. One of the consequences inevitably
of being able to sustain three smaller scale operations is the
need—and the Committee have tasked me about this in the
past—to provide all of the enablers to support those three
operations. The Committee have asked me in the past about over-stretch
and one of the things I have conceded in the past is that the
pressures on simultaneous operations have been most keenly felt
by those who are supporting those operations, by the logisticians,
by the communicators, by all the people who have to make sure
that if you are conducting operations in places like Afghanistan,
all of the equipment reaches Afghanistan. That is a huge challenge
and I have to look to those kinds of adjustments to make sure
we have the right kind of enablers. You, Chairman, would be the
first leading the charge in the complaint if we had not taken
notice of the observations which the Committee has made in the
past. I am seeking to react to those observations by making sure
that we have the right kinds of people doing the right kinds of
jobs which we need to deliver the effects we all judge are required
in a modern strategic environment.
Chairman: I accept that it requires more
than 105,000 soldiers.
Q137 Rachel Squire: May I ask whether
you agree that regimental loyalty is a key factor in both recruitment
and retention? Coming back to your earlier point about cost, is
it true that would-be recruits have actually been turned away
because it would cost too much to take them into the forces, even
though the serving army's recruitment target is yet to be fully
met? Is it the case that training has not taken place, due to
the requirements placed on our current forces in all the operations
they are engaged in? Does that not lead one to conclude that we
need more not less when it comes to the numbers in our Armed Forces?
Mr Hoon: I shall do my best to
try to answer all of those points. I certainly accept that regimental
loyalty is a crucial factor. The only thing the Committee will
know is that the titles of regiments have been changed over the
years, there have been amalgamations. I come from the East Midlands
and the Sherwood Foresters have a very proud tradition but these
days people do not join the Sherwood Foresters per se.
Elsewhere in the East Midlands we saw the establishment of the
Anglians who have very quickly established a proud tradition which
is strongly supported. We are talking about recruiting 17-, 18-
and 19-year-olds and sometimes that is overlooked in the debate
about regimental loyalty. They are loyal to the regiment they
join and that is the basis on which their loyalty continues. That
really needs emphasising in that debate. As far as would-be recruits
to the Army are concerned, we welcome those who have the skills,
the aptitude, the ability to be trained and last year our biggest
problem was not trying to attract people in, but to manage the
extra numbers beyond those we anticipated would come forward for
training. We have not literally sent anyone away, but we have
had to adjust the timescale within which they can do that training.
It has not been possible always for them to start their training
immediately, but we are not sending people off. We are not going
to turn away volunteers. Obviously some training has not taken
place because of operations. Some exercises have to be cancelled.
If people are engaged in real war fighting in Iraq, if they are
engaged in peacekeeping in Iraq, if they are engaged in Afghanistan,
they are carrying out their primary tasks. Obviously they have
to be trained and exercised to do those tasks; rather going back
to the point the Chief of Defence Staff made. In order to recuperate
our armed forces fully in the light of all our other commitments,
that training and exercising will take some time. One of the problems
I had when I first got this job was understanding why it was that
when people were engaged in real operations, doing their primary
task, they still needed to exercise and train, but of course they
need to exercise and train across the range of requirements which
we might make of them. Certainly we have to get people back to
the level of skill which is necessary so that the next time we
want to use them, they are available to us.
Q138 Mr Havard: I was at a local recruiting
office last week and one of the things which was said to me was
that because of the success of keeping people and recruiting people,
there was a curb, or some sort of slowing up of expenditure in
terms of effort to get more recruits. You partly alluded to it
in this question of training. That is particularly worrying in
one sense. If there are sufficient volunteers, you said you were
not going to turn volunteers away. The question of maintaining
and developing the effort and the presence in local communities
to do recruitment, irrespective of the volunteers coming through
the door, surely that is selling seed corn, spoiling the ship
for a haporth of tar and all that.
Mr Hoon: Of course and I do not
disagree with that at all. We do spend an enormous amount of money
on recruiting and that has been necessary in the past. Certainly
I should be very reluctant to see a significant reduction in that,
but there is a balance. If in fact we are getting lots of recruits,
part of the judgment is whether we are getting lots of recruits
because of the recruiting efforts or whether it is simply because
they want to join the Armed Forces independently of any efforts
we might make to recruit them. What I would want to avoid is going
into reverse and the MoD has made that mistake in the past, where
at various times the tap has been turned off and we then had problems
fairly soon of not having enough people in particular positions
with particular abilities. A careful judgment has to be made about
how much we spend on recruiting at a time when recruiting is going
very well. By and large we are maintaining the effort and it is
delivering success.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: In the Defence
Management Board, which I chair, the pressure I have from the
Chiefs of Staff on people is to ensure that we have the right
financial incentives in place to get the gaps which really do
exist filled. They do not actually talk to me about shortfalls
in infantry; they talk to me about these critical enabler functions,
the logisticians, the submariners.
Q139 Mr Havard: They talk to me about
the shortfall in infantry, because they cannot do their training,
they cannot get leave.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: If I may say
so, the point is that we have put a lot more money into our people
lately and we have tended to target it particularly in the areas
of greatest shortfall and that is logisticians, signallers, engineers,
submariners particularly, some elements of the air force, intelligence
as well. It is in those critical areas where we are having to
target the most effort. The Chiefs of Staff are not saying to
me that I really need to give them a lot more money for more infantry.
I just offer you that as a comment. That is what I do as the Permanent
Secretary, trying to make sure where the priorities lie. We would
all like more of everything, but that is where it tends to be
most acute.
Chairman: We had better move on. We will
return to this subject.
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