Select Committee on Defence Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1780-1799)

17 DECEMBER 2003

MR EDWARD CHAPLIN OBE, MS CAROLYN MILLER, AIR VICE MARSHAL CLIVE LOADER OBE AND MR IAN LEE

  Q1780 Chairman: Yes, before.

  Mr Chaplin: They were pretty frequent. Across Whitehall, I should think—

  Q1781 Chairman: This committee you had set up.

  Mr Chaplin: The Iraq planning unit was permanently in session.

  Q1782 Chairman: Yes, but for the purposes of co-ordinating what the other departments were thinking and planning to do.

  Mr Chaplin: It was fairly constant by that stage.

  Mr Lee: In terms of meetings, I would say that there were weekly or more than weekly chiefs of staff meetings which would have as a component of the meeting a discussion of the post-conflict issues. There were meetings at differing frequencies, often three times a week and then at certain points it became daily, chaired in the Cabinet Office, looking at the whole situation including post-conflict issues. Hundreds of meetings is the answer.

  Q1783 Chairman: Could you give us, not now but by the time you come before us again, some rather more detailed information? We would like the minutes, but we are not going to ask for them. Something about the range of meetings and the sort of subjects you were considering.[1] You can see the transparency of our questioning. Did this all come as a shock? Sir Kevin said you did not expect the war to end so quickly and therefore things were activated fairly swiftly to respond. We were in the State Department and they gave us the impression that a lot of planning was taking place, but when that part of the war ended, it looked as though people had been deluding themselves. If planning had been taking place, it did not seem to be evident on the ground. Could you give us a lot more information as to how co-ordination took place?

  Ms Miller: DFID clearly has a major role on the humanitarian side in any conflict, in terms of preparedness, contingency planning, so it is being prepared ourselves, but also advising the MOD in particular and the FCO on likely implications of the conflict, getting information. A particular role that DFID has is combining the HMG effort with the international effort. At the same stage we are talking to the UN, other bodies, ICRC, NGOs and trying to make sure that our effort is co-ordinated with international planning. We are also very concerned about the continuum from humanitarian planning to reconstruction planning, which is another role of ours. We do not see the two things as separate; we see it as a movement between one and the other and a similar role with the international community and with our colleagues across Whitehall in preparing for that movement through, information, advice and actually planning for doing some of these things ourselves.

  Q1784 Chairman: Were any other government departments or agencies involved in these meetings?

  Mr Chaplin: The Treasury was quite often involved as a part of the Iraq planning unit.

  Q1785 Chairman: Just the Treasury?

  Mr Lee: No, there was quite a wide range of departments in the meetings chaired by the Cabinet Office, including the Department of Health, Home Office, Energy, Trade and Industry, almost all departments you could think of had some sort of angle on this question.

  Q1786 Chairman: Were NGOs involved in this process or were they kept quite apart?

  Ms Miller: We talked to the NGOs, mainly about the humanitarian side and then we would feed in their concerns and their views to these meetings, of which I can confirm there were many.

  Q1787 Mr Viggers: There has been reference by Mr Lee to Cabinet Office chairing meetings and to the discussions, but who is responsible, who is the lead department? Where does responsibility lie for co-ordinating these activities?

  Mr Chaplin: Eventually in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. From February onwards Ministers decided that there would be one unit represented across the key Whitehall departments based in the FCO.

  Q1788 Mr Viggers: So there was a date on which FCO took over responsibility.

  Mr Chaplin: Yes.

  Q1789 Mr Viggers: At what stage did you approach outside experts for advice? Throughout?

  Mr Lee: I am just trying to think of specific examples of outside expert advice. It would be a normal part of business to take expert advice from outsiders where it is appropriate. I cannot give you a particular date or a particular piece of expert advice.

  Chairman: Perhaps you could drop us a note.[2]

  Q1790 Mr Blunt: May I ask you what political constraints you were under as far as post-conflict planning was concerned before the conflict started?

  Ms Miller: The main constraints we were under were discussing, as we would normally, with international partners, many of whom found it difficult to admit that they were preparing for some of these eventualities. The United Nations especially, but even some of the NGOs, wanted to keep that more to themselves. A lot of people were hoping that the war was not going to happen.

  Q1791 Mr Blunt: What directions were you receiving from your Secretary of State?

  Ms Miller: Our Secretary of State had clearly hoped that the United Nations would come together and war would not be necessary, but at the same time we continued contingency planning for a range of eventualities.

  Q1792 Mr Blunt: What resource constraints were you under?

  Ms Miller: We were under no resource constraints. We continued to plan for all eventualities. We did not need to spend money in any great quantity in the preparatory phase, but we did actually fund NGOs and the UN in their preparedness before the conflict started.

  Q1793 Mr Blunt: The Secretary of State made clear to me in answer to an oral Parliamentary Question on the floor of the House before the conflict started that she was not spending any additional money out of her own department except that money which was in a sense automatically going into international institutions like UN agencies, where money would otherwise be going. It struck me as being a very clear answer, that she was not spending any money in addition from her budget. Did I get the correct information?

  Ms Miller: We did fund preparedness work with the NGOs and the UN in addition to the money they would have received.

  Q1794 Mr Blunt: Additional funding.

  Ms Miller: Yes.

  Q1795 Mr Blunt: How much?

  Ms Miller: I think just before the start we had committed up to £20 million. I believe that was communicated to Parliament.

  Q1796 Mr Blunt: You are saying as the lead official on this that the attitude of your Secretary of State, as it certainly appeared to the rest of us to be, that it was not going to happen, was it, did not affect the whole planning process?

  Ms Miller: We continued the planning process for a range of scenarios.

  Q1797 Mr Blunt: Did it restrict the scenarios on which you thought you could plan to spend money?

  Ms Miller: In fact we planned for very grave humanitarian consequences, which luckily we did not have to respond to. No, we planned for a very wide range of possible eventualities.

  Q1798 Mr Blunt: May I quickly ask the representatives of other departments a similar question about the political and resource constraints on planning? We have just heard in evidence about UORs, not wanting to send the wrong signals by ordering urgent equipment under the UOR procedure. In addition to that, what other restraints, both political and financial, were you suffering under in the planning process?

  Mr Lee: We were not suffering from any constraints of that sort.

  Q1799 Mr Blunt: We have just taken evidence that UORs were delayed because you did not want to give the wrong signals. People were deployed late because you did not want to give the wrong signals. Is that not a restraint?

  Mr Lee: No, UORs were not purchased late or people deployed late. That implies that there was a date against which they had to be deployed and at the time we are talking about there was no date, there was simply a process which we were going through.


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