Examination of Witnesses (Questions 2260
- 2279)
THURSDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2004
RT HON
GEOFFREY HOON
MP
Q2260 Mr Blunt: You have presented
a chronology of events which is very detailed about what happened
in Iraq and the events leading up to Iraq, and the MoD does not
appear, for the lay reader, to want to identify any events that
might be important in the run-up to operations before 12 September.
Mr Hoon: Are you suggesting that
there were some?
Q2261 Mr Blunt: Yes, I am,
and let us go on. Could you go to the entry of 18 November, which
says, "United States approaches a number of countries seeking
support in the event that military action proves necessary."
What conclusion are we meant to draw from that about the United
Kingdom?
Mr Hoon: That we were one of the
countries that had been approached.
Q2262 Mr Blunt: When did the
United States actually ask the United Kingdom for help, and when
did you become aware that the United States was pretty much determined
on the removal of Saddam Hussein, if necessary by force?
Mr Hoon: I do not think it is
possible to provide you with the precision that you would like.
As the timetable indicates, there was a process. That process,
as I was asked earlier, was both a political and diplomatic process,
as well as a military preparation. Certainly, the first indication
that we were given from the Prime Minister that planning and preparation
could begin was on 24 September, in a speech that I think he gave
to the House of Commons. That was really the point at which the
planning and preparation of a specific military operation got
under way, but obviously, no specific decision was taken to commit
forces until many, many months later, once there had been a vote
in the House of Commons.
Q2263 Mr Blunt: But, Secretary
of State, this chronology is leading us to believe—and you
have said that we were entitled to draw the conclusion from this
this was the date of the request to the United Kingdom on 18 November—that
on 18 November the United States asked for our help. A week later
you initiated contingency planning with your announcement of 25
November in the House of Commons and everything rolled out from
there. That is simply not true, is it?
Mr Hoon: As I have indicated,
the Prime Minister made a speech indicating that planning and
preparation could begin, and that was, as far as the Ministry
of Defence was concerned, the time at which the process got under
way as far as planning is concerned.
Q2264 Mr Blunt: With respect,
Secretary of State, that answer is also pure sophistry. The idea
that the Ministry of Defence would only be going into proper planning
after the Prime Minister makes a speech in the House of Commons
on 28 September 2002, not only beggars belief, but also contradicts
the evidence that we received from Air Marshal Burridge and General
Reith.
Mr Hoon: I can only tell you what
my understanding of the position is, and if you would like to
give me some evidence for your assertion, I would be delighted
to consider it.
Q2265 Mr Blunt: Yes. It was
referred to earlier by Mr Havard. Air Marshal Burridge and General
Reith have told us there was a decision in June 2002 by the Americans
to bring the United Kingdom in on their planning cycle. Indeed,
British officers were even responsible for suggesting when the
operation should happen. Air Marshal Burridge said, "At no
stage did we say `Here is the end date by which we are going to
do this.' What we did have was a couple of windows. We said"—the
United Kingdom—"ideally it makes sense either to do
this in the spring of 2003 or autumn of 2003." That was a
suggestion from the United Kingdom officers in Centcom planning
for this operation.
Mr Hoon: Not planning for this
specific operation in the way that this operation was conducted.
Q2266 Mr Blunt: No, but I
want you to reflect on this point: that they were planning for
military operations against Iraq, which any Secretary of State
for Defence would reasonably conclude from what you knew about
the intention of the United States and the view of the Prime Minister
at the time. It was reasonable to conclude that the United Kingdom
might very well be involved.
Mr Hoon: I am making quite clear
that the decision to initiate specific planning inside the Ministry
of Defence followed the Prime Minister's speech, as I say, I think
on 24 September. There was then a great deal of planning and preparation
that was necessary. The specific operation carried on from there.
Q2267 Mr Blunt: Secretary
of State, you just told Rachel Squire that the timetable you set
could have impacted on operations, but you said "I do not
believe that it did." I am afraid the charge against you,
Secretary of State, is that you did take decisions too late, and
that you had no right to expect the logistics to work as well
as they did. You have just told this Committee that they exceeded
reasonable expectations, and the position our forces found themselves
in, because of the timetable you imposed on them by not giving
the authority for UORs, for example, to be initiated until 25
November 2002, would have been even worse. That charge is sustained
by the evidence from soldiers on the front line.
Mr Hoon: I do not accept that
for a moment and the obvious explanation that your father and
grandfather would have accepted that, given more time, they could
have moved equipment more successfully, that is self-evidently
obvious and that really is all that your argument amounts to.
The reality is that logisticians move equipment in the amount
of time that they have available and they have to use whatever
equipment they have—
Q2268 Mr Blunt: Yes, that
is—
Mr Hoon: If you will stop interrupting
me for a second—you ask questions and I am trying to give
you an answer. Now, the explanation, therefore—and again
if you were in a position to consult, you would find that, for
example, it depends on how many ship movements you have in any
given space of time, how many aircraft movements—is they
were able to do this in the short time available because the difficulty
you have still, notwithstanding your assertion to the contrary,
is that actually British forces were ready to conduct military
operations on the date, many of them even before the date, and
there is nothing anywhere that you can suggest that they were
not available to carry out those military operations successfully
and in fact that is why the logistics effort was so successful.
Chairman: One more question, Crispin.
Mr Blunt: I am afraid, Secretary of State,
there is evidence precisely to the contrary and that evidence
comes from members of the RTR who, in their account of crossing
the front line, describing the Iraqi front line, said, "What
was impressive, however, was the effectiveness of their camouflage
and concealment, the depth of their vehicle trenches and in general
the quality of their field defences and engineering. It was sobering
to reflect that had they manned the position, there would have
been a serious fight". In the same article they say, "We
learned of several Iraqi surface-to-surface missile launches,
including one which landed six kilometres away and generally the
threat of WMD use was more a matter of when rather than if".
Secretary of State, the timetable you imposed on our armed forces,
knowing for several months that our armed forces were likely to
go into action before you authorised the expenditure of funds
and full preparation on the 25 November 2002, then led the Challenger
2 tanks and Warrior armoured personnel carriers to go across the
front line in the expectation that they would be fighting in a
chemical environment without NBC filters.
Chairman: Thank you.
Mr Blunt: No, I have not finished.
Chairman: You have. We have reached question
3 out of 14 and we have 45 minutes, so let the Secretary of State
answer and we will move on.
Mr Blunt: I would like to conclude this
line of questioning.
Chairman: Other people have questions
to ask. I said it was the last question, Crispin. Please give
me an answer, Secretary of State, and then we have to move to
the fourth question.
Mr Blunt: Chairman, I protest.
Q2269 Chairman: You can protest
as much as you like. Crispin, you have made some great points,
but there are other people who have other points to make in the
short time available.
Mr Hoon: I have made clear on
the previous occasion that I came to speak to this Committee and
on each and every occasion these issues have been raised in the
House of Commons that there were shortcomings. The fact that the
filters were not available for Challenger 2 tanks was one of those
shortcomings, but nevertheless, as you well know, each soldier
was properly protected from a chemical attack, training had been
conducted for those in tanks to wear the appropriate chemical
protection suit, each suit was available to each man inside a
tank and operational commanders judged that that was sufficient
protection. The further difficulty about your line of argument
is of course that it depends upon a particular area of the operation.
The truth is, and it is set out in the NAO's Report and it is
set out in our own Lessons Learned Report, and again this
is something that you are not recognising, that it was of course
recognised by each commanding officer in each part of the chain
of command in judging that his forces were ready and prepared
to conduct offensive military operations, not a judgment made
by a politician, but a judgment made by soldiers on the ground
whose job it is to decide whether their forces are sufficiently
prepared and safe to take appropriate action. Each one of those
soldiers made that judgment and, therefore, when they crossed
the line, that was their professional military judgment. If you
will forgive me for saying so, I rather prefer their professional
military judgment from the unjustified assertions that you are
making.
Q2270 Mike Gapes: Can I take
you a bit further on in this question of logistics and the planning
assumptions. You have already told us when you gave evidence before
that this was the largest logistics effort by the UK since the
1991 Gulf War and that it was achieved in half the time. The assumptions
have been based upon the Strategic Defence Review of 1998 and
the concept of the Joint Rapid Reaction Force, but Air Marshal
Burridge has already told us that this was based upon balancing
risks and he said that if you adopt a `just in time' concept,
you are introducing risk and if you believe that your planning
assumptions are less than robust, then that risk could be significant.
What assessment do you have of the risks that were entailed in
this `just in time' concept and, not getting into what we have
just had but, the actual risks that were being dealt with on the
ground by virtue of the fact that, as we understand it, tank units
have told us that their training was affected badly because the
Challenger 2 tanks were only modified just in time?
Mr Hoon: I think that is a perfectly
fair point. I was just looking through the NAO Report at paragraph
8 of its conclusions and what they said was, "For any required
level of readiness, a balance has to be struck between having
people and equipment ready to go immediately and making good shortfalls
in the time available", and really that is a question of
judgment. I said at the outset that I thought that perhaps 9,000
sets of clothing available was perhaps not sufficient in the light
of the experience that we have had and we are now going to hold
larger numbers for that reason, but, as I said earlier, I think
this is a matter of judgment. What I think is important to emphasise,
as I have just been doing, is in the end military commanders at
unit level and above in the chain of command judged that they
were prepared to take offensive military action.
Q2271 Mike Gapes: Secretary
of State, the Chief of Joint Operations, Lieutenant General Reith,
told us that the actual size of the British force was only decided
at a very late stage and that it was actually shaped by the task
rather than the size of the force determining which task it could
carry out. Do you think that is an ideal situation?
Mr Hoon: I think it is consistent
with quite a significant adjustment that perhaps military historians
will see in the conduct of this particular campaign. I have talked
about the creation of military effect and the emphasis very much
was on what effect were coalition forces trying to achieve in
the deployment of their forces and, therefore, in the planning
that has already been referred to, conducted with the United States,
we were able to offer certain contributions to the creation of
that effect. I think significantly in the air, but also on the
ground, the decision was taken, consistent with the planning,
to attack along certain routes and we were able to offer appropriate
contributions. That makes it sound like a rather formal process,
but the truth is that our integration with the United States in
a military sense means, not least because operations had been
relatively recently conducted in Afghanistan, that the US is wholly
familiar with the contributions that we can make and it was very
much an easy process to adjust our force package to the requirements
of the overall operation.
Q2272 Mike Gapes: Did we say,
"We have this available", and they said, "Right,
we want to use it", or did they come to us and say, "We
need this and can you provide it?"?
Mr Hoon: I think it is more of
the latter, but it is more like, "We know you have this.
Can you provide it? We require this particular capability to conduct
this operation, to create this military effect. We know that the
United Kingdom has that capability and we would like to use it".
Q2273 Mike Gapes: How much
was this influenced by your assessment, and it gets back to the
point about intelligence in a way, of the morale, the leadership,
the organisation and the equipment available to the enemy? How
much were the planning assumptions and the fact that you were
going in in a certain way on a different basis from what might
have been envisaged originally based upon intelligence assessments
about how poor the Iraqi forces actually were?
Mr Hoon: I think it is fair to
say that the planning was conducted on a worst-case scenario on
the assumption that Iraqi forces might fight more vigorously than
actually it turned out that they did, and I think that is a proper
assumption to make. Certainly assumptions were built into the
planning to allow us to overcome whatever resistance happened
to be in our way and I think it is now almost a matter of history,
but I was well aware of the way in which, for example, Iraq's
armed forces were organised. Students of the Soviet Union would
have found the military organisation of Saddam Hussein's armed
forces wholly familiar. There was a purely military element, but
there was equally a very strong, I suppose, political element
in that each of the units had loyalists of Saddam Hussein in position
to ensure that the leadership in particular was concentrating
on what he wanted them to do and that resistance was actually
real resistance in a military sense, and when we got to the edge
of Basra, it was not particularly a military reaction, but it
was very much the reaction of various groups that were utterly
loyal to Saddam Hussein that had to be overcome.
Q2274 Mike Gapes: In the light
of the quicker-than-expected success and the fact that your worst-case
assumptions were not borne out in practice, did you intend to
revise the planning assumptions based upon the experience of Operation
Telic?
Mr Hoon: I think we are moving
from the general to the specific in the sense that I hope that
we do not have to conduct offensive operations against Saddam
Hussein's Iraq again and, therefore, this was a particular and
specific plan to deal with that country under that regime at a
given time.
Q2275 Mike Gapes: Does it
not have general applicability; do we not learn the lessons?
Mr Hoon: Exactly, and I was going
to go on to deal with it in a more general sense. I think there
is little doubt that in building in lessons learned from this
approach we will be thinking far more about the creation of effect.
How do you deal with a regime of this kind that has intimidation
as its central reason for its existence? I think that the military
effects, not least in Baghdad, for example, where precise bombing
meant that we were able to attack buildings solely associated
with the regime and we all saw the television pictures the next
morning, and I was aware of the targets that had been struck and
I was then able to see on television cars travelling up and down
the roads in Baghdad as if very little had happened, the people
of Baghdad were able to see for themselves that it was the regime
that was our target, that there was not indiscriminate civilian
bombing and that had an enormous impact, both, I think, on the
civilian population, but also on the regime.
Q2276 Mr Roy: Secretary of
State, I would like to stay away from the political point-scoring
which the Iraqi debate seems to be becoming on a daily basis,
which quite frankly I think sickens members of the British public,
and I would like to focus on the people that really matter and
that is the men and women who actually were at the front line
in Iraq and I do not think that at any point in this debate we
should forget that that is really what we should keep our focus
on. I would like to talk to you in particular with regard to reservists.
You said in your opening statement, "We have also recognised
that our procedures for mobilising reservists need to allow for
far greater notice than was possible in January of last year and
I am pleased that we have managed to do it a bit better in subsequent
mobilisations, meeting our aspiration to provide 21 rather than
14 days' notice". Secretary of State, why was it not possible
in January last year?
Mr Hoon: I think the experience
of mobilising that number of reservists in a short space of time
was not one that the Department had had over a number of years
and, therefore, I accept that there were lessons to be learned
in that process and we do have to do better, as I have indicated.
Our information about reservists, their location and sometimes
their skills and capabilities, was not as good as it should have
been, and I think that all affected the mobilisation. That is
not to say overall that this was not a success and it is in great
part, as you have rightly said, to the enthusiasm and attitude
of those people who wanted to be mobilised that it was carried
through so successfully, but I accept that it could be done better.
Q2277 Mr Roy: Secretary of
State, last year in Basra I spoke to a reservist from Liverpool
whose working life was as a lorry driver working for a small haulier
business and he was very concerned that, because of the short
time that was given to him, it was a problem for him, it was a
problem for his employer, and it was certainly a problem for his
future employment prospects when he got back home. Have the views
of those reservists been sought and have the views of the employers
been sought? Do your findings stop at the kind of top-brass level
or have you generally asked the people concerned?
Mr Hoon: Certainly a great deal
of effort has been made both to discuss with the reservists themselves
their reaction, but as well I have spent quite a bit of time myself
on this and talked to employers. I have attended a number of regional
meetings where employers of reservists have been present and I
have had the opportunity of asking in a sense what went right,
but also trying to understand from their point of view what might
have gone wrong. Again I think that the enthusiasm of the employers
has been remarkable. I know that there have been in some cases
particular difficulties, but actually, given the numbers deployed
and the size and scale of this operation, I have not actually
detected any widespread opposition from employers to the fact
that their employees have been mobilised. Indeed overwhelmingly
the response I have had, talking to employers, is that they have
been very proud to have played a part.
Q2278 Mr Roy: I think what
the employers feared was certainly not so much the mobilisation
as after the mobilisation, after the men and women have returned
to their work, that they would then be mobilised again for short
periods which was certainly going to cause problems and that was
certainly put across to me.
Mr Hoon: One of the things that
I think we do have to do in the future, and this came through
perhaps in particular more from employers, I think they want a
sense in which they know the nature of the contribution that they
are making. I was very struck by how keen employers were to know
where their employee was, what he or she was doing and I think
we need to do more on that kind of basis to keep employers informed
because that actually encourages then the sense in which they
themselves, the employers, are also making a contribution.
Q2279 Mr Roy: The SDR proposed
much more deployable and usable reserves and Operation Telic was
a major test of that concept. Did the reserves pass that test?
Mr Hoon: With flying colours,
absolutely overwhelmingly, and I think that is the big change.
As I said earlier, I think it is a change which in a sense the
Department have had to deal with. Although the words were there
on the page, I accept that it is always a test in reality as to
whether you can do that. It was done. There were areas where it
could have been done better, but I do not think anyone can doubt,
and regular forces, I think, would bear this out for me, that
the reserves made a very significant, absolutely vital, contribution
to the success of the operation.
|
