Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
12 MAY 2004
SIR KEVIN
TEBBIT KCB CMG AND
MR TREVOR
WOOLLEY
Q40 Mr Jones: I am not saying I have
ever dealt with a budget the size of yours but in local government
each year I had to balance the budget and it was always about
priorities between policies and also being able to come within
an overall budget. To what extent is the focus from the Treasury
or someone else on the overall budget? How do you quantify that
in terms of making some of the tough decisions you have to make
as well? Clearly, if you say, for example, that you want to move
away from one system to another, it might be a very expensive
option. Is the process that you put that up and then in these
negotiations with Treasury you argue for more money? Or are you
saying you cannot do it and putting it to one side and cutting
somewhere else in the budget and moving monies around?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: The defence
budget is complicated in the sense that we have an awful lot of
different elements to it. We have to maintain current operations,
current capacity to do things like training, logistics as well
as people and develop a long-term future equipment programme so
that we have the defence the country needs in 10 years' time.
A lot of these are long lead items. Broadly speaking we have a
wide degree of flexibility within the total envelope, notwithstanding
this discussion about cash, to apportion resources according to
our priorities. We have to have that flexibility; we cannot have
American style individual programme lines because it becomes unmanageable.
Broadly speaking we have an equipment programme of about £6
billion which reaches out into the future, about which there is
a degree of flexibility obviously about what we bring on when,
how long we take things in development phase, when we move to
production, those sorts of issues. The manpower element of the
budget is pretty fixed; broadly speaking we are not, I can reveal,
intending to slash away the armed forces in huge measure and therefore
the manpower costs are not going to change very much. I hope they
will change to some extent, because it is a rising cost in the
budget. We know more or less what we have in those sorts of elements
and therefore what moves tends to be in the logistics area, how
much sustainability we can afford at any one time, and in the
equipment programme, just how rich a forward programme we can
afford to have.
Q41 Mr Jones: In terms of the procurement
process you are committed to the overall spend, but how you move
that down the line in terms of slippage is how it is managed,
is it?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: It depends what
is committed and what is not committed. If it is on contract then
it is committed. Clearly the proportion which is uncommitted is
relatively small; greater the further you go to the right, the
further the out years are. Most of the budget is obviously committed.
The flexibility one has is relatively limited. There are choices,
as ever and the important thing is to try to build some flexibility
into the system so you do have choice. That is another element
of what we are doing at present. We are trying to gain some headroom
so we do have the opportunity to make choices as well as simply
making ends meet, which is why it is not simply a question of
cuts.
Q42 Mr Cran: Could I bring you on to
consider the question of readiness as set out in pages 18 and
19 of your report? The Committee are specifically interested first
of all in paragraph 43. Just for the record, it is that the Army
". . . improved its performance of rapidly available units
at the required states of readiness to 84% (against the PSA target
of 90%) from 81% in 2001-02, despite under-manning and continuing
specific sustainability challenges". Can we take the manning
first? Could you just explain to the Committee what we are talking
about? What are the major manning problems? What are you doing
to rectify them and with what success?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Performance
on manning has been very, very good indeed. Recruitment is up
in this year covered by the report; it is also up over the past
12 months, and we have been very successful in recruitment in
all three services. The difficulties which remain tend to be in
specialist areas, in the Navy in submarine officers, artificers,
in all three services in medical staff, in the Air Force a reduction
now in problems: we had a problem with junior pilot officers and
that has now gone. Recruitment has been very strong in all areas.
The strongest probably was in the Army. Over the past 12 months,
during the year 2003, we increased the size of the Army by about
1.9%, nearly 2%, which was a remarkable achievement, the best
for about 15 years. So in recruitment and retention in all of
those areas the statistics are improving. It does not mean to
say we can be complacent, but it is the result of incentives put
into the system, most obviously in the pilot area and in the medical
area, a result of overall pay, general quality of life. I actually
think some of the training investment has been pretty good and
pretty attractive. We now have something like 43,000 people on
courses which are recognised nationally, so when they leave they
will go into the civilian economy with full qualifications and
skills. I am not just talking about officers, I am talking about
general servicemen and that is becoming an attractive element
of overall military life. With all of these things we have improved
on manning levels. We are not complacent, but it is much better
than it was three years ago.
Q43 Mr Cran: You did mention the whole
question of retention, which is key to the whole question of you
being able to be properly manned. Just say a word or two about
retention. As we walk around the MoD estate, as it were, we keep
on hearing about the inability to retain, usually niche capabilities.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: That is true
and I did not mention signallers; people with communications/IT
skills are obviously very much in demand in the private sector.
All I can say about that is that retention is improving slightly,
although we still have serious difficulties in very specific and
specialist areas. What we are doing is trying to target financial
retention incentives to make a difference in the critical areas
and keep people in longer. That has been successful and we have
particular success in the RAF in getting pilots to stay longer.
In the medical area it has been a question of getting them in
and we have had this "golden hello" scheme which has
been very successful. For example, we had a fourfold increase
in our success in recruiting doctors and consultants last year,
probably as a result of the "golden hello" scheme. Still
too small, still numbers are much smaller than we would wish,
but nevertheless it is making a big difference. Those are the
techniques we are using. We are competing in a very difficult
market; retention is also in a difficult market.
Q44 Mr Cran: In broad terms, if you and
I are sitting here next year discussing the successor report to
this one, the manning variable would not be the variable which
would impede the MoD reaching the 90% PSA target or whatever it
is going to be next year.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: That is right.
The actual numbers for manning will be even better. That is separate
from readiness of course. That area will be better.
Q45 Mr Cran: Can we attack the specific
sustainability challenges, again in paragraph 43? What do you
mean by that and what are you actually doing to address these
challenges, whatever they are?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: This is more
about the pace of activity, the operational tempo that our forces
are having to sustain at present; that is the biggest challenge
rather than numbers of forces, or indeed readiness states, because
they can be quite misleading. The RAF and the Navy can maintain
high readiness and meet those criteria even when they are on operations,
because essentially it is not difficult for an air wing to go
and do something else at quite short notice, even if it is on
operations. Its operational routine is not that different from
its peacetime routine. Pilots have to fly regularly. Similarly
with ships, if they are deployed, they are active and if they
are in a military operational theatre one day at quite short notice
they can switch to another theatre. With the Army it is different
and the Army is where the greatest challenges exist because, as
you saw from the stream of figures in the report, their readiness
levels were rising through 2000-01 to 2002-03, recovering from
Kosovo in 1999 and Afghanistan and building up, but building up
for Iraq. Now we are in the part-recovery period from Iraq, but
still sustaining a medium-scale mission. It means the Army is
not at a readiness state equivalent to 83% shown here. The Chief
of Defence Staff and Chief of General Staff have already testified
to the Committee that it will take a while now before they are
back to doing major operations. They can do small-scale operations
now, but medium scale is 2006, large scale 2008. That is the sort
of effect that this huge effort of 26,000 ground forces has had.
Q46 Mr Cran: Again, if we were sitting
here in a year's time discussing the successor report, are you
saying this particular set of variables, specific sustainability
challenges, would not be the impediment which would prevent the
Army reaching the 90% PSA?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: The key issue
will be operational tempo and the time taken to recover from operations.
Q47 Mr Cran: Just so that I understand,
is that a yes or a no?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: There is a separate
issue about sustainability to do with logistics. That will be
less significant that the question of recovery from operations
and getting the Army in shape for large-scale operations as quickly
as we would like. That is the point. I should perhaps say that
the Army is looking to change the way it measures its readiness
and we are for all our armed forces. We have tended to look at
high readiness only, but of course it is much more important to
look at the overall readiness of the totality of the force structure.
Our future readiness measures will look at the readiness of everything
rather than just the high readiness element.
Q48 Mr Cran: The rest of the Committee
may well know when we are going to hear about this: I do not.
When are we going to know about this new measurement for readiness?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: The new readiness
measurements are coming in now as part of the future Army plans.
Q49 Mr Cran: I cannot think of any occasion
myself, but then I may not know everything. On this whole question
of readiness were there any occasions when the Army's inability
to reach the 90% PSA target prevented them undertaking any operations?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: No.
Q50 Mr Cran: I cannot imagine that.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: No, it does
not. It does not mean to say we could not generate something bigger
before the timescales I have mentioned, but these also are linked
to harmony guidelines as to how often it is reasonable to expect
people to be deployed on operations. It does not mean necessarily
you cannot do it, but it means if you are doing it you are basically
breaking your internal compact with people as to how often they
should expect to have to deploy.
Q51 Mr Cran: The PSA targets having been
set at 90% for all three services, when are we going to reach
90%, or is this an illusory target which one never really gets
to?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: It is not illusory
for the Air Force and the Navy and that is going to be fine. For
the Army, it is not possible at present to get the overall force
structure into that readiness level fast enough. In any case and
for different reasons we shall be measuring readiness as a broader
measure for the totality of force structure rather than asking
how many are high or high/medium. These are interested in how
many days it would take people to deploy on operations: 30 or
60. We shall be giving better measures for the force structure
as a whole. That is not supposed to obfuscate, it is just going
to be a reality of being better at measuring all forces rather
than just high readiness elements.
Q52 Mr Cran: Just tightening that up
a little for my purpose, does that mean to say that by this time
next year or whenever, the Royal Air Force and the Navy will have
reached the 90% readiness?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: I think they
are already there and I think they will be sustaining that.
Q53 Mr Cran: I of course have not been
involved in the setting of these PSA targets. I should just be
interested to know what effect Iraq has on the readiness of troops,
not in Iraq but back at home here ready to undertake whatever
it is the government may decide in the future they should undertake.
Bearing in mind that I do remember what the Chief of the Defence
Staff said about not being able to undertake anything major for
eight to ten years, but thinking perhaps of something more modest,
what effect does Iraq have on that?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Iraq is the
most important factor because to sustain an operation, to keep
one brigade in a place, you have to have people ready to come
in behind it, to rotate it and refresh it every six months or
so. That is why it is more of an effect that it might seem. When
you say if you have 8,000 people or whatever in Iraq at present
it does not sound huge in relation to the total Army, of course
that takes out rather more than 8,000. In formal terms you should
multiply that by five on the 24-month overall cycle; in fact it
is not quite as much as that, but that is the ideal. Iraq has
that sort of impact. In addition to that, at the moment we have
the Bowman conversion. I was talking about measuring by effects
and the positive things we are doing to our armed forces. Digitisation
of the land forces, enabling them to communicate better, not just
by voice, but also by data links and in a secure way, makes it
easier to respond more quickly and to control bigger areas of
ground that used to be the case in the past. That is therefore
a critical modernisation, new capability for the Army, and that
takes out the equivalent of a brigade as well because we are doing
the conversion to Bowman. It is not just the people, it is all
the vehicles; they all have to be converted to take this new communications
capability. That adds another commitment to this. In short, that
is why we shall not be back in harmony terms to being able to
do a medium-scale additional operation of 8,000 or 9,000 until
about 2006 and for large-scale I suspect 2008 would be the earliest.
It does not mean to say you could not do it. It means you could
not do it without breaking some of our rules about what we expect
in terms of preparation.
Q54 Chairman: One of the rules for the
military is to go and fight a war every now and again.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: That is right.
Q55 Chairman: The idea that we cannot
fight a proper war, if ever wars are proper, until 2008 gives
me an indication of the size and shape of the military.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: I did not say
we could not.
Q56 Chairman: No, but it would be exhausting
and would cause even further problems. Maybe when you are negotiating
with the Treasury you should point out to them the size and shape
and funding of the military is more than an accountancy exercise.
If an adversary reads or listens to our debates or to what the
Treasury says or what the Secretary of State says, it will be
very comforting to know that an operation which was not the Second
World War—very important and our forces did incredibly well,
but it was not a massive operation—a less than massive operation
had such an adverse effect upon the military that they are unable
properly to deliver. They could as they always do, but it should
not have to be that way. And we are going to have to wait now
five years before the military will be absolutely effective. If
that does not tell the Treasury that something is rotten—not
in the sense of corrupt—in the state of British defence,
then I do not know what one would need to do to explain to them
that diminishing these forces even further is going to have an
even more adverse effect upon our armed forces than perhaps you
or we had realised. Perhaps you would pass that on and we certainly
shall in our report.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: I take your
point, but you are painting an overly bleak picture of it. Remember
that I am talking about additional capability at the margin. Today
we have 23% of the Army deployed on operations. At the height
of Operation Telic it was up to about 55%. We are recovering from
a huge effort. We have troops, 11,500, 12,500, still earmarked
or deployed to Northern Ireland. We sustain commitments in the
Falklands. We sustain commitments in Cyprus. We have forces—slightly
increased—in Afghanistan as well as in the Balkans, as well
as in Iraq. We are still sustaining a high level of commitment,
perfectly competently and without strain. We shall be able to
respond to any short-term emergency and we do not have a policy
which says we should in the short term be able to generate large-scale
forces regularly. We never did have. We would contribute to any
international collaborative effort very directly. Even during
this period, when it was necessary to send reinforcements to the
Balkans, if you recall, the spearhead battalion went from the
UK and was deployed within 24 hours when the actual requirement
from NATO was to deploy in three days. I would not want the Committee
to get a false impression of the effects of Operation Telic. That
said, 46,000 people from the UK in one operation, deployed very,
very rapidly, when, until the middle of January we thought we
were going somewhere else, is a huge achievement. Rather than
talk about the weaknesses subsequently, it is worth dwelling a
little on the achievement at the time. I still feel that the armed
forces and my department received rather grudging credit for what
was actually achieved then. Imagine it: we were expecting to go
in through southern Turkey and we went in through the Gulf.
Q57 Chairman: We wrote a three-volume
report on this, so we are convinced how great the British forces
are.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: I wait with
anticipation to see the final report; maybe it will be like that,
but that was an unusually stressful operation in terms of the
speed with which we had to mount it and the flexibility we had
to show.
Q58 Chairman: Sure. You mentioned Kosovo.
We were in Kosovo and we had a hard job to find a soldier because
most of them were gone.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: They come back
again very quickly.
Q59 Chairman: They come back again but
there was a crisis in Kosovo which caught everyone by surprise,
especially the intelligence services and we had a very small contribution
to make. Yes, the spearhead battalion came, but the small number
of troops there—and I shall not go into detail as to what
those troops were doing—are doing a very effective job.
I am merely making the point that this is not simply a Treasury
exercise. No-one can predict what the future shape of conflict
is going to be and I am simply making the point, as any rational
person would do, that we are going yet again to a Treasury exercise
in which there will be cuts and you will come and the Secretary
of State will come and put a very brave face on it and tell us
how we are actually stronger as a result of losing tanks or ships
or aircraft. We have been through this before. I am merely making
the point, perhaps for a wider audience, that the time comes when
the armed forces cannot reach a critical mass and the Royal Navy
will be moving to that position if they are going to have to take
the transferring to somebody else of three, four or five ships.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: The only point
I am making is that speed and agility of response are the critical
issues today.
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