Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340
- 359)
WEDNESDAY 3 NOVEMBER 2004
GENERAL SIR
MIKE JACKSON
KCB CBE DSO ADC GEN
Q340 Richard Ottaway: There is going
to be a difference in status between battalions which is bound
to have consequences.
General Sir Mike Jackson: Yes,
but you can even that up by moving people around. That variety,
that experience, that is why what we are doing is so attractive
to the serving Army because they can see the advantages of it
all. As I say, it is their army in the future, not mine.
Mr Viggers: General, may I preface this
by saying I survived a reorganisation in the Royal Air Force,
and later survived a reorganisation in the Territorial Army so
I understand the difficulties that the army is going through.
Mr Havard: And several in the Tory Party!
Q341 Mr Viggers: May I add that in
my constituency I have the Royal Naval Pay and Postings Unit and
I have seen the care with which Royal Naval officers are able
to scrutinise the careers of different personnel and decide who
is most suitable for what role and what role is most suitable
for them. Would you agree that with the system we have had in
the past there was a certain amount of hit and miss about the
careers of some Army personnel?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Yes.
It was haphazard. One was not always putting the right man into
the right position because it was not available because the arms
plot had done something else, so I can only agree.
Q342 Mr Viggers: You would concur
this is likely to assist in good career planning for army personnel?
General Sir Mike Jackson: More
than that, it is one of the fundamental reasons why we undertook
to make the change.
Q343 Mr Viggers: Will battalions
continue to be stationed as opposed to deployed outside the United
Kingdom?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Yes.
All of this has got no direct read across to where the Army is
based, direct read across. In other words, as you know, this is
not a question about that part of the army which is based in Germany,
for example, that does not come into it, no change there, that
is a completely different issue, the longevity of our presence
in Germany.
Q344 Mr Viggers: In that case, how
will it be possible for a single battalion regiment with a strong
geographical identity in the United Kingdom to maintain the identity
if it becomes part of a larger regiment and is stationed overseas?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Because
they do so at the moment, the other half of the infantry which
is on a large regiment basis seems to have no difficulty with
maintaining their identity.
Q345 Chairman: In this new structure,
if you are having three or four battalions in a new entity and
then you are drip feeding people from the fourth battalion to
the third and the fourth to the second you will achieve an objective
in a generation of having diluted that regiment so completely
because of the interflow between one regiment and another. Has
that crossed your mind?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Forgive
me, I do not think I accept the premise because the sense of identity
will be to the larger regiment.
Q346 Chairman: Can you not have a
sense of identity to both your own regiment and the larger regiment?
They are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
General Sir Mike Jackson: Chairman,
I think you are back to a previous question, small regiments within
large regiments, I am not sure about that.
Q347 Chairman: You will have a fight
all the way to the bitter end, General. I think people can stomach
the loss of a single battalion regiment if, as I said earlier,
that regiment in some larger entity survives but if, as you said,
it is really only a short term before that single regiment loses
its identity then that I think is when you will have continuing
trouble. No decision by the Army Board is going to alleviate that.
Obviously we will come back to that again and again.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I hear
what you say. I would like to repeat my sense that the serving
army is behind this.
Q348 Chairman: Right. Just some quick
questions from me. How do you plan to bring the arms plotting
in the Royal Armoured Corps to an end? Will it depend upon closing
bases in Germany?
General Sir Mike Jackson: In the
Royal Armoured Corps?
Q349 Chairman: Yes?
General Sir Mike Jackson: The
Royal Armoured Corps do not arms plot in the classic sense, they
relocate, they do not change roles. If you are a main battle tank
regiment that is what you are. Frankly there is a rather different
set of criteria here. The other aspect is that a greater proportion
by far of the Royal Armoured Corps is stationed in Germany than
that of the infantry. Some movement between Germany and elsewhere,
pretty much mainland Britain, over quite a long period of time—eight,
nine, ten years, that sort of period—we do that to give
geographical variety. Members of the Committee may know some of
those rather wind-blown parts of North Germany—Fallingbostel
et al. There are a different set of reasons behind that.
Q350 Chairman: With the ending of
the arms plot and your plans being implemented, have you worked
out the costings? How much will it cost you for those changes?
What are the gains financially?
General Sir Mike Jackson: The
cost has not been a driving factor, Mr Chairman, in what we have
been doing at all, and I have laid out the reasons which compelled
the Army Board to go down this road. Cost has not been an issue
in this. It is true that moving and retraining battalions every
two, three, four years carry with it an expense, particularly
on more complex roles, but that is not something which has been
in our minds as to why we need to change at all. I give you my
word on the subject. I see you smiling but I promise you.
Q351 Chairman: Every decision the
military makes appears to be scrutinised by the Treasury. Surely,
if this is quite a substantial change in the organisation of the
Army, somebody should have been calculating how much you are going
to gain, what the short-term costs are going to be, what the long-term
costs are going to be, because there might be some surprises.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I am
sure there are resource people in the Ministry of Defence who
have done that, but it was not a concern of the Army Board.
Chairman: All we can do is to write to
the Secretary of State and ask him for the estimated costings.[3]
Obviously they will not be exact but if such decision is being
made I think it is right we have some idea of the financial costings.
Q352 Mike Gapes: On this question
of costs generally, there are financial constraints on what you
are doing inevitably, with the restructuring and with the ending
of the arms plot and other changes might you get to a point at
which you are not able to do the full spectrum of all the different
tasks that we are currently engaged in? You have talked about
the network enabled capabilities and, on the other hand, we have
post-conflict feet on the ground, the whole spectrum, are we not
actually going to get to a point where certain roles are going
to be given up?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Within
the Army?
Q353 Mike Gapes: Yes.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I do
not see that. If you want to give me an example—
Q354 Mike Gapes: We are engaged in
many operations in many different parts of the world, we have
our role in Northern Ireland, our role in Kosovo—
General Sir Mike Jackson: Diminishing.
Q355 Mike Gapes: We have our role
in Bosnia. They are all different. There is the potential indefinite
commitment perhaps with regard to what is going on in Iraq, and
on top of that there are other occasions where, with an expeditionary
strategy, we may well have to be deployed in certain ways and
certain areas. What I am asking is, you have a limited number
of men and women but you also have a resource constraint.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I do
not see that in some way we shall lose a capability. This was
all looked at very carefully in the run-up of course to the Secretary
of State's summer announcement, and that would have been the moment
for such a move. For example, a decision was taken about the relative
importance of ground-based air defence, and it was deemed that
it was less important than it had been seen previously, and you
know what happened, we reduced the number of both Rapier and high
velocity missile units, and that was done then. So I do not really
see what you are driving at, forgive me.
Q356 Mike Gapes: If we are trying
to have the spectrum of war-fighting skills right across the spectrum—
General Sir Mike Jackson: Which
we have.
Q357 Mike Gapes: Which we have at
the moment.
General Sir Mike Jackson: I do
not see what threatens that now.
Q358 Mike Gapes: You have talked
about technology moving to network enabled capability, that things
were moving, ASTOR and Bowman have been mentioned, they are all
very expensive pieces of equipment. You are reducing now the number
of men and women in our forces, given the rising costs of the
more sophisticated type of technology we are having to use all
the time—and that will go on because we are in a race with
the Americans to keep up with what they are doing if we are going
to be alongside them—at what point do we have to say, "We
do not have the resources any more to be able to do the full spectrum"?
General Sir Mike Jackson: I am
sorry, I do not think I can answer that. You are looking for a
number from me.
Q359 Mike Gapes: No, I am looking
for you to admit there is actually an issue here in moving towards
more technologically and sophisticated and more expensive equipment
on the one hand, and a cost of actually having your people on
the ground, and that you cannot do everything.
General Sir Mike Jackson: Of course,
if we are to stay as a major military power, if we are to maintain
that breadth of capability and, most importantly, that bedrock
of capability of war-fighting, I think there are questions here
about the minimum size of an army which can do that, the quality
of the equipment it is given, which implies of course a funding
decision. But you are talking about the future and variables which
I do not think I can tackle.
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