Examination of Witnesses (Questions 700
- 720)
WEDNESDAY 12 JANUARY 2005
RT HON
GEOFF HOON
MP AND GENERAL
SIR MIKE
JACKSON KCB, CBE, DSO, ADC GEN
Q700 Mr Hancock: Is any consideration
currently being given to slow down the phasing out of some of
the current ships coming out of commission to retain them for
a little longer to match the latest in-service data for Type 45s?
Mr Hoon: I do not see any necessity
to do that.
Q701 Mr Hancock: So you are satisfied
that the current size of the fleet is good enough to carry us
right up to 2009?
Mr Hoon: As I made clear earlier,
we have to look carefully at the commitments that we undertake.
That is no different from any other part of the Armed Forces.
Q702 Mr Hancock: Would it be right
to say that there is serious concern for senior levels in the
Royal Navy about their ability to fulfil the tasks that we currently
are setting them because of the shortage of ships?
Mr Hoon: I have answered that
question already. The point is that we will review carefully the
kinds of commitment that we currently undertake. Some of them,
as I have indicated to the committee, are in my opinion commitments
that, for example, NATO requires, that I do not believe necessarily
will have to be done in precisely the same way for the indefinite
future.
Q703 Mr Hancock: That is not the
question I asked, is it? The question I asked is, have senior
elements in the Royal Navy made it clear to you that they are
less than happy with the commitments they are planned to see through
over the next two to three years with the ships and crews they
have at their disposal? Have you had representations along those
lines?
Mr Hoon: No, I have not.
Q704 Mr Hancock: You have had no
representations on any serious concerns from senior naval staff
on these matters?
Mr Hoon: No.
Chairman: Mr Hoon indicated dissent in
case—
Mr Hancock: He said no.
Q705 Richard Ottaway: The quotes
I had earlier on, quoting the First Sea Lord on this point, were
from Warship World, September/October 2004. On Mr Hancock's
point, Admiral Bland said, "I have told the Secretary of
State that we have accepted beans today for jam tomorrow providing
that what we are promised is coming along", so you have had
representations.
Mr Hoon: I do not think that is
in any way inconsistent with what I have said to the committee.
Q706 Richard Ottaway: I do not think
it is, but—
Mr Hoon: In which case I have
not had those representations.
Q707 Mike Gapes: Can I ask about
the effects on family life for soldiers of the impact on officers
and senior NCOs about where they might live, how their families
will be organised as a result of the impact of the ending of the
arms plot? It has been suggested that in fact it may be moves
towards more permanent basing in the UK, a reluctance of people
to want to move between battalions and not wanting to permanently
be based abroad. That will then have an impact in different ways
on their families and their contacts, whether people are spending
long times travelling back from Germany by ferry or motorway whilst
their families are living in the UK, and this might lead to disruption
of difficulties in keeping relationships and so on. Do you have
any thoughts on that?
General Sir Mike Jackson: I do;
I have quite a lot of thoughts on that. I should start by taking
us out of the infantry context for a moment and using, say, Royal
Engineers as an example. The Royal Engineers have 12, off the
top of my head, major units, 12 engineer regiments which are scattered
throughout the United Kingdom and indeed Germany. They do not
arms plot. They move their officers and soldiers on a career based
basis. I see none of these horrors which some prophets say may
come about from the Royal Engineers, or indeed the Royal Artillery
or the Royal Logistic Corps. All of them do not move their units
around but move their people around on a planned basis and they
seem to be okay. I think we need to take some of these concerns
with care, of course, and people's lifestyles in 15 years' time
are going to be different from what they are today, it seems to
me. Purely on the family side, I have met one senior NCO more
often than not, but officers too, who have been instructors, say,
at Sandhurst; they have finished two years there, re-joined their
battalion in Yorkshire. Six months later they arms plot to Germany.
It is not difficult to find people who have moved three times
in four or five years. We have to do better than this but I do
not think that is right for tomorrow's families.
Mr Hoon: The other side of this
is that requiring a large number of people to move every two years
is enormously disruptive, not only to family life but also to
the careers of spouses; if we go back 15 years, the world has
changed. When we look at the reasons given by many soldiers for
leaving the Army, precisely at a time when we would rather like
to keep them because they have been well trained and they have
a lot of experience, often it is for those kinds of domestic considerations.
You simply cannot in the modern world expect people every two
years to move their base because, although the men will still
be deploying to the Balkans, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, their families
are having to move from one part of the country to another, often
far removed from the place at which they were recruited.
Q708 Mike Gapes: I can see all those
arguments and I think it is a good idea that people have the right
and the ability to buy a house and have a family home and not
have their children moved around, but how much choice will people
be allowed in terms of location or movement? How do we get that
balance between the aspirations and changes that we are talking
about for individuals and their families and on the other hand
the imperatives of Army life?
General Sir Mike Jackson: Soldiering
is always going to be a mobile profession. I cannot see an Army
which does not move people for all sorts of reasons. What we have
been doing is moving them almost gratuitously often through the
arms plot and therefore that should cease for all the reasons
I have laid out. Again, may I turn to the non-infantry Army? I
have spoken to the Royal Engineers. There are choices. There are
choices of the type of engineering you do, there are choices of
where you do it and all engineers (and the rest of the Army but
I am using them as an example) run a perfectly sensible personnel
policy where if somebody who has come to the end of, say, three
years in a field engineer regiment, is asked, "Where do you
want to go next?". There is an element of choice that comes
into this, quite rightly, and provided that his proper career
progression can be meshed with his choice, it seems that he is
winning and the Army is winning. That is exactly the sort of process
which I would see taking place in the infantry in future.
Q709 Mr Havard: I have a series of
questions about finance. There have been a lot of questions about
overruns and the DPA and there are questions about resources and
so on. We know what the background is to all of this and there
are the efficiency gains that apparently have to be made to offset
other costs. The guts of it are the extent to which the announcements
which you made, Secretary of State, in July and December and all
of these questions about reorganisation and organisational internal
change, are driven by budgetary factors rather than by the policy
decisions that were originally set out and whether now disconnects
have come about from reasons of expediency and overruns and everything
else that are causing effects back that are budgetary driven as
opposed to delivery of the original policy.
Mr Hoon: The budget has increased.
It has increased in each of the years that I have been Secretary
of State for Defence. It will go on increasing. We have the largest
sustained increase in defence spending in more than 20 years.
Seven years of planned increases in defence spending is a record
that this government is rightly proud of. It is a record that
has not been matched in more than 20 years and we will go on in
the course of this spending review spending more money on defence,
a total of £3.7 billion extra to be spent on defence.
Q710 Mr Havard: So you are confident
that the proposed suggestion that there are going to be cost increases
in the top 20 equipment projects and this all balances out, but
you are not going to be able to afford all the things you have
got on the list and the carriers and Typhoon and all the rest
of it and so we are having to cut people in order to make up for
spending more money on equipment?
Mr Hoon: But that is not happening.
The proportions of the budget spent on equipment will remain roughly
consistent in the years ahead. We are not, as has been suggested
from time to time, quite wrongly, by some commentators, sacrificing
the position of people for enhanced equipment. We recognise that
there needs to be a proper balance between the amount we spend
on equipment and the amount we spend on people. That balance will
remain roughly the same in all the spending forecasts into the
future.
Q711 Richard Ottaway: How much is
your ability to fund your proposals in each capability dependent
on the achievement of your efficiency targets?
Mr Hoon: All of the money that
we save in making our systems more efficient, which we have touched
on already in relation to end-to-end supply and so on, will be
available to invest in front-line activity. The more we are able
to save from generating capability more efficiently and more effectively,
the more we have available to spend on front-line activity.
Q712 Richard Ottaway: Do you expect
2004-05 targets to be met?
Mr Hoon: Yes, I do.
Q713 Mike Gapes: When do you expect
to announce the production decision for Nimrod MRA4? Are you still
committed to a fleet of about 12 aircraft as stated in Future
Capabilities and is the aircraft fulfilling its expectations?
Mr Hoon: There is a great deal
of work that has gone on in relation to Nimrod. I saw the aircraft,
I am sure entirely coincidentally, on the runway at Warton when
I went to see Typhoon. I am sure the BAE systems wheeled it out
just by chance when I was there. It has flown. They are making
progress but we are involved in negotiations on price, capability
and numbers and much as I would like to disclose to the committee
my negotiating position I feel it probably would not be in the
interests of the British taxpayer at this stage to do so.
Mike Gapes: Right, I will leave it there.
Chairman: Thank you. Mr Viggers please.
Q714 Mr Viggers: There are three
huge capital programmes in the procurement budget. One is Typhoon,
tranche 2; the second one is the aircraft carriers due in service
in 2012 and 2015; and the third, integrated with that, is the
Joint Strike Fighter. These are vast programmes and certainly
the aircraft carrier programmes seem to be dogged by further delays.
It was proposed to appoint the project integrator before Christmas.
Now we hear it is the second week of January 2005 and we are now
on 12 January. Can you make a statement on how you see the progress
of the aircraft carriers?
Mr Hoon: I am sorry, Mr Viggers,
that you retreat into the language of the tabloid journalists
but it is not "dogged by delays". The in-service dates
for the two carriers remain 2012 and 2015, and what we are doing
is what the Committee had recommended that we should do which
is to eliminate as much risk as we can as we develop the design.
Much of the work that is going on today is to ensure that the
inherent risks in producing projects of this kind are reduced
as far as we can. We are getting ahead in the design work. Indeed,
it has been suggested to me that the design work is further advanced
for the carriers than any ships of this kind in the past, so there
are no delays and we are doing extremely well.
Q715 Mr Viggers: In that case, you
can tell us what size they will be?
Mr Hoon: Those are matters that
we are still negotiating. I have not signed a contract yet and
I think it is very important that I am able to negotiate with
those who will be on the other side of that contract with as much
flexibility as possible. If I answer that question with the precision
that you are obviously looking for, then again I would be giving
away an aspect of my negotiating position that I am not prepared
to do.
Mr Viggers: And what do you expect the
in-service dates to be and what is your definition of "in-service
date", bearing in mind that the definition, Secretary of
State, has previously been that the equipment is in service? Do
you expect it to be—
Chairman: —operational?
Q716 Mr Viggers: —In 2012 and
2015, as you have stated?
Mr Hoon: That is the position.
Q717 Mr Hancock: Why did the head
of the carrier team leave?
Mr Hoon: Because he has gone to
another job, as people do from time to time.
Mr Hancock: That was the only reason?
Richard Ottaway: It is not. He was fed
up basically.
Q718 Chairman: Is he obliged to sign
the Official Secrets Act because he knows where all the bodies
are buried and there are a lot of them, not all of them at sea?
Mr Hoon: He had been in that position
for a very long time and, as is the case in most walks of life,
he has got himself another job and we wish him every success.
He has done a tremendous job for the Ministry of Defence and on
this project.
General Sir Mike Jackson: May
I just remind Mr Viggers that there is a fourth programme which
is of very considerable interest to me, the Future Rapid Effect
System, or FRES. I would be grateful if you could make that quartet
in your mind.
Q719 Mr Jones: Is the in-service
date still 2010?
General Sir Mike Jackson: I doubt
it will make 2010 but the systems house is still at work.
Mr Jones: Honesty at last!
Q720 Chairman: Thank you both very
much. We will have to release the elected Members who have to
rush off to vote. We have a number of questions that we shall
write to you about including the one on CIMIC and perhaps you
could get your staff to bring the letter to your attention.[11]
Thank you both very much.
Mr Hoon: Thank you very much indeed.
11 Ev 176-178 Back
| 
