Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
MINISTRY OF
DEFENCE
29 NOVEMBER 2004
Q60 Mr Jenkins: I was hoping, now they
are in a position where they can be used and they comply with
health and safety, that we could actually get rid of them to another
nation.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: We are getting
rid of them to individuals like mountain rescue teams or adventure
training people. They are the sort of people who are buying them.
Q61 Mr Jenkins: I am back to the Global
Positioning System now and, as the General said, we have a piece
of equipment here for £4,000, 10 times the cost, that will
last 20 years. I do not have a computer that is 20 years old and
I do not have a piece of kit that is 20 years old, in fact, if
I have got a piece of kit that is five years old, it is normally
obsolete. Do you think 20 years is a good lifetime?
General Fulton: Did I say it would
last 20 years?
Q62 Mr Jenkins: I thought you gave an
indication that it might last a lifetime.
General Fulton: If I did, I apologise,
because I do not know what the expected life of the military GPS
is.
Q63 Mr Jenkins: We do tend to buy things
which are very well constructed and on occasions I have been in
places where they say that a piece of equipment will withstand
a bomb blast from 10 metres away. It is a pity the operator will
not, but the equipment will last. Are we over-engineering this
equipment?
General Fulton: I think the right
approach is to look at the way in which this equipment is going
to be used. Clearly there are certain uses on the battlefield,
for example in an artillery OP right up in the front line, where
we do need firstly, the extremely high precision and secondly,
we do need the protection. There may be other uses of Global Positioning
Systems, for example in the lines of communication, moving soft-skin
vehicles up and down roads, where you neither need the same precision,
nor do you need the same level of protection. I think it is a
question of matching the requirement to the need and understanding
both and not then either over-engineering or paying over the odds.
Q64 Mr Jenkins: What about need then?
The tactical data links for tanker aircraft have been a recurring
requirement. We have had them fitted in Kosovo, in Afghanistan
and in southern Iraq. If they are so invaluable to air crews,
and I do not doubt they are, why are they not fitted permanently
into all our tanker fleet?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: We had a programme
in 1996 which was cancelled and that would have done that. That
was a programme which was going to cost £97 million in 1997
prices. It was cancelled because at the time it was felt it was
not a high enough priority to justify the cost. We then found
ourselves operating with the United States in Kosovo, in the air
campaign and these things became very important. We bought some
through the UOR process for that campaign. After the campaign,
we kept them. Then in Afghanistan, again operating with the United
States, because the system does link into their system called
Link 16, we bought some more. And we bought further enhancements
for more tanker aircraft, this time for Telic. This is the one
example I am aware of where it has actually been more cost effective
to enhance and upgrade the fleet by progressive UOR action than
would have been with that original investment of £97 million.
It is a bit special, because retiring the Sea Harrier aircraft
has meant we have been able to take equipment from them and put
them onto the Nimrod and VC10 tanker fleet. But it has actually
been quite a useful way forward.
Q65 Mr Jenkins: I should like to ask
you about the impact. When the Department has to deliver these
212 urgent operational requirements, I know it costs only 4% of
your budget, but what effect does it have on major programmes
with regard to the manpower in the department or the suppliers?
Does it actually push any of our programmes back by having this
fire-fighting approach, jumping in and saying you want this pretty
quickly?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: It is certainly
true that the same staff that do our normal equipment programme
did this, as it were, as their night job in addition to their
day job and people in industry as well. They seemed to do it with
absolute commitment and relish and, as far as I am aware, there
were no slippages. These are the sort of people General Fulton
actually employs directly and I do not know what he thinks.
General Fulton: I do not think
it has had any effect on the rest of the equipment programme.
What I do think it represents is the department going onto a war
footing at exactly the time that the rest of the armed forces
were and none of my people begrudges one minute of the time they
spend doing this because they know that their colleagues, those
in the units from which they have just come, or units to which
they will go, are also preparing for the most important thing
that the country is engaged in at that time. Yes, they do have
to work harder, but I think it is exactly what they ought to be
doing.
Mr Jenkins: Excellent. We cannot blame
that for the slippage in our legacy programmes then.
Q66 Mr Williams: I share with the Chairman
the agreement with the Report, that it is a good Report as far
as the Department is concerned and as far as the people who carried
out the necessary emergency arrangements were concerned and would
join him in congratulating them. I suppose in a way the switch
to small rapid reaction forces increases the risk element: the
risk on the one hand of not having what is required and on the
other hand having equipment you may hardly ever use. Is this problem
that you are trying to address here one which is actually increasing
as our strategic concept of defence changes?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: That is a very
interesting question and it is one I ask myself. In fact, when
I was preparing for this hearing, I was trying to get information
on what proportion of our force that we took to the Gulf in 1991
was augmented by UORs and indeed what we did at the Falklands,
because I did not have that comparator and I thought that would
be quite interesting. Sadly, I am still waiting for the information
because it seems to be in archives and I am trying to recreate
it. I think I will continue doing that, because it is an interesting
question.
Q67 Mr Williams: It would be interesting.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: In terms of
where we are now, the problem is of course that we do have an
increased number of relatively small-scale operations, but we
also have, in this case, a very big large-scale operation as well,
so it is quite hard to give you a specific answer. My sense is
that we certainly have to keep agile and fast. We need to do that
in our basic infrastructure as well; our basic programme should
be geared towards that. We cannot switch that programme onto that
more agile footing as fast as I would like because of these very
big programmes we have which have existed over a large number
of years and we cannot move as quickly in that respect because
of contractual obligations. In any case, those big platforms are
going to be needed for the future. But we do need to think of
how we can do better to respond to fast-moving situations, not
necessarily just through the UOR process.
Q68 Mr Williams: It is clearly a very
different situation from when you had the large land mass type
operation which was envisaged during the Cold War.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: We knew where
it was, we knew the opponent, everything, the strategy and tactics
were exactly clear.
Q69 Mr Williams: In the case of Iraq
and for reasons outside our consideration it was a rather long-drawn
out process between the initial decision to start deployment and
the eventual decision to go to war. At what stage do you start
with your UOR operation? Immediately from the instruction to start
deployment, or do you gamble on the fact that it is gunboat diplomacy
that may never come to anything? How do you make that decision?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: I think there
are several stages. The very first stage, starting from sort of
the spring of 2002, was staffs, informally, simply asking themselves
questions about whether, if they had to do anything, the UOR process
was viable, was in good shape, sort of internal contingency planning
that was not even planning. The actual planning as such, I would
have said, began in September 2002 when there were discussions
with the Treasury about money, as a first tranche, and the stage
at which planning got to the stage where we could go out to industry
was, I think, November, I am sure it is in the Report, after the
Secretary for Defence made a public statement and we were able
then to do that. Through that period, through the autumn, there
were difficult judgments as between going quickly to get UORs
done and not going in the areas where to do so would signal determination
to go to war rather than to pursue a diplomatic route. So there
were some sorts of equipment where we could just go ahead, because
getting more of the same was not particularly delicate or signalling,
as distinct from certain procurements which would be very clearly
focused on war fighting. But then, at the final stage of course
the plans changed. Until the middle of January, we still were
planning for a role in northern Iraq, having gone through Turkey.
It was not until the middle of January that that option was closed
off and we had to switch very, very short-term indeed, to a southern
Iraq option. The real achievement was the UORs which were procured
specifically for that; this All-Terrain Mobile Platform was suddenly
in the frame at that stage. The mine-sweeping measures and other
things for the amphibious forces did not appear until January,
because before then we were thinking of a heavily armoured intervention
from a different location. What arose at the end was an unusual
combination of force packages, so there was a very frantic last
phase where things were different from the previously assumed
type of build-up.
Q70 Mr Williams: We are told about the
Treasury's role in this, that they manage a special reserve effectively.
Is this part of the normal contingency reserve, or is it a separate
reserve again for emergency action.
Mr Glicksman: It is specially
identified and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has indicated publicly
the size of this reserve in budget announcements and spending
review announcements.
Q71 Mr Williams: What is the size as
a matter of academic interest?
Mr Glicksman: At the moment it
stands at £3.8 billion, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer
keeps it under review and, if necessary, he will change it.
Q72 Mr Williams: Mr Bacon has referred
to £110 million, but is there an expedited procedure for
releasing this money? From the Ministry of Defence's point of
view is it a bureaucratic process to go through to get Treasury
to release the cash, or is it almost automatic on demand?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Within that
heading, which is for everything not just equipment of course,
for all additional costs, provided the items are scrutinised and
agreed with Treasury officials, by and large it goes through.
What we have to do is create supplementary estimates in the defence
budget coming through at various times of the year to take that
money onto our vote with the authorisation of the Treasury.
Q73 Mr Williams: Take the situation that
you have identified as really interesting in January, that you
expected to come in through the north with heavy armour and then
you are coming up through the south. How long from identifying
that this was going to need X million extra—and I know you
could not give a final sum—how long from your initial identification
of that need would it take you to get the release of the money
from the Treasury?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Provided the
Treasury agreed the basic costs, that was assumed. We could go
forward with the programme and then it was a question of parliamentary
authorisation to regularise that position.
Q74 Mr Williams: Will the £658 million
that you have referred to have any repercussions as far as your
major equipment programmes are concerned or is it entirely accommodated?
I understand that it says that where there are accelerated availabilities
that is taken into account, but where there are new requirements,
do these then have to be met in any way out of your major defence
programmes, or is it just completely absorbed by Treasury?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Other than those
programmes which we are taking into our core budget, other than
the ones we were already planning for in future years which have
to be deducted, the Treasury do not make any deduction on the
defence programme as a result of these extra costs. I can speculate
as to whether there might have been more money for defence if
we had not had these big demands on the reserve, because £3.8
billion is a lot of resource and I sometimes wonder whether some
of it might have been available for the normal defence activity
had it not been required for this. That apart, basically there
is no deduction from the defence programme, but when we want to
keep things which we had not previously budgeted for, and I think
the Report accurately says we are thinking of keeping something
like 44% of the equipment used in the operation and actually we
are now going to try to keep about 50%, because it is logical
to do so. If we have had equipment that has been hardened or tested
in battle conditions and it has worked and been really useful,
then we do try to take it into the core programme and clearly
then we have to accommodate it and other things would have to
be pushed out in order to do that. We would have to reprioritise.
Q75 Mr Williams: Mr Bacon referred to
the £110 million which is being repaid to Treasury. Was this
an argued-over figure or was it a fairly easily identifiable figure?
How was it arrived at?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Quite clearly
these were things we had in the full programme. We got money from
the Treasury to advance their arrival into the force structure.
They were pretty clearly identified and deductions made in the
future planning finances. It was sufficiently straightforward
for it not to come to my personal attention. Officials sorted
out that money.
Q76 Mr Williams: Someone raised a question
earlier on and you referred to IT. Only the other week we had
the OGC here talking about the red gateways and yellow gateways
and green gateways. I gather you are outside their gateway system.
Why is that?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Because we have
a large programme, not just of IT but of other things, the whole
equipment programme, we already had an existing process of scrutiny,
gateways and phases of projects. As a result of the strategic
defence review we had a specific McKinsey review of defence procurement.
They gave us a model for this process which we are using. It is
not exactly the same as the OGC one, but we are aligning it, we
are part of their process. We do benchmarking exercises and peer
reviews of each other's programmes and that sort of thing. It
is not a significant difference.
Q77 Mr Williams: In that respect, do
you remember, Sir John, when we were dealing with OGC they agreed
that it would be helpful to have your support and our support
in terms of monitoring the red gateways and having quarterly reports
from you. Is there any benefit in doing something of that sort,
or is it already implicit in what you are doing as far as MoD
is concerned?
Sir John Bourn: It does of course
lie within the work that we do. I have been discussing with Mr
Alton how we set up that system for civil procurement and I will
talk to Sir Kevin about the possibility of covering, either as
part of that system or separately, the defence project arrangements.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: We sit on his
steering group. The MoD is sitting on the OGC steering group.
The differences are probably more of form than of substance.
Q78 Mr Williams: You will accommodate
them within this new quarterly system you are hoping to evolve.
Sir John Bourn: Yes.
Q79 Chairman: Following up an earlier
line of questioning from Mr Williams, I want to get the chronology
right. I am looking at a report in The Guardian dated 19
November 2004 on the publication of this NAO Report. I want to
read out the first part of this Report in The Guardian
to see whether you believe it is a fair description of what happened
because the chronology in the wider aspect of all this is terribly
important. It is headed "MoD ordered Iraq supplies `in a
rush'". You may wish to comment on that. It says "The
Ministry of Defence did not begin to order equipment it needed
to invade Iraq until months after it began to consider the implications
of war, a report by parliament's financial watchdog discloses
today. Detailed operational planning began only after Tony Blair's
speech to MPs on September 24 2002, in which he launched the government's
controversial dossier on Iraq's banned weapons programme, says
the National Audit Office. That speech triggered a frantic search
for equipment, including missiles, radars and communication systems,
it says. Between then and the invasion six months later, the MoD
processed nearly 200 `urgent operational requirements' at a cost
of £510 million. Military commanders started to discuss the
need to order equipment for an invasion of Iraq back in May 2002".
We have that date of May 2002 and then we have the earlier reference
to Mr Blair's speech on 24 September 2002. "Senior MoD officials
have already admitted that delays in getting vital equipment,
including body armour, to British troops in time for the invasion
were the result of political considerations. Sir Kevin Tebbit,
the ministry's most senior official, told MPs earlier this year:
`Clearly there was a political inhibition against action that
would make it clear that we would take the military rather than
the diplomatic route'. Is that a fair description in The Guardian
of what happened?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Not entirely
and I should not like to be held to newspaper reports.
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