Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
RT HON
DES BROWNE
MP, BRIGADIER STEPHEN
ANDREWS CBE AND
MR DAVID
GOULD CB
11 JULY 2006
Q40 Mr Havard: So it is an additional
resource. They are not being drawn as in out of 800 people you
have got to find 100 of them to do that?
Des Browne: I announced yesterday
that I was deploying additional staff both to Helmand and to the
Regional Army Headquarters to do this.
Q41 Mr Havard: If you can give us
some information on that it would be helpful.
Des Browne: I will endeavour to
give you specific information on that.[3]
Chairman: One final question on this
before we move on to vehicles, Adam Holloway.
Q42 Mr Holloway: Your commanders
and diplomats again complained that it is pretty unhelpful when
they are trying to generate goodwill in a province to find American
units or other departments and agencies operating. For example,
last week there was a bombing of a compound in a village that
the British were trying to win over where a number of civilians
were killed. Is this helpful, and what can you do to stop the
Americans doing their own thing in what should be our back yard?
Des Browne: I think the answer
to that is that the commanders on the ground and through the command
control structures need to work as closely together so that their
activities are consistent and supportive of each other. I am not
in a position to express any views specifically in relation to
the conversation that you had, and I do not know the detail of
that particular concern, but it is undoubtedly the case that we
are looking forward to being able to move to stage four for the
very reason that we will then have that synergy and that control
through NATO of all of Afghanistan.
Q43 Mr Holloway: So you are saying
that in stage four the Americans will not still reserve the right
to go themselves for high value targets straight out of CENTCOM
and not through you?
Des Browne: No, I am not saying
that; I am suggesting that that will improve our ability to be
able to do that.
Chairman: Vehicles—Mike Hancock.
Q44 Mr Hancock: Secretary of State,
you promised an urgent review of the use of Snatch Land Rovers.
What are the terms of reference that you set out for that review?
When is it expected to be completed and when will you be prepared
to announce the findings? As a supplementary to that, in response
to a point put to you on June 12 you said, "It is open to
commanders to deploy vehicles that have heavier protection than
the Snatch Land Rover. Other vehicles are available to them; there
is a choice." Do you still stand by that statement that in
the deployments we have where our troops are in harm's way, seriously,
in Afghanistan and in Iraq, that commanders really do have a serious
choice here?
Des Browne: Yes, I do stand by
the fact that commanders have a choice. Commanders have a choice
of whether they travel on the ground at all in the first place
in certain circumstances and in some cases the commanders' choice
will be to send out forces walking in relation to the particular
task that they have charged them with, and these decisions need
to be made by commander. I said that because the decision as to
how to deploy troops, whether in a particular vehicle, whether
by air or whether by walking is a matter of assessment by the
commanders against circumstances where force protection in terms
of travel is only part of the nature of the vehicle and quite
substantially about tactics, about intelligence and about related
issues, which are within the knowledge of the commanders to make
those decisions. Turning to the particular review that I have
requested, that is ongoing. I have accepted in the House and repeat
today that the development of improvised explosive devices has
generated a set of circumstances where, in my view, we need to
look at whether there is a need for something between, in Iraq,
Snatch Land Rovers as a form of land transport and the Warrior,
and I have accepted in principle that there is a need to look
at that to see if we can identify resources that can be procured
and deployed in the timescale that would provide that level of
protection while we wait for other armoured options becoming available
such as, for Afghanistan, the Vector, which will enter service
in 2007; and the fact, of course, that we have already upgraded
the Armor and the Warrior and the Saxon and the CVR(T) and that
we are upgrading FV430 vehicles. That essentially is what I have
asked our officials to do, to review the availability of such
resource to be procured and an appropriate timescale to do that,
and I am awaiting a response to that imminently. I am not in a
position to say, just now, when I will be able to report that,
but I will keep the Committee and indeed the House of Commons
updated on any developments.
Q45 Chairman: You say imminently?
Des Browne: Yes.
Mr Hancock: I think it is better that
we do not pursue that in the interests of what you said earlier.
Chairman: Kevan Jones.
Q46 Mr Jones: The next issue, Secretary
of State, is in terms of FRES. What progress is being made on
FRES and when will the first variant of FRES actually enter service?
Mr Gould: We cannot give a date
for FRES entering service because we have not actually started
the main procurement programme for FRES, and one of the things
that we have learnt over the years to our cost is not to make
predictions when we do not actually understand why we are making
the predictions. FRES, however, in those timescales will not contribute
to the immediate problem that we face in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and the things that the Secretary of State has talked about are
the things that can be done quickly to overcome that. The FRES
programme is currently undergoing a series of technology-demonstrator
programmes to try and work out where the correct trade-off lies
between time and capability and cost and what can be done with
technology that is relatively mature now but not completely mature;
so it cannot contribute to the immediate problem but it could
contribute to solving problems in four or five years' time. But
until we really understand those technology trade-offs it would
be foolish to give a firm date for the first variants entering
into service. We are now looking at the trade-offs really between
time and the maturation of technology, which can give an answer
to this problem of how do you get the level of protection that
you currently get through a very heavy vehicle, like Warrior,
into something which is easier to deploy and lighter, and that
is a very hard task to do. But we do hope to come forward with
proposals for our approvals process pretty soon now.
Q47 Mr Jones: Mr Gould, I am surprised
you have actually got to the level you have in the MoD for the
honesty of your reply because every time I have actually asked
this question I have had various dates, and I finally wheedled
out a date from General Jackson. Everyone who has come before
this Committee has said it was 2009 and General Jackson then said
2010 and now you are saying exactly what we all thought a long,
long time ago, that there was never going to be any in-service
date. So can I thank you very much for your honesty? I am not
sure I can say it will do you much good in the MoD. Can I ask
in terms of what you said—and I accept that this is a vehicle
which is through a concept phase in actually trying to find out
FRES is going to be—where does that leave us with the question
of replacing some of the very old kit that we have, things like
Saxon and others which, if you cannot give us a date, are going
to be coming to the end of their life possibly before FRES is
going to come into being. I have to say that getting FRES right
is important, but also making sure of old equipment, which is
old technology and vulnerable for our men and women in the Armed
Forces, is also an added pressure on you as well.
Mr Gould: The combination of things
that the Secretary of State has already referred to can help with
that. Some old equipment actually performs extremely well and
the upgrading that is going on of the FV430 at the moment will
contribute directly to improving the position in Iraq certainly,
and quite quickly. There are other things that are in the inventory
which can be deployed and built on; there is the Viking vehicle
that the Royal Marines use, which is a very capable vehicle—not
again in the class of a Warrior or something like that, but it
is still very capable. We have the Vector programme, which the
Secretary of State referred to, which will actually provide not
a great deal more in terms of protection than Snatch but much
more mobility and load carrying, so very, very suitable for the
kind of terrain we meet in Afghanistan. But I come back to my
point that there is no perfect answer to FRES. There is no single
solution to FRES, in my view—there will not just be one
vehicle, there will be, hopefully, a fairly short family of vehicles—but
a number of things to meet the capability, and one has to make
the trade-off between time and capability because putting immature
technology into something does not actually help the problem,
and going for a quick solution which then does not prevent the
long-term problem is not an answer either. So I do not want to
have another Saxon on my hands, is the short answer to that.
Q48 Mr Jones: I accept that, but
clearly this is going to keep MoD civil servants in work for many
years and obviously that is going to be welcomed by the people
down at Abbey Wood, but this is not going to help our men and
women who we are asking to go into very dangerous situations with
old kit. I accept what you say about some old kit being serviceable,
but is it not the case—because this has been said before
this Committee before—that we may have to buy a stop-gap
to fill in some of this capability gap, because clearly in terms
of Snatch Land Rovers the Secretary of State says it needs reviewing,
with which I agree, but also as this kit becomes older we are
going to have a capability gap because if we are still sat here
in 2025 and our friends in Abbey Wood are still looking at their
naval about what FRES should be then that is not going to help
people going around in very, very old vehicles.
Mr Gould: If I may say so, Mr
Jones, our friends in Abbey Wood are more anxious than anybody
to get the answer to this right and get it done as quickly as
can sensibly be done. But we do need to get the answer right.
In the meantime there are a range of things that can be done;
there are a range of vehicles coming into the Army, there is the
Panther vehicle coming into the Army, hopefully starting out fairly
soon next year. There is the range of vehicles that the Secretary
of State referred to and there are a range of upgrades that can
be done to the current in-service vehicles. Do we have to have
an interim? Yes, we do have to look at the trade-off between time
and capability. If the answer is that we need to do something
early then we have to be realistic about the capability increment
that the early answer will give you, but we need to understand
and be prepared to make that trade-off.
Q49 Mr Jones: Are things like the
Panther a capability which would be deployable in Afghanistan
and Iraq?
Mr Gould: It is a command liaison
vehicle; it is mobility on the battlefield. It will not answer
all the problems we referred to earlier and it is probably not
the answer to the particular patrol vehicle problem—it certainly
is not the answer to that in the short-term; it is not the role
of the vehicle to do that.
Chairman: We will now move off Afghanistan,
Iraq and vehicles on to the Trident issue. David Crausby.
Q50 Mr Crausby: On the question of
replacing Trident the Prime Minister told the House that there
would be a decision by the end of the year, and yet your department
under the previous Secretary of State declined to engage with
our first inquiry into the Strategic Nuclear Deterrent on the
basis that he had nothing more to say at that time. Considering
that the decision will be made by the end of the year, has that
moved on? Is there anything more to say? And can you give us a
clearer idea of exactly where the decision-making process is?
Des Browne: Can I just first of
all welcome the Committee's recent report about the future of
the Strategic Nuclear Deterrent? I think it has made a contribution
to the debate in informing people of the significant number of
the issues and I understand that the Committee will be moving
on to look at other aspects of this, and I look forward to working
with the Committee and offering cooperation to enable the Committee
to do that as part of the process of generating a level of knowledge
in the public to enable the debate to take place. Can I just say
one point—and I want to make this point at the outset—that
it does seem to me that the constant commentary that every time
a minister mentions this issue that they are closing down debate
is unhelpful. There needs to be, in my view, a public debate on
this issue. Your report will assess that and that public debate
needs to take place in as open and transparent a way as possible.
But it certainly cannot take place if the only people who are
not allowed to express an opinion are government ministers, and
if a government minister seeks to express, as the Chancellor did,
his personal view, then it is unhelpful to the encouragement of
debate for commentators to say, "In that event there is not
going to be any debate." It is going to be a very odd debate
in public if the government are the only people who are not allowed
a view. Secondly, can I say to you that while commending you on
the report I actually regret the criticisms that are in the report
of my predecessor and of the Department's engagement with the
Committee for the following reasons, and I will just explain them
to you very quickly? The timing of the inquiry, of course, was
a matter entirely for the Committee and that was exactly within
the province of the Committee to decide when they were going to
do that, but they did that at a stage when the analysis that officials
were carrying out to inform government and to further inform the
debate was at a very immature stage. That was the fact, and in
fact none of that work of analysis had come to ministers in the
Department, and it would have been very strange if the government
had permitted those officials to come before the Committee to
give evidence and be questioned when in fact the analysis had
not come to ministers. But I have, in preparation for this appearance
before your Committee, read the evidence of John Reid before your
Committee on 1 November 2005 and it did not seem to me that he
was reluctant to offer detailed thoughts in response to the questions
that were asked of him then on this issue, and was quite expansive
in what he said to the Committee, and I think it bears re-reading
if the Committee thinks that John Reid was not prepared to engage
and discuss to the extent that he was able to on the issues. He
also set out the background, as I understand it, in a memorandum
that was published in January.[4]
So to the extent that the Department, the government was able
to engage with your inquiry it did so and, consequently, with
a mild hint of regret I regret that that was not recognised in
the report; but it does not devalue the importance of the report
or its ability to be able to identify a number of issues. The
position is still that we are aiming for the end of this year.
By the way, in relation to the report I have asked our officials
to prepare for me a draft response in time to be able to publish
that before the recess.
Q51 Chairman: That is very helpful.
Des Browne: And I hope that we
will be able to do that. I have to say that the draft which I
have seen is in an advanced stage and I am confident we will be
able to publish our response to your report before the recess—not
just for the Committee but for others who take a keen interest
in these matters. It remains the case that the government has
not yet taken a decision either in principle or in detail on whether
to replace Trident. Decisions will be made by the end of this
year, after which the government will publish a White Paper. I
know and I clearly understand the Committee's desire and wish
would have been for that paper to have been Green, but in my view
there is a responsibility on the government to take a collective
view in terms of this debate and to put that view into the public
domain, and it would be entirely appropriate to do that in a White
Paper. In the meantime, further work by officials is underway
to assess the risks, the threats, the options and the costs to
inform that decision which will be put into the public domain
to inform the debate in the context of a White Paper. I hope that
answers the questions that you have asked, Mr Crausby.
Q52 Mr Crausby: I think it is important
that we move on and I think it is welcome that you tell us that
you intend to cooperate with future inquiries. If you have some
concerns about our comments in the report you should have seen
the draft report initially! We did tone it down to some extent
and I thought in the end that it was a reasonably balanced comment
in the circumstances; but I accept that we should move on, particularly
with the second stage of the report which we consider should deal
with manufacturing and skills, and work which must clearly have
been done by now at both Aldermaston and Barrow as to the prospects
of the capability of being able to produce what is necessary and
in the protection of the skills base. So can we be assured that
you will cooperate particularly on the question of skills and
manufacturing?
Des Browne: What I have said to
the Committee I do not demur from. To the extent that we are able
to facilitate the Committee in these further tasks that it has
set itself then you will find that the MoD will be cooperative.
For example, I understand that the Committee may wish to visit
some of these establishments and, as far as I am concerned, you
will be free to do so and we will facilitate those visits.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q53 Mr Crausby: Can I say that I
think it is absolutely right that Cabinet Ministers should express
a view—I think that is plainly correct—and the Chancellor,
in my opinion, is perfectly entitled to his. I could not personally
see what he said that was particularly new. It is clear that it
is Labour Party policy to maintain an independent nuclear deterrent
but I think that what the public really want to get engaged in
is the shape and the size of that deterrent. That is the debate
that most of us want to involve in and I think that this Committee
can do an important job in that, and that is why it seems to me
that a Green Paper would have been so much better than a White
Paper if we are going to have a real debate rather than a fait
accompli.
Des Browne: I have made my position
clear in relation to this and that is entirely consistent with
the government's position and I do not think there will be anybody
in this Committee or anybody listening to my evidence that will
have understood the position to be otherwise. It is the government's
intention to deal with the issues of principle and the nature
of the consequences of that and any further development in the
one document, and that would need to be a White Paper.
Q54 Mr Hamilton: Could I ask a question
in relation to that? At the very beginning you indicated that
the public debate needs to take place in openness and transparency.
I assume from that that you would support a vote at the end of
this open and transparent debate?
Des Browne: I do not necessarily
think that the one follows the other, I have to say. I think from
where I am at the moment, with the preliminary work in relation
to the aspects of this very important decision ongoing and the
analysis not yet complete, while sitting here I could speculate—but
that would be speculation—as to the nature of the decisions
that would need to be made. I think we need to wait to see what
is the nature of those decisions, to see whether there is the
necessity of a vote in Parliament. I consistently say, as do my
colleagues in government, that there needs to be an open debate,
and it seems to me that that debate is already going on, and it
is entirely healthy that it should be going on and a significant
amount of the information that needs to be known to the public
in terms of the issues of principle is already known to the public,
but I will endeavour to ensure that everybody who needs to take
part in that debate gets the information that I can provide to
them to allow them to do so, to make these very important decisions.
Q55 Chairman: But Secretary of State,
do you really think that a decision of such importance and size
could be taken without a vote in the House of Commons?
Des Browne: My position, Mr Chairman,
will just be exactly the same as it was to Mr Hamilton at this
stage; I am not yet in a position to be able to identify what
those decisions will be, and until I know the nature of those
decisions then I will not express any opinion as to whether or
not there will need to be a vote in Parliament.
Chairman: There are some questions I
would like to ask you about the Defence Industrial Strategy, but
before I get on to that I would like to go on to the issue of
the Joint Strike Fighter and technology transfer. David Borrow.
Q56 Mr Borrow: Minister, the Committee
went to the United States in May and one of the issues that we
discussed was the issue of technology transfer in relation to
the JSF and we were reassured by the Deputy US Defence Secretary
that discussions were at an advanced stage and he was optimistic
that there would be an agreement that would be satisfactory both
to the UK and to the US. Where are we up to now in relation to
those discussions?
Des Browne: Can I just say that
the new aircraft carriers and the aircraft that we will deploy
will represent a significant step in relation to our ability to
be able to deliver a force package to the specific requirements
of each mission from land and from sea, and consequently the Joint
Strike Fighter is an important element of that. Much has been
made of the technology transfer issue. We in the UK require operational
sovereignty of the aircraft and we have made that clear to the
United States, that we will not be able to buy the Joint Strike
Fighter without the necessary transfer of technology and the information
to give, as I say, operational sovereignty. Whenever we source
equipment it is crucial that we are able to operate and maintain
that equipment and the transfer of this information is important
to that. We are presently continuing to work closely with the
United States. As you have advised us, your own Committee here,
what progress was being made when you visited the United States
we are presently optimistic that these discussions will be successful,
but I am not in a position here publicly to put a time limit on
when they will be successful, but we are confident that they will
be successful.
Q57 Mr Borrow: Certainly Lord Drayson
has been very robust in his discussions with the Committee on
this issue and the one thing we have not really been able to explore
is that if we are not able to reach satisfactory agreement in
line with the comments of both yourself and Lord Drayson in the
past, is there a plan B and, if so, what is the plan B?
Des Browne: Can I just say to
the Committee with some confidence that we are not anticipating
we will not be able to resolve this. We have made it clear to
the United States, who are of course our ally, that we will not
be able to buy these fighters without the necessary transfer of
technology and information to give us the operational sovereignty
that we need. It may be that Mr Gould would want to add to that?
Mr Gould: No, we made it quite
clear to the US both at a high level and at a very detailed level
what we mean by operational sovereignty, and this is not industrial
sovereignty, this is our ability to operate the aircraft safely
for our pilots and aircrew; to maintain, repair and upgrade and
to integrate into the UK operating environment some of the systems
of communications so that the enhancements you have to do for
each operational deployment and each mission plan can be done,
as we would for other aircraft in the Royal Air Force and in the
Royal Navy, and we are very encouraged both at the general level—the
Prime Minister and the US President, the US President made it
quite clear he wants this to happen—and that the confidential
talks that have been going on between ourselves between the DoD
and the Joint Project Office are encouraging. The Secretary of
State said that we cannot give a date right now but we will need
to resolve this before we move to the next stage of the programme.
Q58 Mr Borrow: Is there agreement
between the MoD and the main company in the UK involved in this
project on the technologies that need to be transferred?
Mr Gould: To fulfil the operational
sovereignty role?
Q59 Mr Borrow: Yes.
Mr Gould: Yes, at a detailed level
there is that agreement.
3 Note: See Ev 22 Back
4
Defence Committee, Memorandum submitted by the Ministry of Defence,
The Future of the UK's Strategic Nuclear Deterrent, Session
2005-06, HC 835. Back
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