House of Commons - Defence

Select Committee on Defence Fifth Report

3 Working Practices and Innovation

48. This part of our report highlights aspects of our working practices which depart from previous practice or which may otherwise be of interest.

Evidence away from Westminster

49. At the beginning of the Parliament, we resolved to take evidence away from Westminster on a regular basis, in order to engage more effectively with the public around the country. We have done this on three occasions. We took evidence in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, on 21 November 2005, as part of our inquiry into Delivering Front Line Capability to the RAF—an event attended by a large group of workers from the nearby Defence Aviation Repair Agency facility at St Athan, protesting about proposals for job cuts. We took evidence at a secondary school in Colchester, on 24 April 2006, as part of our inquiry into Educating Service Children. And we took evidence at the Met Office in Exeter, on 11 May 2006, as part of our inquiry into the work of the Met Office, in a hall full of Met Office staff.

50. Planning evidence away from Westminster has been made difficult in practice by the uncertainties of parliamentary business and by the inflexible attitude of the Whips (an issue we return to in paragraph 69 below). We had to cancel our evidence session at the Met Office twice before it eventually took place, at considerable inconvenience to our hosts.

Extending our range of witnesses

51. In the field of defence, there is a risk that the MoD is a monopoly supplier of information. We have therefore been concerned to find alternative sources of information and to extend the range of witnesses from whom we take evidence. On the procurement side, we have taken evidence from industry, and from smaller suppliers as well as from the major defence companies and manufacturers' associations.[40] We have also taken evidence from the trade unions representing civilian staff in the defence sector, and from leading defence academics.[41]

52. At our evidence session in Colchester, as part of our inquiry into Educating Service Children, we took evidence not only from the parents of Service children, and from teachers, but also from the children themselves. It was invaluable to our inquiry to learn from their experience.[42]

53. Our evidence-taking from Government was not restricted to the Ministry of Defence. We took evidence from the Minister for Schools and from a Department for Education and Skills official during the inquiry into Educating Service Children; from Department of Trade and Industry officials during our inquiries into the Defence Industrial Strategy and the Defence Industrial Strategy: update; and from a Foreign and Commonwealth Office official during our inquiry into the UK deployment to Afghanistan.

54. A complete list of witnesses and oral evidence sessions is provided in Annex 3.

Webforum

55. Accessing the views of rank and file Service personnel and their families is not straightforward: they can feel constrained from giving formal evidence to our inquiries. Our inquiry into Educating Service Children involved for the first time an interactive webforum in which we encouraged Service children, their parents and their teachers to tell us about their experiences. This was a valuable exercise: the forum received 5,000 page hits and 115 postings from people who had registered. It provided us with the opportunity to respond directly to comments posted on the forum and for contributors in turn to respond to our comments.[43]

56. The degree of cooperation by the MoD with the webforum was initially disappointing. Midway through the exercise we heard informally that teachers employed at Service Children Education (SCE) schools overseas had been told by the MoD not to participate. We wrote to the Minister for the Armed Forces seeking clarification of the MoD's position. The Minister responded that there had in fact been "every encouragement for SCE teachers to participate". Following the Minister's response we extended the forum for a further two weeks. Activity by SCE teachers in the forum did pick up, albeit slightly.

57. We intend to run further webfora in 2007, as we believe it is a useful way of obtaining the personal views of those who may not wish to contribute formal evidence to our inquiries. We believe it is also a useful way of engaging public interest in our inquiries and of furthering well-informed debate on defence matters.

Publication of evidence on the internet

58. In order to encourage debate on the evidence received in our inquiries, we have increasingly made it our practice to publish the memoranda received, on our website, during the inquiry, rather than waiting till the report is published. We have also made use of the power, agreed by the House of Commons on 1 November 2006, to publish material on the internet alone, so saving printing costs.

Seminars

59. A list of the formal activities of the Committee gives only a partial picture of the work that we do. We have held a number of informal seminars. Two of these were internal seminars, examining how we go about our work and what issues are on the horizon. One of these was with our specialist advisers.[44] The third examined the effectiveness of our evidence-taking, with the assistance of Jane Martin, Director of the Centre for Public Scrutiny and Richard Norton-Taylor, Defence Correspondent of The Guardian.[45] In addition we have begun a number of inquiries with informal seminars with independent experts: on Afghanistan in November 2005, on the Strategic Nuclear Deterrent in December 2005, and on the Future of NATO in November 2006.

60. As well as taking formal evidence, we have found it useful on occasions to hold informal briefing meetings. We have had informal briefings from the MoD prior to visits to the USA and to Cyprus, on developments in Afghanistan, on the Armed Forces Bill and on unmanned aerial vehicles. We have also had informal briefings from industry: on technology transfer between the UK and the USA, on issues facing the companies managing the naval dockyards and on the Future Rapid Effect System. A list of informal meetings is printed in Annex 4.

Inward visits

61. This Parliament has seen a growing number of visitors from overseas. A list of our meetings with inward visitors is in Annex 4.

62. In March 2006 we hosted a study visit by staff of defence committees in the emerging democracies of South-East Europe, under the auspices of the Geneva-based organization Democratic Control of the Armed Forces.

Outward visits

63. We agreed at the beginning of the Parliament that we should conduct a series of familiarisation visits to MoD and Service facilities within the UK. Our first visit was to the MoD in Whitehall in October 2005, for a series of introductory briefings. This was followed by visits to the Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, Middlesex; to the three Service Command Headquarters: Fleet, Land and Strike; and to the Defence Procurement Agency in Abbeywood, Bristol. During 2006, we also visited the Land Warfare Centre at Warminster and Colchester Garrison; and RAF Marham and DARA St Athan. We have also visited Flag Officer Sea Training at Plymouth and observed a "Thursday War" (a Royal Navy sea exercise). As part of our inquiry into the Future of the Strategic Nuclear Deterrent: the manufacturing and skills base, we visited HM Naval Base Clyde (Faslane and Coulport), the Atomic Weapons Establishment Aldermaston and Devonport Royal Dockyard.

64. We have also visited UK Forces overseas, both at overseas bases in Germany and Cyprus, and in operational theatres in Iraq and Afghanistan. Visiting our troops wherever they are deployed is crucial to our understanding of the conditions in which they are required to serve.

65. We have agreed that we should also undertake familiarisation visits to the UK defence industry. We visited BAE Systems at Warton and Barrow in September 2006; and Rolls-Royce in Raynesway, Derbyshire in November 2006. We have plans for further visits to UK industry in 2007.

66. In May 2006 we visited the USA. This included a series of briefings at the United Nations in New York; a visit to NATO Allied Command Transformation Headquarters at Norfolk, Virginia; and a series of meetings with the US Administration (Pentagon, Department of State, National Security Council, National Nuclear Security Administration, and Defence Logistics Agency), Congress (House and Senate Armed Services Committees) and industry (Aerospace Industries Association and Lockheed Martin Fighter Demonstration Centre) in Washington DC. The visit allowed us to discuss, in particular, operational issues and the future of the Strategic Nuclear Deterrent, and to press the UK's case for the barriers to technology transfer on the Joint Strike Fighter to be overcome.

67. A complete list of visits undertaken in 2005 and 2006 is set out in Annex 2.

Political engagement within Europe

68. During the UK's Presidency of the Council of the European Union, in November 2005, we hosted at Westminster a conference of Chairmen of Defence Committees of EU Member States. No conference was held under the Austrian Presidency. Our Chairman attended the conference held in Helsinki, under the Finnish Presidency, in October 2006. We look forward to working more closely with our European counterparts in future.

69. There is increasing demand for Members of the House of Commons to provide a UK perspective at meetings in other European countries, and we find that we are receiving a great many requests to send a representative to defence-related meetings and conferences. Our ability to participate, however, has been greatly constrained by the Whips. We fully understand the Government Whips' interest in ensuring the delivery of the Government's programme—and the parallel interest of the Opposition Whips in ensuring that the Government is effectively challenged—but we believe that both should act more flexibly, taking into account the national interest in ensuring that members of the UK's national parliament engage fully in the European political process.

Petitions

70. On 19 January 2005, the House of Commons approved the Procedure Committee's recommendation that a copy of each petition presented to the House should be sent to the relevant departmental select committee.[46] This followed the Modernisation Committee's recommendation that "there is a case for the House to do more with public petitions which, if handled correctly, represent a potentially significant avenue for communication between the public and Parliament" .[47]

71. We received copies of several petitions:

from residents of Bridgwater and others requesting that the House of Commons call upon BAE Systems and the MoD to save the Royal Ordnance factory at Puriton, in Somerset (laid before the House by Ian Liddell-Grainger MP on 14 December 2005);
from residents of Southend and other parts of Essex objecting to the Atomic Weapons Establishment's proposal that QinetiQ dispose of radioactive waste on MoD land at Foulness (laid before the House by James Duddridge MP on 24 July 2006);
from residents of Taunton and others, calling on the MoD to scrap any plans for relocating the UK Hydrographic Office away from Taunton (laid by Jeremy Browne MP on 30 October 2006); and
from residents of North Dorset highlighting the importance of the Defence College for Communications and Information Systems at Blandford Camp to the local economy and requesting that it not be relocated as a consequence of the defence training review (laid before the House by Robert Walter MP on 20 November 2006).

We have written to the MoD and, where relevant, other organisations seeking their observations on the petitions, and have published the responses.[48]

Specialist advisers

72. Our work has been greatly assisted by our team of specialist advisers: Paul Beaver, Rear Admiral Richard Cheadle, Professor Michael Clarke, Rear Admiral Richard Cobbold CB, Major General Timothy Cross CBE, Professor David Kirkpatrick, Air Vice Marshal Professor Tony Mason CB CBE, Dr Andrew Rathmell, Rear Admiral David Snelson, Air Marshal Philip Sturley CB MBE and Brigadier Austin Thorp. Dr Sibylle Bauer, Dr Paul Cornish and Joanna Kidd ably advised the Quadripartite Committee. Their advice, both directly to the Members of the Committee and through our staff, was invaluable.

73. During 2006, we successfully recruited a new team of recently retired senior officers as advisers on the three Services, following an open recruitment exercise.

40 For example, HC (2005-06) 824, Qq 1-83; HC (2006-07) 59, Qq 59-94 Back

41 For example, HC (2005-06) 557, Qq 1-26; HC (2005-06) 824, Qq 159-183 Back

42 HC (2005-06) 1054, Qq 1-105 Back

43 HC (2005-06) 1054, Annex B Back

44 11 October 2005. A further seminar of this kind took place on 9 January 2007 Back

45 18 April 2006 Back

46 Votes and Proceedings, 19 January 2005; and Procedure Committee, Fifth Report of Session 2003-04, Public Petitions, HC 1248, para 5 Back

47 Select Committee on the Modernisation of the House of Commons, First Report of Session 2003-04, Connecting Parliament with the Public, HC 368, para 99 Back

48 See www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmdfence.htm Back