Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
SIR BILL
JEFFREY KCB AND
MR TREVOR
WOOLLEY CB
4 NOVEMBER 2008
Q100 Chairman: Have you looked for
it? Have you looked for a concrete example?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: No, I confess,
I have not, Chairman, but I am not aware of a particular example
of that where the original requirement was unfounded.
Q101 Chairman: No, but, if the incoming
unit has got no understanding of the need for that requirement,
then it means that the money has been wasted, does it not?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: It raises an
issue, as much as anything, about the transition from one deployed
tone to the next, which, I know, is something that my military
colleagues take very seriously, the transfer of knowledge and
understanding of what the operating conditions are, and it would
certainly be disappointing if the conclusion was that a UOR that
we were working hard on was simply not required. If that were
the conclusion, we would stop trying to acquire it.
Q102 Mr Holloway: Sir Bill, you talk
about operating conditions, and I know that the UOR thing has
been a great success, but you talk about operating conditions
and I will give you an example of a commander I met, admittedly,
seven months ago who was about to go out and do the police mentoring
job, a troop commander, and they were saying on the ranges that
he was pulling his hair out. He had put an urgent request in to
PJHQ that they should not have to have Snatch Land Rovers and
that they should have some weapons with rather more range than
the Demarco, and this guy was, as I say, pulling his hair out
because he was being told the particular vehicle that he needed
for his task and the weapon systems that he needed for his task
when he and everybody in his unit and the sister unit that had
been there before disagreed. This particular guy was personally
ringing up TA units in provincial towns to see if he could borrow
some GPMGs. That is woeful.
Sir Bill Jeffrey: Well, I am not
familiar with that particular example.
Chairman: I think you will need to provide
chapter and verse.
Mr Holloway: Sure, but my point though
is that actually, in terms of operating conditions, often when
commanders are asking for things that they need, they are being
told, "No, that is not actually the appropriate thing",
like longer-range weapons, like vehicles that can cross grain.
Q103 Chairman: I think also that
is actually probably a question that you need to put to the Secretary
of State next week because it is a general question and I think
that, if by next week you can provide some details, that would
be helpful.
Sir Bill Jeffrey: What we are
talking about here essentially is the means by which the urgent
operational requirement is identified and then processed. If there
are examples of any confusion about what the requirement actually
is, then we can, and should, look into these. All I was saying
was that, if you look at the system as a whole and look at the
extent to which over time we have delivered on equipment like
Mastiff, for example, there has been progress, and I would not
want to overstate it, but there has been.
Q104 Mr Jenkin: Could you kindly
update us on where we are with the short examination of equipment
programme?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: It has taken
longer than we would wish, is the first point to make. It has
not, to pick up a point that was made earlier, constituted anything
like a full-scale defence review, but we have wanted, as we have
done it, to assess the policy implications of the options that
are open to us. In some cases, we have had discussions with our
suppliers about different ways in which our capability requirements
can be met, and we are not yet quite at the end. I have been very
conscious, as have ministers past and present, of the need to
keep the period of uncertainty to the minimum. We had a good discussion
in the National Defence Industries Council last week, I think
the industry understands where we are, and we are hoping that
we can resolve this one way or the other within the next few weeks.
Q105 Mr Jenkin: Does not the fact
of the examination really rest on the fact that the present equipment
programme is not affordable in the current planning round that
we are in?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: It reflects
the fact that our current costings have shown some quite significant
increases and we do need to find ways of reducing costs over the
forthcoming period.
Q106 Mr Jenkin: But when last did
the forward equipment programme actually match what you were given
by the Treasury?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: Well, there
is always an extent to which we take things at risk because there
is always an extent to which it might safely be assumed that equipment
will take longer to deliver than is, on the face of it, planned.
As it happens, notwithstanding what we were saying earlier, I
think we are getting better at acquiring on roughly the timescales
we originally planned and, therefore, one can take less of a risk
than may have been the case in the past, but there definitely
is an issue and there are respects in which we will need to find
ways of reducing the overall costs of the programme.
Q107 Mr Jenkin: Can you put a financial
figure on the gap?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: Not easily,
and I have thought about this before this session because the
one thing is that, if you get beyond the end of the year after
next, we are into new spending review periods and who is to say
what the outcome of a spending review will be.
Q108 Mr Jenkin: But within the present
time-frame?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: In the shorter
term, there is the linked question of the rest of the programme
and how much, and we may face some pressures there, we have some
opportunities for making savings, so it is hard to put a specific
figure on it, but it is undoubtedly the case that we need to make
some decisions that will refocus the programme, not least for
the reason that the then Secretary of State gave when he wrote
to your Chairman about this a few months ago, to try, if we possibly
can, to balance the programme more towards the nearer-term operational
priorities.
Q109 Mr Jenkin: But, within the constraints,
it is very understandable that that should be the priority, but
the effect of this is that you really only have the two options,
either to cancel programmes or delay programmes. Those are the
only two options.
Sir Bill Jeffrey: Or rescope them
in some fashion.
Q110 Mr Jenkin: Downwards in some
way?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: Yes.
Q111 Mr Jenkin: How will we better
support the front line? What do you mean by that?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: Well, we can
all think of particular capabilities that current deployments
are stretching more than others.
Q112 Mr Jenkin: Yes, but we are told
that those will all come out of UORs.
Sir Bill Jeffrey: They will, but
nonetheless there is an extent to it. To take armoured vehicles
and force protection as an example, these are issues that have
been hugely significant for us in the last few years and it would
be highly desirable if we could do so, to focus on these, to the
extent that the budget allows us to, but I do not think I can
go much further than that in terms of specifics at this stage.
We are conscious of the need to take decisions on this as quickly
as possible.
Q113 Mr Jenkin: When do you think
the review will be completed?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: I would say
within weeks rather than months.
Q114 Mr Jenkin: So before Christmas?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: Yes.
Q115 Mr Jenkin: That is very good
news. Obviously, there is public concern being expressed by some
of the Forces' chiefs, that they are going to lose some of their
sort of high-end longer-term capabilities, like Joint Strike Fighter,
for example. Is that a possibility?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: I do not think
any of the chiefs of staff have been commenting on this publicly,
to my knowledge. Do you mean some of their predecessors?
Q116 Mr Jenkin: Possibly. The Chief
of Defence Materiel (Air) recently commented that the RAF faced
"serious challenges" in balancing its short-term operational
commitments with the country's long-term strategic planning. Presumably,
that is what he is referring to.
Sir Bill Jeffrey: Yes, well, I
do not think anything I have said today will displace the sense
that we do face a challenge on this, that is what we are trying
to work our way through, but the chiefs of staff, I think, and
it goes back to our earlier discussion about the corporate way
in which the Defence Board approaches these things, they are,
above all, keen to get an outcome through this set of discussions
that is best for defence overall.
Q117 Mr Jenkin: But do you not dream
one day of having an affordable equipment programme?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: It would be
a very desirable state to be in. There is a tendency always to
find that our ambition sometimes exceeds our means and we just
have to manage that as best we can.
Q118 Mr Havard: There are obviously
reports in the press about individual projects and so on, the
fictional sort of stuff that you would expect really, but there
was a report in the last couple of days. You mentioned armoured
vehicles and the FRES Programme being, in some fashion, renegotiated
with General Dynamics. Are these the sorts of things that are
taking place in terms of readjusting the programme that you are
talking about, so is there a series of elements like that?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: There is a limit
to what I can say about the FRES Programme at the moment because
there are still some commercially sensitive discussions going
on.
Q119 Mr Havard: Yes, but the question
I am asking, Bill, is that big-ticket items, like JSF at one end,
and there are known projects which need to go ahead, are presumably
being readjusted or re-evaluated in some fashion, so is that what
is happening within the plan?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: What we have
been doing is looking at the full range of projects in the equipment
programme and seeing where it would make more sense to rescope
or to change the period within which the project is intended to
be delivered. On FRES, the position is that it is currently in
its assessment phase. We selected General Dynamics in May as the
provisional preferred designer for the FRES utility vehicle and
we are still discussing exactly how to pursue that relationship,
and there is nothing more, I am afraid, I can say to the Committee
at the moment.
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