UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 523 ivHouse of COMMONSMINUTES OF EVIDENCETAKEN BEFOREDEFENCE COMMITTEE
COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH
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Transcribed by the Official Shorthand Writers to the Houses of Parliament: W B Gurney & Sons LLP, Hope House, Telephone Number: 020 7233 1935
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the Defence Committee
on
Members present
Mr James Arbuthnot, in the Chair
Mr David Crausby
Linda Gilroy
Mr David Hamilton
Mr Dai Havard
Mr Adam Holloway
Mr Bernard Jenkin
Mr Brian Jenkins
Robert Key
Mrs Madeleine Moon
________________
Witnesses: Bill
Rammell MP, Minister for the Armed Forces, Ministry of Defence, Rt Hon Lord Malloch-Brown, a Member of
the House of Lords, KCMG, Minister for Asia, Africa and the UN,
FCO, Michael Foster MP, Under-Secretary
of State for Development, DFID, Mr
Richard Teuten, Head of the Stabilisation Unit, Brigadier Gordon Messenger DSO, OBE,
Q300 Chairman: Welcome to our evidence session on the Comprehensive Approach. I do not know what a collection of ministers is called but, nevertheless, maybe a government of ministers, you are welcome. You do not each have to answer every question, in fact I would slightly rather if you did not. Can I begin with the main question about whether the Comprehensive Approach is working, and this is really addressed to the ministers. In your memorandum you say the Comprehensive Approach works well. We have the impression it is getting better, but not that it works well as such. I wonder whether you could say why you think it is working less well than you would like it to. I am going to call you by your name instead of minister because that would get confusing. Bill Rammell, would you like to begin?
Bill Rammell: Thank you, Chairman. Can I
start by informing the Committee of what I have just informed you and the Vice-Chairman
as a courtesy. We are today at
Q301 Chairman: Thank you very much.
Bill Rammell: In terms of the Comprehensive Approach, I would describe it as a
work in progress. Having been a minister
at the Foreign Office and now a Minister of Defence, it gives me an overview
and perspective on this. When this started
there was a frustration within the MoD that initially there was a perceived
lack of engagement on the part of DFID and FCO, particularly with regard to
Q302 Chairman: Do you think you have the
strategy right in
Bill Rammell: I think we do. It was
announced back in April. It is about recognising
there are shared challenges between those two countries, but they are countries
at a very different stage of evolution and development. We have got a much more substantial footprint
on the ground in
Q303 Chairman: The question I asked was how is it working less well and you have told me how it is working more well. How is it working less well?
Bill Rammell: If I am honest, I think there are still cultural challenges between all of our three departments in that the military, aid workers and diplomats have a different mindset when they come at a problem initially but some fundamental shared interests. I think we still need to do more to ensure we can break down those barriers. We still have some challenges, although I think we can overstate them in terms of the accounting officer function, which I do not think creates an insurmountable problem, but it sometimes means decisions take longer than they would otherwise take because of those justifiable responsibilities. This is something which, again, will develop over time as more people within DFID, the FCO and the MoD have direct contact and experience with this kind of engagement and develop the appropriate skills. Is that a self criticism? I think it is a recognition that this is a learning process and it will take time to follow it through.
Lord Malloch-Brown: You have to look at this at probably three levels: the on-the-ground
level in a place like Helmand; the London level; and then what I would argue is
by far the most important level, which is the international level of how we
work with allies and partners, either through the vehicle of the United Nations
or narrower coalitions where that is the case. If you take each, on the ground
I think in terms of the philosophy and administrative arrangements, a
comprehensiveness of a Comprehensive Approach, it is working well and the
shortcomings, which are considerable, are not shortcomings of those
administrative arrangements but shortcomings imposed by a highly insecure
situation where the practical difficulties of doing development while there is
still a war on are very, very difficult.
It is those features of the environment itself which limit the
comprehensiveness in terms of impact. At the
Q304 Chairman: You danced lightly over the
Lord Malloch-Brown: What I would agree is it is a work in progress. I do not think we are all the way there, but
there is steady progress. The fact is in
the crucible of operations themselves, like in Helmand, this thing goes a lot
faster and easier, friendships and comradeship is built by people who are
working and living together through intense assignments. Perhaps in
Michael Foster: Chairman, I echo what both Bill and Mark have said, it is work in progress. When I worked in industry I was a believer in continuous improvement and I think that is what we have seen from the early experiences of joint working, for example in Bosnia in the 1990s compared with where we are now, there has been a real improvement in the relationships and how the three departments and different personnel work on the ground. If I can take a caricature: the military wanted a quick win, a bag of cash taken to a village and that sorts the problem out against DFID, long-term development only and that is the way forward. I think there has been more of a meeting of minds now which has taken place borne of the creation of some structures, like the Stabilisation Unit, borne of experience on the ground and learning from what actually happens day in, day out and also shared experiences at a training level, for instance Operation Joint Venture last year where the three departments undertook a large training exercise. There can be an exchange of ideas which will bring what are characterised as two extremes closer to one uniform policy.
Q305 Chairman: You mentioned
Michael Foster: I do not think there is any doubt that there is intent on behalf of the Government in terms of the amount of resource and as far as DFID is concerned, I think when the Permanent Secretary gave evidence before this Committee she made it quite clear that in Afghanistan, if you were to take Afghanistan as a country with developing needs but without the conflict compared with the situation now, there is ten times the amount of financial resource going into Afghanistan than there would be if it was just a country with the challenges of poverty. I do think the Government is putting forward more resource and more intensively than perhaps it did in the past.
Q306 Chairman: It is 1/50thof
the resources that we put into
Michael Foster: Is that DFID? I was just referring to the DFID resources.
Chairman: Okay.
Q307 Mr Crausby: My question is aimed specifically again at Michael Foster and DFID in relation to the 2002 International Development Act, which provides your authority for expenditure and defines the core power for DFID as to contribute to a reduction in poverty. Given that DFID's main priority is the reduction in poverty, can DFID fully become involved in the Comprehensive Approach?
Michael Foster: Yes, I think it does and it can and I have seen arguments that there needs to be a review of the Act and an amendment of the Act and we do not believe that is necessary. 12.51 Can I remind you what the Act in 2002 said - and obviously it came in following and repealed the 1980 Act where there was conditionality tied to aid - in effect, the 2002 Act set two tests for development expenditure. First, it should be for the purpose of promoting the welfare of people or sustainable development and, secondly, there is an expectation that the assistance will contribute to a reduction in poverty, but the poverty reduction test - which I think is used by some people to suggest that somehow you cannot use DFID funding to deliver in conflict and fragile states - can be long-term and it can be indirect. I think there is a greater recognition now on the ground that dealing with conflict, dealing with fragile states all add to the case for poverty reduction, it is just that it is not a direct link as would be the case of providing education to a primary school pupil. There is a very clear link then between an education a child has and the reduction in poverty. Indirectly it can make sure schools are not destroyed by conflict, people are not injured or killed by conflict because all of those add to poverty reduction. Anything which prevents injuries, deaths, damage to infrastructure is by its nature poverty reduction and, therefore, can fulfil part of the Act quite comfortably.
Q308 Mr Crausby: The International
Development Committee has argued that support should go to the whole of
Michael Foster: We made our position very clear back in 2007 with a policy paper we launched called Preventing Violent Conflicts where we very firmly made the clear link between conflict and poverty reduction. That was part of DFID's policy change, if you like, from what had been assumed to be the case in the past. Yesterday's White Paper again had a chapter specifically on building from fragile states and dealing with conflict and that is the new direction of emphasis. As far as our commitment financially to back-up that support, what we said in the White Paper yesterday was half of the new money which was going to be announced would be spent on conflict reduction. It is about £140 million in 2010/11, again securing our commitment to deal with the poverty angle caused by conflict.
Q309 Chairman: Last week we heard from
several witnesses about the political difficulties between NATO and the
European Union. It became clear there
were political problems which made formal co-operation between the European
Union and NATO more difficult. Mr Howard
said: "The Secretary General of NATO is
very, very firm about the need to improve NATO-EU relations. I have no doubt Mr Solana sees it the same
way, but it needs the Member States themselves, the allies to make change now".
Mr Cooper said: "We have worked out at a bureaucratic level
the detail of the agreements that we need to function together, but they have
not received political endorsement and that is because of political problems
between one of the members of the European Union and one of the members of NATO".
Is there any role for the
Lord Malloch-Brown: I am going to ask Nick Pickard in a moment to comment, but I think the short answer is yes, we have very intense relationships with both countries, and obviously this is a longstanding sore which we have to work on and resolve.
Q310 Chairman: Would you accept the description of the problem I have just read out as being accurate?
Lord Malloch-Brown: I would certainly accept the Turkey-Cyprus dispute has made difficulties between the EU-NATO relationship on a long-term basis. Both have gained their membership of the one organisation in a way which has made co-ordination between the two difficult, but I am not sure I think to reduce the difficulties between the EU and NATO to just that issue is fair or to suggest that despite that issue there is not a growing and quite dynamic degree of co-operation across a range of operations.
Q311 Chairman: It is clearly a fly in the ointment if you are trying to get a military alliance to work with a political alliance to produce a Comprehensive Approach if the two cannot meet in the same room together, that makes it a bit tricky.
Lord Malloch-Brown: It is a fly in the ointment. How do we get the fly out!
Q312 Chairman: Take our fly out of the ointment!
Mr Pickard: You are right to identify that at the formal level in terms of
exchange of classified information, in terms of meeting together in the same
room, the Turkey-Cyprus issue is a major problem, which will only be resolved
by the Cyprus settlement and clearly the UK is doing a lot in that effort. Underneath that very formal role there is an
awful lot of informal activity which the
Q313 Chairman: How many helicopters did that produce?
Mr Pickard: 17 extra support helicopters for
Q314 Chairman: I think we would accept in
theatre things work on the ground because people simply do work together, but
would your assessment of the political reality be that this is going well,
improving the relations between the EU and NATO over
Mr Pickard: It is undoubtedly improving because the willingness of both organisations to co-operate together is much better than it was a few years ago, there is much greater willingness.
Q315 Chairman: The membership of the
southern part of
Mr Pickard: The difficulties which
Q316 Chairman: A challenge.
Mr Pickard: A real challenge.
Q317 Robert Key: Chairman, can I come in
briefly on that.
Mr Pickard:
Q318 Chairman: Bill Rammell, do you want to add anything to what has been said?
Bill Rammell: The only thing I would observe is we cannot get away from the fact that the Turkey-Cyprus problem is a problem and it affects a whole range of multilateral fora. I remember when I was the Higher Education Minister chairing the Bologna Conference about mutual recognition of higher education qualifications, half the conference was taken up with the Cyprus-Turkey dispute. Naively, with a burst of optimism, I thought I could broker a deal and I was sadly disabused. We would be deluding ourselves if we did not recognise that it is an impediment but, as has been outlined, real effort practically in terms of co-operation on the ground is undertaken to try and overcome that.
Q319 Mr Jenkin: Can I ask about the machinery of government which supports the Comprehensive Approach and, if I may, I will direct my questions to Lord Malloch-Brown, others may want to chip in, but for the sake of brevity. If there is a single minister responsible for the Comprehensive Approach it would be the Prime Minister, yes?
Lord Malloch-Brown: Yes.
Q320 Mr Jenkin: How often do the Secretaries of State meet to discuss the Comprehensive Approach?
Lord Malloch-Brown: There is a meeting between the three Secretaries of State once a
month which previously dealt with Iraq and Afghanistan, it is now reduced to
just Afghanistan. I think I am right in
saying it is once a month or it is thereabouts. There is also the NSID structure which is,
when appropriate on
Q321 Mr Jenkin: How often does NSID meet because that is the formal Cabinet structure?
Lord Malloch-Brown: NSID meets regularly, but I am not sure. Probably the better question which I think you
mean is how often does it take up
Q322 Mr Jenkin: No, I am asking about the Comprehensive Approach generally.
Lord Malloch-Brown: NSID meets frequently, not always under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister and sometimes at the sub-committee level dealing with different regions.
Q323 Mr Jenkin: I am informed that NSID meets infrequently and almost all its business is transacted by correspondence.
Lord Malloch-Brown: The NSID sub-committee I am a member of, which is the
Q324 Mr Jenkin: Is there any sub-committee of NSID which oversees the Comprehensive Approach or is this a tripartite meeting of the three departments?
Lord Malloch-Brown: The tripartite meeting is really the principal vehicle for overseeing
in the case of
Q325 Mr Jenkin: Is that part of the formal Cabinet committee structure?
Lord Malloch-Brown: No, it is not.
Q326 Mr Jenkin: Does the Cabinet Office provide a secretariat?
Lord Malloch-Brown: The Cabinet Office is represented. There are two forms of meeting. Very usefully the three Secretaries of State sometimes meet just alone but a note is made of the meeting, but when it is a broader meeting the Cabinet Office is at that meeting.
Q327 Mr Jenkin: NSID tries to meet once a month but does not always meet once a month. When did the Prime Minister last chair NSID?
Lord Malloch-Brown: I am told the Foreign Secretary chaired last week, but NSID met
last week and it was on
Q328 Mr Jenkin: Just to summarise, the Prime Minister does not always chair this committee. This committee has obviously got something like eight sub-committees but not one of those sub-committees has a title the Comprehensive Approach. The tri-departmental meeting which meets once a month does not have a secretariat, though the Cabinet Office does provide some support but there is no formal secretariat. This does not sound like a very comprehensive approach to the Comprehensive Approach, does it?
Lord Malloch-Brown: You would have to accept that NSID meeting on a geographic basis to
deal with issues is a perfectly logical way of conducting its business. The
Q329 Mr Jenkin: I have to say in our other evidence sessions we have not seen much evidence of urgency of decision-making and implementation, it just has not been there.
Bill Rammell: May I comment. I was at the NSID
meeting last week which looked at tackling piracy of the Horn of Africa. It was chaired by the Foreign Secretary and I
have to say, and I am saying this genuinely, it was one of the most searching
and challenging meetings as a Government Minister I have been through in that
we were looking across the piece in terms of what more we could do to tackle
piracy. Yes, from the military
perspective, but also in terms of development in
Q330 Mr Jenkin: May I follow up that
example. You had a meeting, looking at
the sub-committees of NSID, presumably you made some policy decisions which
will be followed through, which sub-committee does that go to? Given that you have got to deal with the land
component in
Bill Rammell: It will not. All those bodies and departments you have mentioned were represented at the meeting and now the outcome of that meeting is being concluded and I believe it is quite substantive. If I can anticipate where I think you are going with this question, I think were we to have one ministry and one minister responsible for the Comprehensive Approach, seven years as a Government minister has taught me, whether this be right or wrong, whichever ministry you went for and whichever minister, the other two departments would then see it as a second-order priority. I do not think structural re-organisation is the solution to all the problems.
Q331 Mr Jenkin: It is kind of you to anticipate my questions, but that was not it. What I was going to put to you is there should, in fact, be an NSID sub-committee which is devoted to maintaining and promoting the machinery which can deliver the Comprehensive Approach through overseeing the three departments sitting in front of us here. It seems there is only an informal structure without a secretariat and we are fighting a war on this basis.
Mr Teuten: Can I elaborate on that, NSID which oversees the Defence Committee does have that responsibility.
Q332 Mr Jenkin: It has many, many other responsibilities.
Mr Teuten: Indeed, but, for example, in January this year it did consider a number of papers on these issues and its secretariat is in the Cabinet Office in the Foreign Policy and Defence Committee, so there is a capacity there.
Q333 Mr Jenkin: May I end with an open question, how do you think the machinery of government could be improved in order to improve the buy-in of all the necessary departments and the overall political direction of the Comprehensive Approach?
Lord Malloch-Brown: Let me, just for factual accuracy, make sure that - as you
obviously are aware - the Committee is aware that officials coming out of this
work have been asked to develop a cross-government conflict strategy to guide
interventions that seek to prevent or reduce conflict. At the beginning of this year, Ministers
endorsed an interim document, the Strategic Framework Conflict. While it is correct that there is not an NSID
committee specially tasked with this, and with the word "comprehensive" in its
title, this effort to pull the strands together to get a commonality of
approach, which can then be put through the prism of different geographic
situations, in the NSID sub-committees, I think is in place. If I might say so, Mr Jenkin, you and I have
discussed this quite a bit, and I think we both share some of the reservations
about a three-departmental approach. I
came from an institution, the UN, where in a situation like this we would have
put one individual senior official in charge.
But having wrestled with this now for a couple of years, and having seen
the way the UK Government has organised with the permanent secretaries of
departments, having financial responsibility for the affairs and expenditures
of those departments, having seen the Whitehall machinery at work, with a great
bureaucratic skill for making things work through a committee structure, I have
become persuaded that it is the best of the alternatives. It is not perfect, and one hankers for a
Patton occasionally - General, not Chris - to do this kind of thing. In truth, this is the way
Q334 Mr Jenkin: I am bound to say that when we had the permanent secretaries in front of us it was difficult to divine a firm sense of direction from the three of them sitting in front of us. They tried valiantly, but it was like stirring treacle.
Bill Rammell: I think practically they have demonstrated leadership on this issue, by, for example, undertaking joint visits where they are demonstrating physically to the people who report to them that the Comprehensive Approach is a real priority. I respect where you are coming from, but I am just not a fan of structural reorganisation as a solution to the problem. I think if we went down that route, you would have a capacity gap of quite a period of time whilst the organisation built up to living with that structure. I do not actually think, over the urgent timescales that we need to improve results, that we get the best outcome.
Q335 Mr
Jenkin: We have been in
Lord Malloch-Brown: Let me say to you, he has made several visits there.
Mr Jenkin: If visits was the outcome -----
Q336 Chairman: Allow the Minister to answer.
Lord Malloch-Brown: So to say he does not have time, he has given this really
significant priority and has involved himself in decision-making. I follow very closely the American efforts to
grapple with this, where an envoy has been appointed, who reports directly to
the President as well as to the Secretary of State, Richard Holbrooke. As a good friend, I do not think he would
feel I was breaching any confidence if I said he struggles to get the
Q337 Chairman: What, then, do you say about Sherard Cowper-Coles's position?
Lord Malloch-Brown: Well, it is not analogous to that of Richard Holbrooke's. He reports to the Foreign Secretary. It is an FCO appointment. It is not the same as the American position in that regard.
Q338 Chairman: Bill Rammell, you said that if there were a single minister in charge of this, the other departments would treat it as a second order question. Do you believe that the Prime Minister treats it as a second order question?
Bill Rammell: No, I do not. What I was
trying to do was to be very candid with the Committee about my perception of
the way
Q339 Mr Jenkin: When it comes to homeland security, we have a very senior official in the Cabinet Office who co-ordinates homeland security: why do we not have the same for the Comprehensive Approach? Thank you!
Bill Rammell: I am hesitating because I do not think you add value necessarily through that approach.
Q340 Chairman: Even for homeland security.
Bill Rammell: I am talking specifically within this remit and I am not at all
convinced that by appointing a senior official within the Cabinet Office you
would add value to what is being done.
Ultimately, this is about political will. It is about the relevant secretaries of state
coming together and pushing and persuading their
Chairman: I think we would accept it is about political will. What we are trying to get at is whether that political will exists.
Q341 Mr Holloway: Political will! Call it leadership. Who is leading?
Lord Malloch-Brown: Look, the country is at war: the Prime Minister is leading it.
Mr Holloway: If so, it has not been very successful. On the political level we have had a tribal
revolt since 2006. If you talk to an
ordinary person in
Q342 Chairman: Minister, can you answer the ministerial question within that because we will be coming on to some of the other issues?
Lord Malloch-Brown: First, I really would dispute that description of the current
situation.
Q343 Mr Holloway: Who is providing leadership? That was my question. There is no way the Prime Minister can be focused on this the correct amount, and then it just becomes a sort of amorphous mass of people having meetings telling one another what they have been doing in the past few weeks.
Lord Malloch-Brown: Look, I say again, I do not think that when you have a war of this scale on it is something that is easily delegated. You have the Prime Minister and the three Secretaries of State who, in a sense, have put themselves on the line for the quality of our engagement for leadership -----
Mr Holloway: It is our soldiers who are putting themselves on the line, and we are failing to provide leadership to sort this problem out. They are the ones on the line.
Chairman: Allow the Minister to answer.
Mr Holloway: Can I just -----
Q344 Chairman: No, allow the Minister to answer.
Lord Malloch-Brown: Look, I just do not accept that interpretation. What we hear is the soldiers feel that there is additional support coming through in terms of equipment, despite the tragic deaths of this week, that there is a sense of us getting on top of this problem.
Q345 Mr Jenkin: Can I just point out, you keep mentioning the three Secretaries of State but, with the greatest respect to the three Ministers present in front of us, the Secretaries of State have sent their Junior Ministers to this Committee, which underlines that this is not regarded in Whitehall as a top issue and yet we are losing our soldiers on the front line in Afghanistan because there is a failure of direction.
Bill Rammell: In my experience as a Minister, most of the work at select committees is done by ministers of state and parliamentary under secretaries. Rightly or wrongly, it is not the practice generally for secretaries of state to come to select committees.
Lord Malloch-Brown: I would just add that there are the travel schedules of the
Ministers as well, the Secretaries of State.
The Defence Secretary was in
Michael Foster: Can I just add
that in terms of how DFID is structured, country responsibility for
Q346 Robert Key: Chairman could I turn to the nuts and bolts of this and turn to Richard Teuten for some questions about the Stabilisation Unit. Back in 1974, when the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit was set up, it was all very focused; and then in 2007 it was renamed the Stabilisation Unit, and it was in support of the management of the Ministry of Defence's budget called the Stabilisation Aid Fund, which had a budget of £269 million that year. What is the budget today of the Stabilisation Unit?
Mr Teuten: It was set up in 2004. When it was set up, it had only a small catalytic budget of its own, though much of its work is in support of the design and delivery of programmes funded by the Stabilisation Aid Fund. As was discussed at the briefing with Permanent Secretaries, the value of the Stabilisation Aid Fund and the Conflict Pools is now £171 million in 2009-10.
Q347 Robert Key: How many staff in each of the three departments are working on the Comprehensive Approach?
Mr Teuten: I would say somewhere between 500 and 1,000, inasmuch as there are
over 500 individuals in conflict-affected and fragile states across the
globe. That figure of 500 does not
include those working in
Q348 Robert Key: How are they recruited for this function? Are they all volunteers, saying, "I really, really want to get involved in the Comprehensive Approach", or is it part of the line management process that this year you are going to do the Comprehensive Approach stuff? How does it work?
Mr Teuten: All are volunteers. In the Ministry of Defence, for example, they have certain categories of people working in hostile environments, for which individuals are encouraged to apply, and then they are vetted for their suitability for working in that categorisation. In the case of addressing the needs across Government, the Stabilisation Unit has been given approval to set up a cadre of civil servants who would work in the most hostile of environments and, as it so happens, we are launching that this week at Civil Service Live with an initial objective of having 200 people available for deployment as a pool at the end of this year. They will receive specific training in advance of any assignment, and then additional training specific to the assignment for which they have successfully applied.
Q349 Robert Key: Do all these people have a basic introduction and training, and, if so, who does it, and then they go on to the specific one for your cadre of 200 people?
Mr Teuten: In the case of the people for whom the Stabilisation Unit is responsible, we simply had a substantial uplift in resources to provide additional training. We are aiming to ensure that at least 40 per cent of the thousand people on the databases that we will have achieved by the end of this year will have received core training, which comprises training to work in hostile environments and training to understand the issues that relate to stabilisation, to working across government in a hostile environment. We will aim to achieve that objective by the middle of 2011. Already, we have trained a substantial number of people from across government and from our database of experts on these courses, and we will just increase further the number who will have been trained.
Q350 Robert Key: Who does the training?
Mr Teuten: The training is outsourced, so in the case of those three courses I mentioned - there are two stabilisation courses and the hostile environment course - it went out to international competition, and two British companies won each of the two bits.
Q351 Robert Key: It is basically a privatised operation. Which companies are these?
Mr Teuten: GroundTruth won the most recent bid for the hostile environment
training course, and the
Q352 Robert Key: Is the UK Defence Academy at Shrivenham involved in this?
Mr Teuten: The UK Defence Academy has been involved in designing the syllabuses, yes, and we continue to engage with them in the development of their own courses, so there is a very good two-way mutual exchange of knowledge between ourselves and them.
Q353 Robert
Key: How many of your trained personnel are
currently deployed in
Mr Teuten: There are about 40
individuals from our database and our own unit in
Q354 Robert
Key: The conditions under which they are
going to live and operate in, in for example
Mr Teuten: Between five and ten per cent.
Q355 Robert Key: That is very low.
Mr Teuten: Well, we go through a process of interviewing and checking the individuals before they are deployed. We also test their resilience to stress on the hostile environment training course, which includes some quite unpleasant scenarios such as kidnap, so those who are not suited to stressful situations would normally be screened out through that process.
Q356 Robert
Key: How many of these people who are
deployed in
Mr Teuten: We have two members of the Stabilisation Unit database who are
deployed at the moment in
Q357 Robert Key: So do you rely on locally recruited interpreters?
Mr Teuten: They play a very important part, yes.
Q358 Chairman: How many Dari speakers?
Mr Teuten: I would have to write to you on that. The unit is focused at the moment on working in the south where Pashtun is the prime ----
Bill Rammell: Bill Jeffrey, who gave evidence to you, is just in the process of writing to you. The figure for Pashtun is 264 amongst the military and amongst -----
Q359 Mr Holloway: Fluent?
Bill Rammell: No, there are a range of -----
Q360 Mr Holloway: Fluent -----
Bill Rammell: With respect, I am trying to answer the question, and it will set out the categories of proficiency for each one. In addition to that, we use local translators.
Q361 Robert
Key: Can I finally ask a question about
pay. Is there a differential pay for
those who are being inserted under the Stabilisation Fund? Do the personnel on the ground who go to
Mr Teuten: People get compensated for the hazardous environment in which they work regardless of the source of their recruitment.
Q362 Robert Key: Who decides what that figure should be?
Mr Teuten: The Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office have schedules for their staff and, generally speaking, DFID and the Foreign Office will have the same figures. There is a slightly different structure in the case of the Ministry of Defence.
Q363 Robert Key: I imagine you have to have a care to the differential between the salaries and benefits available to your people and soldiers.
Mr Teuten: I have never heard that as an issue in terms of the amount that individuals are paid, no.
Robert Key: It might come to that.
Q364 Mr Holloway: This was on a question that Robert asked. Just coming back to Bill: 260 sounds awfully impressive, but I would imagine the majority of those are short courses. How many people actually speak the language fluently and can conduct the kind of conversation we have had today?
Bill Rammell: I have very helpfully had a note passed to me. There are 124 at basic level, 45 at intermediate level and 95 at a higher level. It actually cuts across all three.
Q365 Mr Holloway: Fluent.
Bill Rammell: The higher level will give you a reasonable degree of fluency to be able to conduct a conversation. But, in addition to that, we employ local translators.
Mr Holloway: If that is true, that is much more impressive than I thought it would be.
Chairman: It is certainly more impressive than I thought it was.
Q366 Mr Jenkins: Following on from Robert Key's questions, what is the length of tour ‑‑‑‑‑
Bill Rammell: Forgive me, can I just clarify that? The figures I am quoting are per year, so actually the total output of courses.
Q367 Mr Holloway: That is the number of courses, is it?
Bill Rammell: The number of individuals who have gone through that capability issue.
Q368 Mr Holloway: Right, that is the number of people who have been on a higher course, but I ask the question again: how many people do you have in theatre at the moment in the FCO who speak Pashtun fluently, I do not mean who have done a higher course but who speak it fluently, or the MoD and the FCO?
Bill Rammell: The letter is coming from Bill Jeffrey and it will set that out in detail, but certainly the higher course proficiency, in my understanding, gives you an ability to converse with people on a reasonable basis.
Q369 Mr
Jenkins: Following from Robert Key's
questions, what is the length of tour that your people will spend in
Mr Teuten: The majority will spend 12 months. A few have gone as far as 18 months. A number are required only for a few weeks for a specific purpose.
Q370 Chairman: What are the rest/recuperation and recovery periods within, say, a 12-month tour?
Mr Teuten: Most people working on that length of contract will have two weeks off for every eight weeks.
Q371 Chairman: Does this cause any problem with the contrast with the Armed Forces, which do not?
Mr Teuten: On my two most recent visits it was not raised as a significant issue because the task force recognised that civilians were working for more than six months and that the pace of activity without more than one break that military officers were working to would not be sustained if applied over a 12-month period.
Bill Rammell: Although, it is fair to say, we are looking and grappling with the issue at some of the senior levels in the military about how we can get people to stay for longer than six months where you need continuity in order particularly to build working relationships with your counterparts. If I am honest, over time this is an issue that we will have to get right so that it does not create tension.
Q372 Mr Havard: You talk about the Stabilisation Unit and there is a lot of discussion about stabilisation forces, which we will also be exploring. The IPPR report last week talked about the possibility of setting up - the Brits setting up, never mind whether others are going to do it, the Germans or whatever - a stabilisation force which will have a permanent headquarters element but the rest of it being a mixture of private sector and maybe people from the Stabilisation Unit, whatever, coming out of all of that. Can you say something about whether that is an active debate and a real prospect, as part of what your lessons learned are showing you?
Mr Teuten: Across Government there is an agreement that civilian and military
stabilisation and recovery capability needs to be enhanced. The work that is underway in units and HQ
Land will achieve the same ends as the IPPR proposal, but in a quicker way, and
one that is less complicated and offers better value for money. On the part of the Stabilisation Unit, we are
already meeting the demands that are placed on us for deploying civilians to
work in hostile environments, and we are on track to reach the 1,000 target
that I mentioned for a pool of civilians able to work in these environments. This 1,000 target is made up of 800 people on
our database and 200 people that we are creating across the Government civil
service cadre. We have been working very
closely with HQ Land as they develop the Army's own capability for providing military
officers who work in support of stabilisation.
There are already successful examples of this on the ground where, in
the five Forward Operating Bases in Helmand, we have civilians providing
overall direction of the engagement with the civilian authorities in
Q373 Mr Havard: Was that the overriding factor, then, the expense, rather than utility?
Mr Teuten: No. As I say, it also did
not give any evidence that there would be an increase in the quality of the
personnel. What we have on our database
are individuals who are able to redeploy to
Q374 Mr
Havard: Can I ask you a question about legal
authority, as it were, or protection for the individuals involved in these
processes. One of the things that the IPPR report talks about is the
possibility of amending the International Development Act 2002 so that it just
does not deal with poverty reduction but also deals with security and safety,
and that legal definition may be changing, if the approach is evolving in the
way you are all describing, where effectively people are in these combined in a
way that changes their remit somewhat.
This is the
Mr Teuten: Certainly not.
Chairman: I think that Michael Foster answered that question in relation to the Vice Chairman's question. I do not know if there is anything that anyone wants to add to that. No.
Q375 Linda Gilroy: A question to Lord Malloch-Brown and Mr Foster. How does what we have just been hearing about look like from the FCO and DFID points of view in terms of having staff ready to deploy at short notice to areas of need? We have not talked a great deal, although we touched on it, about the health and safety issues and the extent to which you have been able to resolve those and the duty of care to your staff.
Lord Malloch-Brown: The duty of care was in the old days a terrible restraint on being
able to get the staff out doing the development and political work that needed
to be done. Frankly, coming from outside
the
Q376 Linda Gilroy: So when Professor Farrell told us that there was a yawning gap between the risk appetite of the military and other partners to the Comprehensive Approach, how fast would you say that gap is closing? Clearly, I do not think you would say it is closing completely, would you?
Lord Malloch-Brown: No, I would not say it has closed completely, but I think the view he expressed is out of date.
Q377 Linda Gilroy: On a scale of one to ten, if it starts off round about zero or one, which is roughly where I think it was put, how far do you think it has progressed?
Lord Malloch-Brown: I would be interested in my colleagues' views, but my guess is it is around 7 or 8 now.
Michael Foster: I will add to what Mark said with some of the
detail. Of the five most difficult
environments that we are currently working with, that seven-fold increase is
from 14 to 98 HCS staff, which is the seven-fold increase that Mark referred
to. For DFID, when we compare the
Q378 Linda Gilroy: My next question was going to be: what needs to be done? You have partly moved in the direction of answering that, but can I just say that when we had Professor Farrell before us he pointed to the difference between the American approach, where work is going on on a joint doctrine. Are we anywhere near approaching that? He said that we do not have a cross-government doctrine on the Comprehensive Approach; the doctrine we have was developed by the doctrine command DCDC in January 2006, and it was referred to as a joint discussion note. That is three years ago of course, but in closing that gap I do not know if you want to give a rating on a scale of one to ten! I tended to think that was a little bit optimistic from what the Committee has been hearing from other witnesses.
Michael Foster: I am reluctant to give a rating of one to ten, Ms Gilroy.
Q379 Linda Gilroy: Why is that, because it has not passed the five mark yet?
Michael Foster: I am genuinely not in a position to give an assessment where I could score and know what would be the perfect score. If I do not know what ten is, then I cannot work out where we are in relation to that ten.
Lord Malloch-Brown: Perhaps I could. Forgive me,
Chairman, but there is an apples and oranges comparison here because our
soldiers are there to undertake direct military activity and put themselves in
harm's way in pursuit of that mission.
What we have to do for our civilians is send them out when the risk is
reasonable because the objectives there are not fighting objectives for them;
they are political and development objectives.
The issue therefore is less if the criteria is can they move as freely
and do exactly what soldiers can do, you are never going to get to a ten
because, as I say, it is an apples and oranges comparison. You have to get to the point where, if you
are going to have a strategy where the development and political side of things
matter as much as the military, you have to reach a point where you have enough
flexibility and mobility and freedom to carry out those second and third prongs
of development of the political. Talking
with Richard Holbrooke, who is envisaging a situation where America will triple
its development spend in Afghanistan and get into extensive things in the south
like agricultural development, this issue is not going to go away. He imagines a lot more civilians spread out
across the south of the country, delivering these services, and we are going to
have to keep our game up with that. If I
might, though, on your other point, the issue of a doctrine, the reason we were
all slightly hesitating I think was obviously it is a different point: have we
got a strategy that pulls us all together?
Here, I would refer you again to the documents signed off in Government
on the Conflict Strategy earlier this year and that is our equivalent of what
the
Q380 Linda Gilroy: So you have reached that. Can I just ask one more question, however. The role of the military is to create a security environment and the other partners then come in to do the development within that security environment, but do you think there is now a better common understanding of how much risk within that security environment people should be willing to tolerate in order to go out and be there and be flexible enough to move forward? Is that in the right place now or is it still moving to the right place? How does the joint training that goes on beforehand, which we have heard in the case of the Americans goes on for six months and is much more intense together before deployment, are we moving in that direction and is there still a goal to be reached in that respect?
Lord Malloch-Brown: Well, look, before each of these seven-a-day trips out that I have
mentioned, there is a risk assessment made.
The thing is heavily risk-managed, and all of our staff who go there do
get security training before they go.
The key changing factor now is the goal of the current operation
underway by US and
Q381 Linda Gilroy: Does not what you have described as risk management become in some circumstances risk aversion because there simply is not the capacity before deployment to get to know each other's language, culture and shared goals sufficiently to be able to just do it when you are there, rather than risk manage and risk assess it on every single outing?
Lord Malloch-Brown: There are two things. I
certainly agree with the critique. As I
acknowledged, coming in from the UN side of things I was astonished at how much
more restrictive we were in civilian deployments than we had been in the United
Nations. The cost is that we have lost
in the UN hugely more civilians in these kinds of situations than the
Q382 Mr Hamilton: Chairman, just an obvious point. In answer to the question earlier on, I think Richard turned round and said there is a 12 to 18-month turnaround of staff personnel out there, but that contrasts with a turnaround of the Armed Forces of just six months. That does not help, surely? The point you made, Bill, that it is under review at the present time that came out very clearly in evidence we took earlier on, that senior officers should be staying there a lot longer and not just going on a six-month tour, because no sooner have they built a relationship up than they are coming back out again. The DFID workers are out there for 12 and 18 months, and they must have a long-term view, and indeed far better relationships. How does that impact against the Armed Forces' cycle of six months against a 12 to 18-month cycle? Surely that cannot be healthy?
Bill Rammell: The pressures are different. What was described in terms of the ability of civilian personnel to go backwards and forwards is a clear difference. I acknowledged earlier that this is an issue we are looking at. We are looking at how we can provide some additional incentives to senior military personnel to stay for longer than six months because do we acknowledge and recognise that if you--- I was looking at something last night where somebody was describing the mentoring role that they had taken on with members of the Afghan national army, and this individual was the eighth mentor that this individual within the Afghan national army had had. That is clearly not optimal, but at the same time, realistically, we would not want to, and we are not going to get people to stay over there forever and a day, but we are looking at what incentives we can build in to get people to stay for longer than six months.
Q383 Mr Jenkins: Just a quick point, but not a small point, about comments on the amount of civilians you have lost. People have said to us that if our aid workers were not so closely linked with our military personnel and not getting lifts with them, they could walk round the poppy fields quite happily and the locals would see them and clap their backs and say, "thank you for turning up; we need any help we can get", but your comment that we have lost more civilian workers in the United Nations that do work in that manner than British aid workers who do not operate in that manner would give a lie to that illusion, would it not?
Lord Malloch-Brown: Yes, and no, because where the United Nations has most lost civilian
workers is where, in the eyes of local populations, it is too close to the US
and the UK, so it lost a lot in Baghdad.
There was a similar attack on it recently in
Q384 Mr Holloway: Brigadier Messenger, does the big difference between the scale of the military and civilian resources that are available make delivery in the Comprehensive Approach rather more difficult?
Brigadier Messenger: No, because we are finding that we understand each other's place rather better. Where before perhaps we had viewed security growing at the same time as reconstruction and development at the same time as developing capacity, we very much follow the approach whereby it is security enabled stabilisation and, frankly, stabilisation finds it very difficult to take root anywhere where security is not already being provided. Providing security requires a great deal of military resource to do it. The approach we have adopted, which is very much a governance Afghan-led approach, requires relatively little stabilisation methods in terms of resources and people, and therefore I do not think it is contradictory at all.
Q385 Mr Holloway: Do individual accounting officer responsibilities impede the Comprehensive Approach?
Brigadier Messenger: In terms of what is happening at
Q386 Mr Holloway: Yes.
Brigadier Messenger: That is not something that I personally witnessed.
Q387 Mr Holloway: Did you feel the effects of it?
Brigadier Messenger: I did not, no, to that extent. I would say that the delivery of supporting Afghan governance is not as resource-intensive and manpower-intensive as some perhaps believe. When we went out and did a clearance operation, in the same way they are currently conducting a clearance operation, in advance we identified two stabilisation advisers, and critically the provincial governor identified the district governor who was going to go in. Two days after that clearance operation had finished those stabilisation advisers and the Afghan district governor were in place and acting as a focal point for that effort. In due course there was some sort of duty of care requirements that needed to be put in in terms of protected mobility and protection to their living accommodation, but it was not the impediment nor the enormous drain on resources that perhaps has been envisaged elsewhere.
Q388 Mr
Holloway: In 2005 or 2006 you were building
up the PRT and so on, what benefits do you think that an ordinary Afghan living
alongside the
Brigadier Messenger: It depends where he lives.
If you were to ask I would say there are three states of security and
society in
Q389 Mr Holloway: Finally, General Richards in a speech at RUSI the other day said "Substance not spin is key to winning. To achieve this, while placing much more emphasis on the prevention and the design of our armed forces, non-military activities must be given greater weight, but they must be re-engineered as security instruments and properly integrated into strategy, not viewed as international versions of domestic welfare programmes." Can I ask the Ministers what would we need to change in order to do that?
Bill Rammell: I think we are doing that because we have an integrated approach. I started out this evidence session by saying that if you go back to the beginning of this debate I think there were far more substantial tensions between the military, between DFID and the FCO. Again, if I am candid with you, when I first became a junior minister at the Foreign Office in 2002, and I am sure Mike will take this in a collegiate way, I was challenged by the scepticism within DFID about its role within conflict management and prevention, and yet we are now in a situation where DFID is going to commit over half of its bilateral resources to conflict arenas. I think the situation has moved on remarkably. Have we still got further to go? Yes, we have, but I think there has been significant progress.
Q390 Mr Holloway: Do you agree with people like General Cross who say we should have a sort of PJHQ for the Comprehensive Approach?
Bill Rammell: No, I am not convinced of that. Again, I express my prejudice, if you like, about structural reorganisation being the solution to these problems. I think ultimately it comes down to political will from the top, from the Prime Minister, and within the three separate departments. Mr Holloway, you were earlier quite sceptical about the progress that is being made, and I am the first to admit that we have still got real, significant ongoing challenges in Afghanistan; however, when you make the judgment you need to factor in what the alternative would be if we were not there, and the situation for both Afghanis and for ourselves would be significantly worse. I think that is a view that is supported by a majority of the Afghan population and by a majority of people in this country.
Mr Holloway: It is not either you are there or you are not there; there is plenty in between, but that is a conversation for another time.
Q391 Mrs
Moon: Brigadier Messenger, can I ask you how
you see the difference both in
Brigadier Messenger: I am slightly out of date on the
Q392 Mrs
Moon: One of the things that I have been
trying to pursue is how much within the Comprehensive Approach UN Resolution
3025, which talks about the protection of vulnerable women, children and
promotion of women and children within civil society and conflict resolution is
promoted. How much of that is taking
place on the ground? How much is it
understood on the ground in
Brigadier Messenger: It is certainly understood on the ground. From the
Michael Foster: Can I add to that, Mrs Moon, to clarify that due to the impact that has gone on on the ground for women, there are two million more Afghan girls in school despite teachers of girls being targeted by the Taliban to be killed. We support women in businesses through micro-finance, and there is a great take-up there of the availability of small credit to enable them to grow their own businesses. As Brigadier Messenger said, in terms of the political involvement, we are some way away from where we are, say, in a country like Nepal, which came out of ten years of civil war but there was a far bigger take-up of the role for women, so much so that the constituency assembly that was recently elected comprised 33 per cent women, which was a real improvement from where they had been. There is a balance and there is a movement, but we are not ---
Q393 Chairman: Michael Foster, you said there are two million more girls in school. How do you know?
Michael Foster: That will be
done from assessments and basic headcounts that we would undertake through the
programmes that we contribute to, in the same way as we know that in
Q394 Chairman: When was the last census done in
Michael Foster: I do not think there has been a last full census for a while, but that is not necessarily the same as working out how many extra children go into school.
Q395 Chairman: Do you know how many girls are out of school?
Michael Foster: Not off the top of my head, but I can certainly get that information, the best assessment we have for you.
Q396 Mrs
Moon: Mr Teuten, you talked about the
500-1,000 civil servants with a particular pool that you hope to have 200 by
the end of 2009, 40 in
Mr Teuten: The proportion of women in the Provincial Reconstruction Team is about 20 per cent, which reflects the number of people we have on our database.
Q397 Mrs Moon: Brigadier, how much are you handicapped by what you are able to do in terms of security for women and children by a lack of women in the military? Is that something you are aware of and need to develop?
Brigadier Messenger: No. What we have done, though, is use women specifically in the role of engaging with Afghan women, but I have never felt hampered by the numbers of women in the services there.
Q398 Linda Gilroy: Brigadier Messenger, in an earlier evidence session we heard some discussion about the TCAF (Tactical Conflict Assessment Framework) tool. Can you tell us what your experience of that was on the deployment you led, and what your observations are on it?
Brigadier Messenger: No, I cannot. It is not a tool that I am familiar with.
Q399 Mrs Moon: I am just wondering how successful the Provincial Reconstruction Teams have been in engaging women in the management and promotion of some of the projects that you have been working on. Do you have any figures on that, either Mr Foster or Mr Teuten?
Mr Teuten: I do not have any figures to hand on the proportion of beneficiaries that have been women. The material that you are going to receive from Bill Jeffrey includes some examples of efforts specifically targeted at women, including setting up a provincial women's group, focusing on the rights of women and children, programmes to develop the understanding of the justice shuras in each of the districts on the rights of women, and mentoring female officers in the police force. There are a number of initiatives to specifically address the needs of women. We can see whether we have any data on access to education and health facilities. Michael Foster has already mentioned the progress on providing girls with schools.
Q400 Mrs
Moon: In terms of developing and promoting
the Comprehensive Approach, how essential do you think it is to focus on some
of the more entrenched views in terms of the role of women in civil society in
Mr Teuten: It is neither a luxury nor the single most important thing, it plays a role. Certainly in the attempts that have been made in one of the districts that Gordon Messenger mentioned to involve women in the bottom-up governance arrangements through the shura offers the potential for contributing significantly to promoting better governance and greater stability, so efforts are being made, but it is not the number one priority, but equally, as I say, it is not a luxury.
Mrs Moon: Finally, can I ask you how difficult has it proved for the NGOs to be working so closely with the military? Is that Comprehensive Approach realistic in terms of the security for NGO members, and do the stabilisation teams have enough money to do the job they need to do? Are we giving them enough cash to be successful on the ground?
Q401 Chairman: I think Lord Malloch-Brown answered the first point in answer to a question from Brian Jenkins, so if you do not mind concentrating on the second point.
Brigadier Messenger: Which is the amount of money available?
Q402 Chairman: Do you have enough cash?
Brigadier Messenger: The stabilisation teams are there, and there is money which is
devolved to me which is then devolved to the commanders on the ground to spend
limited sums in support of small consent-winning projects. That happens, and to my mind works
adequately. Where you are looking at
slightly bigger projects then obviously you are looking to the south, and,
again, to my mind that is devolved sensibly down to the various levels in
Q403 Chairman: Did you look with any jealousy at the CERP funds available to American commanders?
Brigadier Messenger: I did not. To my mind it would have been an additional burden on the commanders. I feel that the commanders on the ground had quite enough advice co-located with them from the stabilisation advisers. I felt that they had enough pull on the sorts of resources that, frankly, it is appropriate that commanders have. I do not buy into this "go in with cash and you might avoid the need for combat" because to my mind to go in with cash, there is no guarantee that that cash will go to the right place. In some ways, having that approach rewards instability and may even be counterproductive in certain areas. While we would in no way go into an area expecting or wishing a fight, nor I think would a rather covert looking brown envelope be the answer.
Q404 Mr
Havard: On this question of the PRTs, you
are describing an evolution of where we have got to in terms of perhaps the
utility of how it is working particularly in
Brigadier Messenger: I think we are beyond thinking. It has already started to happen.
Q405 Mr Havard: I hope so!
Brigadier Messenger: The news is encouraging.
Firstly, the PRT is not a British PRT, it is the Helmand PRT, and it is
currently British-led but there are a number of nations that contribute. More recently, with the American inflow into
Q406 Mr Havard: Does that mean through Governor Mangal as well?
Brigadier Messenger: Through Governor Mangal, exactly. The
Q407 Chairman: That is a very successful alteration of American policy.
Brigadier Messenger: I think that is right.
Q408 Mr Jenkins: On resources, one of the things that struck me is that I know, Bill, in the MoD we had this constant debate with the Treasury, especially with things like urgent operational requirements where they could tell us where the cost falls and we should have read the small print when we signed the deal. Every department has got a negotiation with the Treasury, but now you have an added complication because you have got negotiations between each other and the accountancy officer has got to sign this off. When the allocation of cost falls is there much argument between the accountancy officers in whichever department it falls upon, whose budget it falls upon and, if there is, who is the umpire?
Bill Rammell: The Lord Chancellor and the Prime Minister in that respect. The MoD - I will put this up front - is in a slightly different position in that the cost of conflict has never been a mainstream part of our budget, and therefore we have got to call on the urgent operational requirement and the reserve. But I do think within this context that sometimes there is a misleading impression that you can therefore trade off the security elements into the other areas. I do believe, and I would say it, would I not, but I think it is true, the military component is fundamentally necessary before you can move on into the other areas, so I do not think you can actually trade that military component.
Q409 Mr Jenkins: Michael, would you like to make any comment on where the cost falls?
Michael Foster: The difficulty with this, Mr Jenkins, is obviously the Government structure and having the accounting officer responsibilities in each case, and I am not saying it is perfect. It is one that the accounting officers are learning to work with, and that is the best description. Rather as we have learnt to work in a better way for the Comprehensive Approach on the ground, we are learning, quite frankly because we are having to, to work together better to overcome the restrictions of the accounting officer structural relationship and deal with where we have got a joint funding operation.
Mr Jenkins: Work in progress, then, if it happens.
Q410 Mr
Hamilton: A couple of years ago when the
Secretary of State was in front of us giving evidence, I made the point that
when we were involved in Iraq and Afghanistan the vast majority of the British
public did not know the difference between the two of them, so therefore we
were not winning their hearts and minds.
People who knew the difference understood that, but the vast majority of
the British public in my opinion were of the opinion they were both the same
and did not follow it through. My
question now is are we getting the message across to the British people about
the need for us to be in
Bill Rammell: I disagree with that contention.
I supported both the conflict with Iraq and Afghanistan, but actually my
perception of public opinion is that the conflict with Afghanistan has always
been better understood and better supported in general amongst the population
than was Iraq. We are getting the
message across. We have undertaken some
structural initiatives like a joint communications unit in
Q411 Mr
Hamilton: I disagree, I think there is a
distinction between
Bill Rammell: I am not in any sense complacent.
I know we have got an ongoing challenge, and I think we need probably to
be just more simple and clear about why we are there. It is the point I made to Mr Holloway
earlier, that actually were we to withdraw from
Mr Hamilton: I agree with the last part.
Q412 Mr
Jenkin: May I ask what are the impediments
to a Comprehensive Approach to
Lord Malloch-Brown: Do you mean by that a strategy which covers both?
Q413 Mr Jenkin: The Government did produced what you call a doctrine. I do not know whether the Brigadier would recognise a policy document as a doctrine, and there may be a cultural difference as to what the word "doctrine" means, and you might like to comment on that in a moment, but we are presumably trying to take a Comprehensive Approach to both theatres, even regarding them possibly as one theatre. What are the impediments to achieving that?
Lord Malloch-Brown: That was really what I wanted to understand. The core of the question is to what extent
can one treat it as one theatre, because obviously they are interlinked. The obvious but nevertheless driving insight
of recent months has been the recognition that you are unlikely to ever secure
a stable
Q414 Mr
Jenkin: Could I ask Brigadier Messenger
about this word "doctrine" because I sense in military parlance at DCDC that
this word has a much tighter meaning.
Would you agree with that? The
military has been at the forefront of developing the Comprehensive Approach,
and informing the whole of
Brigadier Messenger: I do not know where the discussion note got to but I know that
people were consulted very widely in its production and it was not seen as
simply there for the military audience, it was seen for the cross-governmental
audience and it was exercised and worked through on the various joint ventures
that had happened. I believe that it was
consultative. It captured the way things
had been done and captured best practice.
I would say that the degree of granularity of doctrine particularly in
something like this is an issue, and what we have seen is that different
structures and approaches fit different countries. That is not to say there are not some guiding
principles and there are not some common themes that need to be captured, and
that note attempted to do that. I would
just caution against being too prescriptive in following the model we did in
Q415 Mr Jenkin: If each of you could have a last word, what particular improvements in the application of the Comprehensive Approach are you looking for and would you like us to recommend in our report?
Michael Foster: We think one of the guides to success is to make sure that the objectives that are set for the Comprehensive Approach are realistic and that they are resourced appropriately. If we had those two then I think that would help deliver the Comprehensive Approach.
Bill Rammell: I am not sure what the recommendation is, but I think the key ongoing challenge is the further breakdown of cultural barriers between the three departments. I have made clear that I am not in favour of a centralised approach, but anything that can be done to give people in the military, people in the aid department and people in diplomacy more common contact with each other can only help to improve things.
Mr Pickard: I would agree with that. I am actually an MoD civil servant who is currently working in the Foreign Office, and to a degree you learn by bringing departments together. I agree with Mr Rammell that bringing a separate department and a separate central structure together would actually divorce the departments from that structure rather than bring the whole weight of the departments and all the people who are involved in this effort closer together.
Mr Teuten: Incentives and guidance are necessary to ensure that we are all
joined up in working in having the same understanding and same purpose for the
next
Lord Malloch-Brown: Thank you for giving me the last word! I think what you can usefully do is put us on probation on this point. I said to you earlier that I felt on balance this approach works better than the single tsar in overall charge, but I think we need to prove that. We need to show that this structure can deliver enough dynamic, flexible, on-demand support, and enough integration of strategy across the different departments to show it works. I do not think there is any case for complacency on our side. I think we have made the best judgment, but you should put us, as I say, on probation to prove it.
Chairman: I suppose in theory we could ask you, Bill Rammell, to go through the Strategic Defence Review announcement that has been made today, but I think that would be inappropriate in the circumstances, frankly, because it might take us a little bit off the point of the Comprehensive Approach, so I will not do that.
Q416 Mr Jenkin: Can I ask one very brief question? This is quite a significant statement. Why did the Government choose not to make an oral statement to the House about it, and why was it leaked to the Sunday Times in advance of the statement?
Bill Rammell: My clear understanding is that it was not leaked by Government. There has been a debate in Parliament and a debate in the media, frankly, for months about whether and how there was going to be an SDR. I do not think that was news. We are making it clear today what we are doing. We are also making clear through the statement that there will be a process of involvement and consultation for everybody within this process because it is a very significant event leading to a Green Paper setting out some of the issues that need to be addressed within the SDR and then after the election within the SDR itself.
Q417 Mr Jenkin: It is a very significant event. Why was it not announced in the House of Commons in an oral statement?
Bill Rammell: There is always a judgment in terms of the most effective way to make a statement and we clearly communicated that to Parliament. I went out of my way this morning, and I apologise I was not able to seek out the Chair of the Committee, so that I could inform you, given that we were going to be having this discussion. You were not about when the announcement was made.
Chairman: One of the reasons you were not able to was that I was doing a speech at RUSI about a possible defence review. I must say, I am very pleased that there is a defence review looking as though it is coming, come hell or high water.
Q418 Mr Havard: Effectively you have been having work for some period of time, it seems to me, and you are going to have one in a coherent process, which is a good thing. In terms of us doing our work, it is quite significant for us and how we respond to that. I have not seen it yet. Can you say over what period of time this is likely to take place and when it is likely to be published?
Bill Rammell: We made clear that we are going to publish a Green Paper before the election which will address a number of the questions that we want the SDR to consider. There will then be at the start of the next Parliament, and I think that is the right time to do it, the Strategic Defence Review which will look at those questions in principle and then start moving it in the direction of what that means for hard nuts and bolts decisions, and particularly the allocation of ---
Q419 Mr Havard: So there is a consultation process to produce a Green Paper, which is essentially from October through to February.
Bill Rammell: My understanding is those are approximately the timescales, and I think we are going to be starting sooner than that.
Q420 Mr Havard: Then there is a Green Paper published in February, and then a policy established in the new Parliament following on whenever.
Bill Rammell: That is right, and there is obviously the opportunity for this Committee to input its views and examine witnesses, I would have thought, in the run-up to the Green Paper.
Q421 Chairman: So you are ruling out an October election!
Bill Rammell: I never rule anything out, Chairman!
Chairman: I am not meaning to be in the least insulting when I say that I was not expecting this evidence session to be nearly as interesting as it has proved to be. I am, and we are, very grateful to all of our witnesses for being extremely helpful. It has been most interesting, and you were as open as you can be in the circumstances about an extremely important and difficult issue. Thank you very much indeed to all of you.