Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120
- 139)
TUESDAY 16 JUNE 2009
SIR BILL
JEFFREY KCB, SIR
PETER RICKETTS
KCMG AND DR
NEMAT "MINOUCHE"
SHAFIK
Q120 Mr Hancock:
I would hope that nobody would give that impression or for you
to take it; we all have lots of admiration for the work of all
three departments. This next question is the one where you should
have the earphones on so that you cannot hear each other's answer!
I am quite interested to ask which minister do you think has overall
responsibility for the Comprehensive Approach in Afghanistan at
the present time?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: The Prime Minister.
Dr Shafik: That is a very good
answer!
Q121 Mr Hancock:
But he is not dealing day to day, is he? Who is responsible for
making sure that the Comprehensive Approach that we have put in
place, that you have worked on for a number of years—three
and a half years—is actually working in Afghanistan? Who
has day to day ministerial responsibility?
Sir Peter Ricketts: I do not think
that it would be a good thing to have a single day to day minister.
It would be for the Prime Minister to judge, but it is actually
a Cabinet Committee of the three Secretaries of State here represented
with the Prime Minister in the chair. If you want to have all
three departments fully committed, seeing this as a core part
of their business I think you need all three Secretaries of State
as part of a collective ministerial group that is directing it.
Q122 Mr Hancock:
Can the three of them give what is needed? Do they have the opportunity
to be together that often that they can keep on top of this?
Dr Shafik: They meet quite regularly,
as do we.
Q123 Mr Hancock:
How often would you say in the course of a month that the three
Secretaries of State meet to discuss the Comprehensive Approach
in Afghanistan?
Sir Peter Ricketts: I should think
they meet at least once a month—the three of them.
Q124 Mr Hancock:
On this specific subject?
Dr Shafik: As do we.
Q125 Mr Hancock:
Do you not think it is worthy of more time?
Sir Peter Ricketts: No, because
I think that the ministers are giving strategic guidance to people
who are then dealing with it every day and we have senior officials
who are dealing with it all the time every day. I do not think
we need senior Cabinet ministers to be dealing with it all the
time every day.
Sir Bill Jeffrey: It is certainly
the case, as Peter says, that our three ministers meet very regularly;
I would say at the moment every few weeks and certainly once a
month and there is a meeting taking place soon. We meet on the
same sort of regularity across our three departments. The formal
answer to the question in a sense is the one that we have given,
which is that the Cabinet Committee responsible for all these
matters meets under the Prime Minister's chairmanship and takes
the decisions that need to be taken.
Dr Shafik: The only thing I would
add is that one of the key lessons of the Comprehensive Approach
is the importance of delegating responsibility to the field. So
the leadership in-country is a key point where the day to day
decision-making about how to implement the Comprehensive Approach
is being taken; and, as Peter said, we need strategic guidance
on the big decisions in much slower time
Q126 Mr Hancock:
But the Comprehensive Approach also has to work in this country,
does it not, to the people whose sons and daughters are going
out to do the work for us and for the general taxpayers who are
paying for it, so surely that does warrant somebody having overall
control and day to day political control of what is going on?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: I go back to
the point that Peter made a few minutes ago, that if you had a
minister who was not the Prime Minister but was in some sense
in political command of the whole operation you would then, as
a consequence, have a set of separate relationships with three
very senior Cabinet ministers. Since the essence of this is to
get the three departments to work more closely together I think
that the judgment ministers have made so far is that the PM must
be ultimately in the lead and he must operate through his three
principal colleagues.
Q127 Mr Hancock:
Sir Bill, you told us that you had read the evidence we have had
from our academic colleagues and they were of the mind that this
was what was needed not just for Afghanistan but there needed
to be a specific minister to oversee the whole operation of a
Comprehensive Approach, not only being put together but actually
being delivered. So I take it that having read that and from what
you have all three said today that none of you share that view?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: In the end these
are matters for the Prime Minister. I do not want to sound too
Sir Humphrey-ish about this but in a sense we mainly help the
Committee by describing the situation that exists at the moment.
I would simply make the observation that it is an issue in many
other areas than this in our system of government where ultimately
one has departments of state led by members of the Cabinet—does
it help or hinder to have a minister who is not in any one of
the relevant departments leading the activity? Sometimes it helps,
sometimes not. But the judgment as to whether it will help or
not is very much one for the Prime Minister to make.
Q128 Mr Jenkin:
In Afghanistan, as my colleague has just pointed out, soldiers
are dying and being injured and civilians are being killed and
we are spending billions of pounds on a war. Do you feel that
Whitehall is on a war footing?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: My personal
view is that we could do with being more on a war footing. It
depends what you mean by the term. This is clearly not like the
Second World War when this country was under direct threat. The
threat is real but indirect and inevitably there is less of an
atmosphere of war around. I personally would like to see us more
in that frame of mind.
Q129 Mr Jenkin:
Sir Peter, would you say that the United States was much more
on a war footing than we are in the United Kingdom?
Sir Peter Ricketts: No, I do not
think I would. I do not see what machinery they have in the United
States that would lead you to that conclusion that we do not have
here.
Q130 Mr Hancock:
The public perception is different there.
Sir Peter Ricketts: They have
exactly the same arrangements that we have; the President is in
charge and the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defence
meet him in the National Security Council and they pursue a collective
strategy towards Afghanistan.
Q131 Mr Jenkin:
Do you think that the President spends more time on Afghanistan
than our Prime Minister?
Sir Peter Ricketts: I do not know.
Q132 Mr Jenkin:
I would hazard that he does. Would our effort be better coordinated
if the Prime Minister appointed someone, a single person, a person
who reported to him, to make sure that this was pulled together?
Sir Bill, you said earlier that this is all new territory, but
actually Oman, Malaya, they are all previous campaigns that adopted
a form of the Comprehensive Approach but they were all under a
single command, albeit a military command; and where we see the
Comprehensive Approach working best in microcosm is virtually
under a single military commander as it is in Helmand. Do we not
need to replicate that kind of command at Whitehall level?
Sir Peter Ricketts: Remember that
in Helmand, Mr Jenkin, it is not under a single command it is
under a joint civil and military command.
Q133 Mr Jenkin:
You may kid yourself that that is the case but the brigadier in
charge of the brigade effectively commands the entire effort.
Sir Peter Ricketts: The brigadier
commands the brigade; the brigadier does not command the civilian
activity. It is a joint command at one star level between the
brigadier and a civilian and they work together—that is
what the Comprehensive Approach is. The brigadier does not command
my staff; they are under the control of the civilian head of the
civil-military mission in Helmand, who is a joint commander with
the brigadier. That works in the field, as far as I know—and
certainly the reports I have back are that it works. Of course
it is a decision for the Prime Minister and it is not really for
Permanent Secretaries to offer a view about whether there should
be a single minister but I would just add my point that if you
want the wholehearted engagement of all three departments in Afghanistan
it is a good thing to have all three Secretaries of State involved
in the oversight of it, and in choosing a single minister I think
you would risk disengaging other departments, which is the opposite
of the Comprehensive Approach really.
Q134 Mr Jenkin:
That seems to be a management problem in Whitehall. If we allow
departments to go off piste because they will not cooperate and
they take their ball away because somebody else is in charge it
does not seem to be a good way of running a government.
Sir Peter Ricketts: I offer you
my opinion on the subject.
Sir Bill Jeffrey: You are right,
Mr Jenkin, in the sense that there is an alternative model for
doing this, which is much more military-led. The USA probably
does apply that sort of model although one senses under the new
administration that they are moving away from it a little. What
we have developed, for better or worse—and I would argue
mainly better—is a much more shared military-civilian effort
where the military operations are clearly under the command of
the military commander, as you will have observed in Helmand,
but the Comprehensive Approach bit in it is very much a shared
enterprise.
Q135 Mr Jenkin:
So we do it better than the Americans?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: I am not arguing
that; I am saying that it is different and that there are pros
and cons in both approaches.
Q136 Mr Jenkin:
Are the Stabilisation Unit and reconstruction teams sufficient
to ensure that we can adopt a coherent approach across individual
conflicts and different situations?
Dr Shafik: The Stabilisation Unit
was established precisely to create standing capacity and the
capacity to learn lessons across conflicts, so that we would not
have to do what we did in Iraq, frankly, which was to put together
an integrated team over time, and we had to scramble a bit, to
be honest; whereas the Stabilisation Unit provides us with the
capacity to have that standing. Do I think it is sufficient? We
are still building up our capacity in the Stabilisation Unit.
We have 34 staff there now, 16 of whom are DFID. They have developed
an extensive call down capacity of staff who can serve in conflict
zones around the world and they have provided lesson learning,
they have done analytical studies, they provide pre-deployment
training and I think the last time we were in Helmand together
you could see a noticeable difference in the calibre of the civilians
who were deployed. When we first went there were a lot of people
who—I do not want to call them brave amateurs who were willing
to have a go, but it was a bit like that. Whereas this time if
you see the civilians deployed they are people who are both professional
experts in the fields they are in, be it engineering or judicial
reform or governance, but they are also seriously experienced
in having served in places like Bosnia, Kosovo, Sudan, DRC and
so on. So I think there has been a distinct uptake in the quality
of people we have deployed and that is largely as a result of
the efforts of the Stabilisation Unit.
Q137 Mr Jenkin:
What is the budget of the Stabilisation Unit?
Dr Shafik: The Stabilisation Unit
budget is £7 million and 94% of that is provided by DFID.
Q138 Mr Jenkin:
£7 million?
Dr Shafik: That is just for the
staffing and the capacity; that is not the entire programme.
Q139 Mr Jenkin:
What resources do they have at their disposal?
Dr Shafik: The specific programme
budget that they deploy is £4 million, but then they also
manage parts of the conflict pool. If I may just make a clarification
on something I said earlier? Of the conflict pools, which are
currently £171 million only about a quarter of that is not
eligible for official development assistance; three-quarters of
it counts as aid in the international definition.
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