Examination of Witnesses (Questions 111-160)
RT HON
BOB AINSWORTH
MP, REAR ADMIRAL
ALAN RICHARDS
AND MR
TERENCE JAGGER
24 NOVEMBER 2009
Q111 Chairman: Secretary of State,
good morning and welcome to your first evidence session in front
of the Defence Committee as Secretary of State. We have a huge
amount to cover because this is a joint session about the Ministry
of Defence Annual Report and Accounts and about our inquiry into
readiness and recuperation, and to that we have added additional
questions about the Green Paper. Although you have to leave at
one o'clock—and it may seem like a long time particularly
to you but also to us—time is short and I would ask, therefore,
the Committee to be extremely tight in their questioning, and
I would ask you, Secretary of State, and the other witnesses,
please, to be tight in your answers.
Mr Ainsworth: Chairman, could
I first of all apologise for messing the Committee around. We
did have urgent business, there was an Opposition Day and then
we had the Abu Ghraib report as well which mitigated against my
coming the first time when we tried to get this session up and
going; and then I was, I am afraid, quite ill on the second occasion
and I do apologise for that. I have with me, as you can see, Rear
Admiral Alan Richards, who is my expert on strategy and plans,
so if you want to get into the details on recuperation or readiness
he might avoid us having to write to you on the odd occasion;
and, equally, I have Terence Jagger who is on the finance side.
Jon Thompson, who is his superior—he has not run off with
the money, I am told—I am afraid he is ill and has probably
got the same as I had, and I maybe even gave it to him, so I am
afraid he cannot be here to help today.
Q112 Chairman: We had Mr Jagger in
front of us with the Permanent Under-Secretary. Thank you very
much indeed. We will start with the MoD Annual Report and Accounts,
and then at some time we will move on to readiness and recuperation
and the Green Paper. The Report and Accounts are qualified again
and yet last year the Permanent Under-Secretary told us that there
was "a good prospect" that the problems with the Joint
Personnel Administration would be resolved, that the accounts
would be free from qualification this year. Qualified again; and
yet this year the Permanent Under-Secretary reassured us that
it was likely that the accounts would be unqualified next year.
Why should we believe him this year any more, I have to say, than
we really did last year?
Mr Ainsworth: So you did not believe
him last year when he told you about this?
Q113 Chairman: Well—
Mr Ainsworth: Chairman, not only
qualified again but, I am afraid, qualified on four counts this
time. We continue to have problems with the JPA system which we
are working with the National Audit Office to try to sort out.
There are other issues and I would hope the Committee would have
at least a degree of sympathy, although I do not believe that
you should allow us to be in any way complacent. For instance,
there is the qualification with regards to the Bowman equipment.
What happened with Bowman is that we bought a piece of kit—
Q114 Chairman: We will come on to
Bowman. Just on the JPA issue, apparently the solutions that you
produced to amend the qualification last year were the things
that caused the qualification this year?
Mr Ainsworth: We are trying to
be responsive to our people. We are trying to make sure that we
can actually make payments at an appropriate time and yet, at
the same time, satisfy the auditor that we have got control of
those payments where there are overpayments or underpayments being
made. It is a complicated system; it has suffered problems, bedding-in
problems, which are taking longer for us to get to the bottom
of and we have not been able to satisfy the National Audit Office
yet. It is not only Bowman and the JPA, we have also got a problem
on general stocks. We are working with the National Audit Office
to get a better feel for the size of the problem but it maybe
looks a little worse than it is on the sample that they took.
For instance, they took a relatively small sample and they found
errors in 22% of the sample. Some of those errors were pretty
minor in nature, so it is not the case that there is a 22% error.
There is a 22% error but some of those are very small indeed;
they are very small items.
Q115 Chairman: Secretary of State,
you have moved on to stock again. I want to concentrate just for
a moment on the Joint Personnel Administration. You have to manage
the manning levels and the harmony guidelines with information
which is apparently so bad that it causes your accounts to be
qualified. How can you manage harmony guidelines in those circumstances?
Mr Ainsworth: I think we are pretty
confident that there has been some small improvement in harmony
guidelines, although I cannot say to you that we have still got
all of our people in ideal harmony; we are still finding considerable
difficulty with some pinch-point trades. Yes, of course, the problems
with JPA do not help us to be able to prove to ourselves or yourselves
that that is so. May I ask Terence to give you a bit more detail
on that.
Mr Jagger: I think the qualification
on JPA in the previous set of accounts was very much about our
inability to provide evidence that the payments JPA was making
were justified. In the preparation of this year's accounts we
have had a very thorough process of sampling with the NAO, and
on that particular issue the NAO have not qualified us this year.
What they have said is that JPA is paying accurately in accordance
with the instructions it gets from the units. The qualification
this year relates to the quality of those instructions. We have
dealt with one problem—I would say very successfully—and
we now have, if you like, a problem earlier in the process which
is about when the request is originally put in. I think the record
on accurate pay is extremely high for JPA. We are talking about,
on the whole, specialist allowance rather than base pay; and we
are talking about a problem which we are addressing with great
energy at the moment. The Deputy Chief Personnel has got a whole
project going and I am hopeful that we will see a real improvement
this year.
Chairman: Getting on to the stocks and
Bowman, Bernard Jenkin.
Q116 Mr Jenkin: Secretary of State,
you have already mentioned Bowman and you know the problem, and
we cross-examined the Permanent Under-Secretary quite intensively
on that question. Is there anything more you would want to add
before we probably write something fairly critical in our report?
Mr Ainsworth: Could I just talk
about the harmony, because the issue that has just been raised
on JPA is not going to impact on harmony but there is another
qualification to do with numbers, which I think the Committee
might be worried about. This is about numbers in Naval Reserve,
and it is about us being able to prove and to show that we are
within the totals that we have approved in Parliament at each
and every day of a period. We know how many we have at the start
and the finish of the accounting period, but we have not been
able to show to the satisfaction of the auditor that we are able
to prove exactly how many people we have got in the Naval Reserve
each and every day throughout the period. I am not dead sure that
makes our problems in understanding and reporting on harmony worse,
but harmony is another matter the Committee might want to get
on to. Bowman continues to be a problem. When we bought Bowman
we bought a system wanting it to be flexible and usable by our
Armed Forces. I do not think the Committee would want us not to
have done that. For instance, if a vehicle fitted with a Bowman
radio is broken in theatre for whatever reason a soldier is able
to take the Bowman radio out and keep that in theatre and the
vehicle comes back to the UK for repair, for scrapping or whatever
minus its Bowman radio. That gives us a great degree of flexibility
in theatre but, nonetheless, it makes it very difficult for us
to be able to prove at any one time where each and every Bowman
radio is. So there is a tension between the audit trail and our
ability to be able to prove where some quite valuable equipment
is and the flexibility that we, for quite understandable reasons,
want to give to our troops. Having given them that flexibility,
having given them a system that is usable in that way, we need
now for our systems to catch up with that to give us the satisfaction
that we have got control on exactly what we have got, what we
have got that is workable, where we have got them and that we
are able to apply all of that equipment in the most cost-effective
way that is in line with where the effort is and where the needs
are. That is what we are working on. Terence, do you want to add
to the Bowman side of things?
Mr Jagger: I think you have covered
the main points. There are some which are in transit to and from
theatre; and there are some which are in repair with either the
original equipment manufacturer or the vehicle repair loop and
it is very difficult to keep a handle on those. We are introducing
a new system called "the management of joint deployed infantry"
which should improve the situation further. If I had been sitting
here a year ago I would have said we had our hands on exactly
where almost none of the Bowman were; now we have a very precise
understanding of where about 90% of them are, so we have come
a long way in a year and I am hopeful that we can improve further.
There are 36,000 of these and that does inevitably make it quite
a technically demanding challenge.
Q117 Chairman: Any private sector
organisation would know where things were in transit, would they
not?
Mr Jagger: I think they would,
but not many private sector organisations are fighting a considerable
combat in Afghanistan, and very few of them have the same complexity
of logistics processes that we do.
Mr Ainsworth: On the other side
of things, and I am not saying that this is an excuse, would you
have wanted us to put in a piece of equipment that said that the
soldier could not take the Bowman away from the vehicle without
filling in chits and providing the audit trail before he did in
any circumstance? I do not think the Committee would have wanted
us to apply that degree of rigidity to Forces in theatre?
Q118 Chairman: No, but we would have
wanted you to have put in some systems which allowed you to keep
track of this valuable equipment.
Mr Ainsworth: Absolutely.
Q119 Mr Jenkins: The difficulty we
have got, Secretary of State, is that we have just gone through
hoops to get £20 million out of the system to put back into
Territorials, and yet we have got figures like £268 million
on pay and conditions—and I may be incorrect or correct,
I am not sure—and we have got £155 million of assets
such as Bowman which we cannot put our hands on. Do you not think
these figures would strike dread within us? Having had to find
£20 million out of all this budget and screw the thing down,
to find we cannot account for these sort of figures is, to say
the least, a bit disappointing.
Mr Ainsworth: I do not think we
can afford to be complacent and I do not think we can ignore the
need for audit and that is what we are struggling to try to give
the Committee. If I believed that we had lost that equipment I
would be worried indeed. I do not believe we have lost that equipment.
I believe, as I have said, in a lot of instances soldiers in theatre
and elsewhere behave as they have been allowed to do because of
the equipment we have provided them with, and they have said,
"You might be having this vehicle back but you're not having
that Bowman, I might need that", or, "I do need that",
and that has broken the audit trail. I do not want to take that
ability and flexibility away from that man if that is what he
needs to do. What I do want is an audit system in place that measures
exactly what is happening so that we can track this equipment.
I do not think the problem is the size that your question seems
to indicate that it is. Yes, of course, we have got to be able
to prove where everything is, and we are struggling to try to
do so while we are fighting a very complicated war in an extremely
difficult theatre.
Chairman: Secretary of State, I want
to move on but I suspect we will be quite impolite about this
because the difference between losing equipment and not knowing
where it is strikes us as being not very great. Bernard Jenkin.
Q120 Mr Jenkin: I think the Permanent
Under-Secretary described them as "not lost but we just don't
know where they are"! Moving on to performance indicators,
I think we are becoming increasingly concerned about how meaningful
these performance indicators are because there is less and less
information provided with very general comments such as "some
progress", "no progress", "some progress",
"not assessed" about key DSO indicators. Are you satisfied
with the overall performance of the Department?
Mr Ainsworth: If you want to give
us specifics of performance indicators that you are unhappy with
that might be a way of getting into a quality debate about where
your concerns are.
Q121 Mr Jenkin: If we go to the Public
Service Agreements which are joint with other departments, we
said in a previous report: "It is indeed hard to see how
this will not affect the amount of information the MoD makes available
on those areas where it now contributes to performance indicators".
The point being that you are now giving so little information
about, for example, "to reduce the risk to the UK in its
interests overseas from international terrorism", which is
of course a Service agreement you share with the Home Office,
that it is difficult for us to glean anything from these comments?
Mr Ainsworth: Do you think that
that is easy to measure and to quantify in anything other than
the broadest of terms?
Q122 Mr Jenkin: You produce these
performance indicators which are meant to be providing some help
to us to show whether your Department is performing. If we move
on to the DSO targets, what does this mean, for example, "Be
ready to respond to tasks that might arise. Indicator 2.1: UK
contingent capability and delivery of force elements at readiness.
`No progress'. For a considerable time, Armed Forces have operated
above the level of concurrent operations which they are resourced
to sustain over time"? What are the metrics that you need
to share with us in order to put flesh on that comment, because
at the moment you do not share many figures with us?
Mr Ainsworth: We did share with
you a new methodology that we introduced called the Strategy for
Defence. I would not have thought the Committee would be the slightest
bit surprised that we are having to change some of our thinking
about what is important, because we are operating and we have
operated for some considerable time now well above defence planning
assumptions. I do not know what you describe Afghanistan as, whether
it is medium-scale plus or medium-scale plus plus; but having
got out of Operation TELIC, which of course was an achievement,
we now have over 9,000 troops in theatre in Afghanistan, but with
our ability to be ready for every contingent capability, the Committee
ought not to be surprised that it is not as it would ideally be.
We brought in the Strategy for Defence to try to be a little clearer
with the Committee and the outside world—and with our own
people more importantly—to make sure that they were focussed
on what I consider to be the main effort and give us a kind of
bridging strategy that would take us through to a Strategic Defence
Review which will come in the very near future as all three parties
are committing to holding them on.
Q123 Chairman: Secretary of State,
I think we will come on to the Strategy for Defence. I think the
issue that Bernard Jenkin is asking about is the precision of
the measurements that you have in your departmental strategic
objective?
Rear Admiral Richards: I think
I can give you a part of the answer with respect to the contingent
capabilities, and that is that the readiness metrics that we do
publish, the serious or critical weakness measures, reflect in
detail a link to that Department's strategic objective. That is
the way in which you can judge the extent to which we are ready
for dealing with the task that we may or may not be called upon
to undertake. That is the link with that DSO.
Q124 Mr Jenkin: What are the actions
that the Department needs to take in order to improve performance
against that target; or is it just waiting for a defence review,
which is where we seem to be?
Rear Admiral Richards: I think
in this context, and we will go into it further in the readiness
and recuperation point, the current operations are our number
one priority and that is where the vast majority of our Force
structure is focused at the moment above our planning assumptions.
Beyond that, we are seeking to generate a contingent capability
against those things we think are the most likely; but since a
large chunk of the Force structure is taken up with respect to
Afghanistan, you might expect in any case that the readiness for
other contingent operations is going to be significantly reduced.
The extent to which that reduction is caused by the deployment
in Afghanistan or caused by the fact that we are unable to train
for those other contingent operations is a subject which we have
touched on with the Committee in closed session, and obviously
you would not expect in this open session for us to go into in
detail.
Q125 Mr Jenkin: In summary, it seems
that some of these DSOs are really not very meaningful under the
current circumstances because we are putting all our effort into
Afghanistan, and really we are accepting that other aspects of
the Department's work basically goes to hell in a handcart?
Mr Ainsworth: We are not putting
all of our efforts into Afghanistan at all. Afghanistan is the
main effort and it has to be the main effort. I do not know whether
the Committee wants to disagree with that, but we have standing
commitments which we have to make sure that we are capable of
carrying out and we are focusing on recuperation to a small scale
capability, because a small scale capability is all that is going
to be practical for the immediate future with the size of the
commitment that we have got in Afghanistan.
Mr Jenkin: Does it not say something
about the Department that one operation requires large parts of
the rest of the Ministry of Defence to be hollowed out in order
to support that one operation?
Chairman: We will come on to the Strategy
for Defence later on. David Borrow.
Q126 Mr Borrow: Going back to the
Bowman issue in terms of the audit trail and dealing with performance
targets, departmental select committees have the job of scrutinising
departments to ensure that their audit is correct and that they
meet their performance targets. Would you say, when it comes to
the MoD during a war, that to expect the same standard of audit
and performance indicators is unrealistic and, if we sought to
do that, would that restrict the flexibility of the MoD in actually
carrying out what is its main task, which is to conduct military
operations when we are in the middle of a war?
Mr Ainsworth: I would say that
we should try to the best of our ability to maintain the maximum
degree of openness of audit that we can in the circumstances which
we face. Precisely what would anybody have us do: give the absolute
maximum effort to our current operations and make sure that audit
is a close second to that; or would they have us have the completion
and perfection of audit come above capability in theatre? I know
there is nobody on the Committee who would have the latter. I
think your question is absolutely valid, that something in the
circumstances with which we are faced is bound to give to some
degree. We have to try to minimise that degree so that we can
satisfy the Committee and others that we have got a handle on
where all of that equipment is.
Q127 Mr Jenkins: I do not think anyone
is saying "either/or" here. I think we are trying to
be helpful in some regards. I think Mr Jagger might be able to
help me here. The Treasury public expenditure system of 2008 and
their guidelines indicate that if it were using indicators like
"some progress" it is "where 50% or fewer indicators
had improved". Yet when I look across and see "some
progress" in the manning balance, but I know (although the
RAF has dipped slightly) the Army and Navy has increased, now
that does not give me "50% or fewer had improved" as
"some progress"; that should be "good progress".
You have got a good story to tell here but you do not seem to
have put it in the manner being indicated by the guidance. That
is why we are saying we require more of an indication from you
about where we are improving. If we can put some quantifiable
measures in there to show where we are improving I think it would
be a good indicator for the Department, rather than, as we have
got now, "some progress", "no progress", "some
progress", "no progress", "not assessed",
"some progress" or "broadly on track", whatever
that means?
Mr Jagger: I can try but it is
not my specialist area. First of all, there may be a disconnect
on time here, because this is the year ending March that is being
referred to, and I think the considerable improvement in recruitment
has happened at the latter end of last year and now. I am sure
we can provide more detailed figures on the manning balance later,
if you wish.
Chairman: We will certainly come on to
it.
Q128 Mr Hamilton: Secretary of State,
I have been here since 2001. At the end of 2001 we got involved
in Afghanistan which I supported along with the vast majority
of everyone in the House of Commons. During that period of time
we have been involved in two fronts and we are now backing out
of one and we are into Afghanistan. How satisfied are you that
"some progress" has been made in terms of success of
the military operations in Afghanistan?
Mr Ainsworth: On the Afghan operation
itself, the prism through which this is all seen back in the United
Kingdom is the deaths in theatre and that tends to wipe out in
the public mind and does damage to people's perceptions of the
success that we are having in Afghanistan. We have lost 98 people
this year and so no-one should be surprised if people are not
particularly concerned about where we are. Most of our Forces
are in Helmand Province and if you ask them and go to theatre,
as I know that you do, you will get many of the same answers that
I do, there has been considerable success over the last period
of time. We have seen a substantial influx of US Forces in Helmand
Province. We still control the main population centres but that
means that we have been able to hand-off some of the areas that
we had original responsibility for to the Americans. For instance,
Garmsir in the south is now all their responsibility; Nawzad,
where we had troops, the Americans now take care of; and that
has enabled us to perform operations like the one that was performed
in the winter of last year in Nadi Ali that brought an area of
central Helmand within the control and reach of the Afghan Government;
and in the summer the ISAF and ANSF operation which cleared a
large part (although not perfectly yet because it takes a long
while to build confidence among ordinary people after a military
operation) of the very important area between Garesht and Lashkar
Gah. If you go back, for instance, to 2008 where insurgents were
able to mount operations against Lashkar Gah itself, we have pushed
them out of some very important and very significant areas of
the central Helmand belt where most of the people live, and now
the governor and other agencies are able to get in there and are
able to start providing basic governmental services to the people
and some of the people were able to vote, not nearly enough of
them; so considerable progress has been made. I think we have
also made progress on the organisational side, and the degree
of the way in which the civilian effort in Helmand Province is
joined up with the military effort out in theatre is impressive
indeed and has come a long way.
Q129 Mr Hamilton: Could I add a third
element to that. Do you think that the public has an accurate
understanding of what we are doing in Afghanistan? If you do not
think that, why not?
Mr Ainsworth: No, the figures
have gone the other way, and I would not doubt those figures.
Why not? It is a complex situation. It is not easy to be able
to explain to people, first of all, why this theatre is so important
to their own security back here in the United Kingdom. There is
a tendency to believe this is a faraway place and the threat comes
from many and varied theatres, and we are therefore not suppressing
terrorism, we are not doing anything significant that is connected
to our own national security. I think that that is totally and
utterly wrong. The consequences of our people not being in Afghanistan
would be the pretty rapid collapse of the Afghan Government, the
control of at least a large part of the country by the Taliban
again, massive pressure on the Pakistanis next door at a time
when they really do not need that pressure, and when they are
fighting their own insurgency and really stepping up to the plate
in quite an impressive way in taking on the militants in their
own country, and that would bounce through into our own communities
and in the wider Muslim community. There are a lot of people in
the Muslim community who are desperate to resist some of the extremist
ideas that flow out of these regions, these medieval notions of
what Islam ought to be. Our failure I think would let them down
and set them back as well.
Q130 Mr Hamilton: The question I
put is how important is it to the operations that we get the public
support they require? We talk about winning hearts and minds in
Afghanistan, but you are not winning hearts and minds in the United
Kingdom. How are you going to deal with that?
Mr Ainsworth: I think it is absolutely
vital. Our troops can be as good as they are; their morale and
their spirit can be as high as I see it every time I go out there;
but if they do not believe that there is support back here at
home—not only for them, which I think has improved massively
over the last couple of years (the level of support for our Armed
Forces has gone up considerably) but for the operations in which
they are engaged—then I think that is a very difficult situation.
We have suffered a lot of losses; we have had a period of hiatus
while McChrystal's plan and his requested uplift has been looked
at in the detail to which it has been looked at over a period
of some months; and we have had the Afghan elections which have
been far from perfect, let us say, and all of those things have
mitigated against our ability to be able to show progress and
to put that on the other side of the scales when we are suffering
the kind of losses that we are. The Afghan elections are now over.
We must now get the Afghan Government in the place where they
start delivering on governance and action against corruption.
I hope and believe we are about to get an announcement from the
USA on troop numbers. I think that that will be followed by contributions
from many other NATO allies, so we will be able to show that we
are going forward in this campaign to an extent we have not been
able to in the last few months with those issues still hanging.
Q131 Mr Hamilton: Secretary of State,
my concern is this: the three main parties in the United Kingdom—at
least the three that I know about—support our efforts in
Afghanistan. You base the support of the public on your operations
in Afghanistan on whether it succeeds or not. I go further than
that: if the three main parties in the United Kingdom agree on
the strategy, agree on the involvement, why is it that the three
main parties, led by this Government, are not out there arguing
the case that we should be there and the reasons why we should
be there, instead of individually arguing a case and at the same
time criticising certain things that happen within Afghanistan?
Why is it that you cannot get across the floor agreement between
the three leaders arguing the case that we should be there? Why
is it that we are losing that support? It is not just a question
of the end judgment. If you believe in the cause, you win the
argument with people, the people will support that cause. I put
it to you that we are not winning that argument because people
are still confused between what we are doing in Iraq and what
we are doing in Afghanistan and the two are entirely separate.
Over the last eight years this Government and the Opposition have
been negligent in not separating those two arguments.
Mr Ainsworth: Negligence is not
a word that I would use. I think it has been problematic. I have
now been a minister in the MoD for two and a half years and when
I first went in there nobody was the slightest bit interested
in what was going on in Afghanistan. Afghanistan was something
that was going on that the media by and large had no interest
in at all, the whole of the focus was on Iraq. It was extremely
difficult to get anybody to pay any attention or to have any interest
in it. When we drew down on Iraq, of course, then the focus shifted,
and the focus shifted onto Afghanistan. Despite the fact we have
got agreement in principle across the political spectrum to continue
in the operations in Afghanistan that does not get us over many
of the problems that cause ordinary people in my constituency
and yours to doubt what we are doing and the commitment we have
to it. I have tried as best I can to build a political consensus
that avoids that, but it does break down. I got a little angry
with my opposite number in the summer when he told people that
there were vehicles in Dubai that were badly needed in theatre
and we were effectively betraying our troops. Those were ridgeback
vehicles that we could not possibly have got out for the start
of the deployment of 19 Brigade; they were needed for the start
of the deployment of 11 Brigade; they were on their way to theatre
and they were actually ahead of schedule; and yet the story that
was reported across the press was that we were betraying our troops.
When things like that happen I think it undermines quite substantially
the degree of confidence that our people have because the reaction
of my constituents and yours is not, "Well, the Government
needs to try a little bit harder"; the reaction too often
is, "Get them out. Just get them out. If you can't provide
them with vehicles then get them out". I have had that and
you have had that. When you go to theatre you will struggle. The
Chief of Defence Staff indeed said this only the other day to
both me and the Prime Minister: "I tried very hard to get
somebody to complain about their kit and I failed". That
is the general response that you get from soldiers in theatre,
but that is not the response we get back here; at home the perception
is totally and utterly different. If we do not all work at it,
and indeed work at it even in this pre-election period, and if
even backbenches, never mind the frontbenches, play games off
the side then we will do serious damage to what I think is a vital
mission that is very, very important to the future of NATO, to
the security of our country, and to our national interests. We
cannot lose this in theatre; NATO cannot lose this in theatre,
but our will, our resolve, can be eroded back here at home if
we do not all pull together.
Chairman: Secretary of State, I think
you will find this Committee—certainly I—believe this
is the most important thing that the country faces. I want to
add one further point that I personally believe—I would
suspect that the Committee believes but I have not asked them—that
it is a very good thing that the Prime Minister writes letters
of a personal nature to the families of those who have died. I
personally would be grateful if you would pass on to him my gratitude
for his doing so on behalf of the country.
Q132 Linda Gilroy: Secretary of State,
a moment or two ago you referred to the medieval nature of the
enemy we are facing but there is a paradox about that in that
they are also very sophisticated in how they use the media, and
this is something the McChrystal Report points to; but what is
your assessment of just how sophisticated they are? Is that not
one of the gaps that Mr Hamilton's line of questioning was pointing
to, that actually there is not a proper appreciation of just how
sophisticated they are about manipulating people over here who
are willing to play into the sort of talking down of the effort
in Afghanistan?
Mr Ainsworth: I think we have
got to try and be better as well. We are in a complicated coalition.
We do not want to undermine progress that is being made by the
Afghan Government itself. We have got to join the bits up across
the ISAF coalition and we have got to be extremely mindful in
anything that we say publicly of operational security. We cannot
jeopardise operational security or put our own people at risk,
but I do think that sometimes because of the complexities of that
coalition structure and worries about operational security that
we potentially go too far and, therefore, we are not as forward
leaning as we need to be in terms of explaining in a timely manner—because
nobody is interested in history; once something is done and dusted
it is gone and forgotten about—we have got to get as up
to the front on the story as we possibly can and be able to explain
to people better, as best we can, what we are doing, how we are
doing it, where we fail be upfront and go out and say that and
where we succeed and give people proper measures for the success.
The Afghans have been pretty good at exploiting the media both
in country and out of country. You saw some messaging that they
were effectively targeting on the American public during the Obama
consideration of the McChrystal review.
Q133 Linda Gilroy: The Afghans or
the Taliban Afghans?
Mr Ainsworth: The Taliban. Some
of the notions of society are positively medieval. The kind of
things that we maybe suffered in this country a millennium or
two ago they would visit on their people, but they use modern
methods of communication in order to get their message across
and to undermine us.
Q134 Robert Key: Secretary of State,
could we turn now to the Ministry of Defence support for high
intensity operations. In May this year the National Audit Office
produced a report on this and they identified in a nutshell four
points: shortage of spares; shortage of pre-deployment training
equipment; supply chain problems; and patchy welfare provision.
What has the Ministry of Defence done since that report was published
in May to implement the main recommendations of the National Audit
Office?
Mr Ainsworth: First of all, I
would just try to put it into context by saying that when we get
a new piece of kit and equipment, and let us take Mastiff as an
example where we have had a problem with spares, the most important
thing was to get that vehicle into theatre. The threat had switched:
the degree of mines, of IEDs, and amount of toll that it was taking
on our people was going up exponentially; we had to get that first-class
vehicle out into theatre as quickly as we possibly could and we
had to worry about the spares and worry about the pre-deployment
opportunities afterwards. We have tried our level best to backfill
both the training requirements and the spares requirement as fast
as we can after that. I make no excuses for wanting to get the
vehicle into theatre first in order to save lives. That is just
one example.
Rear Admiral Richards: That is
absolutely right, Secretary of State. You will be aware that we
have plans currently in train of delivery to generate a greater
amount of equipment to support the training earlier on in the
preparation for theatre, but with respect to UORs our first aim
is to get the equipment into theatre as quickly as possible. It
is true that in order to do that one short-circuits or makes the
equipment available within the training pipeline at a later date.
Similarly, because of the time taken to provide the spares, when
the equipment arrives first in theatre the spares load is much
reduced, and that then subsequently builds up over time. We are
seeing, with respect to the large numbers of new equipments that
we are putting in place, a better availability of spares, but
there will always be a pressure on such a system which is designed
to operate more quickly. Part of the UOR system, and one of the
things that makes it more rapid in delivery as against normal
equipment procurement, is that we are able to spend less time
on the spares and support package than we do with respect to equipments
that we buy through the core budget, and that is why it gets into
theatre quicker. So there is a risk there, but it is a risk that
is worth taking to deliver the new equipment in a more rapid manner.
Q135 Robert Key: Do you say, Secretary
of State, that the Department gives a high priority to introducing
these measures along the lines of the NAO recommendations?
Mr Ainsworth: Yes, they are an
appropriate priority. Can I just make a comment about this story
that is current about the Bulldog. This is the other end of the
problem that we have. It has been widely reported in the press
in the last few days that we spent £149 million on upgrading
tanks that are now being used only for training in Canada. These
were bought in 2006 and they were bought for Iraq, not for Afghanistan.
If we recall, at the time we were running convoys into an urban
environment in Basra where our people were being shot at by rockets,
and some of them were travelling around in Snatch Land Rovers
and the absolute urgency was to get the Snatch Land Rover back
into the base and off the streets of Basra, and the Bulldog was
extremely well thought of as a lifesaving piece of kit. We lost
a lot of power because we got a lot of armour onto this vehicle,
so, yes, there was no way it could go up and down hills or whatever.
We knew the consequences of that, it was for that urban environment
and it was a lifesaving piece of kit and equipment badly needed
at the time. Now, somebody three years after the fact says, "Oh
dear, they've spent all this money on some kit and equipment that's
now only being used for training". How many people's lives
would have been lost because we could not fill the gap with Mastiff
alone. Mastiff was superb for the Iraq environment, and superb
for the Afghan environment. We had to try to get as many Mastiff
as we could and as quickly as we could but we could not do it
with Mastiff alone; Bulldog filled a vital niche at the time.
Q136 Mr Havard: You mentioned earlier
on the Strategy for Defence, and my colleague, Mr Jenkin, asked
you some questions about PSO and DSO targets. We have asked questions
before about this. We asked about these NAO recommendations, not
just in high intensity areas but in a number of other areas. To
allow us to do some sort of forensic examination and understand
things properly, what you said to us about the NAO was, "We
have major improvement programmes underway". I ask what they
are, a description would be nice and some sort of timetable, some
sort of idea would be helpful. You say in the Strategy for Defence,
you are going to have "a revised and relevant performance
management system". What is it? Where is it? What will it
look like? When will it be in place? How will it relate to these
other systems? Can you please give us some better understanding
of how the assessments that Robert is asking about are actually
made, are then evaluated, and actions taken on them within the
appropriate time that you decide is necessary? I have no understanding
of that and we would like some further and better particulars,
please?
Mr Ainsworth: Maybe some of my
colleagues can fill you in on some of the details of that. All
I would say to you, and try to explain to the Committee what I
am trying to do with the Strategy for Defence, is that a lot of
these systems automatically and understandably flow from the Strategic
Defence Review, and therefore the Defence Planning Assumptions
and all the other methods and systems that we have to measure
ourselves with in theatre. The reality of the situation that we
are in now is that we have another Strategic Defence Review due
in the relatively near future, and we have an ongoing operation
that is well above planning defence assumptions that will go on
beyond that date. So we really do need a bridging methodology
that makes certain that the Department is focused on what is absolutely
important in that interim period, and that overwhelmingly is Afghanistan.
Afghanistan has to be the main effort, and, yes, of course, these
other standing commitments and what we can realistically—while
we are in still in Afghanistan the size that we are—regenerate
as contingent capability is important. We have got to have that
focus.
Chairman: Secretary of State, I am going
to stop you there because I think you are answering a question
that Dai Havard did not ask.
Mr Havard: Which someone else is about
to ask!
Q137 Chairman: I am also conscious
of the fact that we are going to finish by lunchtime and we would
like it to be lunchtime today! Could you please consider the question
that Dai Havard has just asked, and it may require a written answer
because of the detail of what he asked.
Mr Ainsworth: Shall I ask Rear
Admiral Richards just to say a few words?
Mr Havard: All I am trying to get to
is that underneath a word like "methodology" there is
practice and process and we need to understand what that practice
and process is, and what the timescale and what the evaluation,
the metrics and everything else, are involved with the individual
separate processes and how they combine collectively.
Q138 Chairman: This is a question
which sounds as though it needs a schedule of some detail.
Rear Admiral Richards: One quick
step back if I may, Chairman. With respect to how we measure ourselves,
and this links to PSAs and DSOs, the whole of our Defence Planning
Assumptions, which were published in a written ministerial statement
of 11 February this year, are pointed at the Department's obligations
under our Departmental Strategic Objectives and PSAs. So we organise
ourselves, we focus ourselves in delivering those Defence Planning
Assumptions against those targets. We then measure ourselves in
terms of, I think it is, the 18 military tasks for which we generate
Force elements at readiness capabilities which we also report
against, those serious or critical points. We report against those
at the moment in a process called the "balanced score card".
This has many benefits but where it fails is in the way in which
it directs senior management about what you might do with respect
to measurement. As a result of that, my team have been taking
forward a new focus on a strategic performance management system,
which the Defence Board, not the ministerial committee yet but
the Board, took about a month and a half ago and agreed that we
would put into a dummy run, which we will be generating for the
new year and for a full measured system against the target of
31 March this year.
Chairman: That is very helpful to know.
Could you write to us giving more details, please.
Q139 Robert Key: Could I ask two
very brief questions. We all understand that the defence budget
is squeezed given the national financial situation, and that you
have to reprioritise. Is it true that the St Athan Defence Training
Academy has now slipped way to the right because of constraints
on your ability to spend?
Mr Ainsworth: No.
Q140 Robert Key: That is absolutely
on schedule?
Mr Ainsworth: Despite the growth
there has been in the defence budget, yes, of course we are under
some pressure with the fiscal and economic situation in the operations
that we are conducting. As of yet, the assessment we have had
is that it has slipped in the past, as you know, but there is
no further slippage that I need to report to the Committee.
Q141 Robert Key: The second question,
arising from the NAO Report, is they expressed concern about welfare
provision for forward Forces. Could you just take this opportunity
to explain what are the Christmas arrangements here for post and
parcels and for free talk time, because that is something, certainly
at a constituency level, there is considerable concern about?
Mr Ainsworth: Our main problem
every year is that with the generosity of the British public and
the focus that there is on the sacrifice of our people unsolicited
mail swamps the system and prevents vital and much desired personal
parcels and messages from getting through to our people in a timely
way. That has happened before. We have tried our level best to
guard against it. We have tried not to turn off the generosity,
because that is the very last thing we want to do, but we have
tried to direct people to proper channels through which they can
show their generosity and their love. There are various charitable
organisations which will organise in a way that we can deal with
and in a way which would be wholly appreciated by our troops at
Christmas and not just swamp the system. I go out to British Forces
Post Office at Christmas—I did last year—and it is
a complete and absolute nightmare. There are just unaddressed
"Commander, Helmand Province" gifts and some of them
are perishables as well. There are cakes and all kinds of lovely
stuff in there and there is tonnes of it, absolutely tonnes of
it. People are trying to sift through it in order to get to one
that is from a fiance[acute] or a mother to a son and make sure
that that gets delivered on time. That is our biggest worry. We
will be putting in the usual announcements to enable people to
talk to each other at Christmas as best we can. This is a very
difficult theatre in which we are operating.
Chairman: Thank you very much. Moving
on to manning issues.
Q142 Robert Key: It is very encouraging
that recruitment has been rising this year, but do you have the
capacity within the training system and budget to take advantage
of the extra inflow of personnel?
Mr Ainsworth: It has also given
us some financial difficulties, the fact that recruitment has
risen more rapidly than we had assumed. I am not being told there
is a problem in the training capacity by any of the three Forces,
but I will check it out and come back to the Committee if that
is not so.
Q143 Robert Key: I understand that
another of the problems that has arisen from increased recruiting,
which is a very good thing, is that there is now a shortage of
accommodation because of the additional recruitment, that at a
local level there is a real problem there. Is that the case?
Mr Ainsworth: At places like Catterick,
you mean?
Q144 Robert Key: At garrisons around
the country.
Mr Ainsworth: In the training
establishments?
Q145 Robert Key: Absolutely, and
for married quarters as well?
Mr Ainsworth: I have not had any
reports. You mean the overall accommodation, whether or not we
have got enough Service family accommodation or whether or not
we have got enough single living accommodation?
Q146 Robert Key: No, I mean very
specifically for new recruits?
Mr Ainsworth: You mean in the
training establishments. I have had nothing back that places like
Catterick are not coping but I can check it out.
Q147 Robert Key: I would be very
grateful if you could perhaps look into it and let us know. It
is obviously another pressure on you?
Mr Ainsworth: Yes.
Q148 Robert Key: What about the pinch-point
trades here? The figures that we have seen recently are a bit
alarming, to be perfectly honest. If you look at the Royal Navy
Lieutenant Commander XSM Command Qualified, there is a shortfall
of around 40%. Harrier GR7 Instructors, a shortage of around 45%.
In the Army there are pinch-points here in avionics technologists,
in all sorts of these pinch-point areas. How are you addressing
that?
Mr Ainsworth: By focused packages
aimed at retention of the individuals in many, many circumstances,
but it is enormously difficult and there are often time lags on
some of these recruitment issues to compete with the commercial
sector when they target highly skilled young people. Our ability
to do so on the financial package alone is very difficult. We
try to target specific allowances and inducements for people to
come and to stay but it is difficult.
Rear Admiral Richards: With respect
to the pinch-point trades in particular, and some of those are
very senior officers, you are not looking at recruiting necessarily
to deal with that problem, you are talking about retention. We
have seen significant reduction in voluntary outflow in recent
months which will and is already contributing significantly to
the pinch-point trade position improving. I think we have seen
an improving picture over the last several months and we would
expect to see that continuing. Some of these things take a very
long time to deal with.
Q149 Robert Key: Could I ask you
just to clarify for us the difference between first contact recruitment—people
turning up to a recruitment office and saying "I want to
join up"—and the number of people who are eventually
recruited and go into training. These are two different ideas,
I think. Whilst it has been very good to see an increase in actual
recruitment and training which I believe, and perhaps you could
confirm, has led to the military being able to be more picky about
who they take in, is that true?
Mr Ainsworth: We are seeing some
evidence of that both in terms of the quality and quantity of
people signing up to join the Armed Forces and that ought to,
although I have had no specific evidence presented to me yet,
help us with what the Army dreadfully call "wastage rates"
in training. If they are able to be more selective then we are
going to be able to get more people through training and so it
ought to be a virtual circle. I have not seen figures which suggest
that is the case yet.
Rear Admiral Richards: We have
not got definitive figures on that, but I have embryonic evidence
that the situation on wastage rates is improving significantly
and we are getting many more people out of the training pipeline
than we previously did, all of which is helping our current position
to come into manning balance in the very near future if we are
not there today.
Q150 Robert Key: One final point,
Chairman, on this. I have heard reports that between October 2008
and October 2009 the number of initial contacts at recruitment
centres has fallen due to the bad publicity caused by the number
of deaths in Afghanistan and the associated ceremonial of them
coming home, which has actually put people off from signing up.
Is that correct?
Mr Ainsworth: Our recruitment
position has improved, and improved quite considerably. How much
of that is down to the increased recognition that there has been
of our Armed Forces and the increased esteem within which they
are held and the recession, it is very hard to say. I would have
thought there is no doubt there is still some resistance from
mothers and family members and attempts to discourage people from
joinin, but we have seen an improvement, not the other way round.
Q151 Mr Jenkins: With regard to pinch-points,
I am not sure I got the answer I would have liked, to be honest,
and I want to pursue it a little bit more. Whilst I recognise
that anaesthetists are quite a difficult post to fill and you
have taken them out of the medical schools or wherever, when I
see the Leading Aircraft Engineering Technician in the Navy, of
which we are 300 short, you can imagine it is a long training
programme possibly but the youngsters would want to become involved
in that programme while they come out as a qualified technician,
and if we have not got those people the ones we have got we are
overworking, they are overstretched, with family breakdowns and
family problems and they leave the Services to get a job elsewhere
so it is reinforcing the problem. I do not have the feeling that
you have got a strategy that is really fit at the moment to deal
with these problems. I know it is difficult when you have got
very small numbers but with large numbers it is not so difficult
because you can put a training programme in to deal with it. When
we ask you what are you doing about it we would like a more positive
response, please?
Rear Admiral Richards: I cannot
speak—although I am a Naval aviator—specifically to
the Leading Airman Engineering training, but I do know that for
many of these technical trades it takes three or four years to
get to the Leading Rate level. The improvements that we have seen
in recruiting that we have reported recently are a function of
the last six or seven months. Our ability to translate that improvement
into an improvement in pinch-point trades is challenging. With
respect to the focus that the Services give to these pinch-point
trades, they are very significant. They recruit to the maximum
extent possible that they can into them, but for the technical
trades they require people of a certain calibre before they can
start the training pipeline. On the availability of those people,
the Services are competing with a range of employers for good
quality people. There is a significant focus on doing that, but
the challenge for us is the time it takes both to recruit the
person in the first instance and then to train them to the Leading
Hand, Petty Officer, or Lieutenant Commander level.
Q152 Mr Havard: I think the question
implicit in what my colleague is asking is where are the emergency
training programmes for large groups of people with these sorts
of skills that are not anaesthetists, doctors and so on? Where
is that sort of effort coming, because we do not seem to see it?
We would have thought with the volumes like this that that might
be an approach you might look at.
Mr Ainsworth: Let us just get
one thing into context, and not give people the impression that
it is so. There is no shortage of medics in theatre.
Q153 Mr Havard: I am not talking
about medics, I am talking about people like aircraft technicians,
where there are 300 missing?
Rear Admiral Richards: I would
say, again, this is not my specialist area in terms of the training,
but in practice across our Force structure we are very focused
on ensuring that the right levels of training and experience are
linked to the individuals. We have a requirement to ensure, if
they work on aircraft and other things, that they get the appropriate
levels of training. Short-circuiting the training and experience
pipeline is not something that we are looking to do.
Q154 Mr Jenkins: Why is it you are
saying there is nothing you can do about this problem? Believe
me, there is something you must do about this problem. We are
asking you what must we do now? What plans have you got for meeting
some of these pinch-point trade gaps? That is all we are asking.
Mr Ainsworth: I gave evidence
to the Armed Forces Pay Review Body in which they have been notified
of other pinch-points and pointed to our need for them to take
that into account in the remuneration package they are bringing
forward, so this is not something we are complacent about. We
know it has to be addressed. It is a moving situation. We are
hopeful that some of it will sort itself out over time as the
recruitment position increases, but there are no easy answers.
We have got to try and focus some of these incentive packages.
We have got to step up our recruitment as best we can and fill
the pinch-point trades as best we can.
Q155 Chairman: Secretary of State,
you said there was no shortage of medics in theatre, if there
is a 50% shortfall in Radiologists Major plus, a 46% shortfall
in Radiographers Corporal, a 53% shortfall in Anaesthetists Major,
then if there is not a shortfall now there soon will be.
Mr Ainsworth: If you go out into
theatre, as I know that you do, Chairman, you will see the variation
where the people are coming from who are manning our field hospitals
in Bastion and the rest of it. At any one time there will be a
higher proportion of regulars; a higher proportion of reservists;
from time to time we will hand-off part of that capability. The
last time I was out there there were a lot of Danes who were providing
a big part of the medical capability; but I have never seen a
shortage. I see a variation in how we are managing to fill all
of those posts, but I have never seen a shortage and I do not
think you have either.
Chairman: We are relying increasingly
heavily on a smaller and smaller group of people. Voluntary outflow
is something that you did mention.
Linda Gilroy: Perhaps if I could just
ask for some specific information on the last point. Looking at
the different trade shortages in the Royal Navy, Army and RAF
there are shortages of medical nursing officers listed under the
Army but not under the Navy. Earlier on you referred to some uncertainty
about the Naval Reserve and the numbers in the Naval Reserve;
but the Naval Reserve is probably backfilling a lot of the shortages
in those areas. I would be very interested to know what the manning
level is in this respect. It is probably not something you could
produce now, but if you could give the Committee a note on it
that might be helpful in understanding the nursing side of shortages
particularly.[1]
On voluntary outflows, the equation that makes up readiness and
recuperation voluntary outflows are a very important part of that,
and the Department reported an improvement to voluntary outflows,
yet earlier, when we were talking about the Joint Personnel Administration
not having the figures for the Army, which represents over half
of the strength of the Forces, I think the last available figures
were for 2006, so how can you actually be sure that the voluntary
outflow is in fact improving without that key data?
Rear Admiral Richards: In addressing
the lack of JPA information previously, we have done a lot of
work with DASA recently to improve that position, so I think there
is an improving position on the JPA information. Secondly, whether
stuff is input into JPA or not, we have the reports of individuals
on the ground in the Commands and elsewhere, and in regiments,
battalions, naval ships, an understanding of the number of people
who are applying to leave the Services, and that is significantly
down. The statistics for it take some time to flow through. I
do not have a definitive number to give you now, although we will
have DASA figures coming out shortly, but the reports from on
the ground, which I need to get so we can take action in respect
of recruiting and other measures, are that the situation on voluntary
outflows is significantly improving and the voluntary outflows
are reducing significantly.
Q156 Linda Gilroy: So do you really
have sufficient data to target retention initiatives in the Army
to the best effect? From what you have said, you have but it is
not perfect yet.
Rear Admiral Richards: For the
reasons that we know, it takes time to grow people for pinch point-trades.
We are absolutely clear that we will need to continue to use retention
initiatives against those pinch-point trades to address the point
that Mr Jenkins made earlier, which is to use every best effort
to ensure that we are both retaining the people that are in those
pinch-point trades and recruiting and training people into them.
So whatever the voluntary outflow does, in respect of the pinch-point
trades I think it is unlikely that we will see a diminution in
the financial retention incentives.
Mr Jagger: You asked if we had
the data we needed to make those judgments. There is some confusion
about the statistics out of JPA. Every time JPA is mentioned,
people think, "Oh, we can't trust the numbers." That
is absolutely not true. There are some technical issues about
providing statistical quality data, which is why you have not
seen all the Army numbers, but we have very, very good data from
JPA and other sources on the Army and particular trades, outflow
and lots of other things. We can provide more detail in a written
answer if that would be helpful.
Q157 Linda Gilroy: I was just going
to say is that publishable in some form so we can get a sense
of what you mean by that?
Mr Jagger: The process we can
write and tell you about, yes.[2]
Q158 Linda Gilroy: Are the measures
in place to improve retention, such as the commitment to bonus
working? Are there any deficiencies in what you are able to offer
to people to retain them, particularly in those important pinch-point
trades?
Mr Ainsworth: There is always
a balance, because it all comes out of the budget at the end of
the day, and you have to try and get a balance of what you want
the bottom-line offer to the Services to be. That is something
that the Armed Forces Pay Review body has to juggle with all the
time: how much of the money it puts into pinch-points, how much
of the money it applies to the bottom line, uplifting salaries.
We have seen in the feedback surveys that we do with our people,
which are pretty good; they have held up quite high, but pay is
a growing consideration among members of the Armed Forces.
Q159 Linda Gilroy: Satisfaction with
Service life does not rate quite so well. Only half of the Other
Ranks personnel surveyed said they were satisfied with Service
life. Is that an acceptable level? Are you satisfied with that?
Mr Ainsworth: No, you cannot be,
but it has not fallen back, has it? The one that has fallen back,
the one that has changed, is the significance of remuneration.
Q160 Linda Gilroy: That is just slightly
less than half. The Officer Ranks are showing overall 64%, and
presumably you would want to see it improve. Operations and overstretch
and the impact of Service life on family life are cited as amongst
the most common reasons for leaving. How concerned are you by
the numbers exceeding the harmony guidelines and the way in which
that has an effect as part of this whole equation on readiness
and recuperation? You will know that this time last year there
were something in the region of 2,000-3,000 serving personnel
from the Devon and Cornwall area, and everybody is wondering at
what point they are going to have to redeploy. Families, what
they are talking about and all these issues work together to make
up how people feel about whether they are going to stay or whether
they are going to go, how these outflow figures are working. What
would be your assessment? How concerned are you at how all of
that works together? Do you think you are really stepping up to
the mark to do enough?
Mr Ainsworth: As I tried to indicate
earlier, this is a package and you cannot retain the calibre of
people and the numbers of people that you want by pay alone. It
is the offer to people entering the Services. Of course, they
look at harmony and accommodation as well as money and the bottom
line, and it is also how they are thought of by the population
at large as well. There has been some improvement in harmony and
it is being managed in order to try to spread the load better
than it was. I am surprised with us getting out of TELIC that
it is not falling faster but that might be my own expectations
having been too high as to how quickly we can get back—
Chairman: That is what we are going to
get on to now. The Committee will now move on from the Annual
Report and Accounts to ask some questions now about the Green
Paper and about Readiness and Recuperation.
1 See Ev 48 Back
2
See Ev 48 Back
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