The Strategic Defence and Security Review and the National Security Strategy - Defence Committee Contents

Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers 171-258)

Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope GCB OBE ADC, General Sir Peter Wall KCB CBE ADC Gen and Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton KCB ADC

11 May 2011

Q171 Chair: Gentlemen, thank you very much for attending this session on the Strategic Defence And Security Review. Particular thanks go to the CGS, who spent the morning with us as well.

  General Sir Peter Wall: It is a pleasure, Chairman.

Q172 Chair: You almost sound as though you meant it. This morning I asked you to introduce yourselves. First Sea Lord, would you like to begin?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Yes, I am Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope. I am the First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff. I have been in the job for some 20 months now and was certainly there throughout the whole period of this Security and Defence Review.

  General Sir Peter Wall: I am Peter Wall, as you know. I am the CGS—still, even after this morning—and I took office in the middle of September, about four weeks before the formal culmination of the SDSR.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: I am Air Chief Marshal Stephen Dalton. I have been Chief of the Air Staff for about 20 months—throughout the period of SDSR, certainly—and am still here, as well.

Q173 Chair: As a triumvirate, I do not think that you have appeared before us before—you are all welcome. The inquiry is about the SDSR. We want to lead from the existence of the National Security Council through to the National Security Strategy and into the SDSR itself. I will begin with questions on the National Security Council. We were told by the Secretary of State for Defence that one of the Single Service Chiefs might be invited to attend the National Security Council "Were there to be a specific reason" to do so. Will you describe your relationships with, and input into, the National Security Council, and say whether you have, on any occasion, been invited to meetings of the National Security Council, please?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Do you want me to start?

  Chair: That would be fine.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: In terms of the existence of the National Security Council, we, as a group—not Peter, of course; Peter's predecessor—attended one National Security Council towards the latter part of the SDSR to discuss SDSR issues, not national strategy.[1] We are engaged with the National Security Council through the Chief of the Defence Staff, who seeks our inputs on a weekly basis through the Chiefs of Staff Committee, which meets on a Monday.

Q174 Chair: So you have been all together, collectively, once? Have any of you been singly to the National Security Council?

  General Sir Peter Wall: Not yet. I think that is largely because most of the issues have been sufficiently general for CDS not to want to take a subject-matter expert with him, or the Secretary of State, for that matter. Of course, on occasions the Vice-Chief represents the CDS, but so far, that has not happened.

Q175 Chair: Professor Mike Clarke told us that "The NSC and the NSS are very closely connected, but the NSC and the Defence Review are less connected than they should have been". Was he right, CAS?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: Certainly the involvement of the Chiefs with the National Security Strategy was one of working within the Department, which then gave its input across the road in the Cabinet Office, as the Cabinet Office secured the strategy. To that extent, we were involved as a group of advisers, rather than individually, directly with the Cabinet Office development of the strategy. In terms of the review, we definitely were involved, again through a series of meetings both inside the Department and elsewhere. The point that my colleagues did not mention is that we certainly had at least two sessions with the Prime Minister and some of the NSC separately from the major NSC meeting that we had during the SDSR. We were involved quite a lot in that as it was developed and brought forward, but the majority of our work has certainly been inside the Department, fed in through CDS and the Secretary of State.

Q176 Chair: What do you think about the National Security Council and the Defence Review—the SDSR, I suppose he meant—being less connected than they should have been?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: There is a sense of strategy being ends, ways and means, and the strategy that was produced required the SDSR to satisfy the ways and the means piece. I do not entirely agree that they are completely disconnected. The debate is as indicated. We did have discussions in the Defence Strategy Group—the group that the Secretary of State set up to discuss these issues within the Ministry of Defence—and in those, we discussed the vigilant, adaptable, committed Britain posture that was a major feature of the defence aspects of the Strategic Defence and Security Review. There was engagement, but it wasn't direct. I am not entirely in agreement that they are completely divorced from one another.

Q177 Chair: I don't think that is what he said. He didn't say that they were completely divorced. He said that "the NSC and the Defence Review are less connected than they should have been". The implication of what you just said is that you think the ends, the ways and the means were all sufficiently connected and were all sufficient, and that the SDSR was, therefore, a good outcome.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: That is not what I said. I said that a connection strategy is an ends, ways and means product. The National Security Strategy itself, as a paper, gave us the ends. The ways and the means were connected through the publication, or the formulation, of the SDSR. I didn't necessarily say, as you indicate, that all the consequences are perfect.

Q178 Chair: We will come on to whether the means were sufficient in a few moments' time. Actually, it will be quite a number of moments' time. How has the National Security Council improved strategic thinking and decision making within your individual services?

  General Sir Peter Wall: I would first point to the clarity that has come from having a very senior political lead—the Prime Minister, with Ministers present—on the Afghanistan campaign and its wider ramifications in the Pakistan context, and so on. Having worked as the DCDS (Operations) under the previous arrangements, it is clear how much it is being driven from the very top. The clarity that cascades down to the people who have to put it into operation is very welcome.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: I would add the obvious connection between the National Security Strategy, as it drives through the guidance, and the direction that a National Security Council provides through into what is ultimately maritime strategy. From my point of view, there has to be a connector. The mechanisms that have been introduced through the NSC are constructive.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: I have two things to add to that. First, there is no question that we now get much better strategic direction on what is going on than we perhaps did before the formation of the NSC. That is mainly because there is a clear programme of work that looks out at not only the current issues, but the issues that are downstream, out to 2020 and so on. We have had much more clarity on what the strategic direction is. The balance, which still has to be worked out, is how much of it is about today's issues, and how much is about the issues of the next 10 years. One of the things that we feel—I certainly feel it in my service—is that we need slightly more clarity on the ways in which we are going to get to 2020, rather than on getting through the next year's worth of operations, or the operations that we are doing today.

  Chair: Thank you. I agree with that.

Q179 Mr Brazier: I have two questions. I will come back to the First Sea Lord's point about maritime interface, but first I want to ask a wily question of all three of you. What assessment has been made of the UK's ability to cope with a combination of the risks? At the moment, for example, we are involved in two major operations. All three services are involved in one, and two are involved in the other. Would we still be able to cope with a large-scale civil emergency at home?

  General Sir Peter Wall: What sort of large-scale civil emergency? If we are talking about some of the things that we have been working on, such as something linked to disputes in the prison service, which isn't large scale, but is significant, there is a clear contingency plan that is not affected by operations in Afghanistan or as part of the NATO force in Libya.

Q180 Mr Brazier: Yes, but we have seen what has happened in Japan. We are not in an earthquake zone, so it is unlikely that we would have an exact repetition of that problem, but we have suddenly seen 100,000 people called out at very short notice to cope with a particular problem.

  General Sir Peter Wall: If you wanted 100,000 people, that would have an impact on operations in Afghanistan.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: I think it's also worth recognising that the SDSR itself laid the ground for indicating that a best-effort approach to that sort of emergency would be a feature of our business, and we would need to recognise it.

Q181 Mr Brazier: Absolutely. May I take you a little further, First Sea Lord, specifically on the issue of coastal security? Considering that we are an island and that 95% of our goods come into this country by sea, it struck me that it was astonishing how little the National Security document said about coastal security. Can I press you a little as to who is responsible for the security of our ports, our coastline and so on?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: While the SDSR document itself did not draw great attention to it, there has been some significant activity as a consequence. The formation of the National Maritime Information Centre at Northwood at the moment is a good example of how we are trying to grip the numerous agencies. You asked me who was responsible; a vast plethora of different authorities are responsible for different aspects of the security around our coast. The NMIC is a good starting place to draw together all those organisations into one central position, to at least get the information hub sorted out, and out of that should grow more coherence. The responsibilities for the judicial piece and the wider security piece are under different departments.

Q182 Mr Brazier: If I read you correctly, although it is certainly a step forward—I am hoping to visit the NMIC at some point—it is only the very first step in what needs to be quite a long journey.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: It started off as a national maritime co-ordination centre. It is now a national maritime information centre, because we can't quite go as far as we need to. I would hope progress would be shown.

Q183 Chair: How many ships have we got on station around our waters at the moment?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Two actually dedicated to tasking, which is the requirement placed upon me. One is the Fleet Ready Escort, available for tasking anywhere around the United Kingdom, and the other is a Towed Array Patrol ship which is tasked for specific support to the strategic deterrent. There are other ships, of course, in UK waters doing training or preparing for deployment.

Q184 John Glen: I would like to turn to the National Security Strategy document and refer to some comments that the CDS made to the Committee in November 2010: "The National Security Strategy document is not a bad objective in terms of our ends, but I would say that the ways and means are an area of weakness." Would each of you like to say whether you agree with that statement, and perhaps answer with respect to your individual force?

  General Sir Peter Wall: I am not quite sure in what context CDS said that.

Q185 John Glen: In the context of a similar discussion around the parameters that we have with you today, sir.

  General Sir Peter Wall: But was he talking essentially about whether the National Security Strategy document encompassed the full resolution of ends, ways and means? Mark has just pointed out that it doesn't, because it has to be read in conjunction with the SDSR, which is almost part two, if you like. The National Security Strategy sets the aspiration in very generic terms—not completely generic terms, but it sets the ambition and highlights the areas where additional emphasis will be placed, such as in the cyber-domain, for example—and you have to read it in conjunction with the SDSR to see how that security plan will be delivered in terms of the capabilities we will have, and in less detail how they might be provided for over the decade ahead. If you were to take that interpretation, I would agree with him, because you have to read both documents, which are complementary, to get the full ends, ways and means picture.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: Three things, from my point of view. First, I agree entirely, because the whole point of the security strategy was to give us a strategy. Too often in the past, we have had a policy—a very high-level statement of very few words, by definition; it is that sort of high-level policy—and what we need as military men is a strategy from which we can take out the tasks, understand the requirements and advise on what capabilities are needed to meet that strategy. The strategy did a good job in identifying what the risks were and pointing out what the security targets were. The SDSR then went on to look at how that would necessarily mean we needed certain capabilities, against what planning assumptions we should base this on, and therefore what capabilities and resources we would have. Out of that then comes a series of things that you need to be able to do and to acquire to meet that capability bill. What we have had is a major review of what those capabilities are, and what we now need to do is to understand whether what that tells us is going to match the strategy exactly, and that will take a little while to work through, given the amount of changes we've been through. But the logical process that was set out was a good one. What we now need to do is to sort out in this current planning period what those ways and means are to achieve the overall ends.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: I would just add that the NSS provided us with the priority risks and the national security task that would fall out of those, which was in all respects an ends-focused approach. The SDSR looked in terms of the means and recognised—I speak from a maritime context—some of the consequences of those security tasks with regard to where we as a nation wanted to remain within the world in terms of our ability to engage in a security and defence context. It made sure we could deal with threats at range that required deployability. In my Service, all those feed into ways.

Q186 John Glen: Perhaps the critical question is whether the conclusions of the SDSR meet the requirements of the National Security Strategy document. I understand the interpretation that essentially the NSC sets the agenda and the SDSR sets the capability. Could you comment on that relationship? There have been those who have suggested that there is a gap between what was set out in the National Security Strategy document and the implications of the SDSR in terms of the capabilities that would be generated for your three services to meet those objectives.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: You refer to a gap. From a military context, what risks are out there associated with delivering the requirements for that National Security Strategy? That is our business.

Q187 John Glen: The point I am trying to get at is does the SDSR, from your service perspectives, fully meet the risks that are set out in the National Security document?

  General Sir Peter Wall: Are you saying, Mr Glen, that the capabilities—

  John Glen: I feel I'm getting all the questions today.

  General Sir Peter Wall: Okay. I think the capabilities that the 2020 plan articulated in the SDSR document cover the aspiration in the National Security Strategy well. It is not a particularly well-kept secret—the Prime Minister spoke about it very clearly when he announced the SDSR in October last year—that there will need to be an uplift in funding in the latter part of the period at least, which is something that may or may not be expressed in terms of a percentage of GDP, in accordance with the NATO aspiration that we should be spending 2% of our GDP on defence. That is going to be necessary to deliver the capabilities as we would wish to see them, and that is now widely acknowledged. What we do not yet have is the assurance as to whether that is going to be possible.

Q188 Chair: I'm afraid I am now completely confused. CAS, you said that we started with an accurate description of what the risks were, and we are currently working through what the ways and means are through the planning rounds, whereas you, First Sea Lord, said that it was clear that the SDSR was an ends-based approach. We discovered what the means were, and now we are trying to close that gap. Either the risks have been identified and the ways and means, as CAS suggests, have not or it was just a cuts exercise that completely ignored the strategy set out in the security strategy.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: I am not sure that I understand what you are saying, Chairman. The SDSR was focused on 2020 Force structure as the direction of travel, and we agreed that the SDSR delivering 2020 Force structure meets the requirements with reduced risk profile—in terms of the delivery of the effect—that was required. It was also done with the recognition of a strict financial envelope, which meant that we had to balance the risks in getting from 2011 to 2020 with a decrease, as the Prime Minister indicated, in defence expenditure to have growth thereafter to meet the 2020 target.

  I am saying that there is embedded risk in the delivery of the effects necessary to satisfy the risk statements within the National Security Strategy, which are the areas that we are trying to combat. We deal with military effect and the ability for us to deliver that military effect does carry more risk in the early part of the time scale because we cannot get 2020 target until 2025. Does that help?

  Chair: No. It might help if we had not, during the past six months, watched with horror the chaos in the defence budget following the SDSR, but all of us have been watching it. We will come back to the matter.

Q189 Mrs Moon: I wish to go back to strategy and risk. The NSS and the SDSR talk a tremendous amount about national ambition, and there is lots of analysis of words like "risk". There is actually no definition of national ambition. I am still not clear what our national ambition is. How is that impacting on your roles in identifying capability and force structure decisions? Is it impacting on you at all or are we just ignoring it, and just looking at risk?

  General Sir Peter Wall: I will answer first, if that is okay. For the Army, the overriding clarity that came out of matters was that, for the period up to 2014 or so, which happens to coincide with the period covered by the Comprehensive Spending Review, our primary preoccupation in policy, strategy and output terms was our contribution to success in Afghanistan. Neither the strategy nor the SDSR document pulls any punches on that point and, notwithstanding the budgetary issue, we are very well resourced to do that as was discussed this morning by the CDS, and we are getting on with it.

  In the period after that, the SDSR gives us clarity about what our force structure is to be and it seems that the national ambition that one derives from reading the National Security Strategy is met by that ambition. There are, of course, some questions in the later years about just how affordable some of those capabilities might be and how much resilience will be afforded within them. A particular area that everyone is aware of and which the Secretary of State has asked us to pay particular attention to in the short term is the Army equipment programme over that period, which is subject to scrutiny and various key decisions in the next few months on how we might progress with it—none of which is news.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Following on from the obvious Afghanistan focus, national ambition seems to be set by a sense that we are quite clear that we want to remain a player on the world stage in international security and defence at a given level. That is defined by the defence planning assumptions, which are: a stabilisation operation at a slightly smaller scale than Afghanistan, a complex intervention for example Libya, and another non-complex operation of an evacuation scale. Those latter two are timed to be no longer than six months. There is a clear ambition that this is what we want to achieve, as well as recognising the day-to-day business. For the Navy these are the standing operational commitments— being involved in what happens in defence 24/7/365, which is the Falklands, Caribbean drug interdiction, engagement with NATO, the national security provided by the two ships I mentioned earlier, maritime security in the Gulf and counter-piracy in the Indian Ocean. That is just my area. All that nicely defines what its ambition is. From my point of view, I recognise what my tasking is against that ambition.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: I think the other thing, if I may add a couple of points on the end, is that the whole SDSR, not to say the NSS, looked at whether we could only do things to which the country was committed. In other words, only things like the defence of the UK air defence region and the Falklands. At that point, we would have to say that that was all we could afford and stop. The Government rejected that option. They then looked at another scenario, where the national ambition would be to only react to those things we had to react to, such as the extraction of our nationals from other countries. They rejected that as being an acceptable way forward. Their national ambition was to focus on this adaptive posture, where we would have enough to do those committed and reactive things, but where we also had the ability to do that bit more. That means that we have to have the ability to be expeditionary. The ambition was still to be able to have national forces that could be projected anywhere in the globe. Fortunately the Government were no longer saying, "Only in this area", or "Never here", or "Never that", because it has proved to be particularly unsuccessful when politicians have tried to say that in the past. The national ambition in that way was also defined. I felt that it was reasonably well defined in that document.

Q190 Mrs Moon: It's not exactly inspirational for up-and-coming people joining the Armed Forces, to say that our national ambition is to have the capability to take on one enduring mission. That doesn't ring, but I will leave it there. Can you describe your individual involvement in the SDSR and its decisions? How were you engaged with it?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: It's quite a new way of doing business for the Ministry of Defence, recognising that this was a Security and Defence Review, rather than just a Defence Review. Where in the past the review was done in the Ministry of Defence, this was done with the information gleaned from the Ministry of Defence, but centrally co-ordinated within the Cabinet Office. The manner in which we did business in the Ministry of Defence was through the Defence Strategy Group, which was chaired by the Secretary of State for Defence. In a large number of meetings, we discussed the various aspects and issues associated with what was at that stage a maturing National Security Strategy and how we would deliver our particular part. There was robust discussion and debate around those tables. Issues were taken from that debate to feed the wider discussions in the National Security Council.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: And we also had quite a few discussions where groups would be got together on a much more regular basis, involving a broader set of people from across the services, so that the expertise could at least be put forward. As the First Sea Lord describes, that expertise was then brought together right at the very top of the organisation, to ensure that there was coherence across the piece. Then, I have to say, I set a lot of store by the fact that the Prime Minister, with one or two key Ministers and advisers, set aside two quite lengthy periods where he took the Chiefs, the Permanent Secretary and the Ministers and we spoke to him directly. We were involved in that way as well. There was a lot of involvement from the individual services and from us personally.

Q191 Mrs Moon: Given the new security structures that were being developed, where was the centre of gravity during this whole process?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: The Cabinet Office.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: Yes.

Q192 Chair: Any particular individual?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Clearly, Sir Peter Ricketts was the Secretary of the National Security Council and was organising and co-ordinating, but the individual was the Prime Minister.

Q193 Mrs Moon: Were you asked for your specialist knowledge and expertise in the areas that you were responsible for? Was it something that people were eager to hear?

  General Sir Peter Wall: Yes, they were, at a number of levels. There were quite a lot of specific studies being done that involved our staff. In our case, that was the General Staff and our people down in Andover in Headquarters Land Forces, and likewise for the other two services. At the apogee of the thing, as Stephen said, we were discussing issues with the Prime Minister and other Ministers.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: The machinery of business in the Ministry of Defence produced papers and issues for debate, covering all the angles that were appropriate to that particular subject, from subject matter experts across defence. The debates that we had at the Defence Strategy Group were well-informed discussions and were robust.

Q194 Mrs Moon: Would you agree with that?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: I do. I think we were all engaged, in many ways, remarkably strongly, and that was very valuable. Whether we necessarily were able to influence the debate in the way that we wanted it to go sometimes is another thing altogether, but we were all engaged.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: That is the important point. We in the MoD debated those issues and produced at the meetings the collective views of the body of those meetings. They then went across to the centre of gravity, which, as we indicated before, is the Cabinet. We had no control once they got there.

Q195 Mrs Moon: So you were all putting your two pennies' worth in and giving your expertise, priorities and where you saw your knowledge base would see us going in terms of our national ambition. Did the SDSR's outcome reflect your collective and individual input? Was what came out of the sausage machine what you were expecting? Was it your input, or something quite different?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: In the main, it reflected our inputs. The inputs were reflected not necessarily as a uniquely consensual position. All the issues were exposed, but no decisions were made at the Defence Strategy Group because it wasn't a decision-making body, but an information body, feeding the Cabinet Office with the level of information that they needed to make a decision under the NSC's guidance.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: I think that that is the important thing. We were putting our advice into discussions within the MoD and occasionally, as I have indicated, beyond that. The key thing for us was that we wanted to make sure that where issues were being talked about that we did not think were necessarily the optimum, people understood why we thought that, rather than us just always putting in advice about what we wanted to happen. There was a balance to be struck. When it came to the decision making, it went across to the NSC to make those decisions.

Q196 Mrs Moon: Interestingly, on 27 November, in his West Dorset constituency, the Cabinet Office Minister explained frankly that in his opinion, the only justification for building two large aircraft carriers was to maintain jobs and shipyards, and that the Chiefs of Staff had told the NSC that by choice, they wouldn't buy them either. Is that right? Was that part of your input?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Not entirely correct. The strategy for the retention of aircraft carriers was discussed on numerous occasions within the DSG and is underpinned by the outcome of the SDSR and the need for carriers in the future.

  Chair: We will come on to that in a moment.

Q197 Mrs Moon: Finally, if there was one area for each of you in the SDSR that you could revisit, what would it be and why?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: Enablers. The bit that holds all the capabilities together was not, in my view, given as much priority as we should have given it, mainly because of the major work that went on to understand what the capabilities that we needed to meet the new strategy and new requirements were. However, we need to do some work on things such as having the right amount and quality of secure communications across the piece. We need to do some serious work. I am talking about making sure that ISTAR is all linked up across the piece, to make sure that we are making most value of everything we can collect and need to do. The value of information is there, but the surety of the information is something that doubles the work to do. If there is an area that I would want to improve, it is that area.

  General Sir Peter Wall: For me, it would be a slightly more general thing, which I know has been discussed with previous witnesses—our ability to gauge affordability beyond the CSR period for those programmes that are relatively long-lead items and have a distinct bearing on capability in the 2020 time frame. I fully recognise why that has been difficult in such a period of economic stringency, but we need progressively to evolve a methodology where that can be possible and where the affordability of any new programme or project—or even continuing an existing capability—can be gauged against the affordability of that programme within the holistic affordability of the overall defence programme and budget. That would be a very serious step forward in terms of understanding where the residual risks lie in matching ends, ways and means in the time frame of, say, 2020.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: The SDSR was done under financial constraints that we are all aware of. So one would wish for not having quite those financial constraints, but given that recognition and the understanding that we had to look carefully at the capabilities that we would retain, I wish that there was a little bit more money to meet the challenge that I now have, alongside the Chief of the Air Staff, of regenerating carrier strike in 10 years' time. That clearly is a major challenge. In the context of the SDSR, difficult decisions had to be made, but if you asked me for a wish list, it would be nicer if we didn't have to—

Q198 Mrs Moon: To have retained it rather than to have to regenerate it?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Absolutely.

Q199 Chair: So if we broadened the question—not into which bit of the SDSR you would revisit, but which bit of the combined SDSR and Comprehensive Spending Review you would revisit—if there were one area to retain, would it be the carrier strike capability?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Yes.

  Mr Donaldson: Given that 9,000 UK forces are now deployed—

  Chair: Would you mind very much, but I completely forgot to bring in Gisela, who caught my eye on the previous question?

Q200 Ms Stuart: I want to take you back to the discussion on national ambition. As well as remembering "aggressively evolving methodology"—I shall remember that as a really good busking term if I need it next time—looking now until 2015, would you still describe our national ambition as being a full spectrum capability?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: No.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: No.

  General Sir Peter Wall: No.

  Ms Stuart: Thank you.

Q201 Mr Donaldson: Gentlemen, given that more than 9,000 UK forces are deployed in Afghanistan, plus the current operation in Libya, is the UK breaching the defence planning assumptions of the SDSR at the moment?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Given my explanation as to where we are in terms of the defence planning assumption as one stabilisation operation and two complex and non-complex operations—likening Libya to a complex operation—according to the requirement, no, we are not. We are stretched, though, across the other requirements, which makes it quite challenging.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: At the moment I would say that there are times and phases of the operations where we have stretched the capabilities absolutely to the point where we would find it very difficult to do anything else at that particular time. But of course, that is all a question of relative priorities in one moment in time—and I do mean any one moment in time. Certainly from my perspective, we were able to deploy a force 3,000 miles over a weekend. That could equally be revisited, and that same force could be moved somewhere else in the same sort of framework.

  We are sometimes stretched, particularly when we need the key enablers like the air transport force and we have to continue to support the RIP in Afghanistan, which is what we have done in the last eight weeks. As well as deploying the force, we have maintained the RIP with about 25,000 people going back and forwards to Afghanistan, and so that has stretched us. That does not mean to say, therefore, that you cannot meet defence deployment assumptions over whatever period that happens to be judged against, because they are all about the planning assumptions that you can make. It does not mean to say that individual assets have to be doing the key parts of those operations at the same time.

Q202 Mr Donaldson: Before the CGS comes in, on the air assets that you mentioned, such as air transport and ISR aircraft, will there be a need to transfer some of those assets from Afghanistan to Libya?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: No, we've not moved any of the key ISR assets from one to the other. We have balanced them out where we could do so to make sure we optimise the delivery of the function that we are down to deliver. For instance, we have kept the capability to move the Sentinel R1 ground-mapping radar aircraft between the two theatres. Some days we have two in one theatre, and some days we have one in one theatre. We can move them backwards and forwards as the tasking and the priorities require. That's what we do on a daily basis to manage the assets to achieve the optimum results.

Q203 Mr Donaldson: So you are clear that you are not overstretched on that at the moment.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: We are not overstretched. There have been times within this period and there are days when every available asset is being tasked absolutely, and therefore we are asking a lot particularly from our people, but also from the assets we have. That is a question of doing day-to-day planning on priorities, and working out where the priority is on a particular day.

Q204 Chair: Would it be right to say that no military officer would come before this Committee and say that the Armed Forces were overstretched, whatever the circumstances?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: They might very well do so. It's a question—

Q205 Chair: They never have.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: Without dancing around a pinhead, it depends what you mean by overstretch. Over a period—what is that period?—if we carry on like this, things will be overstretched. For example, we need to take aeroplanes out every so often and give them a major servicing, at which point you will have fewer aeroplanes available and you will therefore be stretching whatever is left. It is a question of what period you are talking about and in which direction you wish to define overstretch.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Taking your question head on, we all represent organisations that are "can do" on achieving what the Government put in front of us. Culturally, overstretch is not something that we would admit to, simply because we are keen to do what we can, within the resources we have, to deliver the requirement.

  Chair: Yes—and, if I may say so, because your answers have to be within government policy. We recognise that as a Committee, and we recognise the difficult time that you have had over the past six months. We pay tribute to the Armed Forces and to your overall leadership of them. Nevertheless, there are some questions to which we need answers.

  Jeffrey Donaldson—although the CGS has not had an opportunity.

Q206 Mr Donaldson: Before I leave the RAF, has the loss of Nimrod had any impact on this?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: The availability of Nimrod would of course have helped, in some of the early stages, in securing the northern coastal waters of Afghanistan.[2] It could have been deployed there very quickly. It could be maintained there, because it is a long-range, long-endurance aeroplane, and it had the sensor suite that would have allowed us to have the perfect picture.

  Did it mean that we did not know what was going on? Did it mean that we did not have other assets or other nations with assets that we could combine with? No. But Nimrod would certainly have been—is—very important. We could have deployed it and it would have been very useful there.

  General Sir Peter Wall: I think the Army is in a situation it was in before the SDSR was rolling. As you said, we have that force level out there. Obviously, it is a tri-service force, and quite a large chunk of our neighbours are out there.

  We are not beyond the totality of what defence planning assumptions require us to be able to put in the field. We don't have as much capability available for contingency as we would have, were we not in Afghanistan with nearly 10,000 people. That is well understood. We aren't breaking harmony. For the most part, except in some pinch-point trades, as we call them, people are having two years between operational tours. That has certainly not always been the case in my service, albeit it has to be for operations of the intensity that Afghanistan sometimes requires.

  The overarching effect on us has meant that we've had absolutely to focus our effort and energy on what is a relatively narrow part of the overall conflict spectrum, to which the National Security Strategy alludes. That is a conscious decision. A number of other NATO nations are doing exactly the same. It means that when we are no longer as heavily committed in Afghanistan as we are now, we will need to re-educate ourselves in a load of capabilities that are on hold for the time being.

Q207 Mr Donaldson: Are the Army and Navy still meeting the harmony guidelines?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Yes, the Navy is meeting the guidelines within, I think, 1%, but it is always within the margins of error. Of course, there are different harmony guidelines. By virtue of naval business, which is to do with deploying people for long periods of time, even when we are not on operations. Therefore, within our fairly stringent harmony rules, we are justifying the current figure of 1%.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: We are doing so today, but as the First Sea Lord says, the harmony is dependent on how long things can go on for and on how many people you are going to use. A classic example is the Nimrod R1 crew. That capability is absolutely critical. For every sortie, it is that team who are producing the goods. They recognise that the quality of and the need for that capability is so important, and they understand why we are asking them to do that much more. That is why we need to replace that capability with the RJ programme in the future. It is critical to any operation.

Q208 Mr Donaldson: If the Libyan operation is extended for humanitarian purposes, what are the implications for UK forces?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: For the maritime forces, there will be a significant challenge in terms of the ability to rotate frigate platforms and mine counter-measures. Those are the two capabilities that we have. We can achieve it over six months, but it is over and above the tasking that had been indicated. We would be challenged to find further platforms to rotate through, and to continue to maintain the overseas commitments that are standard operating requirements.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: Depending on what is involved and the size of any further support to deal with humanitarian issues, our biggest problem would be providing the necessary air transport and tactical transport if we were asked so to do. That would be a very big ask at the moment, because that would mean a long-term commitment. It is not a question of then being able to move it around; it would have to be there. So that would be a challenge for us.

  Apparently, when I answered the question on the Nimrod, I talked about Afghan waters. I did not mean Afghan waters—I meant Libya. I would love to find some water in Afghanistan.

Q209 Bob Stewart: Harmony guidelines suggest a two-year tour interval between operational tours. It's always been that way, hasn't it, for as long as I can remember? Two years is the board-level target. Why? Why has it got to be two years? Why can't it be 18 months?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: That is not the way it works in the Navy.

  Bob Stewart: I know that. I have already talked to the CGS, who is going to give me a slapping.

  General Sir Peter Wall: No, far from it. I know with what glee you went on tours almost permanently. The first thing is that two years is an aspiration that has not always been achieved. The average has tended to hover around less than that. We have got ourselves organised in the Afghanistan context for very deliberate reasons, so that we can deliver that period of about 24 months. It is slightly less than that in between repetitive tours. As you know, we have brigades, battle groups and individuals who have now been round the block for the third time; 3 Commando Brigade are there in precisely those terms as part of the roster. Let us be clear: we would not be able to maintain that roster were it not for the involvement of 3 Commando Brigade, so it is an holistic effort.

  A long debate has gone on in the context of the defence reform work as to whether you could have a different sort of regime in terms of tour lengths versus downtime, and the number of cycles that would constitute that downtime. At the moment it is one to four. Our considered view, bearing it in mind that we cannot predict whether operations are going to be relatively straightforward or complex and that we cannot predict what the environment will be like, is that we should be designing for the upper end of the spectrum, rather than taking any comfort or risk from the fact that life is going to get easier in the future. It usually doesn't, in our experience.

  We believe that a 24-month tour interval allows us to sustain, first of all, the individual training and rehabilitation that people need when they come back from a tour, because they all have careers and they have to move on in training terms. It then allows them to undergo some generic training in broad military skills. Then, in the second year of the two-year period, they can concentrate on honing their skills for what is an evolving approach to the Afghan campaign. It is absolutely true to say that no two successive training periods for brigades going on six-month tours have ever been the same. We are always adapting and changing the way that we do business. That is the model that, in our military judgment, we should be continuing to deliver to ensure that we have a sustainable capability. It does mean that, within that, if we want to surge and dispense with harmony for a bit, we can then go up to a much higher level of capability, such as was demanded in the first six months of operations in Iraq in 2003. We had 30,000 people from the Army within a 42,000-strong force as part of what we call a large-scale effort.

Q210 Bob Stewart: And of course you will have harmony at home by seeing your wife occasionally.

  General Sir Peter Wall: Yes. That is another bonus of the model.

Q211 Mrs Moon: In summary, is it fair to say that we are sweating our assets, both human and platform-wise, quite severely, and there will be long-term consequences if we keep up this pace?

  General Sir Peter Wall: Because of the regime that I have just described being sustainable, we are certainly putting our individuals and their relationships with their families under intense pressure. You know yourself that we are doing that in a context that could, just for some people, very sadly have psychological impacts and so on and so forth, so we have to do this consciously and very carefully. Apart from that factor on the individual, can we sustain this effort? Yes, we can. When we are no longer delivering our contribution in Afghanistan, will we, with the right retraining and re-equipping, be able to redirect that effort to something else? Yes, we will. I do not think that we are consuming our strategic stamina in the way that you imply.

Q212 Chair: First Sea Lord, what is your answer to that question?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: The tempo of operations is high. I am including Afghanistan, because 3 Commando and a large number of other naval service personnel are there. In the wider aspect, if one includes Libya and the standard tempo of operations across all the overseas commitments, we are sweating the assets. You also made it very clear that the asset was the people and the equipment itself, and you would expect us to sweat the assets to get the best value that we can from them. There is a pace that you can drive the people at, and harmony is how we measure it. Therefore, while sweating it, we are getting, in a naval context, the very best that we can from our people. In terms of the equipment, it is a question of ensuring that the right maintenance is pursued to underpin our ability to deliver this capability. There are aspects of challenge within that in a constrained budget scenario.

Q213 Chair: And CAS, are we using up the airframe hours of the Tornadoes?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: There are three aspects and that is one of them. I liken the pressure on the individuals to the fact that having a sauna once a week is just about healthy for you, and having a very hot bath once a day is probably very good for you. We are running pretty hot at the moment, in terms of how our people are being asked to do their work. Without being masochistic about it, I must say that they seem to be enjoying it. When you go and visit them on operations, they seem to be doing well and are up for whatever is required. The issue is, of course, as always, that they want a degree of certainty about when this is going to slacken off and when there is going to be, therefore, an opportunity to ensure that they have a different pace of life that they can sustain for ever and a day.

  On the equipment side of things, there are certain areas where we are using up the hours, not a great deal faster, but certainly faster than we would if they were at home. Fast jets are one, but it is just as much the case for the transport aeroplanes, and also now, of course, the remaining hours on the Nimrod R1 and on some of the other assets, like the Sentinel R1. So some of the airframe hours are being used up as well. We have already upped the amount of servicing we are doing and the hours that we can get out of the servicing facilities at Marham, Brize Norton and elsewhere to ensure that we can do that. We have arranged for spares to be delivered at a consistently much higher level than perhaps they would be if we were doing ordinary-level flying back at home, so there is an element of that in there.

Q214 Mr Brazier: Just a quick one: CAS gave us a really striking example of one particular group of people who really are heavily stretched. Where would the other two services say their tightest pinch-points are, in people terms?

  General Sir Peter Wall: The people who are both exposed and in short supply, as opposed to those who are perhaps in short supply in a less exposed place, are counter-improvised explosive device taskforce people, particularly the people doing high-assurance search and explosive ordnance disposal. We've had to grow that capability very quickly in the last two to three years, for obvious reasons. We are not there yet; we are asking an awful lot of those people.

  Chair: We have seen them in Afghanistan, and we are overawed by what they're doing.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: The greatest stretch is in those areas where, as we said earlier, you have pinch-point capabilities. If you're short of people, those you have got, have to work more and find themselves employed in a much more reactive manner. In the nuclear submarine community, we are significantly challenged by some of those shortages, in terms of both the weapons engineer element and junior officers at the front end. They are the areas and, as a consequence, they are churning quite hard. But I wouldn't want to isolate one community. All of us collectively have been referring to what is a very heavy tempo for all our people.

Q215 Penny Mordaunt: My questions are to Admiral Stanhope and Air Chief Marshal Dalton regarding the new carriers and carrier strike capability. There is some uncertainty about the future of the second carrier. What might some of the implications be of those uncertainties?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: The SDSR is clear and offers a number of options as to what might happen to the second carrier. I'm very clear that if you want to have a capability that's available to this nation continuously, you can't do that with one carrier. The French one is a good example. You have your capability five years in eight, because three years, roughly, are taken up either maintaining it or working it up. So if you want a continuous capability, you need both carriers. The options sit in the SDSR, and you're quite right: there is some indecision. But we're building both carriers, and that's the way ahead at the moment.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: Absolutely, and the key for getting the capability together is to ensure that we have the ability to regrow the proficiency not only to fly aeroplanes, but to operate aeroplane—in other words, all the people who make up the capability. People tend to think that is the pilots, but there are also the engineering personnel on board a carrier and the personnel who direct assets on and off the carrier. We need to make sure, as we are doing, that we are putting together a coherent plan that makes sure that we can develop those people and give them the necessary experience so that we keep them available to us for when we have the capability in place. That is part of the strategy we're working right now to achieve.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: That is a very important point. In terms of working it up, it is not just the carrier that is not available; you have no way of maintaining competencies, which is something that requires constant training, in the three-year down period. You may be able to leverage off your allies, which of course we would do, but you can never leverage enough, nor would they be willing to supply that much. Then you would have a long period of getting back into the saddle again.

Q216 Penny Mordaunt: On that point, what are the plans for regenerating the capability?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: The plans are running as of now. The obvious need to ensure that we have a full competency package to deliver fixed-wing aircraft from a carrier in the 2019 time frame requires ensuring the building of some of that expertise as I speak. At the moment, there are three naval pilots flying, or in the training pipeline to fly, F14s. [3]

  Chair: Three?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Three at the moment, with a fourth just about to arrive. CAS has nowhere to place these people for the next nine years, within the requirement that they need, so it is a question of growing that number so that we have the required number at the end of the game to deliver the capability from the carrier.

  To expand on the answer, as the Chief of the Air Staff has indicated, pilots are just the pointy end of the spear. There is a whole package underneath it, from deck handlers to the engineers; they have to be part of that package, which is going to grow over the next three or four years. We are absolutely reliant upon the relationship that we have with the Americans, and indeed the French, to provide the capability to grow these people.

Q217 Chair: CAS, how many pilots has the RAF got in training?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: In training? I would have to get back to you with a precise figure, but it will be in the order of 90 pilots a year coming through on the fast jet side, about 50 on the rotary side and about 30 on the fixed-wing side—roughly speaking.[4]

Q218 Chair: So you have 90 fast jet pilots and the Navy has three?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Yes.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: What is the question? We need to understand what the requirement is. The requirement is quite important here.

  What we do not need is to have 30 or 40 pilots who are today aged between 25 and 35 with all the experience of flying from a carrier and to find that that experience is completely wasted in eight years' time, when the carriers come along, because they will be too old to fly on it at that stage.

Q219 Thomas Docherty: As you know, we have just returned from a trip to the United States. It was a pleasure spending time with your American counterparts. Based on the information that we received from them, would it surprise you, and would you agree, that by 2013-14, you would have to have identified and started initial training for in the region of 50 aviators, given that some of them will have to do deck handling and that there will be attrition? Do you think that, broadly speaking, that is the correct rate? If not, how many? Secondly, have you agreed a programme with the French or the Americans to do that training for you?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: We are in the process of drawing the programme together. We only made the decision in October, and it is a complicated package of development for a project that has to come to fruition in 2019. Are we working on it? Yes, we are. Are we discussing with the Americans what packages we need? Fifty is an abstract number unless we know whether they are engineers, deck handlers—

Q220 Thomas Docherty: Fifty pilots. That is based on three squadrons, as the SDSR sets out, plus an attrition rate, plus, as you rightly say, sir, the fact that some of your aviators will have deck-handling roles when not in the aircraft. That is a broad figure.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: That is one specific role. I am pleased to say that even in our highly efficient organisation, we do not have pilots moving aircraft around the decks. Aviation expertise beyond the pilots, in terms of deck handling and so on, is another cadre of expertise that we have to develop and maintain.

  I do not recognise the figure of 50 in any sense whatsoever, in terms of the ability to deliver a capability to 2019. I recognise the figure in terms of how many pilots in the end I need on a scale of capability from someone just learning to fly to someone who is an accomplished aviator, who has finished growing his expertise and would become what we would call the wings, or the Americans might call the air boss. There is a whole spectrum of capabilities. Within the cadre of expertise of pilots, that is what you need in 2019.

  May I make a change to the record of this conversation? I said earlier F14, but I meant to say F18.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: A number of points need to be clear. First, I am not sure on what assumptions the Americans gave you that advice, in terms of the requirement. We find it interesting that, whatever we do across all three services, our American counterparts always have at least twice as many people doing the jobs as we would have available.

Q221 Thomas Docherty: Given that you need 36 single-seater aircraft, I am assuming that 36, plus an attrition rate, plus rest and everything else, gives you 50. I am struggling to see how you get down to half that number and have three squadrons of active aircraft.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: Okay. This is what I was trying to get at. We are assuming, in the joint force that we are creating, that this force will grow over time and we will have, as we always do, an initial capability on the said date, which might not be the full 36 aircraft deployed on the carrier at any one time. The initial capability may be somewhat less than that.

  Let me give you an example. When we declare a type of aeroplane in service—an ISD date—that will be a set number of aeroplanes with a certain capability. That is not necessarily the full capability that we want to be able to deploy in the heat of the moment. So, for instance, the assumption is that at some time we will be able to deploy, according to the SDSR, 36 aircraft on the carrier. We are not aiming to do that on day one. We are aiming to grow that capability over time. It depends entirely on what the future structure is going to be—yet to be decided. What we are assuming is a number less than that, which will be available to meet initial carrier capability. That is what we are structuring, and that is the point we are making about the size of the pilot cadre, and elsewhere we need to go into training. That is why we do not believe we need any more—statistically, we can show you how that would build up—than three or four pilots in the training machine, from about the middle of this decade onwards, to deliver a capability that we want for 2020 on the carrier.

Q222 Chair: Forgive my asking this question quite so bluntly, but is this an attempt to kill the Fleet Air Arm?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: No, absolutely not. Mark and I are absolutely joined at the hip here. This is going to be a joint force. We have worked up how we are going to do this, to the point of knowing precisely what percentage and what numbers of pilots we are going to need. We have agreed that number. We have agreed the training machine, where there will be dark blue and light blue working alongside each other. It is roughly a 58:42, or 60:40, percentage split in terms of the pilots.

Q223 Thomas Docherty: Which way?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: The RAF will have the 58% to 60%, and the Navy will have the 42% to 40%.

Q224 Chair: So the Royal Air Force has no ambition to, or intention of, taking over flying from the Fleet Air Arm?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: May I help a little? I think this is important. The SDSR makes it quite clear—I have it open in front of me—that, while we are looking at a force that is going to grow over time, we have a target of 2019 here. We talk, in the SDSR, about routinely 12 jets being the starting point—12 jets with pilots competent enough to use the deck of an aircraft carrier. Those are the sorts of numbers we have to start off with to build, where we are going to have to lean very heavily on our American cousins, and indeed the French, if we are to provide that level of expertise, so that it is ready and available to operate these aircraft in that time scale. That mixture, as the Chief of the Air Staff indicated, is dark blue and light blue, and the Government have been very clear about this being a joint force.

Q225 Chair: So, a very big ship with lots of rattling around in the hangers.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: No, there is a lot of work being done in terms of the wider utility. While you can recognise carrier operations as those one sees from American platforms—and indeed the Charles de Gaulle at the moment—the vision here in terms of carrier-projected capability is much more than that. The mix of fixed-wing and rotary might be subtly different on board; we are still working on the doctrine.[5]

Q226 Penny Mordaunt: When you think of scenarios and situations that will have been envisaged when putting together the NSS and the SDSR, what could the implications be of not having a sovereign floating air base?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Our inability to provide fixed-wing fast jet aircraft in the area that we wish to project power into. In the future, in certain locations in the world, there might not be what we call overflight rights to get our aircraft there, or the basing rights that would make it possible for the Chief of the Air Staff to get his jets there to project the power, as there are at the moment from Gioia Del Colle into Libya. Those sorts of facilities might not be available further from home.

Q227 Mr Havard: Can I ask you, General Wall, about the Army's position? In Afghanistan, we had difficulty deploying about 3,000 people to give us the ability to deal with fast-changing circumstances. How will the SDSR improve our ability to send the right numbers of people in the appropriate packets of small, medium or whatever in future?

  General Sir Peter Wall: If we rewind to the discussion we had this morning about why it was difficult very quickly to uplift forces in Afghanistan, that was, as CDS said, in part driven by the high standards we set for getting people theatre-ready. It was also because deploying additional people without additional enablers does not offer huge utility. We need to remember that that uplift was against a backdrop of a force of around 6,000 to 7,000 on the ground in Southern Iraq. In a sense, our total deployed force is about the same as it was then.

  The size of the Army that is catered for in the SDSR more than allows us to have the agility to get our people in combined units, such as battle groups and brigades, to where we need them to be, enabled by a lot of the capabilities we have discussed. I have concerns about our forward equipment programme, which has been widely discussed by the NAO and others. That is being actively addressed now. We need to remember that our agility is not just a function of size and whether the individuals are available; it is about the extent to which we can train them in the broad spectrum of activities, and then deploy them with ready equipment with the right sustainability. All that, of course, has to be tested, and will continue to be so. That is what a lot of the planning work is going into at the moment. We have no reason to believe that, provided that the 2020 aspiration is delivered, we won't be just as flexible as we are now, if not more so.

Q228 Mr Havard: Given the forthcoming withdrawal of combat people from Afghanistan, what progress are you making in developing new capabilities? I was interested in what you said earlier about the tools to assess. My understanding is that what came out of the lessons learned from the Programme Board about the SDSR and so on was the development of the FAST tool, which is about cost of defence development and so on, and the ICAT tool, which modelled industrial implications. Along with a planning process, they were all very beneficial and useful things. Are they the tools that are necessary to do the things that you want, to do with assessing the new capabilities? What progress are you making to keep that going?

  General Sir Peter Wall: No, I don't think they are. They are tools that are valid in a different sphere, which is essentially about programming, long-term costing and balancing of force packages. I am talking about the more practical end of that, once those forces are, if you like, on the shelf, with vehicle fleets, with sustainability packages, with training programmes and so on. It is how we meld those together on a tri-service basis, particularly with the right joint enablers that Stephen was talking about earlier, to give us the force packages that we need. The flexibility with which you can do that, if you have carrier-based air and helicopters, is greater than if you are dependent on staging and basing through other places. I support everything that has gone before in that respect.

  Are we trying to create among the three of us what we had before we were engaged in these protracted campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan? Certainly not. We are trying to project forward to what we will be doing in accordance with what is called the future character of conflict, which is a fairly broad bible. Like a lot of these things, you can find a number of different themes in there.

Q229 Mr Havard: It is about the same size as well.

  General Sir Peter Wall: There is a bit of that. The fact is that what we have to do is make sure that we continue to focus our contingency capabilities, in the aftermath of Afghanistan and whatever else follows in the era of the next three of four years, on what we perceive the evolving challenge to be. Some of that will be shades of what we are currently doing, and some will be different. That is our challenge. If you were to ask where we stood against that challenge in 2003, for example, in the case of the Army, we were still trying to fit the campaign to the Army in 2004 and 2005, when it was very clear that we needed to start thinking about how we fit the Army to the campaign. This is the challenge when you have the tensions between campaign situations, where the whole organisation gets very immersed in a narrow part of the conflict spectrum, versus the thing that happens next, which could be completely different. Our job is to rebuild flexibility and hope that, in terms of adaptability, we can learn from some of the contortions we've been through in the last 10 years.

Q230 Mr Havard: One of the things that has been generally said is that the Army came out relatively well in the SDSR, and, therefore, maybe will not do quite so well in the next one. One of the main elements of the changes that you have to make, however, is the withdrawal from Germany by 2020, and as I understand it the aspiration is to have half of that done by about 2015. Will you tell us something about the progress of that? I note what is happening in terms of the new—I've forgotten the title—organisation within the MoD that is supposed to assist you. Would you like to comment?

  General Sir Peter Wall: I'd love to comment on that, but can I first rewind to your proposition that I sit apart from the neighbours on my left because somehow the Army has had a reprieve? You were asking about whether we're sweating our assets, whether we're overstretched and that sort of stuff. We have 102,000 Army that is currently, and unusually, fully manned, or at full strength anyway—not necessarily precisely the right people—and we are running hot trying to deliver what we're doing at the moment. Most of that is Afghan focused, but like everybody else, we have our standing tasks and everything else.

  We are being asked in the SDSR to make a 7% to 8% reduction to that number, we are up for the challenge. However, if you were to apply to that the routine level of under-manning that tends to go with a situation where we haven't got quite the same operational challenges that make people want to join up, and we might have a better economic predicament, we could be looking at something that is more than 10% smaller than we are now. The only way that we can go from there is to reduce our commitments. That may well be what people are prepared to do, but this isn't about inputs, it is about what we're trying to get out of it, which will then prescribe a level of input. Included in that, of course, is the equipment programme, which I have mentioned.

  As far as repatriating the 20,000 or so soldiers and 23,000 dependants, who we have living in Germany thanks to the hospitality of the Federal Government, there is indeed a plan to do that over the next 10 or so years. Some of those numbers will be reduced by the units being disbanded, though none will be combat units that have served in Afghanistan; they will be more part of the support structure, but nevertheless very important. The rest will be moved back to new garrison locations in the United Kingdom, which is subject to an ongoing study, and no decisions have yet been made.

  Attendant on the basing and infrastructure situation is also the question of where those people will train, because, as you know from your travels, the training facilities available to us in Germany—partly sponsored by the UK, partly by NATO—are extremely good. We've got to replicate that capacity, to a greater or lesser extent, somewhere else—perhaps in the UK, perhaps elsewhere, recognising that in the modern era we'll be able to make more use of simulators and that sort of thing, but we'll still have to take our vehicles out on the area and do our stuff every now and then. Work is going into that, and it requires quite a lot of infrastructure investment. Inevitably, some of it will alight upon those bases—particularly air bases—that are being vacated by others, and we are all working together on a defence basis to come up with the best plan for that.

Q231 Mr Havard: What happens if it doesn't happen in the sequence that you are predicting?

  General Sir Peter Wall: We are very fortunate that our German hosts have made it very clear that they are not imposing a time constraint on us, either for the training space or where we live.

Q232 Thomas Docherty: Air Chief Marshal, could you update the Committee on the process for the decision on the RAF bases, please?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: As you will have read, the decision has been made that we will no longer need some of our air bases for the foreseeable future, and three in particular. Of course, the decision on the first one was made some while ago, and it was the decision that RAF Lyneham will close as an air base next year. We will move our air transport assets to RAF Brize Norton. More relevantly in terms of the SDSR, you will have read that the air base at Kinloss will no longer be required for the RAF as of the middle of next year. The decision about what that air base will be used for has still to be made. The process is ongoing, and I think that the decision is coming nearer, but it has certainly not yet been made.

  Under the SDSR, we are due to lose one more air base. The decision on that one is moving ahead. It is still in the process of being staffed. I do not know when that will be made clear. I know that the information is being brought together, but obviously it is quite a complex process, not least because, as CGS has just pointed out, some of them will potentially be required for Army units to move into. Therefore rebrigading, as we are doing now, is necessary to match the requirement from the RAF point of view and for the other flying elements of the Army and Navy. There is a complex study going on, depending on what we will do with the whole site, so I do not expect many decisions to be made before the middle of this year.

Q233 Thomas Docherty: "The middle of this year"—does that mean prior to the parliamentary recess in July?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: I'm told the middle of the year. If I go beyond that, I shall be telling something that I don't know, so I will say the middle of the year.

Q234 Thomas Docherty: I'm sure that you are aware of the huge uncertainty and distress that has been caused in Norfolk, Fife and the North-East of Scotland. I must say that the situation has not been particularly helped by leaks coming out of the Ministry of Defence and elsewhere. To what extent is that a factor, in terms of making a quick decision?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: I wish, and have done for many years, that I could find anybody who starts a rumour going and cut them off at the proverbial knees, because I hate rumour-control. Rumours are so dispiriting to the people who are trying to do the job out there. Regrettably, rumours are always more attractive than the truth, and of course while there is indecision people will make things up, because they are looking for some sort of decision.

  I am very conscious of the disturbance that those rumours about where we will be based have caused in a number of areas, not least Scotland. There has been disturbance not only among my own people, but among the local people, who have been incredibly supportive, particularly in Moray and Fife. I have to say that people have also been actively supportive down in Norfolk, at my old air base. I am very conscious of how all this goes, and I am trying to do my best, with a lot of other good people, to ensure that these decisions are brought to a final conclusion as soon as possible.

Q235 Chair: CAS, will you acknowledge that the middle of the year will have passed by 1 July?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: Technically, Chairman, you are absolutely right.

Q236 Thomas Docherty: Further to the Vice-Chairman's question about timetabling, General—and Air Chief Marshal—is it your assumption that there will be a gap between the RAF moving out and the Army moving into whichever bases are closed? I think that the Vice-Chairman's point was that you are not making speedy progress on repatriation of large numbers of soldiers.

  General Sir Peter Wall: I think that that is going to depend on the situation in each base, in terms of how much additional work is required to convert a base from one role to another; on whether the people who might be coming back are on operations; and on how much we decide that we are going to split our formations and have moves over a protracted period, which is obviously not very good for cohesion for the next turn of the handle in Afghanistan, and all that sort of stuff. At the moment, that is all being worked upon in the context of a defence-led plan.

Q237 Mr Havard: Along with the capacity of the defence infrastructure process that is being reformed to help you do it. As I understand it, the British Government are yet to give the two years' notice to the Germans that they wish to do it.

  General Sir Peter Wall: Well, we are in active discussions with the Germans, at both the Federal level and the Länder level. That is how I know that we have got the support that we have from them for our plans, whatever the time frame is. In fact, they would prefer things to go more slowly.

  Chair: He keeps asking that question, and he keeps getting that answer.

  General Sir Peter Wall: Sorry. Where am I not helping enough? As far as the DIO is concerned, it formed on 1 April and it is getting on with its business. We were at a meeting yesterday where they were taking the lead on co-ordinating the multiplicity of pretty complicated factors on the military side, let alone in the political domain, that will drive these decisions. The decisions will obviously be taken later.

  Mr Havard: The questions about air capacity are not for you; they are for someone else, but we will ask them.

  General Sir Peter Wall: Yes. Could I just add one thing in response to your question about the Army and its future size? I didn't talk about how the future of the reserves will impact on what could well be the future size of a force that we regard as integrated. That is all sub judice at the moment, but it will have a significant bearing on the totality of capability that we end up with, and how we deliver it.

Q238 Mr Havard: I am glad you mentioned that, because it was a supplementary question I wanted to ask, but can I ask about another aspect? Our experience in Afghanistan was that the two-star headquarters was one of the key capabilities that we could put in there. After the projections on the SDSR being implemented, could you say which two-star headquarters would be able to be used in a similar circumstance, and what would be the readiness of such an organisation?

  General Sir Peter Wall: We would certainly be able to do one at a relatively high readiness. Generating a second to take over from it will, in future, require a bit more warning than was required in the past. I think, however, that it is also worth remembering that—in the interests of our effort in Afghanistan—in the past three years we have formed, used twice, and just disbanded the headquarters of the Sixth Division, which was resurrected after a very long pause, going back to Suez, I think. It did two turns of the handle, over two years in Afghanistan, in a three-year period, and we have just wound it up. So, with a bit of notice, we can regenerate such structures, by bringing people together from all sorts of areas of defence to work in a divisional headquarters structure. So I am not too concerned about that.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: I would add to that the capability of the amphibious force here, in terms of a two-star command in COMUKAMPHIBFOR, which has played into this cycle in the past and is still an entity.

Q239 Chair: All of that is despite the large reduction in numbers of two stars that is envisaged in the SDSR.

  General Sir Peter Wall: The actual change in the SDSR, as far as our previous permanent divisional structure is concerned, is to turn one of the divisional headquarters into something that basically does force generation on a day-to-day basis, and can only deploy itself with reinforcement and quite a bit of notice. Where the majority of the putative two-star headquarters will be saved is in the regional command structure, which is not part of the deployable capability.

Q240 Sandra Osborne: If RAF bases close, is it guaranteed that they will be utilised by the Army or within the Armed Forces, by any other means?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: No, it's not guaranteed. What happens is that when we look at the question of our future needs, we look at what our need is not only in terms of the overall accommodation and resource available to do the job, but in terms of where the training needs to go on, and so forth. So, if I return for a second, if I may, to the point about closing the bases, because we make a decision this summer, it does not mean to say that the base will close on 1 January or 1 April next year. The bases will close when it is sensible, prudent and financially a good idea for that particular operation to cease. Sometimes that could be in three or four years' time. It could be that the Army comes back from Germany to a particular base, and there might be a very short period between the two, because we might not close that base until we actually no longer need it. So, it is all a matter of timing in terms of when we need those bases.

  When we look at the closing of air bases, the Ministry looks at it in the round, and considers whether the Ministry of Defence needs that real estate any more, and whether it is needed for other defence uses. It then goes elsewhere to see which other Government Departments might need the land and facilities. They look at it, and only then is it decided whether the whole estate will be sold off in some way, shape or form to some sort of private entity, having gone through national Government and local government, all over the place. It is not guaranteed. It depends entirely what the need is, and where the location is.

Q241 John Glen: I would just like to draw the attention of the Air Chief Marshal and the Admiral to the comments to the Committee of the MoD's Permanent Secretary, when she said, "I do confirm that we have removed a capability, and that increases the risk that we take"—referring to the decision on the MRA4—"However, we mitigate that risk by the range of the other things that we do". What actions have been taken to address that risk?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: First things first—I think that the acknowledgement there that a capability has been removed is absolutely right as an entity, but we have then done as much as possible to try to make sure that the risks that have been taken by removing that capability are mitigated as much as possible. I will give you three or four examples and, no doubt, CNS might give you one or two more. In support of operations and submarine activity, the Navy are making greater use of frigates and of their Merlin helicopters to protect the sea lanes and prosecution of identification and attacks on submarines.

  In terms of long-range search and rescue, you will recall that about three or four months ago, a fairly major drilling rig in the North Sea was breaking its anchors and breaking loose. What we did there was to launch one of the E-3D command and control radar aeroplanes that definitely acted as the co-ordinator and control of the search and rescue efforts that were needed to bring the crew off, and we have the ability out of the back of our Hercules to launch life rafts into the sea to provide that sort of capability, if that becomes necessary. Those are the sorts of actions we have taken to mitigate that risk, but it is not an entire fabric of the capability that was within the Nimrod; we can do a certain amount, not all of it.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: The Chief of the Air Staff has covered some important issues here. The loss of the risk can be mitigated against under the current threat levels that we are expecting to envisage and we are into security areas here which I do not want to go into. So we can mitigate in terms of the delivery of the strategic deterrent as well as in terms of the force protection of deployed task groups.

  John Glen: In terms of, say, counter-piracy or deep-sea, air-sea rescue, are we going to be left short? You already said at the start that you only had two ships available to you at any one time—is it credible to say that these risks are going to be fully mitigated by the actions you have available to you?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: An area we have not covered, of course, is that 'dependency' was a feature of the debate on the SDSR and here is an area in which—in terms of your anti-piracy example—we will have to rely a lot more on our allies than we have in the past. Those sovereign areas of capability where we and we alone can be responsible for the delivery of the capability, that risk area which is principally focused, of course, around protection of our own task group, should we want to use that task group independently, or, indeed support a strategic deterrent, have to be mitigated against the threats that we are likely to come up against.

  John Glen: Do you think we are in a position to mitigate those risks? You feel that you have the capabilities required to do so?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: I think, in the scenarios we are likely to come up against now or in the near future, we can do that, but that is a time-limited answer because if risks increase dramatically because of circumstances, we will not be well placed.

  Chair: What could the lack of a floating, sovereign airbase mean to our defence capabilities?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: We have moved on from Nimrod.

  Chair: Yes, we have.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: In the event of a security or defence requirement whereby UK interests require us to be able to protect a force, with or without our supportive allies, then, to go back to a previous answer, if we cannot get over-flight rights or basing rights, we would be unable to provide fixed-wing air cover to our forces on the ground in such an event.

  Thomas Docherty: I don't know which of you is best placed to answer, but what do you think is the point of no return for the Harriers? Obviously, we still have Illustrious, which is doing a wonderful job in Rosyth, I have to say.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: I hope Rosyth is doing a wonderful job on Illustrious, rather than the other way around.

  Thomas Docherty: Indeed—that is a fair point, but what is the point of no return for the Harrier, at which point we have lost either the skills base or the airframes, in your opinions?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: In essence, you are past that point now. The issues are threefold.

  The first, as you say, is the expertise. For instance, one of the critical factors that you have to have in order to be able to support an aircraft type is a detailed, broad-based understanding of the airframe and its systems, and the integration of it all. That is predominantly provided by a combination of the services and industry. But industry has already dismissed those people who worked in that office. You would not be able to rebuild that capability, therefore, without either trying to re-employ those people—some may still be in the relevant companies, some may not but could have gone anywhere—and that will take a long while to do. It is not the same as bringing in people from America, which I have heard people talk about, because their systems and their requirements are very different from ours in a technical and legislative sense.

  The second point is—

Q242 Chair: Before you move on to the second point, may I ask you, First Sea Lord, whether you believe that we are beyond the point of no return on that?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: What the Chief of the Air Staff said is correct.

Q243 Chair: All of it?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: The fact of the matter is that industry is losing its staff.

Q244 Chair: But do you believe that we are beyond the point of no return?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: It all comes down to money. If the money is available, then we will not be on the point of no return; but it's no good giving the Harrier back to the services in general without money to support its capability. That is what it all boils down to.

Q245 John Glen: Given your 40 years of experience, and having seen the evolution of demand in different conflicts, do you see what is happening in Libya as giving justification for a review?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: We are delivering the effect required on the ground and in the air in Libya through basing facilities and over-fly rights and getting out of Gioia del Colle.

Q246 John Glen: But surely there is an increased risk from where we were six or eight months ago?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: There are aspects that a carrier would provide, in terms of readiness and reduced transit times, with the Harrier as ground-effect aircraft. However, the Harrier was limited as it couldn't fire Brimstone, and we all know how Brimstone is doing in Libya. There is a balance of issues here. If we had a carrier, it would be there, but as to whether that turns SDSR upside down in terms of an operation that is—going back to my earlier point—in our back yard, where basing and over-flight rights are sort of expected, there is a big difference between that and somewhere where they are not.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: The other thing to bear in mind on that point is, what was the requirement? The requirement was to establish a no-fly zone over Libya. With all the wishing in the world, the Harrier could not have done that. It doesn't have a radar. We haven't operated a Sea Harrier for many years.

  Chair: I am conscious of the fact that many people are catching my eye to talk about Harriers, which has taken a lot of our SDSR time, but we haven't yet got to the money. We have you for the next 16 minutes and we have to deal with the money, I'm afraid. We've also got to deal with the redundancy programme, but I'm afraid that we're not going to be able to deal with the allowances. Sandra Osborne?

Q247 Sandra Osborne: Do you have an update on the Armed Forces redundancy programme for each of the services?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Let me start. We are tasked with reducing the size of the Royal Navy by 5,000. We expect therefore to lose about 3,300 people through a redundancy programme, either voluntary or directed. We intend to do this in three tranches, the first of which is under way.

  We have identified those areas within the naval service where we do not want anybody to leave, so they will not be entitled to volunteer for redundancy; we will not be looking for redundant people within those particular areas. People not in those areas know who they are, and they are volunteering, or not, to take redundancy. As I said, we will do it in three cycles, the first of which will be looking to remove about 1,600 people. On 16 May, we close the voluntary piece and start to look at whether we get to our 1,600 by virtue of the numbers that ask for voluntary redundancy. There will be another following on next year, and one the year after that.

  General Sir Peter Wall: In our case, the numbers are slightly bigger: 8,000 people altogether; 5,000 through a redundancy scheme. Again, the process is in three tranches, happening in a not dissimilar time frame. The first tranche—in this financial year and the next—involves 1,000 people. Work is underway. A growing number of people would volunteer for that, but we are probably well short of that number.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: In our case, the number is about 5,000. We have the same process of three tranches; ideally, two tranches if that can be done. We have already had the returns in from our request for voluntary redundancy. About half of the number we need have volunteered to go, so we will now go through the process of identifying the other half of the first thousand—so about 500 people—whom we will make compulsorily redundant in the first tranche. We will then go back around the buoy in six months to look for the next tranche of redundees. We aim to have the process finished by August 2013.

Q248 Sandra Osborne: What has been the effect on morale as a result of the redundancies, and the effect on the Armed Forces training programme and recruitment of special forces?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Can I start with a morale component piece? I would not wish to pretend that people enjoy watching their service being reduced in size. A redundancy programme is in being, so that obviously affects our people. Having said that, sailors, marines and airmen—I am sure that I speak on behalf of my colleagues—are very, very protective and proud of what they do. Because they are thinking people, they understand the issues associated with the need for redundancies. They recognise that an economically weak nation is strategically weak. They see their part in this. You can talk about it on a mess deck of a ship, and they will understand. They hope not to be part of the redundancy programme, but they understand the cause. Morale in certain areas of the Navy is more brittle than in others, but overall the morale component of the naval service is holding up.

  General Sir Peter Wall: I echo all of that. A number of issues affect our people's view of the world, and their morale. The redundancy scheme is obviously very unnerving for those people who want to serve on. The only way it can be done is to identify quite a broad population from which perhaps only 20% would be drawn to make up the 1,000 in the first tranche of our scheme that I talked about. Of course, for those who volunteer, it is an opportunity but, for the majority, it is disproportionately unnerving. Other issues to do with terms and conditions of service, pay and allowances, the ability to which we can sustain people's accommodation and such things could well have a progressive and detrimental effect on people's sense of worth and well being.

  As for special forces recruiting, there has been some discussion in the media about that recently. It was not particularly linked to the fact that the Army is reducing in size, but to the ongoing challenge of sustaining the bayonet strength of our very highly qualified and specially selected special forces people. That has always been a challenge and about a year and a half ago, we tried to work out whether we can come up with a more resilient way of sustaining the strength of our Special Forces units. It was that work—it was fairly routine work, not a response to a clarion call because of an exodus or very significant under-manning or anything like that—which was exposed in the media.

  It is business as usual in terms of the challenge of always being able to sustain people of that quality. I am anxious not to put pressure on special forces manning because we are trying to achieve the same strength from an Army that is 10% smaller, but it is a defence-wide effort and includes the Territorial and Reserves fraternities, too. I am not overly concerned. We will continue to pursue our normal path.

Q249 Sandra Osborne: How has training been affected?

  General Sir Peter Wall: None of this redundancy package has a direct effect on training.

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: From the Air Force point of view there are three things. First, people recognise the reality of life—they do not want to go because they enjoy the life, but they recognise the economics of where we are. Secondly, the issue is as much about what effect it has on those who are remaining as it is on those who are leaving. I am certainly determined that people who are leaving are looked after properly, and we do as much as we possibly can to help them out. I shall come back to training in a second for a particular example.

  Thirdly, it is about ensuring that the future has a certainty. People are going to commit themselves to eight, 12 or 20 years, and they need to be sure that this is not one element of a continuing process but that there is definite future for them. When they commit themselves for that amount of time, they want to know that they are going to be employed.

  From our point of view, the only real knock on training is that, as you know, we have had to review about 170 pilots, to see whether they are going to continue to as pilots, and about 39 weapons system operators as well. I think we've recovered from that knock. People have understood the fairness and the integrity that was used to decide who should go and how. No one liked doing it, least of all me, but we have got through that particular stage. It is encouraging to see that about 20% of both groups have reapplied to join other branches within the Air Force because they so much want to stay.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: I failed to answer, Chairman, on special forces and training. In effect, the training piece for the Navy is not affected in the same way as the Chief of the Air Staff indicated. But for Special Forces, where Royal Marines produce 46% of the special forces cadre, and are 3% of defence, I have to tell you that because we are not reducing the Royal Marines significantly there is no impact in terms of the recruiting rate of the special forces cadre from that point of view.

  I want to expand a little on the back of what has been said by my colleagues about the redundancy package. As the Chief of the Air Staff said, although we are passionately looking to ensure that we exit our people from the service with the right support and backing; those people who remain are the principal focus of our attention in order to ensure retention. I go right back to the beginning of our discussions over an hour ago, on the Future Force 2020. What this means for people in the future is very important, and some clear head mark as to where we are going is fundamental to the morale of people in all three services.

Q250 Sandra Osborne: Could I ask you about information that we received from the House of Commons Library with regard to people deployed in Afghanistan? The Secretary of State has reiterated on several occasions that they will not be subject to compulsory redundancy. I believe that the Army and the RAF are to give individuals notice that they will be made redundant on 1 September, followed by the Navy on 30 September.

  The House of Commons Library, which is normally very reliable, says that the dates are crucial in terms of exemptions relating to Afghanistan. Those serving on Operation Herrick 14 between April and October 2011 and those on notice to deploy as part of Operation Herrick 15 in October and November 2011 will be exempt from compulsory redundancy. However, the post-operational tour leave allowance is one working day for every nine calendar days deployed, which roughly equates to 20 days for a six-month deployment. On that basis, it is entirely possible that those personnel who were serving on Operation Herrick 13—which concluded at the end of April 2011—when the redundancy schemes were announced, could be made compulsorily redundant in September, as they will have completed their post-operational tour leave by then.

  I am sorry that that is a bit complicated, but the basic point is that if they have finished their tour they may still be made compulsorily redundant. Would that be true?

  General Sir Peter Wall: Yes, I'm sure that that's accurate.

Q251 Sandra Osborne: So that is contrary to the spirit of what the Secretary of State has been saying?

  General Sir Peter Wall: I think that people might be making a distinction between individuals and units; we'll have to check those facts and come back to you on that point.

  Sandra Osborne: I am grateful for that. Thank you. Talking about the 25—

Q252 Chair: I am afraid that we have to get on to the money. There is a crucial question relating to the loss of 25,000 MoD civil servants by 2015: what effect will that and the work of the Defence Reform Unit have on the ability of each service to fulfil its role? We will write to you about that and we would like your answer, please.[6]

  On the money, we've heard about the Prime Minister's personal strong wish to have an increase in the defence budget from 2015. Precisely what would happen to each service if that were not to be achieved?

  Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton: The most important thing is the question of whether that is decided now and something is put against that statement. In other words, are we going to see a figure put against that and an allowance made so that we can plan against that figure? If not and the question will be decided only once we have had the next election, the implications are that we will have to plan on the assumption that there won't be any increase because the Treasury, naturally enough, will not allow us to plan on something that does not exist in policy terms. So that will have an effect on what programmes we need to have in the future, in terms of both people and equipment, because that planning is critical if we are to get through the initial stages of understanding capabilities for the future without actually buying equipment. You have to have some sort of research and development in relation to what is going on and some evaluation of the options that are there. If that is not given some meat in the foreseeable future, the most important consequence is that we will have to plan on the assumption that there won't be an increase, even if there subsequently is to be one.

  Chair: Thank you very much. That is the clearest statement of that point that I have yet heard and it is very valuable.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: It's difficult to add to that. If it is not on contract now and you have got it in the equipment programme and you have to put it on contract now for equipment delivered in say five or six years' time, and if you are not going to get into a position where you have hugely overspent and over-aspired, we have to have some indicator as to how much we are able to cost within the programme.

Q253 Chair: CGS, do you have anything to add?

  General Sir Peter Wall: No, but it's clearly down to an holistic view of affordability. There is uncertainty about anything that is a new programme that has figures in the line beyond the CSR period. That programme cannot be commenced and in some ways will not be sustainable. So it will bring us to a halt relatively soon. The implications of trying to live within a flat real continuation of the budget as it is in 2014 will mean an erosion of capability in every line of our activity, whether it's equipment, pay and conditions, people, infrastructure or training. All those would be subject to scrutiny to try to work out how we exist within that funded volume.

Q254 Chair: I think that there is little point in asking you about Planning Round 11 because the Secretary of State has not made a statement to the House of Commons. Am I right in saying that?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: Yes, it would be helpful if you didn't, Chairman.

Q255 Chair: Well, I could, but you probably wouldn't answer. Would it be right nevertheless to ask this question? Because of the implementation programmes attached to each of the decisions of the Strategic Defence and Security Review, would it be right to assess the Ministry of Defence as currently drowning in paperwork?

  General Sir Peter Wall: No, I don't think it's drowning in paperwork. It has areas of clarity, where decisions can be taken and announced. Those are implementing some of the very clear direction that came out of the SDSR. We've been talking about the redundancy programmes and the putative infrastructure programme on which a lot of work is going on. We have heard what has already happened in some areas where activities have stopped and probably can no longer be drawn back in. Inevitably, it is a broad and complex business and there is quite a lot of stuff that is uncertain on which we are continuing to work.

  That is being done in a number of ways. It is being done in the centre of the MoD, in terms of the centrally provided functions. For each of the Single Services, we are assessing where we need to go now in our transformation programmes, not just to implement savings measures and work out where we would like reinvestment if our ship comes in later on, but to work out the cultural and capability adjustments that we are going to need to make in the latter part of the decade to keep pace with a changing society that we need to draw the right people from, in the context of a character of conflict that is going to change and that we have to be equal to.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: I know it has been a catch-line, but it is true that the SDSR is a process, not an event. What is linked to your comment, Chairman, is that processes are now going on in the Ministry of Defence to take this thing forward that are not traditional processes, and therefore there is a lot of work going on to try to satisfy the new process of trying to balance the books, in terms of the SDSR.

Q256 Chair: So was this process efficient, comprehensive and effective—Planning Round 11? You can answer that, I am sure, before the Secretary of State has made a statement to the House of Commons.

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: It was comprehensive. It was as efficient as it can be. What was the last one? Effective. It closed down PR11.

  Chair: I think we can't take that further at this stage, being in this limbo period.

Q257 Thomas Docherty: The Secretary of State has announced that the cost of QE is going up by between £1 billion and £2 billion. The vast majority of that cost will probably be hit within this cycle. Have you had any discussions about whether that will be extra money for the defence budget or whether you will have to reallocate money to find it?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: This is based around the decision made in the SDSR on cats and traps. A process is going on now to ascertain the costing, what sort of cats and traps we are going to use—we have an option—and on which platform we are going to place them. All that is work in progress that you would expect. There is nothing novel about it. Cats and traps do cost; some money will have to be found for them.

Q258 Thomas Docherty: Absolutely. So no decision has been made on whether you will have to find the money from your existing allocation or whether you will get an additional fund from the Treasury to meet the rise in cost?

  Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope: No decision has been made.

  Chair: Thank you very much indeed. I want to repeat something that I said earlier. You have all had over the last year an extraordinarily difficult time in coping with the SDSR. We recognise that you have to hold the Government line and you have done that very effectively today, if I may say so. Nevertheless, we are grateful to you for the evidence that you have given today and for such elements of clarity as you have shed upon the SDSR. It isn't huge, but nevertheless it has been helpful and we are grateful.

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1   Note by the Chief of the General Staff on reviewing the transcript: he did attend this NSC. Back

2   Note by witness: Afghanistan should read Libya, see Q 208 Back

3   F14s should read F18s, see Q 220 Back

4   Note by witness: Correct figures are as follows: once the effects of SDSR settle down, the RAF will have approximately 90 pilots total coming through training each year. The 90 will be made up of approximately 26 fast jet, 26 rotary wing and 38 multi-engine pilots. Back

5   Ev 137 Back

6   Ev 138-139 Back

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Prepared 3 August 2011