House of Commons - Army 2020 - Public Accounts Committee

Army 2020 - Public Accounts Committee Contents

1 Planning for Army 2020

1. On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Ministry of Defence (the Department), the Army and Capita about the Army 2020 programme.[1]

2. Army 2020 is an ambitious programme of change and restructuring which responds to the government's need to reduce public spending, including on defence. Army 2020 seeks, for the first time, to integrate fully a regular Army of 82,500 with a larger and more frequently used Army Reserve of 30,000. This represents a significant change from pre-2010 levels of some 102,000 trained regular soldiers and 19,000 trained reserve soldiers. The Army therefore needs to reduce regular Army numbers by 20,000 and increase the trained strength of the Army Reserve by at least 11,000.[2]

3. The Department projects that the revised Army structure will result in the Army costing £10.6 billion less between 2011-12 to 2021-22. The Department therefore removed this amount from the Army's budget for that period and asked it to develop a plan for creating the Army of 2020. The Army had to provide the capability needed within the staffing and funding requirements the Department set. It decided that to do so it needed to restructure itself into a fully integrated Army of regulars and reserves, and this became known as Army 2020. The Army must work with its recruitment partner, Capita, to recruit enough suitable personnel, both regular and reserve soldiers, for the Army 2020 structure.[3]

4. The Army highlighted that the decision to reduce the size of the regular Army was driven by the need for the Department to make financial savings in a time of austerity.[4] We heard from the Chief of the General Staff that he was not involved in all stages of the decision-making process, despite the magnitude and importance of the change required, and its impact on the service which he commands.[5] He explained that he gave very clear advice on the impact of the originally planned reduction in the size of the regular Army from 102,000 to 94,000. But the decision to reduce the regular Army further from 94,000 to 82,000 was made by the Department and was based on work that he was not privy to. The Chief of the General Staff told us that he was advised of the decision by the Permanent Secretary of the day, after it had been made.[6]

5. Having made the decision to reduce the size of the regular Army, the Department subsequently decided to grow the size of the Army Reserve and the Army was told to design an Army that included a reserve component of 30,000 by 2018.[7] The Department told us that its decision to increase the size of the Army Reserve was based on the recommendations of the Houghton review of the use of reserve forces.[8] However, the Army accepted that neither the review nor the subsequent work led by the Department included any objective assessment to test the feasibility of recruiting and training the number of reserve soldiers within the required timescales.[9] Our confidence in the Department's assessment was further undermined by the knowledge that the Department decided to grow the Army Reserve to 30,000 before establishing how reserves would be used in practice, and what impact a new role for reserves could have on recruitment and retention.[10]

6. We were concerned that the Army may have been put in a challenging position with a target that appears difficult to deliver. The Department put a case to the Committee, which is also set out in the Houghton review, for the 30,000 target being deliverable based on the fact that there were 70,000 reserves in 1990.[11] The Department admitted, however, that it had limited data and that it is still unable to create a recruitment model with the degree of granularity required to assess the likelihood of it increasing the trained strength of the Army Reserve to 30,000 by April 2019.[12] In the last two years, around 10,000 people have left the Army Reserve and its overall trained strength did not increase between April 2012 and April 2014.[13]

7. Army 2020 includes plans for a regular Army of around 82,500, which represents a 20% reduction from its previous size of 102,000. The Army told us that its smaller size will make it more vulnerable to the levels of under-staffing that were common before the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.[14] Having heard about the risk of gaps emerging in the Army structure, we asked the Army what contingency plans they had in place. The Army was able to describe two of the mitigating actions it could take if recruitment performance does not improve, such as calling up ex-regular personal with a service liability or extending tour lengths for regulars.[15]

8. Regular reserves are soldiers that have a legal liability to serve having completed their term of service in the regular Army. This liability lasts for five years but does not apply to people who have been made redundant.[16] The Army has just started running a programme to establish contact with regular reserves to develop a pool of people it could call upon to fill gaps in the Army structure but recognised that actually calling up, training and mobilising regular reserves will require political backing.[17] Additionally, the Army is not able to say with certainty that all those with a service liability are available to be used; some 40% of the records the Army holds on these individuals do not contain details of medical fitness that would determine whether they could be used on operations.[18]

9. The Chief of General Staff also suggested that gaps could be mitigated by extending the tour lengths for regular soldiers from the current six months to nine or twelve months. He recognised, however, that while this option would cover recruitment shortfalls in the short-term, it could have potentially negative consequences in the long-term. For example, a longer-term increase in the number of people who choose to leave the regular Army due to the impact increased demands could have on morale, thereby exacerbating the problem.[19]

10. Overall, the Army gave us no assurance that these actions represented a fully developed contingency plan. Given the significance of the potential gap in defence capability that could result, we find it unacceptable that the Department's current 'Plan B' for Army 2020 is to get 'Plan A' to work.[20]

1 C&AG's Report, Army 2020, Session 2014-15, HC 263, 11 June 2014 Back

2 C&AG's Report, paras 1, 3, 20 and 2.1 Back

3 C&AG's Report, paras 2 and 3 Back

4 Qq 60, 64 Back

5 Qq 85, 186 Back

6 Qq 66, 68-70 Back

7 Qq 55, 57, C&AG's Report para 1 Back

8 Ministry of Defence, Future Reserves 2020: The Independent Commission to Review the United Kingdom's Reserve Forces, July 2011. Back

9 Qq 55-57; C&AG's Report para 1.13 Back

10 Q 70 Back

11 Qq 55, 57; Ministry of Defence, Future Reserves 2020: The Independent Commission to Review the United Kingdom's Reserve Forces, July 2011 Back



© Parliamentary copyright 2014	Prepared 5 September 2014