Debate on Defence Policy

House of Commons

Thursday 15th October 2009

Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex) (Con): May I start by paying my own tribute to the fallen, to their families, to the families of all servicemen and women serving abroad and, indeed, to our remarkable servicemen and women, wherever they may be? I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Havard) said. Indeed, I was also in Washington last week.

The McChrystal paper is required reading for anyone who wishes to take an interest in Afghanistan. I am quire sure that he is correct, and I detect behind his paper the hand of a very senior-now, sadly, retired-British officer, Lieutenant-General Sir Graeme Lamb, who is advising General McChrystal closely and from whom many ideas to which the hon. Gentleman referred derive.

I shall deal with four separate points, because the general Afghanistan question has been very well covered by other people and will be covered by others. First, I pay a tremendous tribute to the work of the Defence Medical Services and congratulate them on their achievements on operations. They have been through a torrid and difficult time, which flowed from substantial but necessary changes at the end of the cold war. I do not think that anyone believed it possible that they would be involved as they are today, but they are now the world leaders in trauma medicine, and soldiers who would normally have died are surviving on the battlefield. That is a great thing. Survival rates are beating all expectations, but those survivors, bless them, will present problems for the whole Government and for our country in terms of looking after them for the rest of their lives, and we must ensure that we honour those obligations.

I think it extraordinary what surgeons, nurses and others achieve while working in field conditions in one of the most hostile environments in the world.

Mrs. Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Soames: Will the hon. Lady forgive me for a moment?

Secondly, on the Territorial Army, Lieutenant-General Sir Hew Pike, a former inspector-general of the TA, wrote a letter to The Times last week, which he started like this:

“Sir, The decision to suspend training and matches would quickly spell the death knell of a football or cricket club. So it is with the Territorial Army (TA), which relies on regular training activity to develop and sustain skills and morale.”

He is of course completely right. Culling TA training days to the extent that the Ministry of Defence is will result in an under-trained TA, with soldiers deploying on operations who are not properly prepared. It will result also in major retention issues for the TA. After all, why should people remain committed to an organisation that appears to show such a callous lack of commitment to them? That, in turn, will undo much of the substantial investment that has been made in the TA, lower confidence in TA soldiers among their counterparts and the chain of command, and challenge the ability of the Ministry of Defence to sustain high-tempo operations in Afghanistan in the medium term.

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The British Army in the field simply could not survive without the extraordinary input of the TA. For example, as far as the Defence Medical Services are concerned, the Public Accounts Committee report published this week states that the annual operational requirement for anaesthetists is 108, and that there are 45 deployable regulars. The balance is made up by Territorials. Presumably, the Minister will exempt medical staff from the cuts to TA training.

Mr. MacNeil rose-

Mr. Soames: I really must get on; I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me.

Thirdly, I want to say something about the structure of the Ministry of Defence. As a Minister, I worked with some of the finest officials, soldiers, sailors and airmen it is possible to imagine, and that has been one of the greatest-if not the greatest-privilege of my life. However, it is now 25 years since the Heseltine review of the head office of the Ministry of Defence. At the time, our armed forces were twice the size. Since then, however, we have-magically, somehow-increased the number of military officers and, especially, civil servants, at the three and four-star levels.

How can anyone seriously justify the creation last year of the post of director general of strategy to serve in addition to the director general of policy, who did the job perfectly well when I was a Minister? How can anyone justify creating a commercial director general, a chief of defence materiel, a deputy chief of defence staff personnel and a director general of human resources? It is all a crazy, absurd, overblown bureaucracy. The top structure is increasingly bloated with senior officials, who themselves create bureaucracy and slow down decision making in a wholly unacceptable and dangerous manner, given that we require decisions to be made nimbly, sharply and promptly. Can one really imagine Lord Beaverbrook and Churchill allowing a procurement structure of the type that we have now?

On the running of operations, as a result of the enlightened reforms of the last Conservative Government, we now, thank goodness, run operations jointly under the chief of joint operations. It is a good structure. How can we therefore continue to justify each of the three services having both a chief of staff and a commander-in-chief? Do we really need a First Sea Lord and a separate commander-in-chief for the Navy, with all their supporting staff, who come in big numbers? We also need to address the duplication of staff between the head office of the Ministry of Defence in London and the permanent joint headquarters at Northwood, which is the key nerve centre for the running of all operations. A great deal must be done to flatten that structure. The time is now right for a thorough root-and-branch review of the head office of the Ministry of Defence, following the thoroughly botched so-called “streamlining” mounted by the Government 18 months ago. We need to reduce the number of chiefs and not just cut the Indians. It is first-order business, and I have no doubt that the Secretary of State will address it in his review.

On procurement, if the number of civil servants has grown out of control anywhere in the past 10 years, it is at Defence Equipment and Support. Some 28,000 staff work in that buying organisation, and that must be a

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world championship record, especially as it spends only £13 billion per annum. The upstream division of Shell procures £20 billion of equipment per annum with 1,000 staff. Furthermore, they deliver it on time and on cost, which is absolutely unknown-

Mr. Quentin Davies rose-

Mr. Soames: No, I will not give way.

Each year, the record of the Ministry of Defence is agonisingly exposed to all of us who love the services and want them to do well. It is agonisingly exposed as a national scandal to the public, not only by the Defence Committee but by the Public Accounts Committee and everyone else involved. The issues need to be addressed and there needs to be reform that is fundamental to the transaction of the Department’s business.

Finally, may I give an illustration from another letter from The Times, which I just have time to read in full? It is from a Mr. Brian Faux of Tonbridge, Kent, and it contains a lesson that the Government might like to learn. It says that Jackie Fisher-Admiral Lord Fisher-

“was appointed First Sea Lord on October 20, 1904. The Special Committee on Design first met in December 1904. Its recommendations on future design (of Dreadnoughts) were approved in early 1905. They were revolutionary. HMS Dreadnought’s keel was laid October 2, 1905. She was launched on February 10, 1906. She went to sea, for steam, gunnery and torpedo trials, on October 1, 1906.

The whole of the trials were completed without hitch of any kind. She left England for a long experimental cruise on December 5, 1906. Immediately after the trials”-

the ship entered the inventory of the Royal Navy and three other keels were laid. The letter concludes:

“Each of these was completed in two years from laying the keel.”

The Ministry of Defence has a very great deal to learn.

House of Commons

Hansard - vol 497

No 124

Columns – 502-504