George Robertson may be feeling that he got out of the Ministry of Defence in the nick of time. He has left his successor, Geoff Hoon, to cope with a growing public litany of problems in the military. Some of the stories in the media can be put down to the usual tactical leaking ahead of the budget process, so well satirised in "Yes Minister". The Defence Select Committee Report of 2 February 2000 is a different matter. The Chairman, Bruce George, is a serious Labour backbench MP, who has sat on the Select Committee continuously for the past 20 years. He knows the lines that the MOD has spun over the years, and is not going to let the Department off the hook. Unusually, the Committee has a good record at achieving cross-party consensus over the years, and has not been afraid to tackle controversial topics.
The Committee comments on the lack of a Defence White Paper since 1996, and makes it clear that it expects the MOD promises of greater transparency to be delivered in practice. The Performance Report (covered in The Source last month) is described as "inadequate for its stated purpose". The Committee invited the MOD "to indicate how it is moving in the direction of greater clarity in its annual reporting cycle about the relationship between resources, activities and outputs, and what further developments it plans." As The Source indicated in December, the Defence White Paper contained little hard information.
The whole tenor of the Committee's review of progress since the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) is one of concern. They highlight a number of areas where they feel things are going off the rails. For example: "The SDR committed the UK to force projection strategy. If we lack the ability to 'project' force, many very expensive assets are wasted. We view the lack of adequate deployability, particularly with regard to strategic airlift, with grave concern and will follow developments closely."
The big issue remains that of overstretch, and they spent some time taking evidence from Ministers, officials and senior military officers on this problem. Their conclusion is depressing: "Overstretch is the clearest and most urgent problem facing our Armed Forces.The Army's establishment was to be increased by 3,300 personnel which was why it was given longer than the other two Services to achieve the full manning target. Around 2004 could have meant late 2003, but in oral evidence, we were told that the target date is now 31st March 2005. We conclude that slippage has occurred and urge the MoD to concentrate on finding solutions rather than on redefining targets."
The final conclusions of this report are measured and make depressing reading. They include the following statements:
"The MoD have introduced several measures to improve the lives of our Service men and women, and more are to follow, but the critical problems of undermanning and overstretch have not been solved. Indeed, the situation has almost certainly deteriorated since the SDR. The next twelve months must bring signs of improvement.
A budget that depends on counter-productive sales, such as those linked to the privatisation of DERA, has already served to undermine our confidence that that promise of stability will be fulfilled. More fundamentally, the quality of the MoD's reporting to Parliament has not yet reached the stage where we can be confident that resources are being applied to maximum effect, or be certain that less money does not mean less peace and less security.
There is, it seems to us, a fundamental implausibility in the total efficiency claimed by the MoD over the years.
Overall, we conclude that the condition of the defence budget is sufficiently poor to give rise to serious concern. The cumulative evidence of cancelled exercises, delayed equipment programmes and of resources apparently insufficient to reverse the problems of overstretch and undermanning suggest that if the wheels have not yet come off the SDR, they are certainly beginning to wobble alarmingly. The Department's finances should be rebalanced in the current Spending Review. Commitments and resources have to be brought back into line, or we risk finding ourselves stumbling from one crisis to the next."
In this writer's view, the next crisis may not be long in coming, particularly if the Northern Ireland peace process is derailed.