It’s been a tumultuous year at MoD but as the ministerial team looks back on what’s been achieved, we all feel we’ve laid the foundations for a much more stable future for Defence.
It can’t be said too often that we inherited a grossly over-committed budget that meant we would have had to make cuts to programmes and capabilities just to live within our means. But the need for Defence to make a contribution to deficit reduction meant those cuts had to be sharper still. I know there are many people who feel Defence should have been exempt from reductions, but to them I simply say that there is no point in trying to defend a bankrupt country.
So in the last year we have had a Strategic Defence and Security Review that began the process of aligning our resources with our commitments. We always knew that, after so many years of neglect, it would take more than one SDSR and one MoD annual planning round to get things into balance, but we are making real progress.
And we’ve done much more than the SDSR. We are all especially pleased to have incorporated the Armed Forces Covenant into law. We’ve also launched a range of initiatives, most importantly the Levene review, that will transform the way MoD works. I’m particularly pleased with the new Major Projects Review Board that will keep a careful eye on those big projects that go over budget or over time. And the new forum for Small and Medium Sized businesses I’ve established will give them a real voice in MoD’s thinking for the first time.
All that, taken together with Liam Fox’s recent statement on the basing review, the reserves review and the government’s commitment to increase the MoD equipment budget in real terms after 2015, means we can now say for the first time in decade or more that our plans are in alignment with our resources.
That’s not to say we don’t have more serious work to do to complete the process. Things remain very tight – that’s the product of years of Labour indifference to the need to balance MoD’s budget – but we can now plan with real confidence.
For me there are two central challenges. With the various reviews behind us I now need to get on with the White Paper on Equipment and Support for Defence and Security. We couldn’t publish it until all the other issues were settled, but now, working with my good friend James Brokenshire in the Home Office, we can finalise this important document.
While the White Paper is about what we buy, the other major piece of work – Bernard Gray’s “Materiel Strategy” – is about how we buy it and support it. The real problems with major defence programmes have been caused by politicians and top military personnel in London. Over committing the programme has meant pushing buying things into the future at much greater cost, and always striving for technical perfection has driven up costs far to far. We need a balanced budget that ends delays, and a culture of “good enough now, not perfect later”. But when we’ve done all that, we still need to make sure we have the skills and structures to buy and support equipment well. That’s what Bernard Gray is sorting out next.
So after fourteen months I think I can honestly say that we’re turning the MoD supertanker round, but it’s going to be a while yet until we can say that all the problems have been solved.
Despite all the difficulties and challenges, the troops in the front line in Afghanistan and all those on service in the Libya campaign are getting the equipment and support they need. This is a tribute to many hard working civil servants, scientists, military personnel and private sector contractors who, together, are providing an outstanding service to our armed forces on the front line.
And that’s my last challenge. Seventy five per cent of our armed forces say their equipment is what they need to do the job they’ve been entrusted with – and given the high standards they rightly set for their kit, that’s a high figure that I’m determined to make even higher. But only twenty per cent of the public think the kit is good enough. We need to do more to show to the British people that, although we still have many issues to deal with in MoD, we are firmly on the right track when it comes to the one thing above all others that we must do well.
( 2 comments ) Tags: Afghanistan, Armed Forces Covenant, Liam Fox, Libya, Ministry of Defence, MoD, SDSR, Strategic Defence and Security Review
Comment by Jeremy Thomass on September 19, 2011 at 12:29 pm
We’ve made a good start in trying to address the very serious problems we inherited in Defence. There was no doubt that we were living beyond our means so far as as our equipment programme was concerned. Neither could there have been any doubt of the need to review our defence strategy generally. For all that, how far are the assumptions of SDSR now increasingly at risk of being overtaken by events? The seeming permanence of the Atlantic Alliance, which the Review implicitly accepted, now appears more and more questionable, as budgetary pressures and growing isolationist sentiment may soon combine to force a gradual US withdrawal from its historic commitment to European security. In that event, Britain, like other Major European Powers, would find itself increasingly obliged to concentrate its miltary effort on the defence of Europe itself by land, sea and air, rather than on the strategy of expeditionary warfare it has followed in recent years. In such circumstances, another wholesale review of equipment and strategy could hardly be avoided. Wkat ideas might we have on that one
Comment by Tyrone Berg on March 1, 2012 at 1:56 am
Been watching the latest rounds of defence cuts in Britain from here in Australia and do not see the gains in the current strategies. It mirrors the Thatcher years when defence cuts were instigated and then the country ended up at war (policy costing lives, contrary to how the British armed forces handled themselves Thatcher and the people behind these defence cuts cost lives). This looks like it will happen again.
The current policy regime, leads to the loss of industry (especially since latest ships order went overseas) or at minimum a degregation to it.
Each year should lead to a few ships across the spectrum in each catagory group being ordered, thus allowing growth, improving perceptions around the world of a robust industry not one that is terminal. Army and airforce should be seen in the same light.
By dividing the fleet into catagories (such as CG’s DD’s and FFG’s in one group, Auxilaries in another and CV’s LPH’s in another the government improves the chances each year of gaining foreign orders. Modify how contracts are let and then this works. Smaller lead in times too by involving private industry less.
Remember it was a large navy that Germany did not have that lead to the Battle of Britain. The achievements go almost exclusivly to the RAF for the saving of Britain in WW2, reality is that Germany could not get the troops ashore anyway.