UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 381-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

DEFENCE COMMITTEE

UK Defence: commitments and resources

Tuesday 6 March 2007

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL SIR JOCK STIRRUP, GCB

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 156

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Defence Committee

on Tuesday 6 March 2007

Members present

Mr James Arbuthnot, in the Chair

Mr David Crausby

Linda Gilroy

Mr David Hamilton

Mr Mike Hancock

Mr Dai Havard

Mr Bernard Jenkin

Mr Brian Jenkins

Mr Kevan Jones

Robert Key

Willie Rennie

________________

Witness: Air Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup GCB, Chief of the Defence Staff, gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: Good morning. Welcome to this first evidence session in an inquiry into the UK Defence commitments and resources. What we intend to do is to review the assumptions made in the Government's Strategic Review in 1998 and also in the Future Capabilities White Paper of two years ago, to explore whether the current commitments are sustainable without an increase in resources. CDS, good morning. You have to get away by 12, I understand.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: There or thereabouts.

Q2 Chairman: We will do our best to get you through by then. Can I begin by asking whether the assumptions made in the Strategic Defence Review are being reassessed in the current Spending Review and, if so, to what extent are those assumptions being reassessed?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: If I may, Chairman, I think the question puts the issue slightly the wrong way around. We do not review the assumptions because we are having a Spending Review; actually we keep the assumptions under regular review. Of course, that review feeds into specific issues, such as the Comprehensive Spending Review in which we are currently engaged, but we are very conscious that the world does not stand still, and since the SDR in the latter part of the previous decade - ten years ago now - we have looked at it on a number of occasions. We have mentioned the review itself, of course, the new chapter which we carried out after 9/11 and the subsequent review since then; and we have done very recent work to see whether the assumptions that we made at the time of the Defence Review not only are valid today but are likely to be valid over the next ten to 15 years. We have looked at the strategic context; we have looked at the experience of the last five years; we have asked ourselves what is it that we are likely to have to do over the next five to ten years? So I would reassure you that we keep our assumptions and our policy baseline under constant review. You mentioned the planning assumptions that spring from that policy baseline, and that of course is a subject of considerable debate at the moment. It is quite clear that we are operating beyond the bounds of the planning assumptions that were set. That in itself is not a major issue because the planning assumptions set the overall resource context and the shape of the Armed Forces in general - they are not an upper limit beyond which one cannot go. But they are clearly a limit which if exceeded for extended periods of time cause considerable difficulties, and if exceeded on more or less a permanent basis then clearly they are not the right limit. So the questions that we ask ourselves at the moment are: is the current pace of operations, the current tempo and the current commitment likely to be sustained not just for three or four or five years but for ten or 15? If that is the case then we would have to revisit the planning assumptions; and I have to say that the jury is still out on that particular issue. We are now starting to see the first signs of a very, very slight un-tightening of the screw, if I can put it that way. But we are looking at the defence planning assumptions as I speak and will reach conclusions during the course of this year on what they should look like for the future.

Q3 Chairman: You have seen the RUSI article about the over-extended equipment budget and we will come on to that issue later, but in view of what you say would you think that there was anything to be said for having a new strategic defence review, which is what that article recommends?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: At the moment I do not. The work we have done on the future strategic context has broadly underpinned the judgments that were made at the time of the Defence Review, but thrown some of them into sharper focus, and clearly emphases change over time. The responses that we are able to make to various challenges change over time and that is natural and is part of the routine business of the Department. If we, as we do, live in the complex and dynamic world in which things change quite rapidly then we, too, have to be agile; so the concept of a massive policy effort to set a new policy baseline is not the right response to that sort of world. It is the right response when some things change so fundamentally you have to alter the whole basis of your business, but you need to be updating your policy baseline and your assumptions almost continuously in the context of that dynamic and complex environment. So it is a question of evolution at the moment, rather than revolution.

Q4 Chairman: What about the current force structures and the equipment procurement strategy? Do you think those are suited to the needs of the country today?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: We have done a great deal of work to ensure that they are. To take one example, the future Army structure, which is very much about ensuring that the Army of today and tomorrow will be able to face the kinds of challenges that it is likely to face - the restructuring of the brigades, to give more emphasis to medium weight, the restructuring of the number of battalions into fewer but larger battalions of greater utility, the availability of a larger number of battalions for deployed operations - all of these are about structuring the Armed Forces in a way that fits them for the future challenge. The same is true of the Royal Navy and the same is true of the Royal Air Force, where an enormous amount of restructuring goes on almost continually because the world is changing and we have to evolve with it and we have to be agile to meet that particular challenge. As far as equipment is concerned, equipment covers a very broad spectrum of acquisition, from boots all the way up to nuclear submarines. If we look at the upper ends, at the platforms, the very expensive big ticket items, these, by and large, are around for anything upwards of half a century - if you look at original concept out of service date. Over that sort of timeframe the world, of course, is going to change many times, and change dramatically, and you cannot change platforms every time the world moves on. So, of course, the answer is to ensure that your platforms are agile enough and adaptable to respond to those changing circumstances. As it happens, the evolution of technology gives us great opportunities in this regard because capability today is much more about the information systems, the sensors, the weapons and associated systems that you mount on platforms than it is about the platforms themselves. So the key to having the right degree of agility in our equipment programme is to have systems that are readily and affordably adaptable to meet changing circumstances, and I think you can see many instances of how we have applied that concept over recent years.

Mr Jones: The in word this morning seems to be "agile" and agile and the MoD are not two words that go together very carefully in my mind. The RUSI article is actually headlined The Underfunded Equipment Programme and at the beginning it states that the equipment plan has been estimated as under-funded by some £15bn or more over its next ten-year period. You use the word that it is going to be evolution rather than revolution, but in the article they are asking for quite a revolutionary approach in terms of reviewing the number of Typhoons, Type 45s, Astute, and actually asking whether the Nimrod Programme is relevant any more, and the A400M. So how are you going to meet what, if this article is correct, is a problem not just in terms of changing platforms but actually being able to afford this?

Q5 Chairman: Could I ask you to answer that briefly, please, because we will be coming on to equipment issues later?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: First of all, in the context of that article of course it makes certain assertions with which I would take issue. The second point is that the equipment programme has always been under-funded if you look at it from that perspective because to a very large degree, once you get beyond the early years it is aspirational; people have all sorts of things that they want to deliver within their capability areas and these have to appear in the programme somewhere so that you can look at the totality of them and see how they mesh together and how they can be made affordable. Over time those programmes are massaged in terms of the number of them, in terms of the capability and in terms of the timescale to make the delivery of any given programme affordable. So it is the way the equipment programme is constructed rather than the funding of the programme, and indeed to refer to it as an equipment programme in that sense is wrong - it is more of an equipment plan, a plan which has to be amended and altered as you get close to the point where you are going to get to Main Gate and have to put in some serious money.

Q6 Robert Key: Sir Jock, could you clear up a little confusion in my own mind about strategic procurement and indeed military policy on this? The arrival of HMS Albion and Bulwark has been a tremendous asset and it has also meant a much longer reach for amphibious warfare and the role of the Royal Marines. It is very good news that in January the Ministry of Defence ordered a contract for the partial air-cushion support catamaran vessel, PACSCAT because, after all, the poor old Mark 10 landing craft still goes at the same speed as landing craft at Gallipoli 90 years on. But I find that rather confusing when, put against the policy of STOM - the Ship to Objective Manoeuvre programme, which means that amphibious activity will actually be able to go without touching the beach - a concept from over the horizon on a ship like Albion or Bulwark - straight into the area of conflict. Why is the Ministry of Defence apparently having two strategies, two procurement programmes, with two different objectives?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I think the answer to that, quite simply, comes back to the word which is the buzz word of this morning, which is agility. Ship to Objective Manoeuvre is a very good concept and will have tremendous utility, but the difficult thing about the future is we never know what it is going to hold, and very often in the past we have found that our ideas of how we might deal with situations when the future becomes today have to be changed because something has arisen which we did not or could not foresee, and we have to adapt to that. So we need to retain the sufficient suite of capabilities within our overall arsenal so that we can have that degree of agility and respond to the needs of the moment.

Q7 Chairman: Still on agility, Sir Jock, is the aspiration - if that is what they are - of future fast jets appropriate for what we need compared with the aspiration of future helicopters and lift?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: The balance between air transport, rotor lift and fast jet aircraft is again one that is debated frequently and one that is under debate at the moment. It is, of course, always a question of balance. At the moment support helicopters have been very much to the fore in everyone's thinking. We are all right at the moment; we are able to deliver sufficient support helicopter hours to Commanders in theatre to meet their needs. I am in theatres frequently and I always ask them the same question and I always get the same answer. But our concern, of course, is about our resilience into the future, our ability to continue doing this over an extended period of time, and that is why we are looking at various options for improving our support helicopter capability. But in terms of the balance of our planning we have to remember that, alas - and this Committee has taken note of this in the past - we have eight Chinooks sitting in a shed unable to fly. Were those aircraft flying it would represent a 25% increase in our Chinook lift capacity today and everyone in this room knows how enormous that is. So if our plans had come to fruition properly we would be much better placed in terms of support helicopters than we are today; but we are where we are so we are looking at what we can do to improve our resilience into the future. Air transport, we all know, is a serious concern but we have a fifth C17 coming along next year and we have the A400M somewhat down the track and hopefully the future strategic tanker aircraft, which will be a modern aircraft with an air transport capability. The issue of fast jet aircraft, though, is an important one; it is not all today about air transport and support helicopters. If, as you will have done, speak to David Richards about his time commanding ISAF, he will tell you that without air power last year in Afghanistan NATO would have lost; air power not just in terms of fixed wing, of course, but the Apache, which has done a fantastic job for us in the south of Afghanistan. But the effects that those aircraft deliver in the battle space can be and often are decisive. So there is no question of saying one is less important today than the other; it is, exactly as your question puts it, a matter of balance between them. We are confident that at the moment we are striking about the right balance but we are in a bit of a hole because of the shortfall in SH lift that is represented by those eight Chinooks sitting in a shed.

Chairman: We are falling behind; if you could be very brief, please, Robert Key.

Q8 Robert Key: I am ashamed to say that those eight Chinooks are in my constituency, a cause of considerable embarrassment to a lot of people. But why has the Ministry of Defence not made a decision on the purchase of eight Puma helicopters formerly belonging to the Portuguese Air Force, which the Ministry of Defence inspected at the end of last year and still, months on, no decision has been taken? With eight Pumas we would be making some progress towards the 25% shortfall as a result of the Chinook fiasco.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: But there are other options; that is not the only option for addressing the problem, there are other options and there are other options which provide a better outcome for us, and those are the ones that we have been pursuing.

Q9 Chairman: So have you rejected that suggestion?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I will not say that we have rejected it because we remain open to all possibilities here, but of course it is a question of priorities - which do you do first?

Q10 Mr Jenkin: I shall not get tempted down that path, except to point out that the war might be over by the time we got the helicopters. Sir Jock, you say that the jury is still out on whether the defence planning assumptions of SDR are right. How long does the jury need to be out because we have exceeded all the defence planning assumptions for at least seven years, as the RUSI article points out. Does there not come a point when we have to say that we are doing more operations than we planned and we have to cater for that? And of course it is about money and I could imagine you not wanting to have a Defence Review if you were not confident that the money was going to be produced after it was not produced last time, as we now know.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Since you managed to slip in your little comment at the start, perhaps I can respond by slipping in a little comment that, as I said at the outset, Commanders in theatre are quite clear that they have all the helicopter hours they need for current operations. We are thinking about the future, so therefore it is right to make sure that you have the right solution for that. As far as the planning assumptions are concerned, I think we have to reach a judgment over the course of the next 12 months.

Q11 Mr Crausby: A simple question, CDS. Do you think that the UK needs to pay more for its defence, a higher proportion of our GDP, for instance?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: The amount of money that a nation spends on its defence capability is, of course, at the end of the day a political judgment. From our perspective we have looked at our experiences of the last five, six or seven years, which have clearly demonstrated the need for military capabilities across the full spectrum of operations, from high end war fighting to peace enforcement and everything in between. We have also considered, given the nature of the changing world, whether that requirement is likely to continue in the future, and our assessment of the future strategic context is not that encouraging; there are lots of very worrying factors - population pressures, climate pressures, technological factors. I do not have time to go into them all this morning but we have done a pretty thorough assessment of those and they indicate to us the risk to global stability in which we have an enormous stake is pretty high. If we take the UK's position in the world as one of its leading economies, as one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, a leading member of the world's most successful military alliance - NATO, the EU and so on - then it seems to us that the UK is going to want and needs to play a substantial role in delivering the right degree of global stability in that extremely challenging environment, and that is going to need the right level of investment.

Q12 Mr Crausby: The Chairman and I visited Germany last week and I think we got the impression that there is little or no chance that the German public could be persuaded to spend more than the 1.4% of their GDP, much below ours. So why and how do we convince the British people that we should do more than our European partners?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I am not sure, personally, that we should be judging this against a benchmark of what others do; we should be judging it in the context of what we think is right for us in the future strategic context.

Q13 Chairman: CDS, when the Vice Chairman asked about spending more of our GDP on defence you gave a quite long answer, but I translated it as "Yes"; would that be right?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: You might very well think that, Chairman; I could not possibly comment!

Q14 Mr Hancock: If I could follow on from David's last question to you, Sir Jock, do you not also have a responsibility - or does the government not have a responsibility - to be able to convince the people of this country that to spend more on defence while your NATO allies are manifestly taking the opposite line is a very difficult task and they are not very successful at doing that, are they?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I do not think it is for me to comment on what the government's job is or how well it is doing it. What I would say is that we have a lot of highly qualified people who carry out the kinds of analyses that I have been describing and it is important that we explain the results of that analysis and that it forms the basis of a public debate within the UK on this issue, and of course I think that is quite simply what the Prime Minister was calling for in his recent speech in Plymouth.

Q15 Mr Hancock: Do you sense, when you meet your European counterparts, that they are slightly embarrassed by the position that their countries are taking?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I do not think I can really answer for the emotional state of my European colleagues.

Q16 Mr Hancock: I did not ask you to comment on their emotional state, I just asked if you felt that they were slightly embarrassed about the situation of the commitment of their Armed Forces into fighting mode and also the fact that many of them have a very distinct position that they are not going to increase defence expenditure and, in some instances, are going to reduce it?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Forgive me, but I regard embarrassment as somewhat of an emotional state and I really cannot answer for the views and the thinking of my European colleagues. But if I come back to the point that the level of defence expenditure is essentially a political decision, then it seems to me that it is not for the military to think across Europe what it should be, it is for politicians across Europe to think about it.

Q17 Mr Hancock: I can fully accept that line, and that leads me nicely into my next question on this. Do you see your role as to say no to Ministers if you believe that the level of commitments were putting excessive pressure on the Armed Forces?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Happily it does not actually get to the position because Ministers take exactly the same view of this - and I am talking of course about Defence Ministers here - as I and the single service chiefs do. It is an issue which we look at frequently and which we see in exactly the same light and our views are reflected very clearly and very robustly in wider government thinking about responses to potential contingencies. So it is not a question of me saying yes or no to Ministers, it is about us together reaching a clear and considered opinion and judgment on what is doable.

Q18 Mr Hancock: Can I take you back a year or two to the initial decision, 18 months ago, to deploy to Helmand Province and the fact that the initial deployment was going to be X number of troops and that was obviously a bad underestimation of what was needed and where was your role or your predecessor's role in that decision-making?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: It was not a bad estimation, or under estimation of what was needed at the time. The fault, if fault there be, was perhaps in not explaining clearly that when you go into a new environment, about which you know little and of which you have fairly limited intelligence, then it is only once you get people on the ground and you start developing that intelligence that you understand the situation clearly and you see what is going to be required on the long run.

Mr Hancock: It is a bit rich, Sir Jock, is it not, considering we had been in the country for over three years and the Secretary of State for Defence in this Committee room told us our troops would most likely be firing shots, they would be reconstructing the country. So their intelligence was that good that he could sit there confidently saying that he did not expect our Forces to be engaged in any real fighting.

Chairman: I think he expressed a hope rather than an expectation.

Q19 Mr Hancock: No, I think it was more than a hope, Chairman.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I cannot comment on what he actually said to you in this Committee, but I am pretty clear that what he intended to convey was that we would all be delighted if that were to be the outcome, but we certainly did not expect it. If we expected to be in there without firing a shot, frankly we would hardly have deployed Apache helicopters.

Q20 Mr Hancock: I think you should re-read the evidence.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: So we knew we were going into a difficult situation and we said so, right from the outset. There was no question about that; militarily we made that absolutely clear. We did not know what was going to be required in the long run because although we had been in the country for quite a long time we had not been in the south; the maximum number of military that had been in Helmand Province was somewhere in the region of about 100 Americans at any one time. So our intelligence base of what would be required in Helmand and indeed in the further reaches of Kandahar, was pretty low and once we got people on the ground we started to develop that intelligence more clearly and we saw what was going to be required for the longer term.

Mr Hancock: I have some more questions but I think Bernard Jenkin wants to come in.

Q21 Mr Jenkin: Just to press you on this matter, Sir Jock. Does this not demonstrate that if you are deploying above your planning assumptions that there is inevitably a tendency towards wishful thinking in terms of what commitments are likely to be when new operations are taken on? I cannot think of a single independent commentator who did not say that the force was likely to be inadequate and certainly it got a very rough ride in the House of Commons because it seemed to all of us that it was going to be wholly inadequate, and we still get reports from frontline Commanders that they still feel that it is somewhat inadequate.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: First of all, your opening caution I think is very appropriate. There is a danger of wishful thinking; there is a danger of making the assumptions fit what you think you are going to be able to do, and it is something we do guard against very carefully. So you are right to highlight it. This is more than just a matter of semantics; indeed, the force that was deployed there in the first place was not inadequate for what it was tasked to do. In a sense in those first several months we were engaged in a break-in battle in Helmand and the force was appropriate for that. Of course, there is limit to the amount of force you can flow in any given time, particularly when you have to build bases in the area. So it is not that the force level last year was inadequate for what they were tasked to do, it was that having established ourselves on the ground and having seen the situation it was quite clear that over the longer term we would need substantially higher force levels and that became clear fairly early on, and that is what we have been working towards and that is what we have seen in recent announcements.

Q22 Chairman: But they were inadequate because they did not have a reserve.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I am talking about the forces that we deployed to the Helmand Province. In terms of ISAF, of course, it is perfectly correct that the CJSOR was not fulfilled.

Q23 Mr Hancock: If you do not think you are at that position or you suggest to us that you are never in that position when you have to tell Ministers that enough is enough and this is one too far, if we are not in that position - and you obviously think we are not - where are we? How close are we to that judgment having to be made and what scale of future commitments would you consider seriously having to reject?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Let me just be clear. It is not a question of never saying we can do no more; my point was that we do not have to go and say no to Ministers because together we look at this all the time and we reach that judgment collectively. The question was phrased in terms of senior military officers versus Ministers and that is not the way that it works, but of course we can reach a judgment that we are very limited in what further we might be able to do and that is the judgment that we quite clearly reached. If you look at the reports that we published on readiness, our readiness for contingent operations is considerably reduced. This should come as no surprise to anybody. It is because we are actually fighting operations. You can either have all your forces available for contingent operations or you can have all of them engaged on operations or anywhere in between, but you cannot those extremes.

Chairman: We will come on to that later.

Q24 Mr Hancock: Why do you think it is then that serving officers have spoken out recently about their concerns, and do you think that they are right to do so?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I think the way that that question is put implies that serving officers have done something rather different.

Q25 Mr Hancock: No, I just asked a straight question. Why do you think they have spoken out?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: You said "spoken out" in a sense that they have suddenly broken silence, as it were. Senior military officers have been giving interviews in the media, talking to defence correspondents all the time. What has happened recently is that the way that some of the things they have said have been reported has led ---

Q26 Mr Hancock: It is the journalists! Do you think that some of the journalists have invented what officers have said?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: No, that is not what I said, but the way that these things have been reported. Let me take the example of the First Sea Lord, who was reported a very short while ago. He made it quite clear that what he said at that particular session was not what was reported, certainly the sense of it was not what was reported the following day. He made that quite clear himself. I think that speaks for itself.

Q27 Mr Hancock: And officers on the frontline when they have said to journalists, "We are short of equipment, we have a problem", are they right to do so?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Officers and soldiers, airmen, sailors on the frontline are always right to highlight, as they do, through the chain of command, deficiencies which they identify.

Q28 Mr Hancock: They are not doing it through the chain of command, are they, Sir Jock? They are doing it through journalists.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: When you have journalists embedded on operations clearly they are going to hear these things and that has always been the case and there is nothing new in this. Equally, if you go and talk to the people on the frontline - I do, you do, you all go out there - you might have gone out there reading the media and thinking that our people are short of everything and that their equipment is terrible, but you come back from there with a completely different impression. Our people on the ground have some of the best equipment in the world anywhere. Equally, of course, they have some things that are rather old and that we wish had been replaced some time ago; there is a plan to replace them but it is some way down the road.

Chairman: I think we are getting off the subject slightly.

Q29 Mr Hancock: My question is, are you concerned that some of your senior Commanders and junior Commanders in the field are appearing to be so frustrated about the chain of command and the refusal in the chain of command to accept what they are saying that they then speak to journalists in such a way as they put pressure back here to get the things that they cannot get by going through the chain of command? Journalists do not make up those sorts of stories; as you say, they are embedded with these people.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Are people frustrated with the chain of command? Of course, that is always a possibility, always has been and I daresay that some people feel that way. But does the chain of command not actually listen to what they say? No, that is not true; the chain of command does listen to what they say. Very little, if any, of what I read in the media, if you actually get through the way that it is presented, is news to us.

Chairman: I do not want this subject to take over the whole of this evidence session; it has the potential of doing so.

Q30 Kevan Jones: I think this is important though, Chairman, because if I understand what we are being told is the fact that these senior members of the Armed Forces are well intentioned but misunderstood. I am sorry, I do not accept that. Is it not the case, I put to you, Sir Jock, that not only lower down the chain of command but even at your level some - like the First Sea Lord and others - are playing politics, quite frankly. To think that, if they rattle the Treasury long enough and embarrass them enough, that more money will flow out of the Treasury, and is it not your job really to try to pull some of those people into line because we have seen a succession of these well-informed sources but some going on the record, not being misunderstood and not being, I do not think, unclear in what they are saying? Do you not think that it is a bit dangerous if you, as the military, are now starting to get into a political arena which, frankly, you should not get into?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I agree with the last part of what you said. The first part I do not agree with, your interpretation of what I said, which is that we are well meaning but misunderstood; that was not my point. But since there has been quite some debate about this we need to be absolutely clear. When I go out to theatre, which I do very frequently, I speak to people on the ground and I listen to what their problems are, I listen to what they think is good and I listen to their complaints. There are always things that they can find to complain to me about and there always will be, and some of their complaints are absolutely justified and I can do something about them; some of them are justified but it is impossible to do anything about them in the short term for real practical reasons in the world; and some of them are not justified, and that is just the way it is. If there is a criticism to be made - and I think there is - then we have probably not been as good as we ought to be at feeding information back down the chain of command about those particular issues, about what is being done to fix them and about why they cannot be fixed and about why they might not be reasonable.

Q31 Kevan Jones: Fine, but can I give you two examples of where senior officers have actually created the story themselves? One was quite clear, the First Sea Lord you referred to, talking about the number of ships. The other one over Christmas was the Adjutant General talking about Army accommodation, where this government has had a good track record of investment in Army accommodation and that story came from the Adjutant General's office - he made the story up. The journalist would not have had a story if it had not been for planting stories. So I have to say, Sir Jock, that you have to separate issues that come from theatre from an agenda that is being played by certain of your senior officers actually to get the agenda going, and it is no good then blaming the journalists and saying that they have misunderstood because they would not have had stories if those people had not spoken to them.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: First of all, I did not at any stage, I think, use the word "blame"; I understand that people in the media have their job to do as we do. Secondly, I absolutely reject the assertion that the Adjutant General suddenly appeared, went public and made this up. The Adjutant General came back off leave at our request to give some input into a story that was already being run. He was speaking on behalf of the MOD and if you look at what we said ---

Q32 Kevan Jones: And gave it legs.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: If we contribute to a story that is running of course it is going to give it legs but if we do not contribute that is going to give it legs as well. We all know here that in that sense we are on a hiding to nothing. It is better to have our case heard and what he said was that we have done a great deal in terms of accommodation but we have more to do; we are all clear that this is an important area of priority for us and we have to work hard on it, and we all agreed with that.

Chairman: I think we have done enough on this now, except for David Hamilton.

Q33 Mr Hamilton: My question is similar in a sense. You indicated earlier on that Ministers and yourselves are at one when you make a decision, which implies there never has been a disagreement about whether we should go into a specific conflict or not. Everyone accepts that we have the best Armed Forces in the world, which is continually referred to, and I think the Americans would say the same about their Armed Forces and other countries will say the same. And when we decide as politicians, or Ministers decide that we go into a conflict, my problem is this: do you have the courage at your level to turn round to Ministers and say, "No, we will not go into that conflict, we do not have the support for that conflict, we do not have the longevity for that conflict"? Because many of the criticisms that have been referred to by junior ranking officers and indeed foot soldiers is not at the politicians but it is guided, in a sense, against yourselves because you make the point of the chain of command - three times you have made that point - and in other words what you are saying is that the young soldier or the officer should not complain unless they complain through the chain of command, the very people who made the decision to go in in the first place. That is a criticism, is it not, about yourselves?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes. I reiterate that my point about not having to say no to Ministers does not mean that we do not say that we do not have the capacity to conduct this particular operation. My point was that it is not actually us versus defence Ministers, we make that judgment absolutely together and defence Ministers take absolutely the same view of this as we do. But do we have the courage, as you put it, to say, "No, we just do not have the capability to do that"? Yes, of course we do, that is our job.

Q34 Mr Jenkin: One of the principal indicators of over capacity is your inability to achieve the Harmony Guidelines, which has been amplified in your own performance report. What is the point of having Harmony Guidelines if they are routinely broken?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: The point of having Harmony Guidelines is that that is how we like to operate and if we start going beyond them then we need to think very carefully about what we are doing and how we get back to within those Harmony Guidelines and about how long it is going to take, and that of course plays into the earlier question about the defence and planning assumptions. Yes, it is true that we are breaking the Harmony Guidelines but it is not true that everybody across defence is breaking the Harmony Guidelines. If you look across at the moment the Army has certainly something like 17.5% of its people breaching Harmony Guidelines; the Air Force has about 5% and the Navy about 1%. So it is uneven across the Services and of course within the Services it is uneven there as well. I make that point not to suggest that this is not a serious issue, because of course it is; it is an indicator that we are operating beyond the level for which we are structured and resourced in the long-term. And in the long-term, if we are to return to the Harmony Guidelines, which we need to, then we have to consider whether or not our overall levels of commitment are likely to reduce so that we will come back within the Guidelines or whether we will need more resources, and that comes back to the judgment we talked about making within the next 12 months.

Q35 Mr Jenkin: But have you calculated how big the Army would need to have been, say, over the last five years in order to achieve the Harmony Guidelines?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: We have calculated that the most important thing for the Army at the moment is to achieve its full manning.

Q36 Mr Jenkin: But even if it achieves its full manning it would not ---

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: It would make a significant difference. The precise difference that it would make overall on Harmony Guidelines - and we would not have brought the Army back into Harmony Guidelines over the last couple of years - is if the Infantry in particular were able to get close to full manning and the overall level of commitment were to head in the direction which we anticipate it is likely to over the next 12 to 18 months. Will it get much closer to Harmony Guidelines? I suspect the answer is yes.

Q37 Chairman: Could you possibly do us that calculation that Bernard Jenkin asked for?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Certainly, Chairman.

Q38 Mr Jenkin: I did the calculation myself two or three years ago and we needed an Army of 135,000, not even the 108,500 which was originally promulgated in the SDR, which of course we have never achieved, and in fact a target that was given to this Committee by the Adjutant General at the time of the SDR but then disowned by the government.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: We will certainly do that calculation.

Q39 Willie Rennie: You have said several times that you have to think very carefully when you breach the Harmony Guidelines; do you not think very carefully before you breach the Harmony Guidelines?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Of course, but the problem is that we are engaged on current operations and you cannot take a holiday from them; that is the conundrum we face. We are in Iraq, we are in Afghanistan and it is our job to do our best to see those two to a successful conclusion and to do what it takes. We cannot just say that we will stop that for a year.

Q40 Willie Rennie: What measures did you take before you broke the Harmony Guidelines, to try and resolve the problem that is obviously coming down the track?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Assumptions were made about (a) Afghanistan and (b) about the rate of handover to Iraqi control within Iraq. Those assumptions turned out to be inaccurate.

Q41 Mr Jenkin: Moving on to the manning balance, which of course if we achieved would help ameliorate the Harmony Guidelines situation, are you concerned that the manning balance is actually deteriorating at the moment, again as confirmed by your performance report?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Actually no. The forecast is for all three Services to be back within manning balance by April of next year.

Q42 Mr Jenkin: Forgive me for pressing you on this but the performance report actually shows deteriorating lines on all three Services. What has changed in order to bring about this Nirvana that has suddenly appeared?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: A number of things. In the context of the Air Force, for example, the deterioration is to a very large extent a reflection of the way that the drawdown in manpower is being handled, in that for technical reasons the people are going before the posts are actually shed, so that will bring the Air Force back into balance. As far as the Army is concerned, there are a number of initiatives in terms of improving recruiting and in terms of improving retention and I do not need to remind you of the recent pay announcement and the operational allowance that was announced some time before that, and of course financial retention incentives that have been aimed at the key areas in all three Services.

Q43 Mr Jenkin: So manning balance has actually been achieved by reducing the size of the Armed Forces, which seems to have exacerbated the gap. That is what you said about the Air Force and I suspect the same is about the Army. The Army fully trained target has tended to creep downwards rather than upwards.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: In terms of the Air Force it is a reduction that was set in hand three years ago and was accomplished through normal wastage and a series of redundancy programmes, but the redundancy programmes you have to do in a phased way, and the actual reduction in the posts that was planned three years ago is not, as I say, for technical reasons, in line with those. So if the person goes three months before the post technically disappears then you have a gap and that gap itself will disappear.

Q44 Mr Jenkin: I understand but if you are making posts redundant that must be reducing the size of the Armed Forces.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes, but this is a drawdown that was planned and agreed three years ago for a wide variety of reasons; in the case of the Air Force, largely because of logistic lean and the tremendous efficiencies that that produced.

Q45 Mr Jenkins: CDS, on retention specifically, looking at the figures, we have a problem. I think I understand part of the problem but I want to bounce a few ideas off you and see if you concur with some of my understanding. When I look at the figures the one area which is within our target was Army soldiers, which some people may think is rather surprising, but I do not because having talked to a number of individuals they say that the break point comes in a soldier's life when they have been on tour, maybe once, maybe twice, and they have said, "Been there, seen it, done it, the Army can offer me nothing else that will top that and so I can close this chapter on my life and move on." Whilst we talk about overstretched and talk about the equipment difficulties, we have another component in the equation now; we as a nation have never enjoyed so much in the way of an economic revival and boom as the last ten years, and so why, as a fully trained, skilled, much in demand ex-serviceman should I not spend time at home with my family, earning more money and with a better career prospective in front of me, than remain in the Forces, which trained me very well, thank you very much, but I have done my shift? How are we to overcome this problem of retention?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: First of all, the statistics do not show that we have, at the moment, a substantial retention problem. The voluntary outflow rates, applications and exits go up and down year by year obviously, but they are not showing a significant trend. But it is an issue that constantly concerns us because there is always the danger that you do not notice the cliff until you have actually taken a step over it, and we would rather like to see it before we get to it. So I absolutely agree with you that this is a tremendously important issue. Some of the factors that you mention, though, I am not sure are necessarily strong factors. There will inevitably be people who say, "I have done my operation, I have that behind me and now I will go and do something else," but equally I can tell you that I go and talk to a lot of people in Iraq who cannot wait to get to Afghanistan. So I think the picture is mixed there and we have not seen in any of the three Services a phenomenon of large numbers of people going for the reason that you cite. But equally we do have to think very carefully about how to recruit and retain these people in a very competitive labour market. I go back to some of the very good news that we have had in recent days. We have had a 3.3% pay rise across the board; the lowest paid of our people, 13,000 of them will get 9.2%. Another 6000 of the next band up will get 6.2%. This is a very good result. The tax free operational allowance, £2,240 for a six-month tour; the separation allowance, the qualifying period has come down from 110 days to ten days - so lots of things that we have done in that regard. It is not all about money, of course it is not, but money is one consideration and has been an important consideration over the last year or so. Undoubtedly - and without going back into these particular issues again - improving manning will help because it will improve Harmony Guidelines. Undoubtedly doing more in terms of the accommodation for our people - both single living accommodation and service families' accommodation - will be an important element, which is why we are planning to invest over £5bn across the next ten years in that particular area.

Q46 Mr Jenkins: Yes, maybe, but I have a different view about accommodation, by the way; I think that servicemen should have the right to invest in their own accommodation and get on the property ladder quickly.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: We agree with that.

Q47 Mr Jenkins: I do not want to see large monopoly companies coming into make a killing on the defence budget by providing homes under PFI ---

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: We are pursuing that as well.

Q48 Mr Jenkins: I shall not go down that route. One of the things that I do want to talk about is exit interviews. We do exit interviews with all service personnel, of course, and we must collect all this information, and there must be now developing a trend. So if you have that information could you let us have a note, please, on exactly what you see the trend to be on why we have, if not a crisis, a retention problem.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: We will certainly let you have a note on that particular subject.

Q49 Chairman: Before we move on from that, CDS, I think you should be congratulated on the pay settlement. I do not know how many of the problems it will solve but it is obviously a very good result.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: It is a very good result; it is down to a lot of hard work by a lot of people, but, most importantly, in my view, it is a clear recognition by the government and the nation more widely of the value of our people and what they do.

Chairman: Indeed so.

Q50 Willie Rennie: In your careful thinking about breaking the Harmony Guidelines have you thought about increasing the manning requirement?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes, we have, and there are certainly areas - specialist areas in particular - where our view is that we are going to need to do a bit more. Our first task is to get up to the right manning levels; there is no sense in increasing the requirement and then failing to meet those by an even greater margin than you failed to meet the current ones. So let us get the current manning sorted out first. This is an issue in the Infantry, it is an issue in the Royal Marines, it is an issue in the RAF Regiment, across all three Services, and one which is very important.

Q51 Willie Rennie: If you actually increased the manning requirement does that not change your strategy in terms of recruitment? If it is a wholesale change in the recruitment levels that you are looking for, does that not change your strategy, because currently I believe you are focused primarily on retention because that is where the concerns have been?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: No, I think that we are focused on recruiting just as much as we are on retention, but it is a balance between the two. But quite clearly - and I think the National Audit Office Report made this clear - in a sense you get more bang for your buck by investing money in retention rather than recruitment, but that does not mean to say that we ignore recruiting; and of course we want to keep the right overall age mix within our services for the kinds of jobs that they have to do. So we have to think about all of those things - it is balance.

Q52 Willie Rennie: So you do not think it does change your strategy, a whole scale change?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I assume what you mean is that if you assume you are always going to be 15% no show then if you overbook, as it were, you will get up to 100%, that sort of effect. I am not sure that is the case. We are undermanned to such an extent in the areas I have mentioned at the moment that we need a concerted effort to focus on those particular targets. And historically we have shown that when we do focus on it and when we spend the money on recruiting we can actually get the numbers up. It is a tougher environment at the moment because of the outside economy but we can still do it; we have an enormous amount to offer people.

Q53 Willie Rennie: So let us say you achieve your recruitment targets, will you increase those targets to make sure that you are actually meeting the requirement?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: When we have met the manning targets by then we will have reached some conclusions on what the defence and manning assumption should look like in the future, and we will have reached some judgments on specific areas of increase. To be perfectly honest with you the most pressing requirements are not in terms of the Infantry, they are in some rather more specialist areas, but those are the ones we are looking at at the moment.

Q54 Willie Rennie: You do not just set targets just to try and meet them; you set targets because there are real targets for what you require.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes.

Q55 Willie Rennie: Is it not the case that if you do need a greater manning requirement that you should set a target that meets that greater level of manning?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes, but, as I said, in macro terms much of this depends on the judgments that are reached about the defence planning assumptions; much of it depends upon the judgment about whether we think that the kind of level of operations on which we have been engaged over the last two to three years is going to be sustained into the longer term or whether it is likely to turn down. So that really is what drives the overall target. Meanwhile, though, there is plenty to be getting on with because we are not meeting the current target.

Q56 Willie Rennie: I may be making more of a deal with this, but you are saying the manning requirement is not an issue; that because you do not think you are going to reach a higher level of manning level target, therefore you are not going to set that, and you are saying something else ---

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: What I am saying is, if we need to adjust the overall manning requirement we can afford to wait for the work on the defence planning assumptions over the next 12 months to mature, and the work on specific specialist areas to mature because we are not going to meet the current targets before that timescale. In other words, the pace of that work is not the long pole in the tent; the long pole in the tent at the moment is meeting the current manning requirement. So it is just a question of sequence.

Willie Rennie: Let us move on to the RAF

Chairman: Before you move on, Bernard Jenkin.

Q57 Mr Jenkin: By being undermanned across all three Services for some considerable period of time the Ministry of Defence must have saved quite a bit of money. How much money has the Ministry of Defence saved? And where would the money come from if you had been fully manned? Presumably it would have had to have come out of other parts of the defence budget, is that correct?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: In answer to the first part of your question, what is the difference between the manpower costs of what we have had and what we would have had if we were fully manned, if I may, I will let you have a note because I do not have the figures. What we budget for, of course, is not the establishment but the manpower levels that we expect to have. So that when we put in our bids in our spending reviews over the forthcoming years it is based upon the number of people we actually expect to have and expect to have to pay, rather than the establishment.

Q58 Mr Jenkin: So if you recruited up to manning balance ---

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: We would need more money.

Q59 Mr Jenkin: You would need more money.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes.

Q60 Mr Jenkin: And you would have to go cap in hand to the Treasury and the Treasury would say, "Sorry, mate, you will have to get it from somewhere else."

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: That remains to be seen.

Q61 Willie Rennie: The Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy, the force levels have been reduced significantly since the SDR. Have the commitments reduced in that time and are you satisfied that the force levels are sufficient to meet those commitments?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: It is not the commitments that have reduced; it is the number of people that you are required to carry out those commitments. Let me take the example of the Air Force purely because I was closely involved with this in my previous job, and I referred to it early. The logistic leaning process that we have been through, which of course for obvious reasons applies to all three Services but applies to a greater extent to the Air Force and the Navy because of their higher technical content, if I can put it that way, that logistic leaning process, which has been driven by the people on the hangar floor and the ship decks who do the actual work, rather than by management and leadership, has driven up an enormous amount of waste, overlap and duplication and reduced the requirement for people to carry out those tasks substantially; and at the same time in most cases improving the through-put. Efficiency gains, frankly, have been astonishing - in the order of 50% in some cases - and that has driven the requirement for a reduced number of people. It is not that the tasks and the commitments have reduced; it is that they can be carried out much more efficiently.

Q62 Mr Hancock: On the performance reviews there are five main targets. On the first three, overall assessment, on course with some risk; the second one, broadly on course with some slippage; third one, overall assessment some risk on the third target; the other two on target. But in the report you do not indicate at all where the risk is or why the risk has not been addressed. Why is that?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I cannot answer the question of why that is not in the report and perhaps the department can let you have a note on that. It is certainly not the case that risk is not addressed. Risk management is a fundamental activity of people throughout the department and the defence management board in particular.

Q63 Willie Rennie: The first target, Sir Jock, was to achieve objectives established by Ministers for operational and military tasks in which the United Kingdom Armed Forces are involved, including those providing support to civil communities on course with risk.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes.

Q64 Willie Rennie: But the risks are not explained.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: As I say, if I may, I will let you have a note about the presentation of that. The second part of your question was why are not the risks addressed, but of course they are addressed, which does not mean to say that ---

Q65 Willie Rennie: But where? Where are they publicly addressed for the benefit of Parliament?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: That is what I will let you have a note on, if I may, because I cannot answer your question, but, as I say, in the second part you suggested they were not perhaps being addressed, and they most certainly are.

Q66 Chairman: Could you let us have a note, please, about your comment that the reduction was in logistics rather than in the front line?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes.

Q67 Chairman: Could you let us have the figures on that?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Certainly, Chairman.

Q68 Willie Rennie: While it may be possible to deliver enhanced capability with lower force levels, do you accept that there is a limit to this?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: In a sense. Clearly concurrency is an issue. You cannot have one person in more than one place. I would never suggest that numbers are not a factor in overall capability. What I would say is that they are only one of the factors in the delivery of overall capability. So you have got to look at numbers plus everything else.

Q69 Willie Rennie: How close do you think we are, therefore, to the minimum force levels that are required?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: That is not a question I can really answer, because there is no set minimum force level. There is no number at which you can say: after that we really cannot cope. First of all, you have to judge it against the requirement and, secondly, you have to judge what level of capability you can deliver with that reduced number of people, and that will depend very much on technological advances, information technology, in particular, and so on. There is not a floor that is very clear below which you cannot come, but there is always the issue of numbers to be considered as a factor in the overall mix.

Q70 Willie Rennie: There must be a critical mass below which you cannot go below for a force to operate successfully as a unit?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: That depends upon what your tasks are. There are armed forces around the world that are very, very much smaller than ours that operate pretty effectively, but, obviously, they cannot do all the things in all the places that we do. It is a balance between the numbers, the overall capability that numbers, plus training and technology and doctrine give you, plus the task that you are set, and it has got to be judged in the context of all those issues. I am not trying to duck the question, but there is not a set algorithm by which you can derive a number which says: "When you go below this level you no longer have an effective military."

Q71 Willie Rennie: It is difficult for us to measure, is it not, because the goal posts keep moving?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes.

Q72 Willie Rennie: We keep getting told we have got enough equipment on the ground, we have got enough forces and the next things, things change.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes.

Q73 Willie Rennie: Which implies they were not okay before, and it is difficult for us to get a handle on exactly when we have got enough?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: It is a very difficult judgment, and it is constantly changing, because the world is constantly changing.

Q74 Mr Jenkins: Before we move off force levels, I was struck the other day by someone I was talking to. He said that because of his own international overseas commitment, when he comes back he will be entitled to five months' leave. I understand the problem he has got, he is coming home for five months with his wife and, while he may want to stay for a month or two, he would be quite happy to come back into training or performing some role for maybe three of those five months; but he does not want to give it up for free; he would like some compensation for giving this time up. Whilst we understand the health and safety and welfare issues, when we put soldiers or other members of the Forces into certain commitments where they cannot take their leave, do we have a compensation system in place where we pay them for the leave they cannot take, or are we prepared to pay them for leave that they will forego to come back into doing some task?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: There are armed forces that have such systems of buying leave around the world. From our perspective, what is important is that the AFPRB retains its independent oversight of our total remuneration and everything associated there, and, of course, leave is one of the things that they take into account. I think I can do no better than to say to you that we rely upon that body to look at this and to come up with proposals that they think are appropriate. Obviously we give them evidence. I am not saying that we just do what the AFPRB say, they rely upon us to give them evidence, but inevitably, when you start thinking about these wizard wheezes, you have got to think about what impact it has on the total remuneration package, and, I say again, the AFPRB has been hugely valuable to us in the military and it continues to be so. We have seen the results recently, which we have just spoken about. So I would want that considered in the context of remuneration in the round, rather than as just a one-off issue.

Q75 Mr Jenkins: Is that a yes or a no? Are you in favour of paying for leave?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: It is neither, because it is a pretty complex issue. The trouble is that any proposal always has an up side, but it always has down sides as well and you have got to look at it in the round.

Q76 Mr Jenkins: So you have not made a recommendation?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: No.

Q77 Mr Jenkins: You are quite good at not making recommendations.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I think that is unfair. We have made a lot of recommendations to the AFPRB, amongst others, and we see the results of that in the latest pay award.

Q78 Chairman: I think that is a fair riposte. CDS, three or four years ago I visited the taskforce. It was doing fantastic work in the Caribbean, both helping with hurricanes and reducing and bearing down on drug running, and that taskforce has now been severely reduced. I do not think it is there on a full-time basis. Is that because we do not have the ships?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Those particular tasks we do out of spare capacity, we do not build and resource force structure to do those tasks, but clearly there are occasions when you have that capacity available and then they can add great value to that particular mission. It is bound, over time, to go up and down, depending on what the other pressures are. Of course, the short answer to your question is, "Yes", but I have tried to explain it in that way because you could argue we do not have any ships for that task, we do it out of our irreducible spare capacity.

Chairman: I am always extremely rude to members of the Committee who ask questions that other members of the Committee wish to ask, and I have just done so. May I, with apologies, move on to Kevan Jones.

Q79 Mr Jones: CDS, can I ask about the standing commitments that we have got and how the high tempo operations are actually affecting some of those standing commitments?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: The standing commitments of themselves are not affected, but, inevitably, we have to strike a balance between the number of people and the number of pieces of equipment we devote to one task as opposed to another, just the same as we have to think about the balance between the resources we allocate to Iraq and Afghanistan - that is just in the nature of normal strategic campaign management - so we have to think about the resources that we allocate to those standing tasks. The standing tasks themselves are still conducted.

Q80 Mr Jones: I am finding it very difficult this morning. You have obviously been on a very good, "Yes Minister" course because some of the answers you are giving are certainly out of that book.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I am clearly not being at all clear, and I am afraid I have to blame the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme dinner last night!

Q81 Mr Jones: For example, there has been talk about the reducing commitment to Northern Ireland, there is the commitment, for example, to the South Atlantic, which has been on-going and some would suggest needs reviewing in terms of force levels. You say that it could not just be taken away. Are you actually reviewing all those tasks? The Chairman raised the issue around counter-narcotics in the Caribbean. How is it actually done in terms of reviewing what commitment you are going to give to those areas? Should we not in the Falklands, for example, be looking seriously at reducing numbers quite substantially?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: There is a difference between standing commitments and those military tasks we carry out from irreducible spare capacity. The Falklands clearly does not fall into the latter category. We keep our force levels under review regularly, and we have looked at the Falkland force levels recently, and we do that regularly. I am content that the force levels there are right. We have responsibilities in the Falkland Islands and we have to execute those responsibilities, and we think about how to do that very carefully indeed. We do not have any intention to reduce our force levels in the South Atlantic, we think they are right, but, as I said, when it comes to the Caribbean, that is not a standing commitment, that is a military task that we carry out from our irreducible spare capacity, and that spare capacity is going to vary over time.

Q82 Mr Jones: What about Northern Ireland?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Northern Ireland is a campaign on which we have been engaged for a very long time and which, I am pleased to say, is coming towards a successful conclusion, and so the force level reductions in Northern Ireland are driven by the requirement in Northern Ireland. That requirement has gone down, it continues to go down and, therefore, we reduce the forces that are allocated to it.

Q83 Mr Jones: I do not want to pre-empt the decision, but if the peace process continues as it is, can you see a substantial reduction in the presence in Northern Ireland?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I think the Government has made its aim clear, which is to come down to essentially normal garrisoning levels by the second half of this year, I think is the timescale.

Q84 Mr Jones: How many would that be?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I think it is five and a half thousand. Let me give you that. It is a published figure. I seem to remember it is around about that level.

Mr Jones: That is down from, what, 13,000?

Mr Hancock: Eight, nine.

Q85 Mr Havard: I have listened very carefully to what you have said, but this is the guts of it, is it not, this bit about commitment. You said earlier on, all these configurations that you to do, whether it be personnel, equipment or anything else, is set against the tasks set, and that is part of what this is, the tasks set. You say that two things are happening really: there is an iterative process, which is partly the defence planning assumptions, it is partly your assessment of future strategic context, and these things are melding together with the usual planning processes to effectively, as it were, continually update an assessment of the Strategic Defence Review that is setting the overall architecture. That is what I understand you are saying?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes.

Q86 Mr Havard: Out of all of that, you are reassessing both the commitment, the tasks and what you can do over the longer term, presumably, and what equipment you need to do it, and so the suite of things that you have to do it will change as a consequence. You talked about within the next 12 months. Are we going to see something come out of the Ministry of Defence in the next 12 months, or do we see it fitting into the current Comprehensive Spending Review for July/October with the New Prime Minister and the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, or wherever we are heading for then? Where is this next 12 months? What you are describing to us is, with the Prime Minister's debate, your iterative processes and the Ministry of Defence, effectively we are getting this reassessment done and it will then be presented to us in some fashion. How are we to be involved in that debate?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I am afraid I do not know what the current proposals are for exposing this work to this Committee and for its involvement, but perhaps we can come back to you on that because, quite clearly, that will be part of the consideration. I am not saying that it has not been thought about, it is just that I do not have the answer.

Q87 Mr Havard: You said the next 12 months, which to me is next February. Is that right?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: That will take us into next February, yes.

Q88 Chairman: Could you come back to us on that?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: We will certainly come back to you.

Q89 Mr Havard: The MoD seems to have an elastic calendar: "Bend me, shape me, any way you want me"?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: No, I do not think that is entirely fair. I am giving you a sense of the timescale; I am not giving you a specific date for when our review of the defence planning assumptions will be complete. What I said was we need to come to some conclusions on this within the next 12 months. On your point, "How are you going to be involved in this?", I will, if I may, come back to you with what the department says.

Q90 Mr Havard: The central feature in that is the commitments we decide to give to you, "we" collectively, "the politicians".

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Absolutely.

Q91 Linda Gilroy: Equipment overspend. It has been widely reported that the MoD faces serious financial crisis in the current year because of overspends in major equipment projects, and the Autumn Performance Report one of the PSAs it reports some slippage on is exactly that, and people will draw the conclusion from that that it is inevitable that this will impact on running costs. What has been cut as a result? Is it training, stock levels, fuel? How does it impact on readiness? Is it inevitable?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I do not think I would characterise it as a serious financial crisis. I think the department has its annual expenditure well in hand. The actual cost of major projects and the cost overrun on those projects does, of course, cause us problems, because we have to accommodate those. Thankfully they are becoming fewer in number, and we expect to see this trend continue, but we still have to deal with some of these legacy projects that were set in hand some time ago, and we know which those are. How then does the department deal with the cost overruns? By a range of measures. In one case it is slippage in the time delivery, in another case it is trade-offs in terms of performance and in another case it may be massaging alternative programmes to move some of their expenditure to different years to make a bit more headroom for that particular overspend project. It is unwelcome to have to do it for cost growth within a project, of course, but this is, in a sense, normal departmental business, because we are always seeking to create headroom for other things.

Q92 Linda Gilroy: Can I put that into plainer English? What is the price, in day-to-day terms, in terms of equipment and the day-to-day operational requirements?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Your question boils down to: what is the opportunity cost of that equipment costed growth?

Q93 Linda Gilroy: It is really what impact is it having at the front line?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: It is having no impact on the front line, because we are not reducing front line activity as a result of this; most of this is absorbed in the equipment programme.

Q94 Linda Gilroy: So it is not affecting fuel and stocks that are available to them?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: No.

Q95 Linda Gilroy: What about training?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Absolutely not.

Q96 Linda Gilroy: It is not having any impact on training at all?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: No. Other things are, but that is not.

Q97 Linda Gilroy: What about readiness? Where do you see the readiness curve going over the next six months?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Readiness is going to remain at a fairly low level because, as I explained, we are actually engaged on real operations rather than sitting being ready for operations, and the more of one small structure one commits to current operations the less is going to be available, i.e. ready, for contingencies.

Q98 Linda Gilroy: I might come back to that in a moment, but before I move there, are you concerned that our contingency reserves are being eroded?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Contingency reserves of?

Q99 Linda Gilroy: In relation to the PSA and the targets in relation to the Autumn Performance Report, there is an indication that contingency reserves are being eroded.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I am sorry to be obtuse about this, but are we talking about spares, are we talking about ammunition, WMR, that sort of thing?

Q100 Linda Gilroy: Yes.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: No, because we actually do not do that any more. We kept those war maintenance reserves for large scale operations and the surge requirements that arise from those. We are now actually engaged on operations. So what we do is maintain the flow of equipment and spares of ammunition for those operations through to the front line with a header tank, if I can put it that way, to make sure that there are never any shortages going through to the front line, and the size of that header tank depends upon the item in question - the delivery time, the order time - and that is in the judgment of the DLO. We do not use WMR in the sense that we did, for example, in the days of the Cold War.

Q101 Linda Gilroy: On the readiness performance statistics in the Autumn Performance Report, you said earlier that it should come as no surprise. Those are the percentage of force elements showing no serious or critical weaknesses against required peacetime readiness levels and also those showing no serious or critical weaknesses against the ability to generate from peacetime, but what in practice do they mean? Why are they there if they do not have a meaning in terms of the current context of how we are operating?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Because they show us what we do have left available for contingencies. The question was put earlier: do we say "No" to additional commitments? This gives us a very clear indication of what we have left in the locker, as it were, to contribute to further contingencies, to deal with further emergencies. So it is a very useful measure.

Q102 Linda Gilroy: "Thirty-two per cent of force elements having serious weaknesses against peacetime readiness." What does that mean in terms of that capacity?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: What it means is that our ability to conduct further contingency operations is very much reduced.

Chairman: Can I break in there for a moment? Robert Key.

Q103 Robert Key: Chairman, something rather strange has crept into the Spring Supplementary Estimates on page 251 which leads me to question what is going on between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence about the treatment of urgent operational requirements and depreciation. The MoD told us in our evidence on the inquiry into Lessons of Iraq that the Treasury has agreed that these costs are a legitimate charge to the operation for the period when equipment bought as UORs is in use in theatre. What has happened here is that we see on page 251 there is a £42 million transfer from RFR1 (request for resources) to RFR2, and this item, of course, covers the cost of capital and depreciation charges. Does this mean that the Treasury is actually changing its rules and that the Ministry of Defence budget is going to have to carry the whole cost of the consequences of purchasing something under an urgent operational requirement. £42 million in one item in the Spring Supplementary Estimates actually is a very significant sum, and if this is a change of Treasury thinking and rules, then the Ministry of Defence is going to lose out seriously, or have I missed something?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I do not know, I am afraid. I am going to have to take that one away and come back to you.

Q104 Linda Gilroy: Continuing on the readiness, the Autumn Performance Report states that assuming that our level of actual operational commitment does not exceed our current assumptions on the size and duration of operational commitments over the next 18 months, we assess we will probably meet our PSA target in April 2008, but we will dip below it in the meantime. What does "dip" exactly mean? How big is it? Does it worry you? What happens if your assumptions are exceeded, as they have been in very many cases before? You referred to the danger of wishful thinking earlier on.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: The readiness issue does not worry me. As I say, you cannot both conduct an operation and be ready for operations; you can do one or the other; and so the more that you do in terms of conducting, the less you can have in terms of readiness. That is not the issue that concerns me. The issue that concerns me actually is about our ability to carry out the necessary level of training, particularly as new people come into the Armed Forces, to be able to recover to the appropriate readiness levels when we cease current operations. That is my concern, rather than the specific level of readiness at any moment in time, which is bound to go up or down depending upon the demands of current operations.

Q105 Linda Gilroy: So how worried are you about that training?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: It is a serious concern.

Q106 Linda Gilroy: What are you doing about it?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: We are doing what we can to deliver the lower level training to our people, but, inevitably, with the current level of operational commitments, we are unable to do the higher level formation training, which is extremely important in developing the wider capabilities of our Armed Forces and particularly the capabilities of our commanders at various levels.

Chairman: We will come on to training in just a second. I want to stay on readiness for the moment if I can.

Q107 Linda Gilroy: Is the inability to meet the agreed readiness targets because of lack of stocks, manpower, training? What is the balance between those?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: It is essentially because of the demands of operations which impact on all of them.

Mr Hancock: Why? You do not explain that very well.

Q108 Linda Gilroy: Can I pursue that. I want to go back to the question I was asking earlier about 32 per cent of force elements having serious weaknesses. You were saying that was a useful measure because it was an indication of where we were, presumably in relation to what we are talking about now?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes.

Q109 Linda Gilroy: Is that as far as it can go? Is that the tipping point between stretch and overstretch? Where is that tipping point, if it is not one in three or 32 per cent?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I think about stretch and overstretch more in terms of people than anything else, and we are very stretched at the moment. We probably do not want to go too far down this route either, because you want to concentrate on readiness, but if I can just deal with the overall readiness issue. Readiness depends upon a combination of factors - obviously the people, the state of their training, the equipment, the state of their equipment, the logistics support they have for it. It would be very neat if you were able to take, say, 50 per cent of your force structure and send it on an operation and with it goes all the support and the trained people that it normally has and the other 50 per cent as it normally is, but we all know that does not happen. When you are supporting an operation you have to move your focus of logistics support to the operational theatre, you very often have to provide them with higher levels of support than you would do on a day-to-day basis, and that impacts upon units that remain back at home. So, inevitably, their readiness is to an extent compromised, but that is in itself a reflection of the current operations on which we are engaged.

Q110 Linda Gilroy: In relation to that dip and to getting back on target for April 2008 in the event of your managing that, does that create the headroom to get back in balance particularly as far as training, which seemed to be the main concern?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: We are not going to get back to where we need to be on training by 2008.

Q111 Linda Gilroy: I had better leave training, because I think a colleague of mine is coming to that in a minute.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Can I be clear? I am not really worried about readiness targets. What I am worried about is delivering success on current operations - that absolutely has to be our focus - and what we are doing is reflecting the impact of delivering that success on readiness targets against contingencies, and that, of course, reduces our ability to deal with any further contingencies but that is an inevitable consequence of conducting current operations.

Q112 Linda Gilroy: Apart from what we have already discussed, are there any specific capabilities that are responsible for dragging the readiness profile down?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: None that I would point to.

Q113 Mr Hancock: My question really relates to the readiness factor and the need to possibly top up again the troops in Afghanistan and to properly rotate the ones who have been there who would have done probably eight months by the middle of this year. Are we in a position to be able (1) to fully support them if the need was there in readiness terms, and (2) to properly rotate the troops who are on operations there at the present time, bearing in mind we are not going to get much support from our NATO allies?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes, we are able to support them, but there is not much more left in the locker, as I said earlier. We are able to rotate them, but we are not able to rotate them at the interval we would like to (in other words, the Harmony Guidelines) because of the overall level of commitments. Yes, we will rotate them, they will come back, they will conduct some training, they will have a rest period, but at the current operational tempo they will have to go out again, and sooner than we would have liked. Does that answer what you are getting at?

Q114 Mr Hancock: I think it would be interesting to know just where we are with that. You say we are on the brink of something. You said we are very stretched. That is the first time, I think, anybody in the Ministry of Defence has used that term. We have been told we are stretched. They are reluctant to use "overstretched", but you actually said, "We are very stretched", and I think that is the first time we have heard that, and at least that admission is some stage towards giving people some reassurance that you are, if nobody else is, taking it very seriously?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I think I have used that phrase before. What does it mean? It means that our people are breaking Harmony Guidelines and it means that we have not much capacity for other contingent operations. We do have other capacity for certain emergencies, but it is pretty limited, and the deduction from that is that we will, either at some stage in the not too distant future, certainly over the next couple of years, need to reduce the overall level of commitment or we are going to need to think about the overall force structure. The only thing that I would say is that if you look at the announcement that was made on Iraq and if you look at the announcement that was made on Afghanistan, and you look at the announcement that was made Bosnia, what we have effected here is a degree of strategic rebalancing between Iraq and Afghanistan while, at the same time, reducing slightly the overall deployment burden. So we have started to loosen the screw so far only by a tiny amount, but it is moving in the right direction.

Q115 Mr Hamilton: On that can I ask, if you are reducing the troops complement in Northern Ireland by three and a half thousand, surely that releases a substantial number?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: It makes more of the total structure deployable at any given moment, but, of course, Northern Ireland was a home commitment.

Q116 Chairman: May I ask about the Harmony Guidelines. There is a question at the back of my mind about the precise definition of when someone is away from home. Could you let us have a note, please, about that precise definition and whether you are confident that that guideline reflects the reality of what the Forces go through in terms of being away from their home base?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Certainly.

Chairman: Moving on to training, because I said we would get back to that, Kevan Jones.

Q117 Mr Jones: It has been acknowledged that one of the casualties of the high tempo operations you are undertaking at the moment has been training. In the accounts of 2005/2006 it was 10.8 per cent (I think was the figure) of training exercises that had been cancelled. Does this concern you?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes, it does. As I started to say earlier, the problem we face is that, somewhat counter-intuitively for most people, engagement on operations actually leads to skill fade: because while you gain a lot of experience of that particular operation, as I said at the outset, over the last six or seven years we have had to employ our forces across the full spectrum of conflict and you require the necessary degree of training to be able to conduct operations across that spectrum. The engagement in conflict itself does not give you that spread of experience, and at home there is insufficient time and insufficient resources for people to be able to do the necessary training and exercising at the higher end of the scale, and it is really at the higher end of the scale that we are most concerned. It is a difficult problem, because there are no easy solutions to it all the while the operational tempo is at this level. It is something that we try to mitigate as much as we can. The use of synthetic environments for training commandos, for example, is one way of doing that, but nothing substitutes entirely carrying out that high level formation exercise in training.

Q118 Mr Jones: How long can this go on then?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: It can go on for quite some time, but the longer it goes on the longer the recovery period will be and the more it will cost. It is one of these things that it is very hard to put a precise date on. I cannot say that by 16 February next year we will have reached a stage where it is going to be almost impossible to recover, and that will not be the case, but the longer we go on the longer the recovery and the more expensive it will be. But if we are able to reduce the operational tempo, as we hope and intend to over the next 18 months, and I mentioned the first very slight loosening of the screw that we have achieved just recently, then we should be in a position to start to reinstate some of this training, but, quite clearly, we are not going to be in the business of engaging in large scale, high end, war fighting operations for some years to come because, not only do we need to conclude what we are currently doing, or at least bring the levels down, but we will need to train a new generation of people.

Q119 Mr Jones: When does it become critical? You must have some idea in terms of when it becomes critical that this training takes place, or it comes to a point where (1) the financial cost is too great or (2) the fact that those skills that are taken for granted are there are no longer there?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I do not think it ever gets to the stage where you could not do it, but clearly, the longer it goes on the fewer people you have in your own force structure who have had that sort of experience and can carry out the training, but then you might look to others to come and help and mentor in that regard. The longer it goes on the bigger the challenge you face in rebuilding.

Q120 Mr Jones: Are there any particular pinch points where training has actually been affected? Is it uniform across the three services or is there particular training that is not being done in certain areas that you are perhaps concerned about?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: No, I think it is a concern across all three services and it is reflected in different ways in the different services. I think in terms of the Army, my principle concern would be the lack of training for commanders at various levels within formations to carry out those large scale operations. In the Navy and in the Air Force it will be somewhat different. In the Air Force, for example, it is a reduction in the amount of operational realistic training that they are able to carry out in American ranges. For the Navy it is about being able to get together in large carrier groups, for example, and exercise in that fashion. Sometimes opportunities arise, as they have just recently in the Gulf, where you can get a ship into that sort of formation and you can rebuild some of the experience, but it is ad hoc at the moment.

Q121 Linda Gilroy: How far is it the case that the higher tempo of operations commits the people who do the training more frequently on those operations and, therefore, that is one of the tensions that makes it more difficult to deliver the training, as well as people being available for it?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I do not think that is the big problem.

Q122 Linda Gilroy: Is it a problem?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: The training organisation is stressed, just as every other part of the machinery is stressed - there is no question about that - but that is not the significant problem in terms of training. The real problem is getting sufficient people together to carry out large scale exercises - the people in the Army formations, the support helicopters, the air transport, the air support, all the other aspects you need to put together to conduct this kind of training. It is just not possible to do it at the moment, or only very rarely. The trainers, of course, remain extremely important during operations. To take one example, if you look at what goes on in the Operational Training Advisory Group in the Army, their training of people and units pre-deployment is crucial to our success, but, of course, their training is focused absolutely on the demands of the theatre and not on the wider requirements.

Q123 Mr Jones: In terms of one of the great benefits when it went over to more exhibition reports was the operation Saif Sareea. Are you saying that we will not be able to do one of those again?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: No, we will most certainly have to do one of those again. Of course, normally we would plan to do one periodically every four or five years. We have to keep pushing our aspiration for the next one back in time because we will have to come down from the current operational tempo and then we will have to start to build up capabilities within the Forces, and then the final stage of that will be another exercise like Saif Sareea, and then we will know that we are back at the appropriate pitch for high end, large scale war fighting.

Q124 Chairman: CDS, of all the threats to the future defence of this country would you say that this lack of training is the one that worries you most?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: That allied to the recruitment and retention of the right quality people with the appropriate skills, yes.

Q125 Chairman: That is helpful; thank you. Your answers this morning have all been of a piece, in a sense. They suggest that commitments are higher than planned, that they are going on for longer than planned, that that combination is affecting readiness and training and at some stage the elastic could break. You said you wanted to be aware of the cliff before you actually walked over it. What is it that tells you when you are over the cliff?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: It is a combination of many factors. There is no one indicator; there are lots of indicators and warnings, if I can put it that way. In terms of our people, obviously---

Q126 Chairman: But these indicators and warnings are what you have been telling us about all morning.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: It is the combination of them and what they add up to in their sum total. What they add up to at the moment, in my judgment and in the judgment of the single service chiefs of staff, is that we are able to sustain what we are doing at the moment but in the not too distant future we need something to change. Your next question will be: "What do you mean by the not too distant future?" I am not going to put a timescale on that, but certainly we cannot keep doing this for years. We have been doing it for years so far, but we cannot keep doing it for years on that sort of timescale. Equally, I come back to the point I made earlier, in the various announcements over the last several weeks we have actually changed something; we have started to turn the screw back in the right direction. It is important that we are able to continue doing that over the course of the next year or two, but at the same time, of course, we are engaged on real operations which are extremely important and on which we have to do our best to deliver success, and that remains absolutely our focus.

Q127 Mr Havard: I put a timescale on it because you did put a timescale on it to me earlier on. You told me within the next 12-month period a reassessment will have gone on. I think what you are really saying to me is that you need to be able to come back and regroup: "Regroup to do what?", though, is the debate, because this is about the commitment. If you are going to be configured by the politicians to be able to engage in a combination of small, medium and large activities and whatever number, two of these, one of them, or whatever it is, which was the original set of assumptions in the Defence Review, that has not happened. So your actual practical reality is not what the assumption was. That is why we asked the question about a re-working of those assumptions, because you can only configure yourself to work to those assumptions because you will only be given the money to do it - that is what you say - and out of that there may be casualties in terms of the equipment because you might need different types and balances of equipment. That is the assessment, is it not?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes.

Q128 Mr Havard: And that is what you tell me is happening in 12 months?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: But the 12-month timescale was on judgments about whether the tempo is going to reduce towards what is sustainable with the current structure or whether we need a different structure. If, for example (and I am not saying this will be the outcome), we decide that we need a different structure, we cannot deliver that at the end of the 12-month period, that is going to take some time.

Q129 Mr Havard: I understand you cannot implement it in 12 months, but the decision is made about it and the description comes about---

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: The question is how long can we sustain what we are doing with the current force structure? That will go on beyond 12 months.

Q130 Mr Hancock: It is a bit like a little boy crying wolf once too often, is it not? I have been on this Committee for ten years and at least two of your predecessors have come here saying - I remember at the start of the Kosovo campaign - this was putting extraordinary demands on the Armed Forces. We had a large number of forces in Ireland at the time, and there was over-stretch, and it could not go on. Yet we have moved, over that ten years, through this period from stretch to over-stretch to now very real problems in and beyond the horizon. There comes a time when the military have to put up on this one and demand that the nation reassesses what it expects of the Armed Forces. You were asked right at the beginning whether it was time to have a Strategic Defence Review again, and you said, "Maybe not at this time", but surely that is what is necessary now?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I am not sure that is the conclusion from what we have been saying. It depends upon a number of factors. First of all, in terms of the debate, I absolutely agree, and that is what the Prime Minister said in Plymouth in terms of a national debate about defence; but in terms of what is actually required of defence over the next ten years, first of all, we need to reach a judgment about what the pace of current operations is likely to be over the next two years. Is it going to decline or is it going to stay level? If it is going to stay level, we need some consideration about the overall force structure and the resources that are necessary to sustain that. If there is no agreement on that, then we could well get to the position where we have to have a fundamental stocktake of where we are in terms of defence in this country; and that is the stage where I think the question of a broad review comes into play.

Q131 Linda Gilroy: In resourcing whatever the level of commitment is, an increased one, money would come possibly via a Comprehensive Spending Review, but value for money is very important. How does the Defence Industrial Strategy look from your point of view? Is it fit for purpose or is it, as the RUSI paper says, a short-term palliative to keep industry quiet and will we need to do a great deal more than that? What are the discussions, as Chief of Defence Staff, that you have with your colleagues responsible for procurement on that?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I do not agree with the RUSI paper's assertion. I think the Defence Industrial Strategy is a very good piece of work, but, of course, like all such strategies, at this stage it remains just a piece of paper until it is translated into real projects in the real world. What is important is the ability to carry through the propositions that are set out in the Defence Industrial Strategy in terms of our equipment planning and equipment acquisition. In other words, it is the real projects that matter.

Q132 Mr Hancock: Can I turn to the Royal Navy and ask some questions there. Is the current manning shortfall in the Royal Navy limiting the operational availability of the surface ships and, if so, how? Are you at the present time assessing whether you need as many as you have currently got?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Limiting the availability of surface ships in the round, no. Obviously, every surface ship in the Royal Navy sails with whatever element of its complement the commander thinks is necessary for the task it has been given for that particular period of time. As you will know, the Navy has to meet all of its training requirements for its ratings from out of the complements of ships, so they never sail with everybody that is assigned to them; there are always some people on training courses.

Q133 Mr Hancock: Are there any ships at sea at the present time with a fully manned crew?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: The Navy does not work that way. The Navy sails with the crew that it thinks is appropriate.

Q134 Mr Hancock: There are some ships on operation, are there not, and they should be fully manned, surely?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: No, that is not the case.

Q135 Mr Hancock: It is not.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: People are assigned to ships - we are talking about ratings now - on the basis that some of them will always be away conducting courses because there are no short bits for them, they are all at sea. So it is not quite as simple as that. Are there ships at sea whose commanders think that they do not have all the people they should for that particular mission? That is no doubt the case. That does happen on occasions and commanders put in particular Operational Deficiency Reports for resolution by the Chain of Command. So there will always be cases where the commander does not have all the people that he considers necessary for a particular job in hand, depending upon the manning situation at the time, and then it is up to the Navy Chain of Command to adjust the missions appropriate for the people that are available. I know this sounds a bit prolix, but I am trying to explain that it is not a clear-cut case that the ship always needs X number of people for whatever it is going to do. and if it does not have that number of people then it is under-manned. It is much more complex than that.

Q136 Mr Hancock: Let us go back to one of your subjects this morning, which is the state of readiness. Does the manpower shortfall in the Royal Navy make it much more difficult for the Royal Navy to bring ships up to operational level?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Inevitably it is a challenge, but I do not think that is the key issue. I think if you had the First Sea Lord sitting here, and I speak to him about this, I think his principal concern would be the level of spares and various equipment on board ship for their overall operational capability, and it is certainly the case that over the last couple of years the Navy surface fleet has been less of a focus of spares provisioning than other elements of the force structure because of the focus on operations. Of course, the Royal Marines, part of the Royal Navy, have had absolute focus on provisioning of equipment and spare parts, but, inevitably, the Navy has taken some of the load and, as a consequence, some of its ships have from time to time lacked different elements of their capacity, different specific equipments that are fed to them because of the lack of spares, and I think that has been the concern rather than the personnel.

Q137 Mr Hancock: Are ships being cannibalised so that other ships can remain at sea, which consequently means that their state of preparedness is greatly reduced, where it could take the best part of a year to get some ships back to a sea-going operational standard?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: The concentrating of resources on specific platforms is normal practice in these sorts of situations, and it happens not just in the Navy but in the other services as well, and that depends upon the priorities that commanders in the Navy attach to particular vessels and particular tasks.

Q138 Mr Hancock: Can I ask you to confirm once again what you said in the first part of that answer, that the commanding officer of a ship is the one who determines how many sailors he goes to sea with, considering the operation he is about to undertake?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes.

Q139 Mr Hancock: That is not influenced by any other source?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: No.

Q140 Mr Hancock: If a commander was seriously concerned about the under manning of his ship and the pressure that that would put on particularly junior rates on the ship, that is not an issue that he would have a problem challenging through the Chain of Command?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: He would serve an Operational Deficiency Report to the Chain of Command, and they do.

Q141 Mr Hancock: Has that been brought to your attention?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: That they send Operational Deficiency Reports? Yes.

Q142 Mr Hancock: Have you seen them recently where there have been concerns?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I know that there have been a number of such reports over the last 12 months.

Q143 Mr Jenkins: I thought TopMast was a programme where we had sufficient staff ashore to re-man a ship if we had people on training courses or anything else. Is that not true, or is Top Mast falling apart now?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: If I may, I will have to come back to you with a written answer on TopMast. It is a specific Navy issue and I do not have all the details.

Mr Jenkins: If you would, please.

Q144 Robert Key: Sir John, could I turn to the question of Morale. As I know from the hundreds of military personnel and their families in my own constituency, if there is one issue that affects morale adversely of troops in theatre returning home and their families it is the state of the air bridge provided by the RAF between Afghanistan and Iraq and this country. What is the Royal Air Force doing to improve the state of that air bridge?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Absolutely; it is a very important concern. Last summer I gathered the brightest minds we have around my table at the MoD to figure out what we could do to improve the situation, and the answer was that the options available to us were very limited. At that stage the Air Force was trying to run, in the context of Afghanistan, for example, a very busy scheduled airline with three rather old aircraft - three because they were the only ones that were fitted with the necessary defensive aids. Clearly, the first part of the answer was to fit more aircraft with defensive aids, and that programme has been on-going, so the number of Tristars able to fly into theatre has been increasing every two to three months. The second answer was to get Kandahar Airfield into a state where aircraft could fly into there directly rather than into Kabul and then running C130s down to Kandahar, because obviously the more moving parts you have in the whole air bridge, the greater the likelihood that any given problem is going to be magnified; and that has been done, and so aircraft are flying directly into Kandahar. In the long-term, of course, what we want to see is more modern, more reliable aircraft and the Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft is set to deliver that. The additional C17 will be a substantial improvement, but, of course, we come back to the point that we are operating above the level for which we are structured. We are trying to maintain two ruled brigade-sized operations, and therefore it is a considerable stretch. Nevertheless, there are many things that we can do to help ameliorate the situation, and there is no doubt that on occasion the communication, at the very least, has not been all that it should have been, with people affected by delays, delays which are not necessarily within the Air Force purview. There are a lot of players in this game. PJHQ make a lot of the calls that result in some people being delayed, but we have not been as good as we might have been at communicating to people the reason for those and looking after them while they are delayed. The Chief of the Air Staff has instituted another review of the whole end-to-end process, pulling in all the stakeholders, PJHQ, the Army and so on, to see what can be done in that regard to make what is a very unwelcome, but at times unavoidable, position a bit more palatable for our people.

Q145 Robert Key: I do not think any of us are in any doubt that British Forces in theatre have extremely high morale and are doing a superb job. When they get home and think about it, however, they are increasingly feeling that the deal between the British people and our military forces, in other words the military covenant, is under very great strain at the moment. What do you feel about that? Is it your impression that as a nation we are undervaluing our forces and asking them to do too much?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I think there are a number of factors. I do not think that as a nation we undervalue our forces. I think this nation thinks extremely highly of its Armed Forces, as it should, but it is also important to our people that the nation understands and supports them in what they do in addition to just of themselves. That is the first point. The second point is that over the last year or two pay has certainly become an issue again, particularly for the lowest paid ranks. What has been done in terms of the operational allowance and in terms of the pay settlement, which we talked about earlier, will go a very long way to reassuring our people about the value that is attached to them and to what they do. The operational tempo is one that they understand but that they expect us to do all we can to address, and we have talked about that earlier. I think the final point that I would make, and this is a very significant concern, is the infrastructure, the conditions in which they live and the state of service families' accommodation and, to a greater extent, single living accommodation is not what we would wish it to be. We face a big problem here, because we have an enormous number of houses, an enormous number of single bed spaces, and putting those all right is going to take, obviously, a considerable amount of time. I think we have 49,000 houses and 150,000 single living bed spaces. If we have 50 per cent of those that are in satisfactory condition, if we were able to make 70 per cent of them in satisfactory condition over night, which of course we are not, we would consider that to be a tremendous achievement, but we would still have 30 per cent of our people living in conditions which we think are unacceptable. The scale of the problem is such that it is going to take a very long time to make substantial improvements and during that time significant numbers of our people are going to be living in less than ideal accommodation. Nevertheless, we must press ahead and do what we can, and that is why we are planning to invest over five billion pounds over the next ten years in accommodation. It is why we have very vigorous discussions with Defence Estates about modern housing solutions and the responsiveness to the concerns that our families have in service families' accommodation. That did not get off to a good start. Everybody knows that, including Defence Estates, but a lot has been done to fix that. It is going to take time to rebuild confidence, but I think we are moving in the right direction. So we are working that issue very, very hard and putting as much money into this as we possibly can, but let us not kid ourselves: it is not going to transform the situation overnight; it is going to be a slow process.

Q146 Linda Gilroy: In the first part of your response you said that you do believe that people value our Armed Services for who they are, but you also said that they need to be valued for what they do. Is there something you would want to be changed about how that value is attributed to them?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I think one important improvement we could make is to see Iraq and Afghanistan in their own right. I think there is a tendency to see everything in the UK through the prism of Iraq and, of course, we all know that Iraq is the subject of some controversy (that is where we are) and people have different views on it, but Afghanistan is a very different place with very different issues and we need to be careful that the public does not lump the two together, because I think that is unhelpful.

Chairman: That is a point that David Hamilton has been making for years.

Q147 Mr Hancock: I find it amazing when you talk about accommodation for service families. How do you think you would feel if you were a young sailor with a family living in a property which was pretty run down and, at the same time, Annington Homes were selling off married quarters which were much better than the ones these service personnel were living in and the Ministry of Defence have gone along with it? Do you not think that is a source of great annoyance? Fifty eight per cent of the naval homes are in and around my constituency, and I get told time and again about the complaints, and yet perfectly good homes, far better than the ones occupied by service families, are being sold off.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I think any of us would feel---

Q148 Mr Hancock: Why do not we do something about it?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: What are we supposed do about it?

Q149 Mr Hancock: Do not let them sell them.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Annington Homes own them.

Mr Hancock: Yes, but you have to agree.

Chairman: CDS, I think you should blame the Minister who took the decision!

Mr Hancock: Yes, he was the minister who fell for it in the first place.

Mr Hamilton: Can I suggest that when the Defence Estates are looking at the increased value and so on, they should think about moving north rather than staying in the south - maybe that would answer my colleague's question - moving into cheaper accommodation north of the border!

Q150 Chairman: CDS, may I ask one quick question about the air bridge. As I understand it the runway at Camp Bastion is going to be upgraded. That decision has now been taken.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes.

Q151 Chairman: Will that be capable of taking the Tristars?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: No, C17.

Q152 Chairman: Would it not be helpful, if the runway is being upgraded to an extent that it could receive C17s, that it might be beneficial to allow it to take Tristars as well, or would that be significantly more expensive?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: It would certainly be beneficial but it is a massive project. You would need to build a full-scale airfield essentially, because it is not just the runway, it is the parking spaces, the handling capability, and so on.

Q153 Mr Jones: You mentioned reducing the number of segments so that you do not get the breakdowns, etc., but I wonder if you could comment in terms of the use of the private sector. I travelled back from Iraq last year and part of the delay was that the C130 broke down in Basra, but then we found when we arrived in Qatar that the poor people had been sat on the runway mostly waiting for us to arrive. We then got on to a chartered jet, which you would go two hours possibly to Spain on, which would be fine, but we were asking people to travel for seven hours on it. Okay, you might say that was acceptable, but when you think that people have been waiting most of the night on an aircraft, you then have some rather large gentlemen in terms of the Marines cramming themselves into a holiday jet for seven hours, do you find that acceptable? Can I suggest, if you really want to find out about morale, do it yourself. I am not sure how you travel into theatre, but try that, because I have to say, the moans and groans you got afterwards certainly from one Tory Member of Parliament was very vociferous, but certainly from the actual ladies and gentlemen who were actually going on quite a short period of leave some of them.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I think they are all good points. Let me assure you, I have had some pretty uncomfortable journeys in my