Post by cammy on Jul 6, 2009 7:19:11 GMT 1
Suppose you're a grieving family, one among many, day after day, and the man you love has just died in Afghanistan. Perhaps his troop carrier was too frail when a roadside bomb went off, perhaps a helicopter wasn't there on time. At any rate, as so often before, there are questions about the kit he was sent off to war with. You're sad, but you're also angry. Who do you blame?
The easy answer, of course, is those men from the ministry, the eternally faceless bureaucrats who are always getting it in the neck as they apparently fritter away billions on aircraft carriers, hi-tech fighter planes, nuclear subs and the rest. If the Vikings they'd provided had been Mastiffs, more fit for Helmand purpose, then surely things could have been different. Ask a learned friend what he thinks and maybe, depending on precise circumstances, there's a case you might bring to court.
Yet, in truth, that really isn't the point of the whole, tragic exercise. Money doesn't matter. This is a democracy. You're a voter, a citizen: your outrage matters. How do you make someone inside the Ministry of Defence, someone who made a wrong call, share your pain?
And the miserable answer is that it's impossible. The system itself guarantees countless duff decisions, but it also diffuses them in the mists of time. Just consider that system – and what you'd think of it if applied to any other walk of democratic, or business, life.
The title secretary of state for defence was invented in 1964. Peter Thorneycroft sat first in that chair. Since then, right to this day, 18 other secretaries of state have followed on. Make that a new boss ever 27 months or so. And in Labour's 12 years, the shift rate has speeded up a bit. Bob Ainsworth is the sixth defence secretary since 1997. Make that new broom at the top every two years.
Who, then, does the minister rely on for advice when crucial, long-term spending decisions have to be made? The chief of the defence staff: but there've been 19 of them, too, permutating rigidly between the three services. Call the chief of the general staff? Relative stability there: only 17 have come and gone. By these lights, the job of the permanent secretary – changing every five or six years on average – does indeed seem pretty stable. But then, when you cross Whitehall to run defence, there's no great tradition of needing to know too much about it. Sir Bill Jeffrey, the current incumbent, has anti-terrorism and intelligence credentials in his bag, but his last big admin job before this posting was as director general of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate. Calais isn't the first place you'd go to buy a new tank.
Consider the fattest contract of the lot, the Eurofighter. First design specified, 1972; formally proposed by BAE and German partner, 1979; experimental version flies, 1986; initial construction contract signed, 1998. Four staging posts along a flight path that has now cost the UK more than £20bn, leaving early estimates twisting in the wind. And, of course, at every point, there's been a different secretary of state in charge – Carrington, Pym, Younger, Portillo – with a different defence chief (two of them admirals, if you please) and a different impermanent secretary at his elbow. There's been no consistency, no adjustment to changed strategic circumstances in Europe, no group memory to carry a vision through. So there's no one to blame, either, when we get the wrong plane at the wrong price – and think how our men in Afghanistan might have been rather safer for better choices along the way.
What can secretary of state Ainsworth promise today that, in hard terms, he can deliver before quitting office? Or permanent secretary Jeffrey, getting towards the end of his stint? To learn the lessons? Well, naturally: but don't expect even fast learners to be anywhere in sight when they're put to the test.
Much of the time, in government, you can simply cancel your last announcement – scrap identity cards or Sats at the sweep of a pen. A sort of accountability. But defence doesn't work like that. Forget Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or any modern model. Defence turns at the speed of a gargantuan tanker. Good decisions were taken long ago. Bad ones can't come home to roost. The captain on the bridge – from Des Browne to Bob Ainsworth – is never that important, because he's only passing through. And when the voters want a word in edgeways – a plea, an apology, an admission of error – then, of course, there's nobody there.
The easy answer, of course, is those men from the ministry, the eternally faceless bureaucrats who are always getting it in the neck as they apparently fritter away billions on aircraft carriers, hi-tech fighter planes, nuclear subs and the rest. If the Vikings they'd provided had been Mastiffs, more fit for Helmand purpose, then surely things could have been different. Ask a learned friend what he thinks and maybe, depending on precise circumstances, there's a case you might bring to court.
Yet, in truth, that really isn't the point of the whole, tragic exercise. Money doesn't matter. This is a democracy. You're a voter, a citizen: your outrage matters. How do you make someone inside the Ministry of Defence, someone who made a wrong call, share your pain?
And the miserable answer is that it's impossible. The system itself guarantees countless duff decisions, but it also diffuses them in the mists of time. Just consider that system – and what you'd think of it if applied to any other walk of democratic, or business, life.
The title secretary of state for defence was invented in 1964. Peter Thorneycroft sat first in that chair. Since then, right to this day, 18 other secretaries of state have followed on. Make that a new boss ever 27 months or so. And in Labour's 12 years, the shift rate has speeded up a bit. Bob Ainsworth is the sixth defence secretary since 1997. Make that new broom at the top every two years.
Who, then, does the minister rely on for advice when crucial, long-term spending decisions have to be made? The chief of the defence staff: but there've been 19 of them, too, permutating rigidly between the three services. Call the chief of the general staff? Relative stability there: only 17 have come and gone. By these lights, the job of the permanent secretary – changing every five or six years on average – does indeed seem pretty stable. But then, when you cross Whitehall to run defence, there's no great tradition of needing to know too much about it. Sir Bill Jeffrey, the current incumbent, has anti-terrorism and intelligence credentials in his bag, but his last big admin job before this posting was as director general of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate. Calais isn't the first place you'd go to buy a new tank.
Consider the fattest contract of the lot, the Eurofighter. First design specified, 1972; formally proposed by BAE and German partner, 1979; experimental version flies, 1986; initial construction contract signed, 1998. Four staging posts along a flight path that has now cost the UK more than £20bn, leaving early estimates twisting in the wind. And, of course, at every point, there's been a different secretary of state in charge – Carrington, Pym, Younger, Portillo – with a different defence chief (two of them admirals, if you please) and a different impermanent secretary at his elbow. There's been no consistency, no adjustment to changed strategic circumstances in Europe, no group memory to carry a vision through. So there's no one to blame, either, when we get the wrong plane at the wrong price – and think how our men in Afghanistan might have been rather safer for better choices along the way.
What can secretary of state Ainsworth promise today that, in hard terms, he can deliver before quitting office? Or permanent secretary Jeffrey, getting towards the end of his stint? To learn the lessons? Well, naturally: but don't expect even fast learners to be anywhere in sight when they're put to the test.
Much of the time, in government, you can simply cancel your last announcement – scrap identity cards or Sats at the sweep of a pen. A sort of accountability. But defence doesn't work like that. Forget Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or any modern model. Defence turns at the speed of a gargantuan tanker. Good decisions were taken long ago. Bad ones can't come home to roost. The captain on the bridge – from Des Browne to Bob Ainsworth – is never that important, because he's only passing through. And when the voters want a word in edgeways – a plea, an apology, an admission of error – then, of course, there's nobody there.