Defence reform: necessary but not sufficient
The Defence Secretary has outlined the most wide-ranging changes to the MoD for 50 years but the critical issues are spending and the Strategic Defence Review
This morning, the Defence Secretary, John Healey, spoke at the Institute for Government on defence reform. He himself admitted that it is not the most headline-grabbing or obviously popular of subjects, although it is important, but the level of public interest in defence issues is currently higher than usual because of the events of the last week: America’s signalling that it is no longer primarily committed to European security and regards it as the responsibility of Europe; the announcement of “peace” talks between the United States and Russia over the conflict in Ukraine; the outcome of the Munich Security Conference and the emergency summit in Paris; and various domestic news stories about defence spending, the potential deployment of the armed forces to monitor a putative ceasefire in Ukraine and the ongoing Strategic Defence Review.
As Healey noted, the Labour Party’s ideas for defence reform had their genesis in a speech he gave at Policy Exchange in February 2024 as Shadow Defence Secretary. Noting that “the MoD serves as both a conventional Department of State and a military strategic headquarters”, he committed to providing “clearer strategic authority” over planning, operations and procurement. This would be achieved by establishing a Military Strategic Headquarters within the Ministry of Defence, with authority flowing from the Secretary of State through the Permanent Secretary for civilian issues and the Chief of the Defence Staff for military matters. The overall purpose was to strengthen the centre of the MoD and the armed forces and “better align military authority and accountability”. In addition, there would be a National Armaments Director who would bring together procurement across the armed forces and oversee the Defence Industrial Strategy.
These ideas were translated into Labour’s election manifesto with a pledge to create “a strong defence centre capable of leading Britain in meeting the increasing threats we face”. It was perhaps an unusual level of detail to include in even a heavyweight, 136-page manifesto, and no-one is under any illusions that changes to the management of defence policy and the armed forces will have been the deciding factor in anyone’s voting intention when it came to polling day on 4 July last year. Nevertheless, Healey and the Labour Party deserve credit for thinking about these issues in detail, making careful plans and enshrining them in manifesto commitments when they could easily have chosen not to do so.
Readers will be aware that I have frequently criticised the government, sometimes in severe terms, on issues of defence policy and I resile from none of that. However, as I have also indicated, I hope, I think Healey is very much one of the best of Starmer’s senior ministers: thoughtful, straightforward, dedicated and sensible, if prone to occasional bouts of tortured, jargon-laden Starmerisms (“a government whose commitment to defence is unshakeable… the foundation for our Plan for Change, for the delivery of our government’s missions”). He was given the defence brief when Sir Keir Starmer became Leader of the Opposition in April 2020, and is one of only two ministers still holding the same portfolio.
Broadly I think Healey’s instincts on defence are sound, and the idea of streamlining and strengthening the authority of the MoD and, especially, making the chain of command more effective and increasingly accountability will be beneficial. It has not been as straightforward as he anticipated, however. When he first set out the plans for reform in February 2024, he said “this new MSHQ [Military Strategic Headquarters] is a must-make, week-one change”. Clearly, that did not happen: today he said that the new administrative arrangements would be in place as of 31 March. In other words, the “week-one change” will have taken very nearly nine months to bring into effect.
In December, one commentator reported that the establishment of the MSHQ had been delayed by bureaucratic resistance within the Ministry of Defence. The new organisation will give greater power and ability to act quickly to the Chief of the Defence Staff, and the suggestion has been that this is perceived by civil servants as a consequent diminution of their power. An anonymous source hypothesised that the Permanent Secretary, David Williams, and his senior colleagues had dragged their feet but that “their real aim to kill off the idea by over complicating it and trying to kick it out into the long grass”. A comparison was drawn with the attempt by a previous Conservative defence secretary, Sir Ben Wallace, to establish the Office of Net Assessment and Challenge: this was intended to be a unit of senior and able military officers who would examine potential future security challenges and develop measures to counter them, but—so it is said—the civil service regarded this as a competitor to the Joint Intelligence Committee in the Cabinet Office and sought to undermine it. In the end, Dr Rob Johnson from the University of Oxford’s Strategy, Statecraft and Technology (Changing Character of War) Centre was appointed as Director of the Office of Net Assessment and Challenge in May 2022, but it came into being as a think tank-like body of around 25 academic specialists (it later grew to over 35), rather than comprising senior uniformed personnel.
There is an attractive logic to a “quad”, to use the rather worn-out term Healey has chosen, of officials managing the UK’s defence policy: the Chief of the Defence Staff as head of the armed forces, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State as the senior civil servant, the National Armaments Director in charge of procurement and the Chief of Defence Nuclear responsible for the maintenance of the strategic nuclear deterrent and the Royal Navy’s nuclear-powered submarines.
Organisational theory, however, is only a first step. Healey must ensure two things once these reforms are in place. The first is that the administration and lines of accountability are as smooth and efficient as he has promised, and that the Ministry of Defence and the armed forces run significantly more smoothly than has been the case in the past. The second is that there is much greater transparency and accountability within the MoD and the armed forces. Particularly in terms of equipment, we have seen a succession of disasters and examples of mismanagement going back decades. To take one example, the MoD spent a total of £3.4 billion on a plan to rebuild a number of Hawker Siddeley Nimrod MR2 maritime patrol aircraft as updated and more advanced MRA4 versions; after enormous delays, the project was cancelled as part of the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review without a single operational aircraft having been delivered, and the five airframes, some of which were near completion, were scrapped.
Yet there is, at least from the outside, a complete absence of individual accountability. With the arguable exception of General Sir Patrick Sanders, who stepped down after just two years as Chief of the General Staff last summer, having supposedly fallen out with ministers over unguarded remarks about the future needs of UK defence policy, no British general officer has been removed from his post for professional incompetence for half a century. Brigadier Sir Tony Wilson, who commanded the 5th Infantry Brigade during the Falklands conflict, left his soldiers exposed to air attack during the liberation of East Falkland, having become obsessed with outpacing the other British force, 3 Commando Brigade, and was the only senior officer not to receive an honour of any kind. He retired from the Army aged 47 in January 1983 and was believed to have been forced out by the chain of command. But his case is notable for its rarity.
If Healey’s changes to the Ministry of Defence can transform the culture within the higher echelons of the civilian and military leadership, and impress on decision-makers that they will be held to account for failure and poor management, he will have done the armed forces a great service. But change of that kind comes gradually and has to overcome both behavioural inertia and self-preservation. Even if Healey, who turned 65 last week, were to stay on as Defence Secretary into a second Labour government and pass his namesake Denis Healey’s record tenure of five years 246 days in post, he might only see the very beginnings of such a fundamental shift in attitudes.
One other point I would note is this: these reforms represent a significant change in the role of the Chief of the Defence Staff and an increase in his power and authority. The post was created in January 1959 as the most senior officer in the armed forces, replacing the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, a position which had only been permanent since 1956. Previously it had been held by one of the individual service chiefs mostly as an administrative function. That sense of the Chief of the Defence Staff being only first among equals has persisted since 1959, but the new arrangements place him in command of the service chiefs, at the head of the MSHQ and having “responsible for force design and war planning across our integrated force”. Admiral Sir Tony Radakin therefore now becomes something much closer to a commander-in-chief of the armed forces, a style which some countries use for their senior military officer (though in the United Kingdom the sovereign is the ultimate head of the armed forces).
Since the Ministry of Defence was established in 1964, the heads of the three services—the First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, the Chief of the General Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff—have retained considerable autonomy over their own services. That is inevitably going to be diminished. Critically, however, they have enjoyed the right of direct access to the Prime Minister, a privilege which has acted as a kind of safety valve in case of irreconcilable differences of opinion within the Chiefs of Staff Committee. This has not been without controversy: the House of Lords heard that “to allow such action is to encourage disloyalty”—from Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein on 31 July 1963.
It is assumed, although I have seen no explicit confirmation from the Ministry of Defence, that this right of access will end once the MSHQ is functioning and the Chief of the Defence Staff is formally in command of the service chiefs. It would be an extraordinary and challenging situation if it did not. Even if it has been largely a theoretical right, its removal is bound to have a psychological effect on the leadership of the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force. The relationship between the Chief of the Defence Staff and the three service chiefs will change over the next months and years, though it will become more manageable each time an incumbent steps down: Radakin is due to retire as Chief of the Defence Staff this autumn, while the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Ben Key, is expected to come to the end of his tenure in the summer. The Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, has only been in post since June 2023, while the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Roly Walker, took up his position in June 2024.
There is a wider context to consider. The reforms to the Ministry of Defence were designed at least in part to provide the tools to implement the results of the Strategic Defence Review, due to report “in the spring” this year. This process will set out the shape of the armed forces for the future, but its terms of reference stipulate that recommendations must be “deliverable and affordable within the resources available to Defence within the trajectory to 2.5% [defence spending of 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product]”. The government has given no firmer commitment than reiterating that it will “set out the path” to spending 2.5 per cent of GDP, as yet with no timeframe except that it “will be dealt with at a future fiscal event” after the SDR.
The level of defence spending and the size, shape and capabilities of the armed forces are the critical determinants of the UK’s future defence policy. Defence reform is the mechanism for delivering those elements. On its own it will not be decisive, though if everything goes as well as it might, there could be significant cost savings and more efficient and rapid procurement processes. These are important matters, and the Secretary of State deserves due praise for giving them detailed attention and considerable thought. But they are preliminaries: the major discussions will begin later this year when the SDR is delivered.