Liam Fox Unveils Plans For MoD Reform

Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox has outlined plans for reforming the Ministry of Defence, which will include the formation of the Defence Reform Unit, that will lead in the reorganisation of the Ministry of Defence into three 'strategic pillars'.

Speaking to an audience at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in Westminster, Dr Fox announced that he is launching a full review of how the Ministry of Defence is run and how the Armed Forces can be reformed to "produce more efficient provision of defence capability and generation and sustainment of operations."

The Defence Reform Unit will reorganise the MoD into three areas - policy and strategy, the Armed Forces and procurement and estates - and will result in a "leaner and less centralised organisation".

The unit, which will be chaired by Lord Levene, is described by Dr Fox as a "heavy hitting Steering Group of internal and external experts" and it will be supported by a civil service implementation team with a remit to complete their blueprint for reform by September 2011.

The Defence Secretary said that it was a "disgrace" that there had not been a defence review for 12 years, but said that the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) will not simply be a random selection of cuts, but "an objective process by which the shape of the Armed Forces will be reached by the end of the decade".

Dr Fox said that we needed to "invest in programs that we will require to put our defence on a sound footing for the years ahead and divest ourselves of the capabilities which we are unlikely to need in a world where the moral climate demands precision weaponry and where the battle space increasingly embraces the unmanned and cyber domains."

He said: "We are contrasting cost savings and the capability implications with the risk that we face in the real global security environment. This requires assessing any proposed change in a current programme or platform, against a series of criteria including: First, the cost savings in years zero to 5, 5 to 10 and beyond 10. Second, the capability implications - what capability will be lost as a result of this decision and what other assets do we possess that might give us the same or a similar capability? Third, the operational implications - what operations that we currently carry out, or are likely to carry out, will we be unable to undertake as a result of this change? Fourth, the ability to regenerate the capability, at what cost and in what timeframe. And, fifth, the risk in the real world that this capability currently protects us from or is likely to protect us from in the forseeable future."

Dr Fox also announced a review of how the Armed Forces undertake the tasks of force generation and sustainability. He said: "We need to challenge some of the fundamental assumptions which drive force generation, such as tour lengths and intervals, taking into account the varying pressures on our personnel resulting from widely varying missions to see if we can update our practices and produce greater efficiency while implementing the military covenant."

Commenting on the announcement, Shadow Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth said: "This Review will shape our defence and foreign policy for the foreseeable future and the Coalition Government must get it right. They need to focus on making the right decisions in the best interest of our Armed Forces and our country and end the public squabbling that so far is all we have seen.”

(KMcA/BMcC)