Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, first of all, I apologise in advance to the House if I have to leave before the end of the debate. I have to be in Suffolk to chair a meeting of the Marlesford Parish Council at 7 pm which was fixed many months ago. As parish councils are the grass roots of democracy, I hope noble Lords will understand my priorities and excuse me.

I want to focus on only one point: the role of the Civil Service, particularly the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Defence. As we have heard from so many noble Lords, our national defence, and thus the MoD, is facing a crisis of matching resources and commitments.

There are three components to the great department of the MoD. Obviously there is the political leadership under the Secretary of State and his team of Ministers. Perhaps I may say that we are very lucky to have my noble friend Lord Astor, who was not only a regular serving officer but is of course the grandson of the great Field Marshal Haig. More importantly, however, he has devoted himself untiringly to defence matters in your Lordships' House for many years. In these days when so few Members of another place have served in Her Majesty’s forces, it is good that one of the other Ministers is my honourable friend Andrew Robathan, a regular officer in the Coldstream Guards, in which I did my national service some decades ago, and of course he was in the SAS.

Then, there is the military component of the MoD, under the service chiefs and the Chief of the Defence Staff himself. However, it is the leadership of the Civil Service at the MoD that I want to discuss. Historically, the MoD has produced some of our most distinguished public servants and has indeed provided part of the elite for the summits of Whitehall. Even I can remember great names like Eddie Playfair and Ned Dunnett.

The Permanent Secretary at the MoD has to guide, manage and inspire a vast department, with its military, scientific and technical, and intelligence components. There is also the procurement function, on which, as we have already heard, the prosperity and success of an important sector of British industry—and, therefore, much of our economy—depends. One function that the Permanent Secretary does not have is that of shop steward for the civil servants in the MoD. Perhaps the most crucial function of the Permanent Secretary is to have at all times a clear strategic vision of Britain’s defence capability, especially when Governments change.

What are the necessary qualifications for this demanding role? An obvious prerequisite is an outstanding intellect, of the sort that the Civil Service has, at least historically, succeeded in attracting. I believe that there are five other interdependent attributes for success: respect, trust, authority, integrity and experience. In the list of Permanent Secretaries over the past 30 years, three names stand out: Sir Frank Cooper, Sir Clive Whitmore and Sir Michael Quinlan. I was lucky enough to count two of them as personal friends. When I did my stint as a special adviser in the Heath Government, Frank Cooper was my immediate Civil Service boss. He had a distinguished war record as an RAF pilot. When he retired from the MoD in 1983, he was made a privy counsellor. Michael Quinlan, a fellow of All Souls and perhaps the cleverest man of his generation in Whitehall, was responsible for designing Britain’s nuclear strategy, which has served us so well. I got to know Michael Quinlan when he was director of the Ditchley Foundation.

More recent years have not been happy ones. We all remember that when the noble Lord, Lord Reid of Cardowan, became Home Secretary in 2006, he famously and rightly denounced the Home Office as “not fit for purpose”. As I have previously pointed out in debate, that part of the Home Office that attracted his ire was the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, the director-general of which, until 2005, was Bill Jeffrey, who was then promoted to be Permanent Secretary at the MoD. He retired last month, leaving behind him, it appears, a pretty good mess. His succession was of vital national importance.

Last week Mrs Ursula Brennan, whom I have never met and know nothing about personally, took over as Permanent Secretary at the MoD. I looked up her career to see how it fitted with the criteria that I have set out. As to experience, she has been at the MoD for exactly two years. She had no previous experience in that department and, as far as I can see, none of a military or defence nature. Her career began at ILEA; then she was at the DHSS for 25 years, where she dealt with benefits policy and administration, and then IT. She moved to the Department for Work and Pensions and then to Defra, where she was responsible for rural disadvantage, wildlife and the countryside—all important policy areas for a farmer such as me. However, I am not sure that Defra is an obvious staff college for those destined to lead our national security. Most recently she has been concerned with reform at the Ministry of Justice. It is, frankly, a perplexing appointment. That Ursula Brennan meets the criterion of integrity I do not for one instant doubt. As to respect, trust and authority, I can only echo the late Iain Macleod who, referring to the transfer of George Brown to the Foreign Office, said, “I only hope … oh well, I only hope”.