The overall structure of Defence today has maintained the existence of three separate Armed Services into which individual Servicemen and women are recruited and to which they belong throughout their military careers. What has changed is the recognition that Defence is a coherent activity which must increasingly be managed on a tri-Service basis. Much development since 1964 has been focused on the central machinery for achieving this through the concentration of policy-making in the MOD Headquarters, with military and civilian staffs working in integrated hierarchies. We have evolved away from the loose confederal arrangements of the 1960s. Change has also come in the pursuit of efficiency in the management of Defence, culminating in a hierarchical budgetary structure which delegates executive responsibilities and control of resources from the centre to commanders and managers who are given clearly defined objectives.
THE DEFENCE COUNCIL
The formal legal basis for the conduct of defence in the UK rests on a range of powers vested by statute and Letters Patent in the Defence Council under the chairmanship of the Secretary of State for Defence, and on Parliament's voting of public money for defence purposes. Under the Defence Council there is a Board for each Service, the Admiralty, Army and Air Force Boards. These Service Boards exercise a wide range of formal and statutory powers relating to the administration of their Service and its personnel.
MINISTERS AND PARLIAMENT
The Secretary of State is responsible for the formulation and conduct of defence policy, and for providing the means by which it is conducted. Under current arrangements he is supported by two Ministers of State, one for the Armed Forces, dealing with operational and policy issues, and one for Defence Procurement. There is also a Parliamentary Under Secretary who deals with personnel issues and estate business among other matters. For more information, click on a link below:
* Secretary of State for Defence * Minister of State for the Armed Forces * Minister of State for Defence Procurement * Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
The Secretary of State and his three Ministerial colleagues are accountable to Parliament for all defence matters on a day-to-day basis. Parliament exercises this oversight through debates, departmental Select Committees (in particular the House of Commons Defence Committee or HCDC), oral and written questions, and enquiries from individual Members. The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee holds the Department to account for public money through its Accounting Officers described below.
FUNCTIONS
The MOD's purpose is to enable its Ministers to discharge their responsibilities for Defence. It has a dual function:
* as a DEPARTMENT OF STATE it formulates policy of all sorts for Defence, directs the implementation of that policy, participates in wider policy-making in Government, and supports ministers in their accountability to Parliament;
* and it incorporates the HIGHEST-LEVEL MILITARY HEADQUARTERS, which gives military advice upwards to the Government, and strategic direction downwards to Commands.
In some other countries these functions are performed in separate organisations or locations.
DEPARTMENTAL AIM
The aim of the MOD is to define the strategy and maximise, within the resources allocated, the defence capability required to:
* deter any threat to, and if necessary defend, the freedom and integrity of the United Kingdom and its dependent territories, including the provision of support as necessary for the civil authority in countering terrorism; and
* contribute to the promotion of the UK's wider security interests, including the protection and enhancement of freedom and democratic institutions, and the promotion of free trade;
and thus to promote peace and to help maximise the UK's international prestige and influence.
DEFENCE-WIDE OVERVIEW
The 1963 White Paper on "The Central Organisation of Defence" gave the essential role of the Department as "the corporate duty of finding the best solution to the problems of the day, whether of an operational nature, strategic planning, defence policy equipment priorities". Since then there has been a steady process of development with the purpose of strengthening this capacity to view Defence as a whole. If the nation is to get the best defence capability which it can afford, it needs an effective machine to produce a balanced overview. Such an overview involves integrating and reconciling the large number of different issues and perspectives which bear on the defence business.
There are a number of key points of recent change in the Ministry of Defence's structure:
* reforms which reinforced the central tri-Service elements in relation to single-Service machinery;
* the PROSPECT study on the central administrative organisation, which paralleled the re-structuring of the front line under 'Options for Change' to take account of the collapse of the Warsaw Pact;
* the introduction of the New Management Strategy (NMS) with delegated budgets encompassing all of Defence; and
* the Defence Costs Study (DCS) which fundamentally re-appraised the activities which supported the delivery of front-line military capability, including another examination of the central headquarters organisation.
INTEGRATION
The MOD produces two different but equally vital sorts of integration:
* First, it integrates the POLITICAL and the MILITARY. It links the roles and missions of the Armed Forces to the Government's wider foreign and security policy. This is sometimes labelled as politico-military or 'pol-mil' business. In terms of operations, this means dealing with the grand-strategic and military-strategic levels of planning and direction. In terms of the management of Defence it means translating legislative, financial and public standards and constraints into policy and practice for the equipping and day-to-day running of the Armed Forces.
* Second, it brings together the THREE INDIVIDUAL SERVICES to work together for common good of Defence, not for individual Service interests.
STRUCTURE
The development of the Department to deliver this defence overview and integration has revolved around:
* strengthening the integrated Central Staff in relation to previous single-Service arrangements, while streamlining organisations and procedures to minimise duplication of effort;
and more recently,
* the MOD's "Head Office" concentrating on policy-making, while delegating executive responsibilities and the direct control of resources to Commands which are both geographically and organisationally separate from London.
* The MOD Headquarters now has a structure clearly focused on the two sorts of integration we seek. Click here for a top-level organisation chart.
PRINCIPAL ADVISERS: CDS AND PUS
The Secretary of State has two principal advisers:
* one military, the Chief of the Defence Staff or CDS, and
* one civilian, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State, or PUS.
Neither of these is subordinate to the other. They share responsibility for much of the Department's business and reflect the inescapable duality of the civil and military aspects of defence in a democracy.
The CDS, General Sir Charles Guthrie, is the professional head of the Armed Forces in the United Kingdom and the principal military adviser to the Secretary of State and the Government. The chain of command for the planning and conduct of military operations flows from the Cabinet and the Secretary of State to CDS, and from him down to operational commanders at various levels.
The PUS, Kevin Tebbitt, is the Government's principal civilian adviser on Defence. He has the primary responsibility for policy, finance and administration in the Department and co-ordinates the provision of advice to Ministers. He is the MOD's Principal Accounting Officer and is thus personally accountable to Parliament for the expenditure of all public money voted for Defence purposes.
VCDS AND 2nd PUS
CDS and PUS each have a deputy: the Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff (VCDS), Admiral Sir Peter Abbott, and the 2nd PUS, Roger Jackling. Together VCDS and 2nd PUS are the joint heads of the Central Staff, which is the heart of the Ministry of Defence. This forms a very strong central axis which is both tri-Service and military-civilian in character.
SINGLE-SERVICE CHIEFS OF STAFF
Under the CDS, each of the three Services has its own Chief of Staff. The Chief of the Naval Staff (CNS), Admiral Sir Roger Boyce, Chief of the General Staff (CGS), General Sir Roger Wheeler, and Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Johns, are the professional heads of the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force respectively.
While they have (in general) no command responsibilities, they are responsible for their Service's overall fighting effectiveness, efficiency and morale so that it delivers the military capability which Defence policy requires. At the same time they contribute their wide military experience to the development of policy and management on a Defence-wide basis as members of the Defence Council and other key bodies.
The single-Service staffs which work directly for the three Chiefs of Staff in London are relatively small because many areas of expertise have been concentrated in the Central Staff, on which the three Chiefs can draw.
CHIEF OF DEFENCE PROCUREMENT
The Chief of Defence Procurement (CDP), Sir Robert Walmsley, is the head of the Procurement Executive which is responsible for the development and acquisition of major weapons systems. The PE is the largest purchasing organisation within the Government.
CHIEF SCIENTIFIC ADVISER
The Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA), presently Professor Sir David Davies, is a distinguished scientist or engineer brought into the Civil Service on a fixed-term appointment. His task is to help ensure that scientific and technological considerations are given full weight in decision-making.
MAIN COMMITTEES
The thirteen posts described so far form the Defence Council.
The nine non-Ministerial members of the Defence Council form the Finance, Planning and Management Group, or FPMG, which is now the Department's corporate board. It is responsible for directing a number of key processes, in particular the annual re-costing of the Defence programme and the Departmental planning process. The FPMG is chaired by the PUS, although the CDS may take the chair for some business.
The Chiefs of Staff Committee is chaired by the CDS and is the main forum in which the collective military advice of the Chiefs is obtained on operational issues and Defence policy. It is the MOD's principal crisis management committee. The PUS attends the COS Committee.
A number of other senior committees bring together formally the various strands of Defence business:
* The Navy Board, the Executive Committee of the Army Board and the Air Force Board Standing Committee are sub-committees of the Service Boards of the Defence Council. Each is chaired by the Service's Chief of Staff. They deal with the management of their Service and the development of single-Service doctrine. They are the means by which the single-Service Chiefs exercise their responsibilities for the delivery of the military capability required by Defence policy. They are known as the Service Executive Committees or SECs.
* The Ministerial Efficiency Steering Group (MESG), chaired by the Minister of State for Defence Procurement, exists to give strategic direction to the pursuit of efficiency improvements in Defence and to oversee targets and performance.
* The Equipment Approvals Committee (EAC), chaired by the Chief Scientific Adviser, makes recommendations to Ministers on the procurement of major equipment and itself authorises procurement within financial delegations granted by Ministers.
* The FPMG (Service Personnel), chaired by the CDS, addresses strategic policy on Service personnel; the Civilian Policy Committee, chaired by the PUS, considers civilian management policy.
* The Procurement Policy Board, chaired by the Chief of Defence Procurement, considers procurement policy on a particular and a general basis. It reviews progress against performance targets on contracts and is the forum through which new policy proposals for procurement are adopted.
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