Defence Equipment and Support Material Strategy

Defence Secretary Phillip Hammond has today announced that the MoD intends to take forward work to transfer Defence Equipment and Support into a Government Owned Contractor Operated entity or GOCO.

This announcement was made to by a written Ministerial Statement in the House of Commons, on that day that the House breaks for the summer, thus avoiding any debate on the issue.

Further value for money assessments of the GOCO option over the other option of an Executive Non Departmental Public Body (ENDPB) will continue over the summer, after which the GOCO option would be the subject of a full investment appraisal where it would be tested against a full value for money benchmark or public sector comparator.

Our union is opposed to transferring DE&S into a GOCO operation. We believe that the problems of defence acquisition and support come mainly from poor decision making by Ministers, who have failed over time to get a grip of the equipment programme.

As launched under our Fair Deal in Defence campaign our objectives are -

· To give job security for all civilian defence workers. To give the best support to the front line, we need a period of certainty for defence workers and that means no imposed redundancies or relocations.

· Where the trade unions have identified savings e.g. £100m in FATS contract, these savings must be offset against headcount reductions.

· To stop the ideological move to privatise defence services and review all previous transfers of work including all the defence PFI contracts that we are tied into for 30 or 40 years..

· To get the proper level of consultation on all aspects of activities that affect the working lives of staff. The appropriate level of facility time should be provided for this.

· Agreement with the department that members will not work out of grade or cover work from vacant posts.

· Equality of opportunity and a respect for diversity in all MoD activities.

· The above principles to be replicated across private sector areas of defence.

We will be supporting the construction of a robust value for money benchmark which builds upon the emerging Interim Structure to become the best that DE&S can achieve remaining in-house and seeking the support of interested members to work on developing that value for money benchmark, to ensure that all possible in-house improvements and efficiencies are captured.

Value for Money can be achieved in-house and trade union input is critical to that achievement.

Army 2020

Earlier this year the Public Accounts Committee said that cuts to defence personnel had been determined by short-term savings and without understanding what skills it needed for the future.

The proposals coming from Army 2020 has critical flaws and unanswered questions:

• The reduced footprint will remove employment from rural areas whose local economy is underpinned by the armed forces presence increasing unemployment
• Reliance upon non regulars, when there are currently issues with recruiting and retaining regulars
• How would non regulars be release from employment for lengthy tours of duty?
• Training capacity reduced under the Strategic Defence and Security Review to a position that it cannot support defence transformation
• The supply chain is already under strain and modernising equipment so regulars and non regulars have the same kit may bring it to its knees on both cost and delivery
• Whatever the politicians might indicate, there is no headroom in the MOD's budget, otherwise thousands and thousands of people would not be losing their jobs
• Our defence deployment has been heavily reliant upon infantry capability, the reduction in capacity will directly reduce defence capability
• No mention of addressing an all time low in morale is made
• No mention of the benefits of civilianising non deployable post to save money and retain skill sets

We believe that the armed forces should be modernised to improve them but defence cannot be weighed in pounds and pence. If the politicians get this wrong, Defence Cuts will Cost Lives.

Army 2020 is yet another politically driven decision based on cost cutting and not on defence capability and need. It does not take into account the economic impact of removing another 20,000 jobs and has the potential to relegate our armed forces to the third division.