Liam Fox (left) is set to announce big changes to Britain's defences The government is to announce plans to tackle waste, red tape and inter-service rivalry at the MoD.
Described as the biggest defence shake-up for a generation, it follows a year-long review.
It is expected to recommend a reduction in the number of senior officers, with individual service heads losing their places on the MoD's most senior decision-making body.
Defence Secretary Liam Fox will announce the review to Parliament.
The BBC's defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt says the recommendations of the Defence Reform Unit, headed by Lord Levene, are expected to include the slimming down of what many see as the top-heavy structure of the MoD.
She said the plan was also to make it more accountable and reduce rivalry between the Army, Navy and RAF by giving the chiefs of all three services more power over their budgets and organisations.
Lord Levene is also expected to attack the former Labour government for the way they left the MoD's finances.
He writes in The Times: "Our view is that the existing model for running defence contributed to the loss of control over the programme."
Lord Levene (right), a former Lord Mayor of London, is expected to lambast Labour Dr Fox has spoken in the past of implementing radical change at the MoD and asked Lord Levene and a team of experts to work out how to fix the department's problems.
The MoD has made headlines in recent years for waste and inefficient procurement, with a black hole in its finances of billions of pounds as a result of ordering more equipment than it had the budget for - a legacy the recent defence cuts have not yet tackled in full.
Lord Levene, chairman of Lloyd's of London since 2002, is expected to say financial management must be at the heart of how the MoD works, and recommend streamlining overly bureaucratic management structures.
The defence secretary is likely to respond with some of the most far-reaching reforms in a generation.
The individual service chiefs of the Royal Navy, the Army and the RAF will be given more control over their budgets and how their services are run and organised.
But they will no longer sit on a key committee but be jointly represented by the chief of the defence staff, General Sir David Richards - leaving just one serving officer on the defence board.
A new joint force command to oversee and integrate areas such as cyber warfare and military intelligence will also be created.
Our correspondent says there will be a thinning out of senior ranks in the forces later on, though how that is done is likely to be left to the chiefs themselves to decide.
This article is from the BBC News website. � British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/uk-politics-13923042
No comments:
Post a Comment