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The Decision-making Process

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Managing Britain’s Defence

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Abstract

This chapter is concerned with the relationship between government, Parliament and the defence bureaucracy operating within the British Constitution. In order to determine the nature of the British Constitution it is necessary to state what we mean by democracy, given that Britain claims to be one, and then say how and where the British model diverts from this ideal.

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Notes and References

  1. John Biffen, ‘The Joy of Decent Obscurity’, Guardian, 23 May 1988.

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  24. The Official Secrets Bill received its first, second and third readings on the same day. The total debate lasted less than half an hour. The bill was introduced by the Secretary for War, Colonel Seely, who said: ‘This bill is not aimed at any one in particular, but it is highly necessary that it be passed. Every other country has legislation of this kind, I understand, and in no case would the powers be used to infringe any of the liberties of His Majesty’s subjects’.

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  38. Quoted in Wilson, The Secrets File, p. 130.

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  39. Ibid.

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  41. Ibid., Introduction.

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  42. Ibid., p. 137.

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  43. On 29 June 1988 the Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, introduced a bill to reform the Official Secrets Act which did not provide for a ‘public right to know’ or a public interest defence.

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  44. See Peter Hennessy, Cabinet, pp. 123/133.

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  45. Ibid.

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  56. Margaret Thatcher, Statement on the Recommendations of the Security Commission, presented to Parliament May 1982 (London: HMSO) p. 4.

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  59. Thatcher, Recommendations of the Security Commission, p. 5.

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  60. Ibid.

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  61. Sir Raymond Lygo, Chairman British Aerospace, interview by David Taylor.

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  62. Peter Levene, Chief Defence Procurement, lecture at Royal United Services Institute, 25 February 1987.

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  63. Sir Clive Whitmore, PUS, interview by David Taylor.

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  64. Press statement issued by 10 Downing Street confirming Whitmore’s original letter to permanent heads when he was her Private Personal Secretary in 1979.

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  65. Wilson, The Secrets File, p. 131.

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  66. Ibid.

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  67. Ibid., p. 134.

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  68. Ibid., p. 135.

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  69. George Younger interview by David Taylor.

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  70. Peter Jones, Director Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, Aldermaston, interview by David Taylor.

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  71. National Audit Act 1983 (London: HMSO).

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  72. Sir Gordon Downey, C&AG until 1987, said on retiring that he thought the NAO should investigate these areas. Guardian, 13 October 1987.

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  73. Cooper, ‘A View from A Witness’.

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  74. Ibid.

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  75. Personal communication.

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  76. Cooper, ‘A View from A Witness’.

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  77. Personal communication.

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  78. Francis Pym, ‘The Origins of the New Select Committees’, Contemporary Record (Spring 1987) p. 15.

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  79. HComs, 25 June 1979, cols 35–6.

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  80. First Special Report from the Defence Committee, 1979/80, 20 February 1980. HC 455 (HMSO).

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  81. Ibid.

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  84. Sir John Langford-Holt, Chair Defence Committee, 1st session, 15 April 1980 (London: HMSO) HC 556.

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  85. See two Defence Committee reports on Westlands, see Note 40.

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  88. See Appendix, Defence Committee reports.

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  89. ‘Defence Commitments and Resources and the Defence Estimates 1985–6’, Vol. 1, 1984–5 HC 37, para. 36.

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  90. Ibid., para. 38.

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  91. Personal communication.

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  92. See section on LTCs in Chapter 3.

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  93. Whitmore, interview by Taylor.

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  94. See the introduction to Heseltine in Chapter 3.

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  95. See discussion of RBs in Chapter 3.

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  96. Ibbs proposal references.

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  97. See discussion of FPMG in Chapter 5.

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  98. Personal communication.

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  99. ‘Memorandum of Guidance for Officials before Select Committees’, E. B. C. Ostmotherly. General Notice. GEN 80/38. File ref. MG 23/113/01 16.5.80, Civil Service Department.

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  100. Ibid., para. 15.

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  101. Ibid., para. 25.

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  102. ‘Statement on the Defence Estimates 1985’, HC 9430-1, para. 404 (HMSO).

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  103. Ponting, Whitehall, p. 83.

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  104. Personal communication.

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  105. Personal communication.

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  106. Personal communication..

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  107. Personal communication.

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  108. See discussion of the ‘secret society’ in Chapter 3.

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  109. Personal communication.

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  110. See discussion of FOI later in this chapter.

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  111. ‘The Progress of the Trident Programme’, Defence Committee, 1988 HC 422, 1987/8 (London: HMSO).

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  112. Ibid., para. 46.

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  113. HCom., 2 November 1987. WPQ, col. 608. ‘Expenditure on Major Defence Programmes: Accountability to the House of Commons’, Defence Committee, HC 340 1986/7, paras 23 and 34. (London: HMSO).

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  114. John Carvel, ‘Government Eases Rules on Defence Secrecy’, Guardian, 8 May 1987.

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  115. See Appendix — procurement stages.

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  116. HC 340, 1986/7, para. 30.

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  117. Summing up by Justice McCowan in the trial involving Clive Ponting, Assistant Secretary at the MOD who sent material on the sinking of the Belgrano during the Falklands War in 1982 to Labour MP, Tam Dalyell, 7 February 1985.

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  118. F. F. Ridley, ‘Political Neutrality in the British Civil Service: Sir Thomas More and Mr Clive Ponting v. Sir Robert Armstrong and the Vicar of Bray’, in Politics, Ethics and Public Service (London: Royal Institute of Public Administration, 1985) p. 32.

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  119. Sir Patrick Nairne, former Permanent Secretary Treasury, quoted in Ponting, Whitehall, p. 89.

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  120. Ponting, Whitehall, p. 89.

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  121. Peter Jay, ‘Pontius or Ponting: Public Duty and Public Interest in Secrecy and Disclosure’, in Politics, Ethics and Public Service (RIPA).

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  122. See Chapter 2 under Francis Pym for more on Che valine, the secret modernisation of Polaris begun by the Labour government in 1966 and announced to Parliament by Pym in 1981.

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  123. Armstrong, ‘The Duties and Responsibilities of Civil Servants’.

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  124. McCowan, Summing up, 7 February 1985.

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  125. Jay, ‘Pontius or Ponting’, p. 70.

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  126. Alexander Grey, ‘Integrity Versus Goodthink’, in Politics, Ethics and Public Services (RIPA) pp. 62/63.

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  127. Ibid.

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  128. Personal conversations with civil servants and military officers in the MOD during 1987.

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  129. George Orwell, 1984 (London: Penguin).

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  130. Irving L. Janis, Victims of Groupthink (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968) p. 199.

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  131. Irving L. Janis and Leon Mann, Decision Making (New York: Free Press, 1977) p. 132.

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  132. Personal communication.

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  134. Ibid.

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  135. Michael Dillon, ‘British Defence Policy Making’, in M. Dillon (ed.), Comparative Policy Making (Leicester University Press, 1988). Unpublished at time of writing.

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  136. Ponting, Whitehall, p. 29.

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  137. Hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildavsky, The Private Government of Public Money (London: Macmillan, 1981) pp. 8/9.

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  138. Ibid.

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  139. Ibid.

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  140. Civil Service Commission Annual Report 1985 (London: HMSO).

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  141. Heseltine interview by Taylor.

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  142. Younger interview by Taylor.

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  143. Fulton Report on ‘The Civil Service’.

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  144. Ibid.

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  145. William Plowden, ‘What Prospects for the Civil Service’, Public Administration, Vol. 63 (Winter 1985) pp. 406/7.

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  146. Anne Mueller, ‘Better Results Through People in the Public Service’, RIPA seminar quoted in G. K. Fry, ‘The Thatcher Government, the Financial Management Initiative and the “New Civil Service”’, Public Administration, Vol. 66, No. 1, p. 1.

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  147. Frank Cooper interview by Taylor.

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  148. Seventh Report of the Treasury and Civil Service Committee, 1985–6, Civil Servants and Ministers: Duties and Responsibilities (London: HMSO) Vol. i, p. xi.

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  149. Ibid., Vol. ii, p. 276.

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  150. RIPA, ‘Top Jobs in Whitehall: Appointments and Promotions in the Senior Civil Service’ (London, 1987).

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  151. Civil Service Commission Annual Report 1979 and 1986.

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  152. Personal communication.

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  153. Treasury and Civil Service Committee, 1985–6, ‘Civil Servants and Ministers’.

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  154. Plowden, ‘What Prospects for the Civil Service’, p. 395.

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  155. Personal communication.

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  156. Brian Easlea, Fathering the Unthinkable (Pluto, 1985).

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  157. Winston Churchill quoted in Jim Garrison, From Hiroshima To Harrisburg, p. 17.

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  158. Paul Chilton, ‘Nukespeak: Nuclear Language, Culture and Propaganda’, in Crispin Aubrey, Nukespeak: The Media and the Bomb (London: Comedia, 1982) p. 98.

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  159. Ibid.

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  160. Lord Callaghan on BBC Radio 4, ‘With a Bloody Union Jack On It’ — the story of Britain’s nuclear weapons, narrated by Peter Hennessy, June 1988.

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  161. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

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  166. Lygo interview Taylor.

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  167. Dillon, ‘British Defence Policy Making’.

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  168. Ibid.

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  170. David Willetts, ‘The Prime Minister’s Policy Unit’, Public Administration (Winter 1987) Vol. 65, No. 4, pp. 443–454.

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  172. See Appendix — procurement stages.

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  175. Both the Treasury and the NAO were referred to as ‘bloody interfering’ in the MOD by civil servants who did not want their routines interrupted. Personal communication.

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  181. Denis Healey ‘the MOD always finds itself piggy in the middle’, see Chapter 1 on history of defence decision-making, 1945–79.

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  182. John Nott, ‘All our priorities are in the last resort a by-product of our foreign policy’, BBC Radio 4, Analysis.

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  183. Personal communication.

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  185. See section in Chapter 3 on EPC.

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  186. Lord Hill-Norton, ex-Chief of Naval Staff, interview by David Taylor.

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  187. Air Vice-Marshal Sir Michael Armitage, Chief Defence Intelligence, Interview by David Taylor.

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  188. Personal communication.

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  189. Written briefing from Dr Alan Fox, Defence Intelligence Staff Coordinator (DISCS), 1985.

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  190. Armitage, interview by Taylor.

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  192. Kenneth Strong, Men of Intelligence (London: Cassell, 1970) p. 152.

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  193. Ibid., p. 155.

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  194. See for instance letter to Daily Telegraph regarding Trident 21 February 1982, to The Times on Defence Re-organisation 3 March 1984.

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  195. Strong, Men of Intelligence p. 168.

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  196. Armitage, interview by Taylor.

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  197. Written briefing by Fox and personal conversations with DIS staff.

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  198. Ibid.

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  205. Denis Healey, former Secretary of State for Defence, interview by David Taylor.

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  206. Le Bailley, letter to Daily Telegraph, 21 February 1982.

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  208. Armitage, interview by Taylor.

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  210. Brigadier R. C. F. Plummer, ‘The Soviet Army — a View from Inside the Soviet Union’, in Defence Intelligence, London, March 1987, p. 13.

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  213. Ibid.

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  215. Chris Donnelly, lecturer Sandhurst Military Academy, interview by Taylor.

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  216. Le Bailley, letter to Daily Telegraph, 21 February 1982.

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  217. Field Marshal Edwin Bramhall interview by David Taylor.

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  229. See FOI section later in this chapter.

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  233. ‘The Protection of Military Information’, Report of the Study Group on Censorship, General Sir Hugh Beach, December 1983, Cmnd 9112, para. 234. See also government reply, Cmnd 9499, April 1985.

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  235. Heseltine interview by Taylor.

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  236. See section on DS 19 in Chapter 3 on Heseltine.

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  237. See section on the re-organisation of the MOD in 1982 in Chapter 3 under Nott.

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  238. See Peter Riddell, ‘The Select Committee System and the Media’, Contemporary Record (Spring 1987) p. 20.

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  239. Frank Cooper commented on the role of press officers in Downing Street. The same applies to ministers in ministries. ‘The post of chief information officer at No. 10, Downing Street is in fact a political job in a party sense and is not a job which it is proper for a civil servant to fill unless he, or she, resigns from the civil service on appointment.’ Observer, 5 June 1988.

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  240. Heseltine interview by Taylor.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bath, England

    Malcolm McIntosh

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© 1990 Malcolm McIntosh

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McIntosh, M. (1990). The Decision-making Process. In: Managing Britain’s Defence. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10535-9_2

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