MOD/MB/39/10 was issued on the 20th May 2010 and detailed:Last autumn the then shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox met with the MoD permanent under secretary, Bill Jeffrey. Reportedly, at the meeting Mr Fox demanded MoD draw up plans to cut 20,000 civil service jobs to be enacted upon the election of a Conservative government. At the same time it was reported that the Conservatives were planning a 25% reduction in defence spending – none of which is to come from reducing military numbers, but rather by sweeping cuts applied to the 89,300-strong workforce of civilian staff employed.
After his autumn outburst, we wrote to Mr Fox giving him the facts on the civilian population in our department - MoD civilian numbers falling every single quarter from 109,050 in April 2004 to 85,730 in July 2009.
Now in post as our new defence secretary, it appears Mr Fox has chosen to ignore our letter and the views of the 45,000 workers in our department that our union represents. Today the Tory/Lib Dem coalition agreement, “Our programme for government” has been published. Although there is absolutely no detail of how this will happen, it claims “We will aim to reduce Ministry of Defence running costs by at least 25%”.
PCS has now received the Terms of Reference (TOR) for the SDSR which will define how the Ministry of Defence is to meet the 25% reduction in running costs.
Due to the volume of papers it is not feasible to issue hard copies to everyne, however they have been placed on the PCS website at:
www.pcs.org.uk/en/ministry_of_defence_group/ministry_of_defence_group.cfm
It is clear that there are significant issues contained within these documents that will affect our members working in the MOD.
A quick assessment of where the studies will potentially impact on our members is attached at annex A.
To give one example a target has been set across the Government estate of delivering £20Bn of asset sales and £5Bn in running cost savings in the next ten years.
The Defence Estate is a significant enabler in delivery capability and its effective management consumes considerable resource. The TOR details a belief that the current estate management arrangements are fragmented and inefficient. The MOD under SDSR will be looking to generate savings as part of the Governments estate savings and these savings will impact on our members.
Please can you leave your comments and views so that they can be fed into the PCS response to the department.
