1.9 We looked at how the organisation of Defence in the UK has developed over the last century. As we set out in the Introduction, many of the issues dealt with by our predecessors are familiar today, most notably the question of how best to manage the Services within a single Defence framework. Within that, recurring issues over the years have been:
• how far Defence management should be centralised or delegated, and in particular, the relationship between the centre of the Department, the single Services and other delivery business units;
• how far - and where - the delivery of military and supporting capabilities should be done on a single or tri-Service / 'joint' basis;
• the balance between ministerial / civilian and military roles and authority;
• how to ensure clear lines of responsibility and accountability given the complex, interconnected nature of Defence activity and outputs;
• the challenge of reconciling ambition with resource; and,
• how far enabling functions should be delivered in-house or by other parts of the public sector or private sector.
1.10 Our benchmarking with other organisations confirmed that any large, complex organisation must manage many of these issues, although some have a particular Defence flavour and are also common to Defence organisations overseas. Organisations have responded in a variety of ways: it was clear that there is no single perfect answer for all circumstances.
1.11 In the UK, these questions lay behind the formation of a Committee of Imperial Defence in 1904 to organise Britain's defence and military preparations. They have vexed Government ever since, through the Churchill reforms after the Second World War, the Mountbatten and Ismay / Jacob proposals that led to the creation of the unified MOD in 1964, the Heseltine reforms of the mid 1980s and the New Management Strategy that followed, and the various reforms of the 1990s and 2000s.
1.12 We have been very conscious of this history, and have drawn two conclusions from it. First, the historic record shows there is no single right answer. Our predecessors found the solution that worked for their time. Our successors will no doubt face many of the same questions in the future. We have sought to find the right solution for the particular set of challenges faced by Defence today; and also to recognise that those challenges will change, and the model needs to be lean and agile such that it can continually improve and adapt to changing circumstances.
1.13 Secondly, the success or failure of any model depends on the people within the organisation - and particularly its leaders. We are conscious that people, cultural and behavioural issues are as important, if not more important, than structures. This is reflected in the prominence of 'people' issues throughout the report, and in particular our recommendation that the Department should afford greater priority to managing human capability as a strategic resource. More fundamentally, it lies behind many of the recommendations on structures and processes, where we have sought to design a model that builds on the strong cultures and loyalties within Defence and that gets the right incentives and behaviours in the right places. But the model is only the start. It is the people in the organisation, at all levels, who will need to make it work.
1.14 In looking at how the organisation currently works, we found that it was complex and difficult to understand, partly by necessity, but also partly by design. We believe this complexity is both a symptom and a cause of the current problems. In our work we have sought wherever possible to simplify. To that end, we developed our own understanding of the core functions of Defence, to determine how best the organisation should align with them. We believe these functions to be to 'direct', 'develop and generate', 'acquire', 'operate', 'enable' and 'account'. We have tried to be clear about who is responsible for each. This is set out in more detail in Part 3.
1.15 Finally, though we are clear that the way Defence is structured and managed needs to change, we have been conscious of the lessons set out in Mr Charles Haddon-Cave QC's Nimrod Review report of 2009. The Department has legal and health and safety obligations it must meet. Major change has risks; so we set ourselves a high hurdle before recommending any. Those risks will then need to be managed carefully in implementation.