Speaking to CSW about the MoD’s redundancy programmes, Thompson said that those in the RAF and Navy have “essentially finished”, but that ministers are now deciding whether the three tranches of cuts to the Army have been enough.
The news comes after an announcement last week by defence secretary Philip Hammond that the MoD plans to recruit hundreds of computer experts as cyber reservists.
Meanwhile, think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) last week challenged another major MoD reform: the plan to outsource the management of its defence procurement operations in a ‘government-owned, contractor-operated’ (GoCo) model. In a briefing paper, What the Government must do in Defence Procurement, RUSI calls on the government to articulate which services and functions should be defined as “inherently governmental”. A recent court ruling that soldiers are owed a duty of care, it argues, means that the MoD is responsible for equipping them correctly.
The paper says the MoD “may well be recognised as legally vulnerable to claims by personnel that they have been improperly or inadequately equipped, which would suggest real limits to the risks and responsibilities that could be passed to a procurement contractor, and to the risks and responsibilities that any contractor would accept.”
See also: our feature on job cuts in the MoD and armed forces