Believing 10 Impossible Things Before Breakfast...

At times it can be hard to separate fact from fiction on the internet and understand what is going on, or know what to believe. This is particularly true in the field of Defence, where rumours can appear as if out of nowhere, and quickly gain credence as ‘the truth’ no matter how untrue they are.

Often these rumours emerge as twisted offshoots from factually accurate statements, or at other times they can be utterly false. The challenge is trying to spot where the truth lies, and what, if anything, to believe.

This was brought into sharp focus today by a debate on twitter where a credible commentator noted they had heard reports that the UK is planning to ‘sell’ one of the QUEEN ELIZABETH class aircraft carriers to India. This immediately sparked debate as to whether it was true or not.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

Like all good stories, this seems to have its roots in a couple of different issues that have been conflated together to form one entirely new story. The suggestion that one of the two ships could be sold is not remotely new – In 2009 the Guardian reported that India was interested in purchasing one of the vessels from BAE systems.

There was some logic in this suggestion at the time – the UK was about to go into a Strategic Defence Review where the outcome of the force was far from certain, but it was known that large cuts were required. Secondly, India was at the time in the market for new vessels to replace their elderly force at a time when significant delays were being experienced with the refit of the former Admiral Gorshkov.  

Indeed, one of the now almost forgotten outcomes of the 2010 SDSR was that the RN planned to convert one carrier to CTOL, but that the other would be mothballed or even sold off to cover the cost of the conversion. This plan was officially ditched in 2014 under the plans to operate both full time. Therefore,  the seeds had already been laid for the suspicion that given half a chance, the Treasury would jump at the opportunity to force the selling off of a carrier.

The next part of the puzzle came together over the last week as rumours emerged that India has expressed interest in buying the BAE Systems design and building their own version of the carrier at home. This occurred at a similar timeframe to a visit by Admiral Lanba (the Indian Chief of the Naval Staff) to the UK in mid-march, where he visited HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH.

One of the key outcomes of this visit was the signing of an agreed ‘Carrier Capability Partnership’ to focus on enhancing both navies operational carrier capabilities. This makes a lot of sense given the Indian Navy’s ambition to return to operating multiple carriers, and the increasing security relationship between both navies. While it may be possible that the UK would look to forward base Type 31 in India it remains unclear if this would happen or not.

The final part of the picture is that there have been a number of very vague announcements recently about rumours of paying off, or mothballing one of the carriers at the same time as the RN confirmed that it had sufficient manpower to keep both at sea. Some sensed some kind of conspiracy, perhaps early manouveres ahead of the Spending Review, or efforts to keep the pressure on the Treasury to find enough funding for the MOD.

Pulled together it is easy to see how a combination of prior policy, industrial and government co-operation and new announcements could lead to speculation by some people that the RN is about to sell a carrier to India.  

But is it true?

The question to ask when reading articles suggesting that the Royal Navy would be on the very of scrapping its newest warship, that it has invested 20 years in bringing into service and around which the entire future of the surface fleet is arguably being invested, is what is the motivation for such a leak, and is there a Spending Review or Defence Review going on?

The sort of decision required to formally change the plans for operating two carriers, and their associated support forces would only be taken at the very highest levels of Government. The Carrier Strike capability represents a truly cross-government asset, and as was seen recently, decisions on the deployment of the Carrier would be taken by the Prime Minister. The idea then that the MOD would be unilaterally thinking of scrapping this vessel, without widespread consultation across Government would be unlikely in the extreme.

A decision like this, which would have significant impact across a wide range of National Security objectives would need to be undertaken as part of a wider review of UK goals. In this case, the only two appropriate avenues would either be a ‘Strategic Defence Review’ or, less likely, a Spending Review.

The former is an opportunity every five years for Government to assess its strategic priorities and goals and determine the capabilities required to deliver them. These are major set piece events that would need to be endorsed by Cabinet, and unpicking the direction contained within them is extremely difficult outside of a Review. The next Review is unlikely to be held until 2020 at the very earliest, and it would seem extremely unlikely that a decision would be taken outside of this well-established process to ‘sell an aircraft carrier to India’.

The Spending Review represents the regular process by which Government works out how much money it has available, and where it wants to prioritise or cut spending over a multi year (usually 3 year) period. This process is about setting overall departmental budgets and trying to agree what needs more money, and what gets less money. It is usually a very bitter affair, with all manner of information selectively appearing in the public domain, usually suggesting that if Treasury planned cuts to Department X’s budget happens, then Y number of problems will happen, all of which are bad.

The Chancellor has confirmed that a Spending Review will happen this year, but it is unlikely to happen until such point as more clarity occurs on Brexit, as this will determine the state of public finances. Given that the review has yet to begin, it seems exceptionally unlikely that the MOD has already decided to sell off a carrier to make ends meet.

So, given all of this, what is the genesis of these rumours? It is possible that a combination of slightly corrupted whispers have over time given headwind to the ‘ship for sale’ rumour. Alternatively, it is theoretically possible that as part of very, very early preparatory work for the Spending Review, some very basic costings have been done on a vast range of options to understand which would inform how to make savings if required. One of these options could, possibly, have involved paying off a Carrier to understand the sort of money it would save both directly and indirectly. This is purely a guess on Humphrey’s part.

This does not mean that the MOD is going to scrap the QUEEN ELIZABETH – at best it may mean that much like the NHS is probably doing work that says ‘£349m a week could be saved by closing X hospitals’ or the FCO is going ‘£2.1bn could be saved by closing the Embassy network and outsourcing it to a contractor’ and so on, the MOD is also looking at a range of similar ‘well we could do it if you really wanted to do that Minister, and it would be a very brave, borderline courageous decision for you to take’ options, just in case they were called on for costing.

Hacker: Well of course we'll do what we can, but there are many calls on the public purse, you know. Inner cities, schools, hospitals, kidney machines...

Ladies: Tanks, rockets, H-bombs.

Hacker: Well we can't really defend ourselves against the Russians with a performance of "Henry V".

What all of this means is that a lot of rumours, gossip and collection of random events seem to have formed into a very odd, and almost certainly untrue idea. Yet it is the power of the internet that keeps these ideas alive, and gives them strength even when to all rationale observers they seem palpably untrue.

Managing this sort of gossip mill is going to be a challenge, particularly as the Spending Review approaches and all manner of options are selectively leaked to influence or inform opinions. In a similar vein to the way that the successful ‘save the LPD’ campaign over time helped shape public opinion to the point that scrapping HMS ALBION and BULWARK (regardless of any potential merits and wider operational rationale for doing so) is now effectively impossible for some years to come, this could be the earliest of shots in a ‘save the carrier’ campaign designed to make bean counters go and focus on other issues like the Red Arrows or Household Division or other such traditional targets at times like this.

There will doubtless be some who feel that this is the ‘long hand of the Treasury’ making itself known again. Again, Humphrey is dubious about this – while many across the Public Sector like to regard the Treasury as Azkaban and its staff as the dementors of Whitehall, the Treasury is also sanguine about how Departments spend their money once it is handed over to them in a settlement.

The view of the Treasury would probably be that while they have an absolute responsibility to see that Public money is spent effectively and efficiently, they also gain little from meddling in established programmes for the sake of it. While Teams exist to do scrutiny and ensure best use of resources, the decision to keep or scrap an asset is really a departmental one.

There is a misleading idea that Treasury officials send demands for equipment to be sold regardless of cost. In reality its down to a Department to reprioritise its funding as necessary if it wants to keep an asset on, and realise savings elsewhere. This does not mean that the Treasury can, or would, order a carrier to be scrapped – as noted this is a decision that would be taken by Cabinet, and more realistically by the Prime Minister.

So, be wary of believing all you see on the internet and assuming that it automatically means the worst is happening. While it may sound slightly flippant, it really is best to wait until an announcement is made by a Department that something is going on. Often the wrangling and debate on an issue may be going on until minutes before the final statement is due, and what is leaked as a ‘100% safeguard, three clip gen dit’ (e.g. true) statement the night before may be utterly incorrect by the next lunchtime.

In summary – don’t believe all you read on the internet, especially ‘rumours’. If you do read them, ask yourself what the wider angle is here – what reviews are going on, what is the political dimension in play, and who benefits / gains from leaking a story like this and why? Usually a spot of analysis like this will not rule the story out but might make you look at it in a more questioning manner.

If in doubt, remember the adage of how business really gets done in Whitehall…

Hacker: If there were a conflict of interests which side would the civil service really be on?

Bernard: The winning side, Prime Minister.