Justifying The Growth in the MOD Civil Service - Good For Defence, Good For Britain.

Official statistics indicate that the MOD Civil Service has grown in size over the last year, adding around 740 staff (roughly 1.2% of headcount) to reach a size of 60,640. According to breathless tabloid commentary, this ‘blob’ will ‘push pens’ in Whitehall at a time when the regular armed forces face cuts in their headcount. Is this true, have the Mandarins succeeded in their quest to make the MOD a civilised department free of those nasty armed forces ruffians, or is it perhaps a bit more complex than this.

The size of the Civil Service is a perennial source of concern to some commentators. There seems to be some kind of bizarre equation in force which means that they see military headcount as a good thing, but civilian headcount as a negative force that detracts, rather than adds to the outputs of Defence. This is borne from a totally erroneous perspective that all Civil Servants push paper, they don’t do any work and they all exist in Whitehall where in their ivory towers they slow down and make things harder for the military. There is, sadly, a not insignificant body of people who genuinely see MOD Civil Servants as quasi-traitors responsible for the woes of the MOD and who don’t add any value to it. This narrative is particularly popular now as the lunatic theory expounded by some of the extreme right-wing press to suggest that the Civil Service has apparently become some kind of ultra-left wing ‘blob’ dedicated to overthrowing the Government of the day with its ‘woke’ ideology gains ever more traction with their increasingly elderly readership who are still suspicious of anyone with an accent, lest they be a Nazi spy in disguise…  The issue is that the MOD Civil Service adds an enormous amount to Defence and helping Defence do its daily business. Perhaps the problem is that no one wants to hear or read about it for stories like ‘Civil Service do a good job’ are of no interest to those paid to rustle up outrage in the press.

This whole blog dates back to 2011 and the Media attacks on the MOD CS at the time and trying to present a counter argument about the value that it offers to both Defence and the wider taxpayer. This article therefore may feel like a mild trip down memory lane to older readers, but it is still worth writing about because the fundamental point remains as true today as it did back then – namely that the MOD Civil Service is a fantastic organisation that truly makes the UK and allies a safer more secure nation and which plays a critical role in ensuring the armed forces can do their jobs.

Its worth reviewing the roles and locations of the MOD CS before considering why it may have grown in recent years. Firstly its important to slay the pathetic cliché that all the MOD Civil Service work in Whitehall pushing pens. For starters only a fairly small number of the overall MOD CS work there -in 2022 according to official statistics, 3,710 MOD Civil Servants were based in Inner London (against 4,180 military).  That’s about 5% of the MOD CS and will incorporate everything from the Permanent Secretary in Main Building through to staff working in the various armed forces reserve units across the capital and in the many barracks and other facilities. It also includes the security teams provided by the MOD Guard Service and other roles too. It is also worth remembering how much of the London estate the MOD has sold off – in the late 1990s there were nearly 20 MOD buildings across central London, today there is just one (Main Building).  

95% of the MOD Civil Service work outside of Whitehall which doesn’t seem to be an unreasonable ratio.  These staff are based in a variety of different areas, for example roughly 1700 Civil Servants are members of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary who operate around the world on the tankers, store ship, landing ships and other support vessels that make up this vital force enabler for the Royal Navy. Wherever the RN is deployed, RFA Civil Servants will be there too.

There are more MOD Civil Servants based in Scotland than in Whitehall (3,920) while another 1100 are based in Wales and nearly 1000 in Northern Ireland. This means roughly 10% of the MOD CS is based outside of England.

Meanwhile some 4000 staff, are known as ‘locally employed civilians’ or LECs (curiously the 2023 MOD ‘defence in numbers’ publication suggests 6000 people or 10% of the MOD work overseas)  These are people recruited to work for the MOD globally to provide local help and support. This can range from providing base security (for example security guard duties in Germany) through to running stores warehouses or logistics in support of exercises in various different locations where the UK has permanent operating bases. For example there are over 300 locally employed staff in Brunei and nearly 400 in Nepal, where local staff play a vital role in Gurkha recruitment and selection. 600 staff (or 1% of the MOD Civil Service) are locally employed civilians in Kenya supporting British Army training activity in country, while 140 staff are employed in Belize. If you want to see a small example of why the numbers have grown, the MOD location statistics doc (an excellent piece of data buried on the MOD website) shows that over the last 10 years there has been an increase in headcount of MOD Civil Service staff by recruiting an additional 80 staff in Belize, 80 staff in Kenya and 30 staff in Nepal – that’s nearly 200 people, or almost 30% of the headcount growth accounted for right there if you want to play silly games of pure numbers headcount.

It also gets more complex when you try to break down how the MOD is structured because a lot of people work in a complex web of structures. This means that of the 60,000 CS only approximately 36,000 work in what is recognised as ‘the MOD’ while another approx. 18,500 work in what is known as ‘trading agencies’. This may sound like bureaucracy for bureaucracies sake but its actually quite an important distinction. Those working in trading agencies will be staff working for some very specific and closed organisations like the Hydrographic Agency, Defence Electronic Components Agency, DE&S and the Submarine Delivery Authority. All of these are run essentially as stand alone enterprises separate to the wider MOD to deliver outputs to the MOD.  In the MOD itself there are a variety of budgetary areas including all 3 services, strategic command and Head Office itself. This is the area where you’ll see perhaps the most traditional Civil Service work being done including policy & secretariat work, intelligence analysis, strategic budgeting and communication work and so on. Meanwhile in the agencies that’s where you’ll see the procurement happen – so DE&S operates as a separate body with its own payscales and ways of working compared to wider MOD.

There is always the more challenging question of ‘what do all these people do all day’? Many people unfamiliar with government work assume that they are all faceless mandarins who come up with policies and pronouncements and form committees about matters that matter to no one. In fact the MOD is one of the most diverse and exciting employers in the UK offering a huge range of employment opportunities to those who want to take it. For example there are roughly 7,950 (13% of the MOD CS) staff working in science and engineering opportunities, helping do hands on practical engineering work or developing cutting edge scientific research to help keep the UK on the cutting edge of military developments. Almost 6000 staff (roughly 10%) work in project delivery, acting as the people responsible for taking projects ranging from nuclear weapons to building new accommodation and helping manage this from concept to delivery to disposal. Finally despite the perception that the MOD is a policy heavy organisation, in fact there are roughly 25% more staff working in medical services than there are in policy itself (1640 versus 1270).

In practical terms the work people do is varied and depends on their location and role. It can range from working in stores, issuing equipment to new recruits through to cleaning or canteen services. Elsewhere it may be working in office support functions, being the sole source of corporate memory on a unit where every military member of staff turns around every couple of years. More widely you may see staff engaged in scientific experiments, testing new equipment to be used by troops on the front line, while others help support training delivery. There is an enormous range of work, much of it manual in focus, and all of it is designed with the purpose of supporting the military in their day to day job.

Many of these staff are also very junior – according to official MOD statistics, 8% of the MOD are the so-called ‘industrial grades’ working in hands on tasks like stores or dockyards where the salary is around £20-21k per year. A further 30% are in the ‘Admin grades’ where the starting salary is £22,578 per year. 17% work as Executive Officers, where the current starting salary is £27,080 per year. This means that 55% of the MOD earn, on average comfortably under £30,000 per year – this is not an organisation whose staff are earning megabucks. Another way of putting it is that everyone in the armed forces at the level of Corporal or above is earning at least 20% more than 55% of the MOD Civil Service.

Over the last 23 years the headcount for the MOD has been cut by around 40%, declining from 100,000 in the year 2000 to 60,000 today. There were aspirations in prior defence reviews to cut it even further, but these were found to be unmanageable as the sheer damage this would do for the routine delivery of defence work and outputs would have been unsustainable. While it is easy to demand ‘scrap the civil servants’ the reasonable challenge in response is ‘what critical defence outputs do you want to stop as a result’. The easiest way to cull CS numbers is to either stop doing things wholesale (for example by privatisation of a function) or by closing military bases down en-masse, reducing the associated footprint of roles linked to those sites. For example closing barracks down frees up industrial staff, security guards, admin assistants and so on, all of whom can be laid off when the site closes. To reach the target of 40,000, which is what some were aiming for in the 2015 SDSR, you’d need to decide how to cull 30% of the MOD CS – which means wholesale removal of capabilities, large scale privatisation or mass closure of military bases – none of which are particularly appealing to any decision makers.

This isn’t saying that the MOD CS should be immune from cuts, but it is saying that arbitrarily stating a headcount target is not the way to do it – such a move merely encourages people to apply for early release, losing critical skills and experience and leaving gaps across the system that are almost impossible to replace. The other challenge is that the armed forces have increasingly run ‘civilianise posts’ ideas that are a way of saving money. For example, anyone who lived through one of the recent RN ‘transformation projects’ at its main headquarters (and apologies to those involved in it who were triggered back into relapses as they relive the nightmare of that particular ‘challenging experience’) will recall a key way of saving money was to recruit civil servants to free up military headcount for other jobs. In other words, hire a civilian to do the job more cheaply than the uniform could – this was, its important to be clear, a military idea. The result is that the MOD has found itself picking up headcount liability to fill roles that have previously been filled by military personnel to save money. That’s not a bad idea in some cases, particularly for roles that rely on generalist skills not specialist military experience to do, but it also means growing the size of the Civil Service.

While its absolutely understandable about concern that the CS seems to be growing, it is worth remembering a couple of key things. Firstly there is a rise of civilianised posts that exist in order to free up military headcount elsewhere – this is about improving the availability of uniformed personnel to do work elsewhere. Secondly there is a lot going on in Defence right now – just look at the scale of programmes and change underway including investment in a complex portfolio from nuclear submarine building to advanced weaponry being designed. At times this calls for additional people to help ensure these projects are delivered on time and on budget. Finally the sheer reality of Defence operations means some areas are almost certainly under pressure due to the relentless grind of ops support and extra headcount is a way of increasing resource and resilience and responding to events. For example its likely that there will have been a small increase in posts/staff to handle the many challenges thrown up by the Ukraine conflict.

It is a sad fact of life that no one will ever willingly cheer on the Civil Service, and particularly the MOD Civil Service. No Minister will go in to bat for them, and its vanishingly rare to hear senior military officers give them the praise and respect that, frankly, the organisation could occasionally do with hearing. Speaking to staff in the CS and many have resigned themselves to working in roles that are without glamour, prestige or respect and they accept that in the eyes of the Mail and the Telegraph and other extreme-right wing publications, they are seen as ‘enemies of the people’. It is depressing to think that so many people give so much to help keep this nation safe, but due to their audacity of not wearing military uniform they are seen as the source of the problem and not as a critical part of the solution.  The MOD Civil Service is not a ‘blob’ it is normal people trying their best to help make this country a safer more secure nation to live in. It deserves our thanks, not our misdirected anger.