Murnaghan 14.10.12 Interview with Lord Jock Stirrup, former Chief of Defence Staff

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: The Sunday Times newspaper has filmed retired military chiefs allegedly breaching official rules over lobbying for defence contracts. One of those mentioned is the former Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Stirrup, although the paper does point out he didn’t suggest breaking any rules. Well Lord Stirrup is with me now to give his side of the story, very good to see you Lord Stirrup. As I say, you mention you were lulled into a false sense of security I suppose by these undercover reporters, first of all do you feel embarrassed about what’s been written?

JOCK STIRRUP: Well it’s not very pleasant is it? But I think it is important to understand the context of it. First of all this story is about lobbying, I have never lobbied money and I don’t lobby and as I have pointed out in subsequent conversations when I’ve been asked about lobbying, I am the recipient of quite a lot of lobbying and I am struck by how ineffective it is so it is not the way to proceed and, as I try to explain to people, what you are actually trying to do is persuade people that you have understood their needs and that you can help to meet them but the context of this particular situation as far as it pertained to me is I was asked if I would be, not a lobbyist but if I would become a member of the strategic advisory board, a European strategic advisory board for a South Korean company that had developed some exciting new technology that it thought might be applicable in the European defence environment. Now this technology applied to unmanned aerial vehicles, sometimes incorrectly referred to as drones, and was in two parts. The first was to do with supposedly micro unmanned aerial vehicles, these are ones that you can actually carry in your hand, individual soldiers can carry in their backpacks, could send ahead of them into houses, compounds, around corners, warn of ambushes and the like. The other was a larger unmanned aerial vehicle which carried a ground penetrating radar which could be enormously useful in detecting the kinds of improvised explosive devices which have been so dangerous for our people in Afghanistan. So what we are talking about here potentially was technology that could save a lot of lives.

DM: It’s interesting how you put that because this is the problem and this is why the Sunday Times say they launched the investigation because there were fears, there were doubts raised by a Permanent Secretary who said is the equipment being procured for our armed forces the best possible equipment out there, is it fit for purpose and if there is money involved in those that push for it, can we be sure that their judgement is not being swayed by the cash.

JS: Well there are some interesting points there. I don't know which Permanent Secretary was being referred to, which department but if one of the most senior civil servants in the land, one of the most experienced civil servants in Whitehall, truly felt concerned and felt that in some way our procurement process was somehow being compromised, its fairness, its independence, then I would have thought frankly he would have spoken to somebody in the government or the head of the civil service rather than just moaning about it to a Sunday newspaper so that does strike me as rather odd. But the second point is, I mean I saw Philip Hammond said last night about the procurement process and it is not effected by retired military and he is dead right, of course it isn’t. There is a very carefully protected process for the negotiation of competitions and contracts and lobbying, whoever does it, plays no part in that but this is an important point, in terms of getting the right equipment for our armed forces, when I was asked if I would be a member of this European Strategic Advisory Board, I was asked what sort of approach the company might take and I said well of course that would be for the Strategic Advisory Board …

DM: Would you have accepted payment for it if the role had been real?

JS: If I had become a board member then I would have been a salaried board member as all board members are by and large including non-executives but when I was asked, when I was pressed, what sort of approach might the company take, what I said to them was if a company wants to have a successful product in defence it needs to clear three hurdles. The first hurdle is it needs to address a defined military capability requirement. The second is that that capability requirement needs to be of a higher priority than the many others that compete with it for scarce funding and the third is that the company’s product has to be better than anybody else’s. That is the strategy for success in all of this, not lobbying, not lobbying. Indeed when I was asked about who the company should be speaking to, what I said to them was you need to be talking to the military, not to lobby them but to understand the military requirements. I specifically said, the worst thing any company can do is sit down with the military and tell them what they think the military should be buying, what they should be doing is sitting down and saying we’re here to listen and to understand your requirements and to see how we might help you.

DM: You’ve made the point and former Defence Secretary Michael Portillo made the very point in that chair a few minutes ago, that you feel that lobbying by retired military chiefs is not going to sway these very, very big decisions so therefore the other interpretation that you have to put upon this is that, not in your case but that some of your retired colleagues just are in it for the money? They like a good lunch, the sound of their own voices, are boasting about their access and their capabilities and are sitting there on already big pension pots but want more money. How do you think that plays with our men and women in the field?

JS: Well first of all in terms of context, I was asked about my contacts, if you are pressed upon your contacts of course you will tell them what they are. I was asked about whether I knew ministers and of course I do know ministers but of course was not reported was what I also said which is that approaching ministers is not the way to set about this. What you need to do is to understand the military’s needs, the military’s requirements and they are not set by ministers. So what do retired military people do within the defence industry, because let’s be clear they are employed in quite large numbers? Well why do PR firms employ former journalists? It’s not so those journalists can approach their old media organisations and persuade them to publish or broadcast something they would not otherwise do …

DM: It’s for their expertise.

JS: It’s for their expertise, it’s because they understand the business, they understand the language and they understand how the two sides can…

DM: But on the money point, well paid and status throughout your career, big pay offs in your case, big pension pots, why do you require more money to give something back in terms of that expertise that you have gained as a result of your membership of the armed forces?

JS: Well you don’t necessarily and I like many of us do an enormous number of pro bono things, a great deal of my time is taken up working for organisations for which I receive no income whatsoever but if you go and work for a commercial organisation in a salaried position, you receive a salary, as happens across the board. But that is not, certainly for me, is not the prime driver. I mean I have always said, and anyone who knows me will tell you this, that after my military career ended the last thing I wanted to be was an arms consultant but in this particular case the prospect of technology that could actually save the lives of our soldiers on the battlefield, you have to be a very strange ex-military person not to be interested.

DM: Okay and one last thought, with one eye to Lord Leveson, what do you think about being secretly filmed, do you think there was clear public interest?

JS: Well I don’t really have a view on that. I think of course people being filmed in what they think are confidential circumstances are never really going to appear to their advantage, are they, but that’s I think a whole separate issue.

DM: Okay, Lord Stirrup, thank you very much indeed for coming in.

JS: Thank you.