Recommendation 10

HM Government Accepted

The MOD contributes to UK resilience in a number of key areas, including relating to potential staffing difficulties that may occur in sectors such as law enforcement, prisons or firefighting. These contingency plans and arrangements are agreed in advance with responsible Departments and are predicated on the fact that military support is only to be called upon at times of acute difficulties or shortages where aid from elsewhere in Government or from the commercial sector is not available. These arrangements ensure that military support is a last resort, where other solutions are not viable and ensure that the Armed Forces are called away from their core duties only when strictly necessary. The Ministry of Defence would not sanction arrangements where the military are fulfilling civilian tasks, unless other solutions have been exhausted beforehand. In addition to standing arrangements covering a number of critical functions, the arrangements for ad hoc support to other Government Departments for resilience or crisis taskings is governed by the tried and tested principles for Military Assistance to the Civil Authorities (MACA) as set out in the published guidance at https://www.gov.uk/ government/publications/operations-in-the-uk-a-joint-doctrine-publication. The following core principles must be satisfied in order for military assistance of this kind to be considered: • there is a definite need to act and the tasks the Armed Forces are being asked to perform are clear; • other options, including mutual aid, commercial alternatives and the voluntary sector have been discounted; • the civil authority lacks the necessary capability to fulfil the task and it is unreasonable or prohibitively expensive to expect it to develop one; or, • the civil authority has all or some capability, but it may not be available immediately, or to the required scale, and the urgency of the task requires rapid external support from the MOD. The Department maintains a network of liaison officers deployed across Whitehall and in all regions of the UK to work with Departments, arm’s length bodies, local resilience fora and other responders to help them develop potential requests for military support, including consideration of alternative non-military solutions, to ensure that these principles are followed. Defence’s network of regional commanders and strategic Liaison Officers engage with departments and authorities considering requests for military assistance at the outset. This not only helps to shape the type of assistance that may be provided but manages expectations where Defence support is not the most appropriate answer. Requests are usually refused when Defence personnel do not have the appropriate skills for the task, when there is sufficient capacity to satisfy the task within the civil authority, commercial, or voluntary sectors, or where the task requires the use of assets or personnel which are critical to essential Defence outputs and cannot be released. Work is underway across Defence to transform the systems, policies and processes by which we draw on and leverage the critical contributions made by our reserve forces, informed by the headmark, vision and recommendations set out in the Reserves Forces 2030 Review. This important work is being taken forward by individual Front Line Commands, in partnership with a central Reserves Forces 30 implementation programme, and alongside the Haythornthwaite Review of Armed Forces Incentivisation. The Government will provide an update on this work, and a response to the Reserves Forces 2030 Review, following consideration of the implications of the UK’s commitment to the NATO new force model and how this may in turn affect reserve transformation programmes.