No privatisation of the NHS! The RAF? - Well that's OK then!

There seems to have been constant uproar and outrage from the press and the public alike whenever talk of privatising the NHS bubbles up, and rightly so. It’s a critical service that the public (in general) are willing to fund, you’d think there’d be equal concern if there was talk about privatising another critical service - the armed forces. So it may surprise you to find out that this isn’t talk – it’s already happening and has been for a few years – and it’s not just ‘back office’ functions either.

Later this year the RAF yellow Sea King rescue helicopters, familiar to everyone are being scrapped with the service privatised. The large air-to-air refuelling tankers that operate in war zones refuelling all our combat aircraft have already been privatised. All air-crew training whether that be pilots, navigators etc are currently being privatised. Day-to-day running and operation of airbases and maintenance of aircraft –again already being privatised! So what’s happening?    

Search And Rescue

By 2016 our country’s coastline and mountains will be patrolled by civilians replacing 90 RAF and Royal Navy pilots. This ends 70 years of military search and rescue by servicemen who have saved thousands of lives both at sea and off mountain tops. The MoD’s distinctive fleet of yellow Sea King helicopters will be scrapped by March 2016. The MoD currently provides a 24-hour helicopter search-and-rescue service from 12 bases around the country.

Sole responsibility for Britain’s search and rescue is transferring to the Department for Transport. It seems a £1.6billion deal was signed a few years ago which wrenches responsibility from the RAF and Royal Navy in favour of Texas-based Bristow Group. I don't remember this being in the 2010 Tory or LibDems manifestos !

Further concerns have been raised because Bristow is axing two of the 12 military SAR bases and reducing the total helicopter fleet from 24 to 22, despite this the Department for Transport has said that under the new regime rescuers will reach emergencies more swiftly and could cover larger areas of the country. Really? How does that work then? Less bases. Less helicopters but quicker, greater coverage, sounds like spin and bullshit to me. The public has come to trust and value the military search and rescue service and this privatisation is just wrong.

In effect, they've actually privatised out people’s lives. Am I really seeing this? As long as the Forces are doing the rescuing then people will always be rescued - at the utmost risk. So will the private sector operation take on the same sort of risks that the RAF and Royal Navy do, on the same scale? I rather doubt it. No doubt they will have a health and safety manager who will do a risk assessment and stop them flying in bad weather. It really has just opened the door for the Health and Safety bureaucrats who are such a blight upon all of us to decide anything from 'seas too rough' to 'wind blowing wrong way' to 'wrong type of brine' to avoid and hamper rescue attempts. This is absurdity. Leave it with our wonderful military airmen, only the absolutely insane would decree a service such as this as fit for private contractors. I don’t notice other countries carrying out such stupid moves. If it ain't broke - don't fix it.

The military do a wonderful job and have done for many decades. Think of the famous rescues, Fastnet, Boscastle, Piper Alpha etc. They have probably done the job in far worse conditions than any civilian operation would allow themselves to operate in. It won’t be long before we see headlines like "SAR helicopter not allowed to fly in rain, or wind over gale force 4 because of HSE rules."

One other point is that the military will still probably have to do the same amount of flights as currently performed to keep the training and skill level of their pilots at the top of their abilities; they need to for their battlefield roles in rescues of military personnel in peace and war. So we'll still be paying for the same amount of helicopter operations as currently undertaken, the money will just come from a different source of funding or budget name. In the end the funds still come from us, the taxpayer, but of course we will now be funding a civilian operation as well, so coughing up twice the money.

As for Bristow, well just look at their safety record, it ain’t too hot. Can you imagine for one second, the USA handing over the US Coastguards responsibility to a UK private company! I think not! If Bristow weren't making money out of it, they wouldn't do it. But what happens when they stop making money out of it? How long before there’s the possibly that they’ll demand payment from anyone they rescue?

Air to Air Refuelling

Way back In March 2008, during Labour’s reign, the Ministry of Defence signed a PFI contract with AirTanker Ltd, for the “Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft” (FSTA) to provide air-to-air refuelling and passenger transport services. FSTA is based around 14 modified Airbus A330-200 MRTT and have replaced the 24 Tristars and VC10s that formed the RAF’s fleet at the time. These were aircraft owned by the RAF and flown by RAF crews. Note we’re getting 10 less aircraft under the new deal.

 

The deal signed with AirTanker, is worth £10.5 billion over the course of the contract, and involves the 14 aircraft being operated until at least 2035. The contract will be paid for at £390 million per annum. Of this running costs are £80 million and the remainder covers the consortium's financing and profit along with the capital cost of the project, including aircraft and infrastructure.

  

Here’s the crux, under this super best value contract the government has negotiated, AirTanker owns the aircraft and will provide them to the RAF when required.  So we don’t actually own anything! Not only that  AirTanker can make more money themselves by loaning the planes out to the likes of Thomas Cook during the summer holidays. So there’s a good chance you might be jetting off on your holiday in a quasi-military jet.   

History has proved that PFI’s are a fundamentally poor way of procuring capabilities that are unpredictable and involve risk because the cost of that risk is always transferred back to the customer and interestingly, one of the funding partners for Air Tanker is the Royal Bank of Scotland. We will therefore be borrowing money off ourselves because we can’t afford it! The fact that no other country has chosen to procure air-to-air refuelling and passenger transport using PFI type arrangements is further indication that PFI is not a suitable procurement route for such important military capabilities.

Bearing in mind we’re only getting 14 jets to replace 24 that were in themselves over-used, you’ve got to question the wisdom of this deal. To me, the MoD has traded affordability for their perception of value for money. There’s also the question of the aircraft’s capability. The A330MRTT with Rolls Royce engines is absolutely the right aircraft but in trying to scrimp and save we have knobbled the fleet; they have no boom so can’t refuel large aircraft or aircraft from other countries. They have no cargo door or reinforced cargo floor which again limits their usage. In effect, what we’ve got is inflexible, inappropriate and overly expensive.

Whatever the pros of FSTA, and there are many, I suspect it will ultimately be very poor value for money and will fail to deliver the capability that we actually needed, with too much air refuelling for a fast jet fleet we no  longer have and not enough air transport/cargo of sufficient flexibility for future sustained expeditionary operations.

Flying Training

In-house military training has served the Armed Forces well for many many years but the incessant drive to reduce cost while training crews for ever more sophisticated aircraft has lead to it being privatised. The Ministry of Defence realised that savings in both financial arrangements and in training delivery could be achieved if all military flying training was included in an industry-led, military-backed new training ‘system’. This requirement was tendered and Ascent, a 50/50 joint venture between American company Lockheed Martin and Babcock International won the contract in May 2008. The contract made Ascent responsible for running the UK Military Flying Training System programme, providing comprehensive training to all new UK military aircrew across the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and the Army Air Corps. Ascent is a Public Private Partnership (PPP) approach. The initial contract was valued at £635 million and is projected to rise to as much as £6 billion over the life of the contract which doesn’t end until 2033.

I despair when I think of the first class flying training system we had until recently and what it has now become through relentless privatisation and cost saving schemes. A quote I found on an internet forum from an RAF Squadron Instructor said “After going through their basic training, the quality of student pilot arriving on my OCU today can be enough to make you weep, & in less than a year these guys & girls are going to be flying in Iraq or Afghanistan - in 3 years they're expected to become captains”. Says it all really! Foreign air arms used to send their trainees to lean to fly at our flying schools because the final product was so good. Now it’s all about saving money rather than the quality of the end product.

I suppose I can hope that Ascent will improve the quality of the pilots from the training system, but the endless pursuit of ever cheaper training will simply not produce the goods, I fear.

Running Airbases

The MoD is moving to what it calls Next Generation Estate Contracts (NGEC) at many of its bases. What this means is that future staffing arrangements are under consideration as part of this. It is too early to confirm the precise impact, although it looks like outsourcing under TUPE conditions of some activities currently undertaken by MOD staff is under consideration. Essentially what that means is that military personnel will transfer from the military to the civilian companies who win that particular contract.

This of course affects numbers employed. An example I found on the internet was RAF Alconbury where around 80 workers could be forced to leave the military as it looks to privatise maintenance and construction work at the base. The MoD workers are currently contracted to provide construction, maintenance and repair work for the visiting US Air force. These military personnel will end up TUPEing across or may even have to apply for their own job with the private company provider. They will therefore end up being forced out of the military on probably worse employment conditions than they have at the moment.

You also need to bear in mind that civilians don't get the X factor payment that HM forces personnel do for not having fixed hours, additional duties and a war role. This is one way of justifying a lower salary for them as quite often they will have to top up their lower salary with a service pension or redundancy pay off. Civilians also don't have to be cared for by service medical and dental staff, nor are they entitled to subsidised accommodation. So the military staff involved are hit really hard.

What Next?

And there we have it, the thin end of the wedge for the privatisation of the military! What’s next? Adverts on the side of the ships and tanks - if we have any left?. Sponsors logos on the uniforms? Trooping the Colour, sponsored by .... ? And then, sold off to the lowest bidder. Maybe the Government’s next move will be to privatise defence and hire mercenaries as 'contractors'. These could be on long term contracts such as the Vatican guard.

The items I’ve already mentioned are costing us, the tax payer a whopping almost £20billion and there’s more than just those items happening. The whole defence privatisation stinks, makes you wonder which politicians grubby fingers are in this pie? Nothing can be run cheaper than cost. When profit is involved you are looking at cuts and cheaper service so more goes too share holders. Have we not learned from gas, electric, water? Obviously not !

Eventually we will run out of things to sell! Contracted out Britain, all this money flowing abroad, this cannot be a good thing, we'll own nothing but pay for everything, a bit like the PFI debacle.

What a strange country we now live in where fighting such a distant war is apparently more important than ensuring air force involvement in our own shore and maritime defences. Our miserable and wretched politicians know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.