Decorated former army major says top brass believe defence review should be reconsidered in light of the Arab Spring
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Dan Jarvis, a former Major who was awarded an MBE for his work in detecting IEDs in Afghanistan in the Birthday Honours, says senior military figures are calling for a rethink of the defence review. Photograph: Anna Gowthorpe/PA
Dan Jarvis, a former major in the Parachute Regiment who was elected as the Labour MP for Barnsley Central at a byelection in March, has been trying hard to focus on bread and butter issues in his constituency.
As chair of the Labour backbench business committee and as a member of the House of Commons business select committee, he is pushing the economic regeneration of South Yorkshire.
But Jarvis, who was awarded an MBE in the weekend Birthday Honours list for his work in detecting Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan, is finding it difficult to escape his earlier career. Jarvis was a Company Commander with 1 PARA in Helmand Province in 2007. He first went there in 2005 as a planner for the Permanent Joint Headquarters as part of the first reconnaissances of southern Afghanistan.
The new MP, who resigned from the Army on the night of his selection as a Labour candidate, has received an important message from his old friends in the military. The government should "rescrub" the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), published last October, in light of the Arab Spring. This is what Jarvis told me:
All the senior military people I have spoken to, both in the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall and the Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood and in the Army's Headquarters Land Forces at Andover – every one of the people I have spoken to all believe that the SDSR should be rescrubbed. Every single one of them. But every single one of them said it is not going to happen. They acknowledge that there is absolutely no political appetite to do that.
Jarvis has challenged Liam Fox, the defence secretary, to rethink the SDSR on the grounds that some of its thinking is now out of date. Fox has a ready reply: find me the money. Jarvis is not calling for extra money and accepts that it is impossible to expect the SDSR to be scrapped. But he says Fox should follow the example of the last government which added a new chapter to the 1998 Strategic Defence Review after 9/11:
I am not advocating that the whole thing should be ripped up and started again. But it needs to be looked at. It is irresponsible that that hasn't been done for political reasons.
Jarvis believes that Fox's refusal to listen to him – and to the military – shows a strain of arrogance that is letting down the military:
I have become increasingly frustrated with the decisions and actions of the ministerial team at the Ministry of Defence. It is now absolutely clear to me that the world is a different place from October 2010 when the strategic defence and security review was delivered. I have tried to make the point to the secretary of state that the assumptions and the analysis which underpinned that review have been overtaken by events. I have tried to make those points in a constructive and non-political way. Although I am new to politics I believe it wouldn't be a sign of weakness for the government to say the world is a different place, we couldn't have predicted the Arab Spring. The assumptions that were made made have been overtaken by events.
What I do not get now is the absolute refusal by the secretary of state to look at this work again in light of the changing international situation. I think that represents an arrogance. People within the MoD deserve better. On a daily basis I still speak to senior and junior people across the fence. Lots of my mates are still in the army. I believe our armed forces deserve better leadership than they are getting. There is a cult of arrogance and macho way of doing business among the ministerial team.
Jarvis, 38, may be struggling to gain a hearing among ministers. But he is likely to be listened to with greater care on defence in the future after he was awarded an MBE in the weekend Birthday Honours for his work in detecting IEDs in Afghanistan. An MoD source told me that Jarvis, using his jungle training, played an instrumental role in training troops in the art of "Ground Sign Awareness" – spotting the tell tale signs of a device on the ground. The MoD source told me:
What we used to do back in the good old days was quite a few soldiers would go through jungle warfare training and they would be taught about ground sign – how to track men and animals in the jungle or wherever you are going to operate. It was that skill which we had kind of lost. We were relying on technology, on surveillance assets in the air. When you are out on the ground as an infantryman the time it takes to get that information down to you can be life saving time. So it was just going back and running a programme that started getting people to think about looking at ground sign – looking at branches that have been snapped, twigs that have been moved, stones that have been overturned because they are a different colour underneath than they are on the top, depressions in the ground. That is what the Afghans rely on. Dan brought back in a skill that nobody had really thought about and made it part of the pre-deployment training.
This is what an MoD spokesman said:
Whilst serving as a staff officer with Headquarters Land Forces, Major Jarvis pioneered an innovative low technical solution that has helped protect soldiers from the threat of Improvised Explosive Devices (IED). He saw the value of taking aspects of jungle tracking training and using them to help soldiers detect IEDs in Afghanistan through Ground Sign Awareness. He developed a comprehensive Ground Sign Awareness training programme that is now delivered to all units deploying. Soldiers returning from operations have confirmed that this training has been highly effective in detecting IEDs and has undoubtedly helped to save lives in Afghanistan.
The Army has recognised that this training will be central to future conflicts and has decided that introductory training will be received by all soldiers as they go through their Initial Training on joining the Army. Major Jarvis' work is an excellent [example] of how the Army adapts its training in light of the ever changing threats that our soldiers face on operations in Afghanistan.