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Cabinet Office accused of giving military 'cold shoulder' by not admitting it needed help with virus

General Sir Nick Carter has only been invited to one of Downing Street’s daily coronavirus briefings - Eddie Mulholland
General Sir Nick Carter has only been invited to one of Downing Street’s daily coronavirus briefings - Eddie Mulholland

The Cabinet Office has been accused of giving the military the 'cold shoulder' by refusing to admit it needed help with the coronavirus crisis.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, was one of a number of senior Tory MPs who accused the Cabinet Office of alienating the military in a bid “to keep it too much inside the public sector”.

“I called for the military to be brought in from day 1 of this crisis,” Sir Iain told The Daily Telegraph.

“They are the best planners but they were brought in late on during the distribution problem.

“The civil servants were really reluctant to bring them in and this reluctance to do so caused some of the hiccups from the beginning.”

Sir Iain said throughout the crisis the military had been given the “cold shoulder” by civil servants.

He added that as a result “Public Health England and other public bodies have been shown up in three areas”, which included the “crisis” of the distribution of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), the “overly complicated and bureaucratic” procurement of PPE, and an inadequate testing system where “alternatives were not provided in case of problems”.

“Their planning is shockingly bad,” he said.

“The only body that exists in the UK that constantly plans for disaster is the military, so why not bring them in from the start? They need to wargame this now so that if we ever face a pandemic like this again we are prepared.”

It is understood that a number of Generals are “furious” that the military has not been more involved in the pandemic, while others have questioned why General Sir Nick Carter, Chief of the Defence Staff, has only been invited to speak at one of Downing Street’s daily coronavirus briefings.

Another senior Tory MP asked why Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, has not spoken at any of the briefings while other cabinet ministers have.

It comes after James Heappey, the Armed Forces minister, revealed in a written question earlier this week that “Defence has a permanent military liaison officer embedded in the Cabinet Office Civil Contingencies Secretariat”, when asked what discussions the Defence Secretary had had about a permanent role for the armed forces in planning for civil contingencies".

However Tobias Ellwood, Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, expressed concern that only one officer was embedded in the operation.

“There is an enduring stigma within the civil service that resorting to military support is a sign of failure and therefore they are not invited to the table until it’s clear that the situation is beyond control,” Mr Ellwood said.

“We have the best military planners in the world who train for military response. They are strategic thinkers and planners who train at every level and they shouldn’t just be making up the numbers as one chair in the room but invited to present options which the Prime Minister can make informed decisions from.”

Mr Ellwood, whose committee last month launched an inquiry into the nature of the Armed Forces’ contribution to the pandemic, added that throughout the crisis the military have been “treated as FedEx with guns”.  “They do logistics, they do transport, build the nightingale hospitals but we aren’t using the military mind, the training that goes into planning,” he said.

“The one department in the whole of Whitehall that plans for emergencies is the MoD and we are not fully using their capability for operational delivery.”

Mark Francois, a former Armed Forces minister, said: “DHSC and PHE are very prone to the 'not invented here' syndrome and it could be that they are not using the Armed Forces as best they might as a result.”

A Government spokesperson said: “The UK’s Civil Service and Armed Forces have a long history of working side-by-side across a wide range of emergencies, crises and national events, and share experience and expertise in handling these issues.

“Throughout the coronavirus outbreak civil servants and members of the military have worked closely to plan and deliver essential parts of the UK response, including the building of the Nightingale Hospitals, Regional and Mobile Testing and the delivery of protective equipment to where it’s needed."