8.
CONFIDENTIAL
Service individual training accounts for nearly 7% of the Defence budget, 12% of Service manpower and 3% of civilian manpower; these proportions have remained broadly unchanged for several years. A new factor, however, is the introduction of budgets into this field, designed to identify resources with tasks. Whereas a training establishment may, in the past, have carried excess capacity without recognizing the need to eliminate it, the ERB process is already exposing the mismatch between overall expenditure and that attributable to tasked activity. However, deeper analysis of the distribution of F&C students between the different courses, and the demand
for, and cost recovery from, each course, will be needed.
Unless an establishment is formally tasked to undertake an
activity, expenditure of resources cannot be justified. It follows therefore that unless F&C training is recognized as a proper task for the armed forces in peacetime, and the training commands are tasked accordingly, individual training establishments will only be authorized to expend resources on planned UK training, and new-build accommodation will be inadequately provisioned.
9. To improve the management of F&C training, the COS agreed
in principle that there was an obligation on the MOD to
support foreign and defence policy and sales objectives and to provide training capacity to that end (2). They directed also
that DMAO should assume the defence staff responsibility for
F&C training policy management, and that further work should be done to establish the true costs of such training as
indicated below.
THE COSTS OF F&C TRAINING
10. The full cost of F&C training is £40-50 million a year. A rough breakdown of the available figures for the three years to 1986-87, based on memorandum training account data, is at Appendix 1. These sorts of figures, although less than ideal,
2Attachment to COSSEC 342/125 dated 10 Nov 88.
ang.1s2
G-4 CONFIDENTIAL