MoD fiddles with screen breaks while Britain’s defences wait

“The MoD has recently issued advice telling service personnel how to manage screen breaks, assess their workstations and even position their legs. Published on 28 October, the revised guidance comes from the department’s defence safety machinery, with its latest amendment addressing homeworking. This is the nanny state in uniform.

“At a juncture where yesterday’s defence Budget was woefully inadequate in setting out how Britain will fund its longer-term military commitments, is this really the attitude the country should be adopting towards its own defence? We need urgency, resilience and operational readiness, yet Whitehall appears determined to supervise trained adults as though they were schoolchildren.

“Managing fatigue is sensible military leadership. Commanders have understood that for generations. What grates is the bureaucratic obsession with prescribing, assessing and recording matters that competent leaders should be trusted to manage.

“To be accurate, the guidance explicitly allows operational requirements to take precedence in safety-critical and emergency situations. Nobody is ordering radar operators to abandon their screens during an attack. But that qualification does not remove the impression of an institution increasingly preoccupied with procedures rather than trusting professional judgement.

“Yesterday, ministers left the detailed route to their longer-term defence spending targets until next year’s spending review. Today, personnel can consult detailed instructions about their workstations. That contrast should embarrass the government.

“Call it wokeness or institutional infantilisation: either way, the priorities look badly skewed. Britain needs armed forces equipped, trained and trusted to defend the country. Give commanders the resources and authority to deliver that, instead of burying them beneath another layer of nannying bureaucracy.”

Lt Col Stuart Crawford is a former British Army officer and defence commentator and the Editor of http://www.defencereview.UK.

Lt Col Stuart Crawford’s latest book Tank Commander (Hardback) is available now

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