Britain: An official handbook > 1956

III. DEFENCE
THE DEFENCE SYSTEM
Britain’s defence policy is the responsibility of the Minister of Defence, who,
under the general direction of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, of which he is
a member, is answerable for the ‘ formulation and general application of a unified
policy relating to the armed forces of the Crown as a whole and their requirements
The higher direction of each of the three fighting Services—the Royal Navy, the
Army and the Royal Air Force—is on similar lines. Supreme control is in the hands
of Parliament, which makes annual financial provision for defence needs. By limiting
provision to the current year, Parliament ensures an annual review of the state of
each Service.
The Minister of Defence answers for all matters of policy common to the three
Services and their supply. He is responsible for the apportionment of available
resources between the three Services and for seeing that the composition and
balance of forces within each Service accord with strategic policy. Each of the three
Service Ministers—the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Secretary of State for War
(who deals with the Army), and the Secretary of State for Air—is responsible to
Parliament for the administration of his own Service; and the Minister of Supply
is similarly responsible for the Service supplies procured by his Department. The
Chiefs of Staff Committee, which comprises the professional heads of the three
Services and an independent chairman who is a senior officer of one of the Services,
is responsible for preparing and advising upon strategic plans and policy for
consideration by the Cabinet.
Policy
Britain’s defence policy is reviewed in the annual Statement on Defence presented
each spring to Parliament by the Minister of Defence immediately before the detailed
Estimates of the Service Departments. The statement outlines the programmes of
the three Services for the ensuing year and summarizes the proposed defence budget.
The Statement on Defence 1955 redefined the Government’s defence policy in the
light of the emergence of the thermo-nuclear or hydrogen bomb and the international
situation at the time. The defence problem, said the Statement, remained funda¬
mentally a dual one. ‘We have to prepare against the risk of a world war and so pre¬
vent it; it is on the nature of these preparations that the existence of thermo-nuclear
weapons has its main effect.’ At the same time Britain must continue to play its
part in the defence of the interests of the free world as a whole, and particularly
of the Commonwealth and Empire, in meeting ‘limited aggression’—either overt
armed intervention, as in Korea, or infiltration and subversion; and must meet
the many other peace-time commitments overseas arising from its position as a
great Power with world-wide responsibilities. Announcing the Government’s deci¬
sion to proceed with the production of thermo-nuclear weapons, the Statement
said that from a universal realization that the results of a major war could only be
entirely disastrous for both sides, there might emerge a new hope. The nuclear
weapon was a most powerful deterrent which in the Government’s view had signifi¬
cantly reduced the risk of war on a major scale. The United Kingdom would continue
to strive for international agreement on a practical scheme of disarmament with
adequate safeguards, but until this was achieved the ‘Grand Alliance’ of the free
world must maintain its strength.
Each of the three fighting Services has a contribution to make to these aims,
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