8:13am UK, Monday June 27, 2011
The Defence Secretary is set to outline a radical overhaul of the Ministry of Defence - and will say the time has come to end the "micromanagement" of Britain's military.
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The changes Dr Liam Fox will announce are designed to ensure there is no repeat of the profligacy that led to the department's £38bn black hole.
Aiming to increase accountability for spending in the chains of command, Dr Fox will insist the reforms give service chiefs greater control over their own budgets.
The proposals are understood to include reducing the size of the Defence Board - the top committee in the MoD - by removing the heads of the individual Armed Forces.
Ahead of presenting the package to the House of Commons this afternoon, Dr Fox will claim the new model is "simpler and more cost-effective" in a speech to the Reform think-tank.
Mr Fox has said there is a 'very bright future' for the Armed Forces
He is also expected to attack his predecessors, saying: "Despite the fact that Labour ministers knew the defence programme was unsustainable they continued to add new elements to it, knowing that there were no funds in the budget to fund it."
Speaking on Sky News' Murnaghan programme, Dr Fox said there would be some "quite radical changes".
He added: "I'm very keen that we decentralise from the Ministry of Defence the things that should be done elsewhere but with greater accountability.
"I want to open up the military to a more meritocratic way of doing business and I want to prepare us for the sort of changes we will have in defence - like moving away from some of the traditional, more muscular forms of military intervention to areas like cyber and electronic warfare.
"I'm determined that we get a much more efficient MoD and we cannot allow the structures that gave rise to the unfunded liability to continue to be there."
The package follows a 10-month study by the Defence Reform Unit, which was set up by Dr Fox last year and is headed by Lloyds of London chairman Lord Levene.
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