How many press officers are needed to keep the MoD spinning? Far from preserving front-line strength while saying goodbye to spin, it’s plain that the government has been turning the PR handle ever faster while reducing the strength of our armed forces.

As of 20 October (from http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2009-10-20a.293994.h) Currently, there are 110 Press Officers employed across the Ministry of Defence (as recorded in the Central Office of Information's White Book).

In a written answer given on 15 July (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090715/text/90715w0001.htm) it was revealed that, of these, the 35 who are employed by the central MOD Media and Communications unit or Regional Defence Press Officer Network each cost approx £60k. In total, then, the MoD’s press officers must cost £5m, maybe more.

Of course, this is a drop in the ocean of defence spending. Yet over the years, the numbers of press officers have increased spectacularly. Back in December 1998, there were just 12 in the MoD’s central press office. By September 2008, this number had risen to 33. (source: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldselect/ldcomuni/7/707.htm, table 3. It’s not entirely clear that this number is strictly comparable to the 35 mentioned in July and October of this year – but the trend is plain enough.)

From the same source (table 2) we see that between December 1998 and September 2008, the number of communications staff employed by the MoD rose from 109 to 255.

Meanwhile, in the ten years to 1 April 2007, the trained strength of UK regular forces reduced from 193,600 to 172,910 (http://www.dasa.mod.uk/modintranet/UKDS/UKDS2007/c2/table207.html) and to 168,240 by 1st April 2009. (http://www.dasa.mod.uk/applications/newWeb/www/apps/publications/pubViewFile.php?content=170.122&date=2009-08-27&type=html&PublishTime=09:30:00)

To summarise: During the tenure of the Labour government, the front-line strength of our armed forces declined by around 13%. Meanwhile, the total number of communications staff increased by 130%, and the number of press officers employed centrally by the MoD all but tripled.

Posted by Philip Talmage at October 30, 2009 06:42 PM

Yet Lord Cromer ran Egypt with only a thousand civil servants.

It's Parkinson's law: without a competitive pressure to keep things lean and efficient, "work expands to fill the time available for its completion".

Parkinson extrapolated trends to predict that the Royal Navy would eventually have more Admirals than ships. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/3073680/Admirals-outnumber-warships-in-Royal-Navy-report-shows.html

He observed that the number of staff at the Colonial Office increased as the number of colonies decreased, and it had more staff than ever when it ran out of colonies and was merged into the Foreign Office.

Wikipedia: 'He explains this growth by two forces: (1) "An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals" and (2) "Officials make work for each other." He notes in particular that the total of those employed inside a bureaucracy rose by 5-7% per year "irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done."'

Or http://www.vdare.com/asp/printPage.asp?url=http://www.vdare.com/pb/parkinson_review.htm
"But the day came when the air vice marshal went on leave. Shortly afterwards, as it happened, the colonel fell sick. The wing commander was attending a course, and I found I was the group. And I also found that, while the work had lessened as each of my superiors had disappeared, by the time it came to me, there was nothing to do at all. There never had been anything to do. We'd been making work for each other."
"In 1914 Britain had the largest navy in the world, with 542 ships in commission, and the Admiralty had a staff of 4,366. At various points as the century wore on, the ships decreased in number and the staff expanded. By 1967, he later found, the Royal Navy had only 114 ships, most not truly capital, and had ceased to be a world force. But Admiralty staff had reached 33,574. This vast increase in staff was not the product of more complex technology: The technical staff had increased much more slowly than the clerical staff."

Posted by Hugo at November 2, 2009 09:31 PM