 Hwyl i gael ymddiannol, iawn, mae'n ffaith o'r ffordd o'n ffordd o'r ddweudio'r gyda ni'n gwybod ymddiannol yn ffwg o'r ffwg yw'r ffordd yn rhoi. A wnaeth i wneud â'r byn yn ffraith o'r ffordd o'i gael ymddiannol, oedd ymddiannol yn ffwg o'r cyfodol sy'n gwneud ymdiannol, gwybodaeth fynd i gynnwys iawn ar gyfer y gweithio gyda'r ffordd, maewn i'n gwybod y mynd i'r gyffredig, iawn, mae'r gwahanol yn fwy o'r awl iddo. A'r gwybod, yn unrhyw fawr o'r ddahig a'r prydysusor yn Ysbryd. Mae'n hyn o'r ddweud o'r hynny, rwy'n ni wedi'u gael eu ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Mae'n ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud, mae'n rhaid i'n gwybod, fel ydych chi'n gwiswch gyna'r ymdw i'r ddweud, ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r gweithio gael bydd ydy'r hwlad o Maenon Llywodraethau Llywodraeth, ond mae Llywodraeth yng Nghymru yn ystod i'r ysgolio, a mae'n fawr. Felly, yn gynnyddio, ydych chi'n gweithio i'r olyfyn, yna'n mynd i'n mynd i'r dyfodol, y cymryd y rhai o'r rhathion sy'n gwybod o'r rhaid i'r rhagorau'r rhagorau yn yr unig i'r rhathion sy'n gwybod o'r rhathion sy'n gwybod o'r rhathion sy'n gwybod o'r rhathion sy'n gwybod o'r rhathion o'r gynhyrch o'r rhagleniaeth cydnod o mor ystafell wedi'i'i maen nhw, oherwydd yma, byddai'r cyrraedd teimlad yn iddynt yn rhan o gwier. Mae'r trafnirio'r cymhwytaeth yn y ddweud y maen nhw, oedd yn fwy gwrs, ag ym mwy o'r gweithau. Efo'r gwirionedd y gallur i fi'n ddim ddeimlaen i gymryd, yw'r Dahi gan yiggylch ëmlaen i gydag rwy'n mor cyddwyd Ac mae'r ddaf yn ein gofyn gyda Llywodraeth yn ddergyn gwneud gyda'n Llywodraeth a Llywodraeth ar y cyd-rhyw oed, ac mae gennychodd y cyfr foodsbenderfynau ym nifor yng Nghymru ar gyfer rygol y gallai bod ym Mwg Llywodraeth rygol oedd oed ddim yn gweithio'r cyfr foodsbenderfynau hyn yn Nallan Y Llywodraeth. Mae'n ddifen allan y byddwch chi. Efallai cyfr foodsbenderfynau a gyd-dych chi yn cyfrwsio'r lŷl, byddwch angen yn cyflawni'r defnyddio'r defnyddio ar y gyrfaen yma. Y rai fod yn i gyd wedi'u'r boblau cyflawni gyrfaen yn iawn i 2020, ond maen nhw yn fflawni gan Afganestan, wedi defnyddio'r boblau cyflawni gyrfaen yma yn yma ar y cyflawni gyrfaen cyflawni gyrfaen. Mae gennym ni'n dweud o'r eich cyflawni gyrfaen yma, gyda chi'n dweud yw'r defnyddiaeth yw'r defnyddio'n ddiddordeb yn yw'r prysig yn gweithio'r yma, ac nid yw'r pethau mewn ond y dyfodol yn ddigonwyr o'r llai'r lleol, yn ddiddordeb yn ddigonwyr o'r llai yn gweithio'r llai'r panffordi. Yn gwybod y sydd ychydig yn ei ddweud o'r pryd-Brytyn oedd sydd yn gweithio'r llai yn y Twentieth Ysgol Rhysg. Rwy'n gael, wrth gwrs, yn y cyfnodol o'r bethau Brytyn gyda'r empyreidol yn ystod o'r rhagol, mae'n cael ei gŵr. Rydw i'n gweithio'r cyfrwyr ymlaenol cyntaf o'r cyfrwyr mewn gyllid, ond mae sy'n gwneud ymddangos gyda'r cyfrwyr yn ysgrifennol ar gyfer y mewn cyfrwyr yn y gwaith ar gwrdd yma i'r ysgrifennol yng ngyfarr yma. Yma yn ymdill ymddangos ymdill yma, o'r cyfnod siarad a'r cyfnodau fyddiol sy'n dod i'r ffyrdd ddweud o ffyrdd yng nghymru. Roedd yr Mhocwyr Ffyrdd yn ymgyrch ym Mhocwyr ddweud o'r Gweithio UK yn y ddweud o'r cyfnodau a'r ddweud o'r cyfnodau ystyried cyfnodau o'r cyfnodau yn yr ymddangos. Fel rhai o'r 5 rwyf, roeddwn ni'n lefnod, rwyf wedi'u cyfo'r gweithio ymddangos o'r tyfnod yma yn yrach a'r afganistau. The defence planners jargon, two medium-scale enduring operations, at a time when our planning assumptions assume no more than one. We still have nine and a half thousand troops in Afghanistan. Although there will be a small drawdown this year, our Prime Minister has recently indicated that the nine and a half thousand stands as the figure within which our armed forces are operating in generating the British contribution to the NATO force. He also said shortly after ynghyd o'r fforwyd de-afgaredd i Afganol sydd wedi gwneud bod yw'r gwbl o'r rhan o'r ffordd o'r rhan o'r ffordd o'r rhan o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r rhan o'r ffordd o'r rhagl. Wrth gyda ti'n gyfrifio, yn Afganol yn gwybod, y ddim y dweud yw'r ddwylo sydd wedi'n gwybod fel y dyfodol sydd.. ..ygmai'n gwneud y ffordd o'r llyfr ar y theatre, rydyn ni'n rhan o ymddangod o rhan o'r ffordd o'r gweithio mewn ddwy, yn cyfrifio ar y cyfrifio cyflwyf o'r gwirionedd, ac yn cael ei gwybod hwnnw. Fygoedau cymoniwyr o'r cyfrifio ar y gyfer y mawr, mae'n meddwl mae'n meddwl. Mae'r meddwl yw arweinydd a'r meddwl ar gyfer ddim yn ei wneud, ond mae'n meddwl sy'n meddwl mae'r meddwl yw'n meddwl yw feddwl yn meddwl ar y gwasanaeth. Mae'r meddwl ar gyfer meddwl yn meddwl ymlaen, ac mae'n meddwl yw ychydig arnynno fyddwch ar y maes yma, is training for the wider range of military tasks that modern armed forces can expect to encounter. After a slow start, the recent campaigns have also, I believe, led to an improvement in the British public's understanding and support for our armed forces. This has not been straightforward any more than in other European countries, because the decision to join in the invasion of Iraq was controversial with sections of public opinion in the UK. And it's inevitably harder, I think, to rally public support for wars of choice, however important they may be, and their purposes may be, than for wars of national survival. So there have been upsides, but no one who's been involved in these matters could deny that operating for as long as we did, at a higher level of commitment than had been assumed in planning resources, stretched not only the military front line, but the departmental infrastructure, military and civilian, which exists to support it. There have been and continue to be, sorry, these have been and continue to be challenging times. The circumstances are front line troops, and I would argue the supporting cast as well have acquitted themselves extraordinarily well. My second theme is the financial and budgetary pressures, which have been well reported in the media. The headline figure you put on this depends on where you start, how many years you look into the future, and crucially what assumptions you make about cross growth over these years. But on any analysis, our strategic review last autumn had to face the fact that the resources available for defence were likely to fall well short of what would be necessary to fund armed forces of the size and with the equipment that we had previously been planning for. It wasn't that the previous UK government cut the defence budget, it didn't. Like its successor, it funded separately the additional cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But over a period of substantial real terms growth, in particular in health and in education, spending, the core UK defence budget remained broadly constant in real terms and declined as a proportion of GDP, while it should be said remaining higher than that of all other European countries, with the possible exception of France. It's a common place of discussion of health spending in our nations, that there are almost inexorable upward pressures, which mean the budgets tend to rise much more rapidly than general inflation. Less remarked on is that defence spending has some of the same features for slightly different reasons. Technological advance means that each generation of military equipment is more effective than its predecessors in terms of its military impact. But the unit costs, especially of equipment like warships and combat aircraft, which by its nature is produced in small numbers, have over long periods tended to rise significantly in real terms by more than general inflation. There are studies on both sides of the Atlantic that bear this out and suggest that it's true also in relation to the human cost of armed forces. As time goes by, nations get less bang or at least less defence for their buck, their euro or their pound. This may seem like an accountant's digression, but it is actually, in my view, at the heart of the problems that UK defences had to face in recent years and that we had to confront in the SDSR, which was conducted at great, some said excessive, pace in the last six months of my time in the MOD. Added to this is the third element of the sentence I started with from the white paper, the world financial crisis and the steps that our government and all our governments are necessarily having to take to deal with it. It's keenly felt here, I know, and it has defined the first term of our coalition government in London. Personally, I think this is right and was inevitable. Getting the country's finances in order is in the end just as much a question of national security as the issues that I'll spend the rest of this talk discussing. But it did make an already financially constrained review last year even more of a challenge than it would otherwise have been. How then did the SDSR deal with such an unpromising combination of pressures and constraints? I think I would highlight just three factors. First, as I implied a moment ago, the review took a wide view of national security. A deliberate effort was made to identify and prioritise the risks we face across the whole national security domain. It covered not just defence but counterterrorism, energy security, border security. It covered and gave new prominence and funding to what, to my mind, is one of the great national securities of the day, cyber and the increasing risks of successful cyber attack. It looked afresh at the vital contribution of our intelligence agencies. The work was led by Peter Ricketts, whom many of you will know as National Security Advisor, a new appointment at the centre of government and was overseen by a National Security Council chaired by the Prime Minister, which continues to meet almost weekly. I know that the structure and processes of government are not of universal interest, but there are, I suspect, some government process geeks in this room and I would just say that whatever the outcome, and there are plenty of opinions about that, these changes have, to my mind, greatly strengthened our internal decision making process. Secondly, as regards the substance of the decisions on defence, the review made an important distinction between, on the one hand, the measures necessary in the short term to reduce spending and enable defence to make its contribution to fiscal austerity, and on the other, an attempt to define, slightly longer term, a structure and capability for our defence forces in the 2020s, towards which we would work in the latter part of this decade. The short term cuts are significant. They mean that the core defence budget in 2014-15 will be between 7% and 8% less in real terms than it was in 2010-11. This is less than from most other public spending programmes, but defence also has to absorb the inherited financial pressures to which I referred earlier. The cuts, and they're not insignificant, come from reductions in the size of all three armed services and proportionally larger reductions in the number of civilians, cancellation of several equipment programmes, and the taking out of service earlier than had previously been intended of existing ships and aircraft, rationalisation of command structures, and a wide range of other efficiency measures. The definition of force structure in the 2020s is set out in some detail in our published white paper, and I won't attempt to describe it here, although obviously with an expert audience like this you may well have questions on it which I'm happy to answer. What I would say is that to my mind the key consideration throughout was to define a force structure for the 2020s that is flexible and relevant, that plays to our existing strength, and above all has some realistic chances of being affordable, as as we hope will be the case, the UK's economy and public finances strengthen as we go through the 2010s. A key sentence from the white paper reads as follows, our future forces, although smaller than now, will retain their geographical reach and their ability to operate across the spectrum from high intensity intervention to enduring stabilisation activity. That I think is a sensible position for the UK to occupy as a sizeable European power with a strong defence tradition. It lays the lie to the accusation by some commentators that the review was just cover for managed decline, but its deliverability in practice depends crucially on more resources being found after the lean period of the next few years as we approach the 2020s. In that context it was reassuring for those of us who care about defence to that when he launched the white paper last October, David Cameron gave a personal commitment on behalf of his party to real terms growth in defence spending after 2014-15. Maintaining what the Americans referred to as full spectrum capabilities will not be easy. In some cases aircraft carriers being the best publicised example, we took a conscious decision to do without a capability for a number of years until the new carrier now under construction and the new joint strike fighters have come into service. On land forces the review pointed towards a smaller army of 94,000 in 2020, but one which with five multi-role brigades would still be capable of providing a brigade level contribution. That means roughly six and a half thousand compared to the nine and a half thousand we have in Afghanistan now to an enduring stabilisation operation of the Afghan kind. And that brings me to my third point. I spoke about the brigade level contribution and the word contribution is important because although one can never rule it out even these days it is increasingly improbable that the UK will undertake significant military operations in future entirely on its own. The successful stabilisation operation in Sierra Leone in 2000 is the most recent example of such an operation. Our SDSR therefore measured on working more with allies and international partners to and I quote, share the burden of securing international stability and ensure that collective resources can go further. It identified five priorities, our defence and security relationship with the US, which it described as preeminent. New models of practical bilateral defence and security cooperation with a range of allies and partners, and I'll give one example of that in a moment, an effective and reformed United Nations, NATO as the bedrock of our defence and an outward facing European Union that promotes stability and prosperity. One respected British defence commentator, not unknown to some of you I imagine, was quoted in the Economist recently to the effect that the strategic content of the SDSR amounted to the statement that the UK is America's most loyal ally. I think myself that's an unfair assessment, but the fact remains that the defence and security relationship with the US does remain or most important by some way. We need to keep it fresh, we need to think strategically about how best to give effect to it in the 21st century, and we need to be hardheaded about the fact that Americans will themselves be hardheaded and unsentimental about the pursuit of their national interests. But the value of the relationship from the UK point of view in terms of our national interests, particularly in areas like intelligence cooperation and the nuclear deterrent, is to my mind unquestionable. Where the SDSR does represent at least a shift in emphasis is in the focus at Gears to practical bilateral cooperation with other close allies. Formal multilateral alliances are important, if only because they provide a legal framework within which other things can take place, but in practice successful defence cooperation is more about capabilities and common interest. A good example of this in the UK at the moment is the increasingly important defence relationship with France. The white paper commits the UK Government to strengthen the relationship at all levels and gives as examples the provisions of high readiness joint formations for future operations, the development of joint doctrine and training, the extension of cooperation on acquisition of equipment and technologies, notably complex weapons and unmanned aerial systems, and the alignment of logistics support, for example, prospectively for the new A400M transport aircraft when it arrives. This isn't the first time the two countries have tried to achieve a deeper bilateral relationship and it has to be admitted that previous efforts have not always flourished, but I have to say that this time as we got towards the end of my time on the MOD in London it felt different. There is significant shared interest, the military relationship with the French has always been strong. Both countries face acute financial pressures and it has been increasingly evident that there are things that we might conceivably be capable of doing together which we could not do separately. The emphasis on the UK-France relationship does not however mean neglecting our relationship with the wider EU. The total of white paper observes correctly in mind that the EU's ability to integrate civilian and military responses coherently will become increasingly important and commits the UK to, quote, support EU missions, military or civilian, which are in the UK's national interest, offer good value for money, have clear objectives, and in the case of military missions, only when it is clear that NATO is not planning to intervene end of code. This last point about the relationship between NATO and the EU is to my mind one which, as I was saying to Dahye before the session began, still needs more thought and attention than it has had in the past. The two alliances have substantially overlapping membership, shared values and many shared interests, and at the practical level ought to operate in such a way that they complement each other's skills and capabilities rather than duplicating them at a time when none of our nations can afford it. I realise of course I was without saying that the position of Ireland in all this is different from that of the UK. Anyway, to sum up before we open for questions, where does all this leave UK defence? Well, let me put it this way. I rarely disagree with the economist, which I mentioned earlier. I co-wrote the British cabinet minutes for three and a half years and I couldn't therefore fail to admire a house style that explains even the most familiar reference for future generations of readers, as in Coca-Cola, a large American soft drinks manufacturer. But the addition I mentioned earlier included an argument that the Libyan operation somehow invalidated the SDSR, and I don't believe that to be the case. Had we structured our future force predominantly for long running Afghanistan or Iraq style stabilization campaigns, it would have looked very different from that described in the white paper. It's true, as the economist article observes, that some of the equipment that the review concluded should be taken out of service earlier than previously planned might have been used to good purpose in Libya. But that hasn't prevented us making a very substantial contribution so far to the NATO effort in Libya. The guiding principle of our review was to build in flexibility where we could, the so-called adaptive posture. What Libya demonstrates is both the unpredictability of world events and hence the importance of the adaptive posture, and the dilemma which the international community faces when civilian populations are put at risk or worse by their own governments. This is likely to be a constant in itself, but whether governments in responding to it and reacting to the dilemma will be more influenced if I can caricature it by Shevlarica or by Iraq is much harder to predict. Having said that, I would not over claim for the UK SDSR of 2010 for all the reasons I've given, it took place at a very difficult juncture. The fact that the government is committed to five yearly reviews from now on is extremely welcome. I don't doubt that some of the judgments in the 2010 review will need to be revisited in 2015 or perhaps even earlier. The interesting question then will be whether the financial climate in which my successor will be operating allows the white paper's vision of a flexible, broadly full spectrum defence force for the 2020s actually to be realised.