War Situation.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 19 May 1942.

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Photo of Lieut-Colonel Sir Edward Grigg Lieut-Colonel Sir Edward Grigg , Altrincham

The right hon. Gentleman is a very candid person, but he seems to have forgotten that the Prime Minister is also Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, and therefore is really responsible for giving himself advice. No one suggests for a moment that the Prime Minister and the War Cabinet are not responsible for the final decision on everything. This is a really constitutional and Parliamentary country and the decision will always rest with him, but advice on the military side should be tendered, in the first instance, by a detached professional mind concentrated on that task, the mind of a man who has nothing else to think about. I believe that that would be a real help to Ministers and to the Prime Minister himself. He has complained that in the past professional advice was unduly tainted by political bias—for instance in the case of the Irish bases which we gave up—and the danger of introducing political considerations into purely military planning in the early stage is even greater in war than in peace. It is therefore vital that professional advice should be given by detached minds which have nothing else to think about. Nor is there any need for a superman. All that is required is a man who has freedom from the daily round which sits so heavily upon the other Chiefs of Staff, a man who can stand back from the picture and make himself responsible for this forward-looking, coordinating, sifting process.

The other thing is that he should be a man with professional experience and authority, a man who can bring a trained mind with Service experience to bear. I do not believe he would require any extra staff. The staff already exists in the combined planning staff and the Secretariat. My right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Westmorland (Colonel Stanley) knows much more than I do about that, and it would be deeply interesting to hear what he has to say about it. But I do not think that in order to get a professional chairman with an adequate staff any great reorganisation is necessary. The staff already exists. There is no challenge to constitutional government in this respect. Really distinguished Ministers like Lord Salisbury would not 19 years ago have recommended a step of this kind—