Actually if you read the transcript it's pure Sir Humphrey - he's not really responsible, he can't possibly comment, the MoD leaks like a sieve (but he can't do anything about it) - in fact there is very little he can do ............. the decision to release the last major report the day after parliament went on holiday wasn't anything to do with him and he couldn't possibly comment on who might have been involved in such a decision......
it's awful..............
typically .:-
"Chair :- The problem that I have is that you are defending the size of the existing budget and you are admitting that threats arise unpredictably, yet you
are not, apparently, bothered by the fact that to meet the new threats, we are having to consider cutting capabilities that
were deemed necessary only a very few years ago to meet the previous threats—threats that have not necessarily gone
away or, if they have, could easily arise again. How do you respond to that?
Sir Mark Sedwill: I don’t want to comment on leaked documents, because, to be honest, there has been a great deal of
pretty inaccurate leaking in the press about all this over the last few months.
Q177 Chair: But do you accept that if we had operated within a fiscally neutral environment, there would have had to be
significant cuts in certain capabilities? Can you at least confirm that?
Sir Mark Sedwill: In a sense, I can’t, because this is not the area of my own expertise. What the Ministry of Defence is
doing is partly through the current programme—the Defence Secretary has made it clear that he does not accept any
propositions of that kind—but defence always has to look at rebalancing.