Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

ANDREW MARR: Just before we came on air I spoke to the Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Jock Stirrup, and I asked him whether the current conflicts gave an added significance to today's events.

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: It's very important that we have a day like today I think. You know there's been a lot of discussion recently about the amount, the degree to which this nation values its armed forces.

Well I'm in no doubt whatsoever that this country is extremely proud of its armed forces and what they do, and so it should be, but sometimes you have to give some visibility to that.

And today is an excellent opportunity to give some tangible expression to the pride that the nation feels in its armed forces, and of course the sadness and gratitude it feels for those who've made the ultimate sacrifice and the families who've borne the terrible loss, and also to show appreciation of the burden still borne by sailors, soldiers and airmen and their families around the world.

ANDREW MARR: Do you think that modern consumerist, materialist, civilian Britain understands the reality of what happens to soldiers and other servicemen abroad?

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: That can never be, but that's not because it's modern materialist Britain. The things that servicemen and women go through in combat is pretty extreme, and I think talk to anybody from any conflict now and in the past, and they will tell you that you can only ever really talk about those experiences with people who've had similar experiences.

That's always been so, and I think always will be so, but that doesn't mean to say that those who haven't had those experiences, the rest of the nation, don't appreciate what the armed forces do on their behalf - they do.

ANDREW MARR: A lot of people have been talking about the covenant between civilian Britain and the armed forces, and suggesting that it's not in very good repair. What's your view?

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: I think it's something we always have to attend to. I certainly would reject the proposition some have made that the covenant is broken, but we are at a time of considerable stress.

The forces are very stretched, they're doing very difficult and very dangerous things, and as a consequence the difficulties, the shortcomings, the irritations, which in times of peace and quiet might be an irritation, become rightly of enormous significance.

So we have to pay particular attention to the areas where we're not doing as well as we could . And they are not on operations. On operations our people are well looked after, they tell me and they tell everyone they speak to that they think that their equipment is great. There's always something that can be improved but by and large they think that it's fantastic.

But it's when they come home, it's when they come home and see the standard of the accommodation they have to live in, when they come home and the pressures that are on them, on their families, in the relatively short intervals they have at home before they're deployed in operations again, that's where we have to pay increased attention.

ANDREW MARR: Some of your predecessors have got together to form a kind of national lobby for higher defence spending. Now of course you're not in their position, nonetheless do you accept that there is a black hole of perhaps a billion or two billion or whatever it might be, that defence spending does need to go up?

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: Well first of all if you spoke to anybody in my position and said to them would you like more money, inevitably they'll say yes, because we can always do more with more.

But the amount of money that's spent on defence is essentially a political choice, just as it is in any other area of public expenditure. What that means to my mind is that there has to be a sensible, informed debate on what is the right level of defence expenditure. So I welcome any contribution to that debate.

ANDREW MARR: So you welcome what Lord Guthrie has been saying. He said that when he was doing your job there were rows going on about defence spending. Are there still rows?

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: Well I don't know that I'd categorise them as rows, but we had some pretty robust debates. Sometimes people feel that I and my civil service chief colleagues should speak out more in public. Well of course that's not the way that it happens in a parliamentary democracy.

We are serving airmen, soldiers and sailors, and we do our job in private, as we have to. But in private, when we have discussions with the Government and we have discussions with our Ministers, we have very robust discussions on all sides, and that's what everybody expects.

ANDREW MARR: And when somebody like Lord Guthrie says that the armed services are struggling and I don't know how much longer we can go on like this, do you endorse that?

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: Well I have said on a number of occasions that the armed forces are very stretched and that we cannot sustain our current level of operational commitment indefinitely. That's quite clear, everybody is clear on that. But what is also clear is that we are now starting to reduce that level of operational commitment.

We've withdrawn troops from Bosnia, as you know we've drawn down our force levels in Iraq over the past twelve months, and we are set to draw them down yet further in the twelve months ahead. So we are starting to ease the operational pressure on our people, and that's crucial if we're to deal with these other concerns.

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: Are we struggling?

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: We are working very hard. Your definition of struggling of course is one for you to make. I would not use the word 'struggling' because it gets across a sense of verging on failure, and that's not the case. We're succeeding - our people in the operational theatres are succeeding extremely well. But we must reduce the overall burden, and we're doing that.

ANDREW MARR: Some American commanders have suggested that in southern Iraq we have in effect been defeated.

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: They're wrong, they're completely and utterly wrong. And the American commanders that I speak to, who are the current commanders, including the one who's actually running the operation at the moment, don't say that at all, they're completely in accord with everything that we've done and completely at ease with it.

And I would claim now, as I have before, that the British military in Iraq has succeeded, because our mission there was to get the place and the people to the state where the Iraqis could run that part of their country themselves, and we're there.

ANDREW MARR: 'For all those people watching who don't know much about what's going on in Afghanistan - most of us - can you give us some sense of what it's actually like out there on the front line in Afghanistan, because it appears to be a tougher war than the British Army's been up against for a long time.

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: It's a very tough war.

I go out to both operational theatres frequently, and in the summer for example in Helmand temperatures are very high, the terrain is very harsh, the enemy is very determined, and so it is a tough environment. But the British military is fantastic, I mean they are succeeding.

They are gaining ground, they've given the Taliban an extremely hard year, and we are a lot further ahead at the end of this year than we were at the beginning of it.

But we cannot solve the problem militarily, the military only provides space within which the solution to the problem can be delivered, and that solution ultimately has to be political.

ANDREW MARR: One of our diplomats has suggested that we could be in Afghanistan for thirty years.

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: That may well be right . I don't suggest we'll be there militarily for that long - I mean I think our military commitment is a long-term one, but the most important�

ANDREW MARR: How long do you think on the military side?

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: I won't put a number on that because I'd be guessing, but it wouldn't be thirty years because we have to move to the stage where we are developing the country economically and politically and in terms of its infrastructure.

Now we've made a start on that, we've made a good start, although it's early days and so the beginnings are relatively small, but the commitment of the international community has to be to develop Afghanistan, to bring Afghanistan into the twenty-first century, and that's not a military issue . The military has a part to play but it's a much, much wider issue.

ANDREW MARR: Sir Jock, you said a moment earlier that the military equipment side was pretty good. There's been a very worrying series of reports, not least on the BBC, about for instance the Nimrod spy planes, and many people have said they should actually be grounded, they're now too dangerous to fly.

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: Of course we're all concerned by first of all the tragic loss of the Nimrod, which was heartbreaking, and then a more recent incident where there has been a�

ANDREW MARR: Well pretty hairy by all accounts.

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: ..another problem with the fuel system, but that particular problem occurred in a part of the fuel system that is not connected to the main delivery of fuel to the engines, it's just about air to air re-fuelling.

That has been isolated, closed off, and that's not being used at the moment. So that area where the problem occurred is not in use in the aircraft, the rest of it is a separate system. But we are continuing to look very closely at that incident and engineers are investigating it. And yes we're all concerned, I'm concerned.

ANDREW MARR: They're old, old planes though aren't they?

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: They're old planes but there are old planes flying all around the world, including with civil airlines.

ANDREW MARR: What about the condition of our Land Rovers? There's a big controversy at the moment about Fusilier Gentle, who was killed in a Land Rover because it didn't have the blocking devices that it should have had.

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: Well that was obviously a tragic incident and to Mrs Gentle and her family and to the families of all those we've lost, I mean my heart goes out to them. The pain, the tragedy of that loss is incalculable, and none of us can really understand it if we haven't had to go through it. But in the instance you're talking about, that as you know has been the subject of a particular inquiry.

More broadly - and that incident was some time ago of course - more broadly our equipment in theatre has improved out of all recognition over the last couple of years, particularly in terms of force protection, particularly in terms of protective patrols.

ANDREW MARR: Including Land Rovers? Because a lot of people have died in Land Rovers�

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: Absolutely.

ANDREW MARR: �and there's been a long-running controversy about this.

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: You're talking about the Snatch Land Rovers which were moved out there very rapidly as the need arose. We still use those Snatch Land Rovers in some specific circumstances where they are in the commander's mind, in the minds of those in the field, absolutely the right vehicle for the job, but only in those circumstances. We have a full suite of protective patrol vehicles that are used in other circumstances.

ANDREW MARR: You said earlier on as well that people should be treated better when they came home in effect.

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: We've put a lot of effort into that and we now deal with people who are returning from theatre on a consistent basis throughout every stage of their treatment and rehabilitation. So I'm happier with that now.

ANDREW MARR: What about accommodation?

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: Accommodation is a very difficult problem. We're talking about decades of under-investment, we have to understand this.

ANDREW MARR: Money again.

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: Well it is money but the scale of upgrade that's required is enormous. Now we're doing it, and we're doing it on a progressive basis, but we still have in some cases fifty per cent of the accommodation that is not up to the standard we require. Well if I could wave a magic wand and improve the percentage overnight to seventy-five per cent acceptable, we'd still have a quarter of our accommodation that is of an unacceptable standard.

So as we go through this very long process of accommodation upgrade, and a very expensive process - we're pumping an enormous amount of money into it - it's inevitably going to take time and inevitably over the coming years you're always going to be able to find some accommodation that's not up to scratch. I mean that's the problem with this progressive rolling programme, but you just can't do it overnight.

ANDREW MARR: Are you getting the support from Gordon Brown that you need?

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: Yes.

ANDREW MARR: When it comes to a couple of specifics, it was rather odd a lot of people thought that the Defence Procurement Minister suddenly left to go off racing cars. Did you know about that? Were you surprised about that?

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: Well I knew about it a little bit in advance, I'm not sure how much in advance.

ANDREW MARR: Pretty odd wasn't it? I mean he was taking�

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: Well I think you'll have to speak to him about the reasons why he did that. I mean all of us have our own issues and priorities in our lives and we sequence them accordingly.

What I would say is I'm very sorry to lose him from the Ministry of Defence because I think that he's done a superb job in terms of defence equipment and he's responsible for some of the improvements we've seen over the last couple of years, and although it's not for me to speak for them I think that the defence industry is sorry to see him go.

ANDREW MARR: And not come back? As far as you're aware is he coming back?

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: You must ask him, you must ask him those questions.

ANDREW MARR: You don't know?

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: I don't know what his plans are. But you know irrespective of what his future plans are, he's done a very good job for us.

ANDREW MARR: Another story in today's papers - Prince Harry, we knew that he wanted to go out with his fellow soldiers, and I presume it was yourself or somebody told him that he couldn't. Do you believe that he's now on the edge of leaving the Army as a result of that?

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: Well again I'm not in a position to speak for him on what his future intentions are. What I will say is I greatly sympathise with him. You know all of us have been in the situation where our units or other parts of our service have gone off to operations and we haven't, and it perhaps seems ironic to some people but it's a desperate situation to be in.

You know it's the last thing you want in the world. We have an organisation that is very much based around the team, team spirit and team ethos, and so when the team is involved everybody wants to be involved. And so I understand his disappointment absolutely, and I do sympathise with it.

ANDREW MARR: But there's no suggestion that he will be allowed to go abroad, to Afghanistan or Iraq?

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: Well I'm not going to talk about future plans for anybody.

ANDREW MARR: You've been in this job now for a fair amount of time, enough to cover the whole waterfront. Do you feel that overall this country needs to spend more time, more money and more attention on our armed services, given the world in which we now live?

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: I certainly think that it needs to spend more time and attention thinking about the world, about the danger of the world in which we live.

I do sense that the people of this country, the citizens of this country, who in my view are remarkably lucky when I look around the world and I see what goes on elsewhere, are sometimes in danger of taking their relative comfort and prosperity for granted. I mean my message would be that it's neither pre-ordained nor guaranteed, you have to work to sustain it.

So I think that the sensible debate about how we address our security concerns in the world is very timely.

ANDREW MARR: Sir Jock Stirrup, on this special morning, thank you very much for coming in to join us.

SIR JOCK STIRRUP: Thank you.

INTERVIEW ENDS

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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