Examination of Witnesses (Questions 540
- 559)
WEDNESDAY 19 JANUARY 2000 [Morning]
MR JOHN
SPELLAR MP, AIR
MARSHAL MALCOLM
PLEDGER, VICE
ADMIRAL SIR
IAN GARNETT,
GENERAL SIR
ALEX HARLEY,
AIR MARSHAL
SIR ANTHONY
BAGNALL AND
COMMODORE PETER
WYKEHAM-MARTIN
540. What have you done to avoid the standards
being breached? What special measures have you introduced?
(Commodore Wykeham-Martin) To avoid it being breached
we simply do not allow it to be breached. In other words, if people
are on their minimum time ashore we make sure they get that minimum
time ashore.
541. Does that not lead to staff problems?
(Commodore Wykeham-Martin) What it leads to, or has
led to, is gapping afloat. We try, obviously, and protect the
front line, so the gaps actually appear in the shore billets rather
than the sea billets. At the moment, the gapping in the fleet
is certainly less than 5 per cent. Ashore it is worse.
542. Does that have an effect on your operational
capability in any way?
(Commodore Wykeham-Martin) No, it does not.
Mr Hancock
543. The gapping that occurs at sea, you have
just said, is less than 5 per cent, but that is not in all cases;
there are ships afloat at the moment with more than 5 per cent
of gaps in crew.
(Commodore Wykeham-Martin) They remain very small,
isolated pockets.
544. To make sure that ships are going to sea
with less than 5 per cent gapping, is training ashore being cut
simply to fill spaces at sea, to enable sailors to have their
requirement ashore?
(Commodore Wykeham-Martin) No, Mr Hancock, training
is not being affected. Where we are putting gaps is in shore billets.
There is no cut in training.
545. Training time has not been condensed or
reorganised?
(Commodore Wykeham-Martin) Training time is continually
being reviewed but it is not being specifically cut to fill gaps,
no.
(Air Marshal Pledger) Mr Chairman, I think the Navy
also have a special recruitment initiative in this particular
area. You asked about remedial action and they have actually introduced
a system whereby they will recruit for only two years in order
to try to overcome the conundrum you have described and get that
branch back into balance and reduce that gapping.
Mr Colvin
546. Can we move to the Army, because I think
there is a more serious problem there. The Army is meant to have
24-month tour intervals but some units are now down to only six.
Could you tell us if there are any areas in the Army that do get
24-month intervals between tours?
(General Sir Alex Harley) At the moment, the answer
would be no, but—and you have heard the figures of those
deployed coming down—we do expect that as we go into this
coming year there will be some approaching 24 months, providing
there are not any other contingencies, in some areas. For example,
the Royal Engineers would expect to go up to 24 months, whereas
at the height of last summer they were about 7 months. The Royal
Signals would go to about 15 months whereas they were 6 months.
On the other hand, we will find that the Royal Artillery will
go 34 months on tour, whereas they were about 18. So as the tempo
of operations comes down, obviously, the tour interval gets longer
and we move towards our aspiration of 24-month intervals.
547. Have those been the arms in the Army that
have been worst affected, or have there been any others?
(General Sir Alex Harley) The worst affected have
been the Royal Signals and the Royal Engineers, as I have mentioned.
However, that rather hides the fact that there will be a number
of trades within the Army, like petroleum operators, chefs and
one or two other specialist areas, where, probably, they will
recover rather slower towards a 24-month tour interval.
548. Is the answer to the problem simply better
recruitment and retention, or is there anything else you can do—or
are doing?
(General Sir Alex Harley) Certainly, part of the problem
is to start to man up towards our SDR figures, which specifically
try to redress some of the shortfalls in some of these specialist
categories. For example, the second line of communication.
549. Last year you monitored "nights out
of bed" for Army personnel, which showed that the average
soldier is out of bed about 27 per cent of the time. Do you regard
that as acceptable?
(General Sir Alex Harley) No, we do not, but everybody
is clear that when operational commitments, such as the ones we
had last summer, have to be undertaken they get on with it and
do it. The Army has, very specifically, noticed that as soon as
the job was done the numbers are coming down rapidly. The Army
would certainly subscribe to being useful and to being involved,
but it would not want to hang around in places longer than it
would need to.
550. So you are continuing to monitor "nights
out of bed"?
(General Sir Alex Harley) We continue to try and monitor
where the pressures are. In Land Command, which, of course, has
73 per cent of the Army's soldiers within it, they are conducting
various means of trying to identify separation and where it appears
most and what are the particular reasons for it. We will be setting
up a mechanism, round about the end of the summer, which will
require every unit to forward returns up the chain of command
where they will be consolidated. The trouble is that whilst the
unit can determine exactly who is doing what, when and for what
reason, we do not yet have the information technology to gross
it up in any really meaningful way. Nevertheless, we will be starting
a process which will lead towards a much better definition of
where people are being most separated and for what reason.
551. Will you be able to give us a rolling average
percentage figure?
(General Sir Alex Harley) That is precisely the intention—to
give some kind of average for which units, and some reason as
to the reason why.
(Mr Spellar) Also, if I could say, not just in terms
of the more sort of headline overseas operations but looking at
disruption when our forces are back here. For example, on guarding
duties, which is one of the drivers behind the Military Provost
Guard Service -
Chairman
552. Yes, we have heard about that.
(Mr Spellar)—to alleviate the pressures on many
of the forces who accept the need for operations and their role
in operations. In terms of, particularly the married soldiers
and their domestic responsibilities, they find this in some ways
more irksome than operations, and this alleviates some of that
pressure. This comes back to my introductory point about looking
at the disaggregated figure and how overstretch actually manifests
itself in different ways on different parts of the Army. Admiral
Garnett also wishes to identify some remedial measures.
(Vice Admiral Sir Ian Garnett) Chairman, can I give
you three examples of how we have tried to reduce the overstretch
on engineers and signals? In the Falklands, in carrying out our
reassessment of our military posture we have assessed that we
do not need so many engineers, so they have come home. As we look
at the Balkans we are looking at engineer specialists, and instead
of providing engineer specialists for Bosnia and for Kosovo we
are going to provide engineer specialists in certain trades to
the Balkans region and they can do their job in either Bosnia
or Kosovo. In Bosnia and in Kosovo we are looking at commercialising
certain fixed communication facilities to reduce the requirement
for signallers to deploy to the Balkans.
Mr Colvin
553. Also, of course, calling up reservists.
(Vice Admiral Sir Ian Garnett) Yes.
Laura Moffatt
554. I am going to move on to the RAF and try
and make some comparisons through the other services, if I may.
There is a particular standard that has been chosen, which is
the 90-day and the 140-day year, to really demonstrate how people
are being asked to stay away from home and, of course, the 280-day
period for two years. How were these thresholds chosen? Who said
these were a measurement of people being stretched?
(Air Marshal Sir Anthony Bagnall) If I may, Mr Chairman.
Good morning. I had the appointment of the Assistant Chief of
the Air Staff some four to five years ago, and at that time the
Air Force was concerned that we could not track individuals away
from home, because whilst we deployed formed units and squadrons
and the like, we often augment them in times of crisis. Therefore,
we drew up these figures, based on discussion between-Commanders-in-Chief
at the time, as a realistic starting point to allow us to track
the extent of the problem, where the shoe was pinching and to
see what we needed to do about it. They are not absolute figures
and, indeed, we may refine them based on experience.
555. That is interesting because that goes on
to my second point, in which I wanted to know which end of the
telescope you were looking at. Is it a standard that you just
hope to adhere to or is there no way in which they are allowed
to be breached?
(Air Marshal Sir Anthony Bagnall) No, the fact of
the matter is that they will be breached if there is operational
need to do so. In some cases, with some individuals, they will
spend in excess of 140 nights away from home. I have to say that
some of those people relish the opportunity to do so—the
younger ones without family commitments love it. The problem,
though, is that not everyone does enjoy it, and therefore we have
to recognise where the pressures are and do something about it.
We have work in hand right now to look at the balance of investment
in manpower by trade and skill set that we need to cope with the
expeditionary warfare that is the feature of today's war.
556. Thank you for that. You say that there
will be some breaching, and I know that on both of the figures
there has been a worsening of the percentage. You will correct
me, with pleasure, but that is our information. Is that not true?
(Air Marshal Sir Anthony Bagnall) I do not know the
specific figures to which you are referring but what I would say
is that we have taken a range of measures over the last year to
look at how we even out the pressure to take people who do not
normally serve on front-line squadrons, for instance, from the
Agencies, to retrain them and to use them to augment front-line
squadrons to give people a respite who would otherwise cut through
the threshold. However, there are some areas—chefs, drivers
and specialist technicians—where indeed things are difficult,
and we are doing something about it right now.
557. That being so, and you have mentioned some
ways in which you are trying to address it, what else—apart
from the obvious of cutting out operational commitments—can
you do?
(Air Marshal Sir Anthony Bagnall) You can share the
load more evenly across all the people in the Royal Air Force.
You can, secondly, look at people who, hitherto, have been exempted—for
instance, people about to retire, and you can look at medical
employment standards to see whether we can show more flexibility
over that—really, to try and include the maximum number
of people with the requisite skill sets, if need be by retraining
them and refreshing them, to take the load. For instance, if the
job specifically requires a sergeant could we send a corporal?
Could we send a flight sergeant? That will allow us to be pro-active
in managing the problem, that is what we are planning to do.
558. I think that is the three services reasonably
covered. May I now move on to ask which of the three services
do you believe to be most under pressure, in terms of nights away
from home?
(Mr Spellar) I think, up-to-date, the Army has been
considerably under pressure, not least because we inherited a
substantial level of undermanning anyway in the Army, also, because
of the nature of the commitments during the course of this year
and also because of particular specialities that we identified
which have impacted on the Army. With the Signals that is not
just due to operational requirements, it is also influenced by
the explosion in the communications industry in the country, which
is providing some extremely attractive alternative employment
and some quite aggressive recruiting from companies that are growing
very fast.
559. I think you, quite rightly, gentlemen,
raised the issue that sometimes for younger people it is great,
it is why they joined the armed forces, or the RAF or the Navy—to
get out there and do things. However, when you have a wife and
small children—and we have seen that wherever we have been—it
is a different tale. They enjoy doing their job but there is a
great sense of guilt about the family left behind, and that can
be the driving force to men changing their minds about staying
or going.
(Mr Spellar) It can be, but there are things we can
do, not to change whether they are away but, for example, to greatly
improve communications for the serviceman or woman with their
family back home. For example, the increase to 20 minutes a week,
quadrupling the time for actually `phoning back. As we were describing
earlier, we can improve the communications system for those sorts
of purposes so that they have access to telephones.
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