Select Committee on Defence Minutes of Evidence


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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