Examination of Witnesses (Questions 620
- 639)
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
620. So the date in the SDR is wrong?
(Mr Spellar) It is the financial year 2004/5.
621. It actually means the 31 March 2005? Is
that what you are telling us?
(Mr Spellar) Instead of 31 December 2004.
Chairman: Three months' slippage perhaps.
Mr Blunt
622. At least. Some people would say that around
2004 means it could be 2003/4. The fact is that 18 months after
the SDR the date has slipped a year. If it slips a year every
18 months we shall have two aircraft carriers hopefully in service
by the time the Army is fully manned. Even on the current figures,
the net inflow into the Army will take 30 years. The point I am
making is that there is still a very serious problem.
(General Sir Alex Harley) There is a problem and every
year that we miss our targets, our targets go up. This year I
expect to meet virtually 100 per cent of my recruiting targets
both for officers and men and by between 95 and 100 per cent of
my output training targets. That will be the first time that we
have done that for some time. The challenge is a significant one,
but we are not necessarily put off by economics and full employment.
We have all sorts of imaginative ideas of how to take that on.
623. How many people do you expect to recruit
from prison?
(General Sir Alex Harley) Not very many.
624. What effect do you think that information
and the attendant publicity that will go into the public domain
will have on your recruitment and on the quality of candidates
who will put themselves forward?
(Mr Spellar) That is more of a political question.
I have to say that this was raised during defence questions. There
were very mixed views from the Opposition Benches and the response
from the public has also been mixed. On balance, in general, it
has been in favour.
625. I am asking a technical question.
(Mr Spellar) We have had no evidence of it actually
affecting the attitudes of other recruits. We have had a few people
who have said that such people deserve a second chance in life
and if they are properly assessed they will be able to make good
soldiers. We have not seen a negative impact from the broad general
public and in many ways we have had quite a positive impact. I
really think that it is a peripheral issue.
626. I was not talking about the wider public
response.
(General Sir Alex Harley) We are not in the slightest
bit ashamed about it. We have often taken people from detention
centres and prisons. We have a line out to prisons. Many of our
soldiers come from quite unfortunate backgrounds. It is extremely
easy in the barrack room and some of the places that they come
from to get into bad ways. We will look at a person, look at his
background and see why he was in prison, and if he is someone
whom we think is worth saving we do something about it. We do
not actively go out to recruit such people but I think that is
something that we can do for society.
627. You are not actively going out to recruit
them?
(General Sir Alex Harley) No. We have lines out to
people who are worth while and would like to join the Army. As
long as they meet the test and so on and they are not murderers
and so on we will do something for them if they do something for
us.
628. Surely, if you are trying to recruit 15,000
high quality people from the wider population, it sends out an
extremely unfortunate message.
(General Sir Alex Harley) No. Why should they not
be high quality? They can be as high quality as anybody else,
but they have to pass the tests.
629. Does it not send out a wider message to
your rather more substantial pool of recruits, which is 15,000,
leaving aside the few tens or few hundreds that you may recruit
from prisons?
(General Sir Alex Harley) It is far less than a few
hundred.
Chairman: Can we move on?
Mr Brazier
630. I have two brief supplementary questions
to put to the Minister relating to manning. The first is on efficiency
savings. On Monday, Mr Spellar, you were asked whether £1.5
million had been allocated to reducing orthopaedic waiting lists
on the basis that that would get some of the several thousands
of serving personnel who are on the books but not currently fit
for service back into service which obviously would significantly
reduce the manning problem. You answered that Written Question
by saying that there was no £1.5 million set aside for reducing
orthopaedic waiting lists. The question asked whether that money
had been set aside and then taken off as an efficiency saving.
Last week we asked a lot of questions about why we were not being
given the details on efficiency savings. Would you like to reconsider
your answer? Is it really true that there was no money set aside—the
£1.5 million?
(Mr Spellar) When I answered the question I obviously
looked at the advice and I was advised that that was not the case,
that there was not a sum of money allocated which was then removed.
631. In an efficiency saving.
(Mr Spellar) Yes.
632. I am surprised because at the time there
was quite a lot of talk in the service about it. Thank you.
(General Sir Alex Harley) We had hoped that there
would be. There was a possibility that there would be some money
set aside. Nevertheless, ministers gave us the authority to get
people through physiotherapy training by private means and some
of the commands have been doing that.
633. In the light of that answer, on the separate
point of physiotherapy, let me state this again. We may be at
cross-purposes. The allegation which lay behind the question was
that in among the list of efficiency savings which the Committee
pressed hard to see last week was £1.5 million that had been
originally set aside to reduce orthopaedic waiting lists separately
from physiotherapy, specifically for minor operations. You are
quite certain, on the basis of the advice that you had, that that
money was never set aside and then removed as an efficiency saving?
(Mr Spellar) But as you are pressing that issue I
shall certainly go back and revisit that and press further[2].
Certainly that was the advice that I had.
634. Mr Spellar, when General Sir Alex Harley
earlier answered as to the issues most affecting retention, if
I remember correctly the second highest issue was the state of
married quarters, was it not?
(Mr Spellar) It was accommodation generally.
(General Sir Alex Harley) I meant generally.
635. Married quarters and single accommodation.
(Mr Spellar) Sometimes single living accommodation
gets forgotten.
636. I quite agree that it should have a high
priority too. Last week when questioning Mr Balmer, we discovered
that the figure of £11 million had been taken out of the
married quarters repair programme which is almost exactly the
sum that has been put into the new alliance that the Committee
has welcomed. There seems to be some disjunction in policy here.
When the Government were first elected there were a number of
statements made that this was a high priority, not least in your
response to our report in July 1997. Since then it appears to
have completely disappeared off the agenda. There is no reference
at all to it in the quite long section on Armed Forces families.
It is just in the White Paper. It has disappeared completely and
we discovered that the £11 million had been taken out of
the budget. Mr Balmer told us that that £11 million had not
been taken out of the budget, but merely deferred to a subsequent
year. However, he was unable to tell us to which year it had been
deferred. What is actually happening to the programme?
(Mr Spellar) The programme, as you know, is based
on the previous Government's sale to Addington Properties and
the sum of money allocated was to upgrade properties. The subsequent
analysis of the properties revealed that a greater sum of money
was required in order to achieve that. Therefore, the timescale
has moved to accommodate that extra expenditure. That has moved
to 2005. That is still on programme to be completed in 2005. Indeed,
during this financial year we shall be upgrading 1,450 properties
and we plan to spend at least £60 million during the next
year. Mr Balmer's remarks were consistent with maintaining the
completion of the programme within the anticipated timescale.
637. Forgive me, but I did not quite understand
that answer. As I understood it, your answer confirms what he
said, which was that you are aiming for the same timescale. As
I understand it, the study that you carried out showed that you
require more money than was in the programme, but the amount of
money in the programme for repairs to married quarters, some of
which are in a terrible state, was reduced last year. Are you
saying that figure that you have quoted for this year is more
than £11 million up on what was planned for this year, or
is it the same as what was planned for this year in that programme,
or less?
(Air Marshal Pledger) There is a slight amount of
confusion. Firstly, it is not the repair programme.
638. It is upgrading.
(Air Marshal Pledger) We are talking about an upgrading
programme.
(Mr Spellar) The upgrading is separate from the repairs.
(Air Marshal Pledger) We are talking about the whole
of the housing programme as one entity of which one component
of that is a determination to upgrade married service family accommodation
to a certain standard. That programme runs across a period that
started years ago and now will be completed, because of that additional
cost associated with the condition survey, in 2005. The balance
between the various years has been affected by a reduction of
£11 million this year but the total programme is still intact.
As to when £11 million will be consumed that is not a determinant
of the way in which we carry out that programme.
639. From your earlier remarks, the fact remains
that it is not just £11 million but also the additional cost
associated with the extra deficiencies that the study to which
you referred drew up.
(Air Marshal Pledger) Originally when we started this
we said 2003, but when we completed the total condition survey
of those houses the conclusion was an extra £110 million,
which is why it has moved two years further on to accommodate
that extra cost.
2 See p. 203. Back
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