Examination of witnesses (Questions 260
- 279)
WEDNESDAY 1 NOVEMBER 2000
VICE-ADMIRAL
PETER SPENCER
ADC and AIR MARSHAL
MALCOLM PLEDGER
260. What percentage of that is total?
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) Those percentages are 2.9%
for officers and 1.7% for ratings, so they are below the targets,
but they are moving in the right direction. When you talk to the
CRE, when you talk to teachers, when you talk to the parents of
young black and young Asian people, you realise the degree to
which this has to be based is on a long-term long-haul push. We
are looking tactically at what we need to do better. As a result
of not having met last year's targets we have totally reconfigured
the way in which we are going about this in the Navy. There is
absolutely no doubt in my mind that these figures will be met,
it is simply a question of when and how long it will take. We
compare favourably with other sectors who are trying to take off
from a very low base line to go forward, because there comes a
point when you need to get a breakthrough. There comes a point
when there will be a critical mass.
(Air Marshal Pledger) Those targets are our targets,
not the CRE's. They are the targets we set ourselves.
261. You are not meeting your own targets?
(Air Marshal Pledger) We are not meeting our own targets.
The CRE acknowledge that and, again, through this partnership
that we have with them, we are trying to devise methods of getting
closer to those targets. We are not complacent, but they are going
in the right direction. That 200,000 figure that was quoted earlier
is an indication of enormous effort that is going out in the out-reach
programmes that are there to communicate the purpose and the activities
of the Armed Forces to these particular minorities. We are not
complacent. We set ourselves very demanding targets and we are
progressively getting towards them, not to our satisfaction.
262. How much do you think that cultural attitudes,
perhaps racism, perhaps just a message and impression that there
is among ethnic minority people that that is the case, are deterring
young people from black and Asian communities from applying?
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) It is clearly a job that I
have to do to persuade parents and teachers that we will look
after their young people. I think that, taken out of context,
the remarks of the CRE have not made that any easier. The CRE
do acknowledge the efforts which are being made in this area.
If I can just say that in terms of the measures which we looked
at, we track this very closely. People throughout the command
chain understand the policies. There are a large number of examples
where, in the chain of command, minor incidents are stopped in
their tracks and people are reminded of the standards of behaviour.
Mr Hancock
263. I think some of the misunderstanding came
from what General Guthrie said about the 3% target and saying
that that was an achievable target. They have rightly raised the
question here last week that they could not answer, but maybe
you can, Air Marshal. The situation was that the figure was not
200,000, it was 250,000 contacts had been made, but only 330 of
those materialised as people that joined the Service. The question
that was asked of them and they could not answer was, why was
so big a target achieved in contacts, but so few realised in actual
joining? That is a question we need to know the answer to. You
say you have good tracking processes about what happens, but something
happened between that initial contact and those people failing
to deliver.
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) My earlier point remains, which
is that those were not 200,000 enquiries. Those were 200,000 members
of the—
264. Contacts.
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) Many of them were parents who
were not ever considering joining in the first place. They were
visitors.
(Air Marshal Pledger) These are responses to our out-reach
programme—shows that we put on—taking each of the
single Services' recruiting teams into environments where there
are large ethnic minority communities. We deliberately go to sell
the message of what the Armed Forces is about. We get a whole
series of people coming to that who are never potential recruits
in their own right, but they are people that we have to communicate
a message to. That is the 250,000 that you keep quoting.
265. Half that figure then, say 100,000 of them,
were young people looking for a future.
(Air Marshal Pledger) You are speculating.
266. So are you, because you are telling us
that a lot of those were parents. You cannot tell us how many
were parents and how many were young people.
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) The key issue, if I may, is
that I do not think we would get a very different ratio if we
looked at the white people who attended careers shows. The fact
is that the Armed Forces take a very small percentage of the population,
and we have to put out our advertising to a very wide ranging
population. When we did the Meet Your Navy Tour earlier this year,
over 51,000 people visited ships, but I do not regard that as
51,000 potential applicants to join the Royal Navy.
Mr Hood: We are not comparing like with
like, so the figures we have been given are completely useless.
Mr Brazier
267. Can I ask one question? A lot of what you
are describing is very long-term, the sowing of ground and the
building of relationships. I think it was you who mentioned an
initiative led by one of the Bishops and a whole variety of other
areas. You already have a voluntary uniform youth service in the
form of the cadets, which are disproportionately located in inner
cities where the bulk of the ethnic minorities live, who are very
successful and in some cases are more than one quarter drawn from
ethnic minorities. Why was it that in almost an hour discussion
on this last time the cadets were never mentioned once? You were
all here last time. It is the same panel.
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) There is no particular reason
why they were not mentioned. We regard the Sea Cadets as a very
valuable source of potential recruits and, equally, particularly
for the Navy, which has such a narrow footprint in the nation,
it is a very valuable way of the Navy appearing in the public
eye in all sorts of places, albeit young children in uniform.
268. What are you doing to build your ethnic
programme on this very large number of young people who are already
serving in cadet units? The Cadet Of The Year for two years running
in my area, which has less than 1.5% ethnic minorities, was a
West Indian lad who went on to join the Army. Does it not play
any part in your ethnic recruiting at all?
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) Of course it does. We do not
walk around thinking separately in our brains between, do we make
different efforts for young ethnic minority Sea Cadets than we
do for young white Sea Cadets? We target them all. Where positive
action comes in is where we sense that somebody who comes from
a particular school background may be slightly unsettled by the
nature of the recruiting test, we give them some special help.
We give them as fair an opportunity as possible to get through
that test and go into the part of the Navy which they aspire to.
Mr Hood
269. Surely the comparative test would be to
compare the amount of black applicants and the proportion of those
applicants who are recruited, and likewise with the whites, to
talk about the global figure? I can remember Mr Hancock asking
the question and assuming that we were talking about 20 to 25,000,
and there we were alarmed to have this figure of 200,000 thrown
at us.
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) In here is a figure which I
can let you have in writing later, which shows for the last three
years the total number of enquiries to the Navy has gone down,
in absolute terms, and the total number of ethnic minority enquiries
has gone up. That is a direct result of recruiting campaigns and
all of the other efforts that we are taking to promote proper
contact with the ethnic minorities.
270. The figures you should go on is those applications
and whether they are successful or not. Enquiries can come from
a range of sources.
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) For every eight enquiries from
ethnic minorities over the last two or three years, six turn into
applications, and then to one entry. So that is eight, six, one.
The figures for whites is six, four, one. That is still a difference,
but it is actually very much closer than it was four years ago,
where the disparity was much greater. We are now working on what
is driving those difficulties. One of them is the fact that there
is a strong difference between the support that young ethnic minority
potential recruits receive from their peer group and their parents
than is the case for whites. We, therefore, understand even more
clearly the need that we not only have to attract the young people,
but we have to win the hearts and minds of their parents, teachers,
careers advisors and friends.
Mr Brazier
271. In the east end of London where you have
units that are as much as a quarter from ethnic minorities you
have youngsters who spend four or five years among peers from
a mixed group of backgrounds who have that support background.
I have seen no evidence at all, we heard no evidence last time,
and I have seen no evidence on the ground—and I have five
cadets in my constituency—that this plays any part in your
ethnic programme at all. It is much easier to recruit a youngster
who has spent four or five years in uniform already, twice a week
going along to a supportive group of people, than to take somebody
off the street.
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) I agree with you, and we do
have contact with the Sea Cadets. What I would say is that the
Navy has detected a problem in recruiting in London compared with
the other big centres where these communities are. That is a problem,
because the reality is that the large majority do live in London,
and that is something that we are looking at very closely. Just
to correct a misunderstanding which was given. As a result of
my calling on General Webb-Carter with Sir Herman Ouseley and
Bob Purkiss present, I came away with a lot of useful ideas which
I did actually put into practice. So the notion that there is
competitiveness between the three Services that prevents that,
I am afraid is just a misunderstanding and is manifestly untrue.
One of the bright ideas, just as a for instance, he said to me,
"Of course, you have a problem in the Navy, because it is
quite hard to bring the Navy to London. I can bring vehicles out
to show these young people." So now I have personally redirected
the programming of the university RN unit craft, the P2000 craft,
so that, in support of recruiting drives, they are available on
the Thames from time to time and we can take youngsters afloat
and go up and down the river and show them what it is like, albeit
in miniature, to run a war ship.
Chairman
272. The CRE were not questioning the good intentions
and the goals. They were very fair, I thought. They were looking
for greater implementation. They recognise the difficulties.
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) They are a ginger group and
they are extremely helpful to us. They would obviously like us
to proceed faster, and so would we. They have to strike the balance
between being seen to be a ginger group still, as well as being
a legal enforcement agency, but at the same time continuing to
work in partnership with us, and that we do very successfully.
Mr Cohen
273. You gave this figure eight, six, one. Six
were applicants, but only one entered. Have you done an analysis
of that?
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) We have done a very strong
analysis of that. Of a large number of no-shows that we interview,
people get cold feet. That is what we are following up, and we
follow up every individual and say, "Would you like to think
about it?" We sometimes find that they are concerned about
the prospect of taking a recruiting test. We are now in the process
of organising letting them have a dummy paper so that they are
familiar with the format. We have actually had an independent
investigation by the Defence Research Agency to detect if there
is any unintentional bias in the recruiting testing, and there
is nothing which they can detect. There does seem to be some difficulty,
both in terms of the attitude of mind in that interim period,
part of which is related to the point I raised earlier about support
from the family and part of which is apprehension of taking the
test, and we are working on both areas. We have driven that gap
down considerably.
Chairman: We would love to see that documentation,
Admiral. It seems very interesting.
Mr Hancock
274. If I could turn to the issue of skills
shortages, ships going to sea under-manned and the gapping policy
that has become very part and parcel of Service life. Can you
tell us where you believe the Navy suffers most from those skills
shortages? I am sure the Committee and the record ought to know
what the current position is about ships at sea which are under-manned
and what sort of percentage that represents, and what are you
trying to do about filling those specific gaps for those recognised
skill shortages that you have?
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) The skills shortages are most
prevalent in the operator mechanic branch and Royal Marine general
duties. The attack on that is to clearly adjust the recruiting
targets and also to focus any retention schemes in order to encourage
people to stay for longer. We have just put into place a retention
scheme for leading seamen who are in operator mechanics and the
other "source" branches, which is already showing itself
to be extremely successful. This is because after about six years
there does tend to be a bit of a peak when people decide that
perhaps they would like to go and do something else. We actually
target that period and we have got good evidence from previous
schemes, including one for Royal Marines a few years ago, which,
when they have got through that period they then actually find
that is what they want to do any way and they stay. It is much
easier to get them through that period and it is a fraction of
the price of recruiting and training their replacements.
275. What about the gapping policy and the under-manning
of ships? (Vice-Admiral Spencer) The reason we gap in ships
is because we have to strike a balance in people's lives. We are
around 1300 short against the trained strength, and we also have
some mismatches historically in some of the areas of skills. If
this was a full scale war fighting occasion we would fill every
boat and every submarine and every ship. If we were to do that
in peace time we would actually exacerbate our retention problems
because we would not be giving sailors enough shore time in order
to get some balance in their lives. At the moment, over 20,000
ratings are on what we call minimum time ashore. For Able Rating
that is five months between two long sea drafts. So in order to
ensure that they get at least that five months we have to gap
some of those at sea. We do not gap anybody in submarines because
of safety reasons.
276. Are we then overstretched commitment wise
by the pressure of taking on more commitments, forcing ships,
on many occasions, to stay at sea and away from home longer, causing
a real problem for you to deal with?
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) It is not related to the operation
directly in that sense. If a sailor is deployed away at sea he
or she works jolly hard whether they are on operation or not,
and the evidence points towards the fact that one of the reasons
why we have sustained recruiting and retention at a period of
very high employment is the fact that the younger sailors like
being away at sea and like being involved in operations, particularly
the sort of high profile peace keeping operations which have taken
place recently. They feel good about that. What they do not feel
good about, necessarily, particularly as they get a bit older,
is if they spend all their time at sea and do not get any time
ashore to spend life with their families, partners or children.
277. So you do not see the Navy as being over
committed and the nation asking too much of too few?
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) I see the nation asking a lot
of the Navy, which is too few at the moment because we are 1300
short, but we are driving it back into balance, which we will
achieve the year after next, in 2002.
278. Can I raise an issue which is relevant
to myself and Mr Viggers' area because we have a big Navy connection
and we also have big defence industries? The pay differential
between what a serviceman can earn in the Royal Navy and what
they can earn in the civilian world living in the same area is
very large indeed. Is the pay limit, to a certain extent, limiting
your ability to retain the right people in the right job for the
Royal Navy?
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) One would have to break that
question down, because a very large percentage of sailors on leaving
the Navy would actually take a pay drop. There are some exceptions,
particularly for aviators, doctors, people who are skilled in
communication information systems and some engineers, but they
do not constitute the majority in terms of numbers.
279. Are they the areas where you have the greatest
skills shortages?
(Vice-Admiral Spencer) The areas where I have the
greatest skill shortages, at the moment, have been Operator Mechanics
and Royal Marine general duties in terms of bulk. We have critical
shortages in smaller numbers in terms of fixed-wing pilots and
doctors, but I was answering the question as a generality across
the whole population.
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