Examination of witnesses (Questions 380
- 399)
WEDNESDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2000
VICE-ADMIRAL
JONATHON BAND
and MR D FISHER
380. I look forward to seeing the results of
that because it is obviously very, very important.
(Vice-Admiral Band) You educate to prepare people's
minds to take the training, you train to meet an operational or
business need, but it all has to be strung together in this career
progression because we have to pull these people through; we have
to get them in and pull them through. We see this whole area having
to underpin that. Our initial training must match the labour market,
our whole through-life learning and through-life training must
pull people through.
Mr Cohen
381. The second key driver in that MoD memorandum
was shifting social trends. How are you reacting to that? Presumably
these are for tomorrow's trainees, are they not?
(Mr Fisher) Absolutely. We are taking into account
some of the various shifting trends in the way we have been discussing,
because one of the great trends is the change in the workplace,
that people do not necessarily expect to have a job for life,
they want to move around more freely. Certainly the young people
want to have this freedom to move careers, so that underlines
the importance of having marketable skills. One of the reasons
why we are looking very much into improving our accreditation
range is precisely to cater for the shifts in the workplace. That
is one big trend we have to address. Another big trend is the
massive expansion in higher education which means that we are
increasingly recruiting graduates. There have been quite staggering
changes in the population of officers. Whereas a few years ago
at Sandhurst it was 40% graduate intake, now it is something like
90% and it is a similar figure for all the other services except
the Air Force where it is a bit lower at 70% . We are talking
now about predominantly graduates with all the services.
Chairman
382. That is surprising really. I thought they
would be much higher. We shall ask the Air Force later.
(Mr Fisher) Yes, ask the Air Force; that is the best
thing. Overall the figure is round about 85% now for the three
services and that is an amazing change. Clearly that is one of
the big changes we have to take into account in looking at whether
we are now providing training and education in the right sort
of way, given that we are now talking about a predominantly graduate
intake. Those are two major shifts which we have to take into
account.
Mr Cohen
383. Both those are very important social trends,
the career structure and the graduate entry, but there are some
other shifting social trends. For example, a bit controversial,
but a few years back Major Joyce was a controversial figure writing
on all sorts of aspects of the armed forces. One of his key points
was that he felt it was very class-ridden and he though training
was class-ridden. I would have thought one of the social trends
would be to want less of that and have the opportunity for people
to come all the way through if they have the talent and the merit
to come all the way through to the top and the training to reflect
that.
(Vice-Admiral Band) This is going on to how the services
are structured and I know you have recently spoken to the PPOs.
All I would say is that in the service which I represent, wearing
the uniform I do today, if anyone shows the leadership and sufficient
intellectual ability, there is no stopping them. This is why the
figure for the Navy is that 35% of our officers started as sailors.
There is no class in the Navy. The class is on quality.
384. So your training will pick up people.
(Vice-Admiral Band) Yes we are. This is why this personal
development is so important. If people come in, basically we want
to use them for the talents they have. I think the services have
an exceedingly good record of taking people, particularly as other
ranks, who at times have either rejected the educational system
or been rejected by it and yet they end up running a troop of
soldiers in Sierra Leone. That is thanks to the investment the
services make. The commandants of the colleges are good people
to talk to about it because they all train people who started
as soldiers, sailors and airmen. I am entirely enthused by the
fact that our education and training system must find the potential
in people and realise it and that is a great way of saying to
them that this is a good firm to be part of.
(Mr Fisher) One thing I would emphasise in this context
is that our review is not just looking at officers, it is looking
at all the armed forces. One of the things we are very keen to
ensure is that the training and education of the soldiers, sailors
and airmen who make up 85% of the armed forces is right and that
they have the same kind of opportunities where they need them
as officers have. That fits in very much with one of the social
themes which you are underlining and it is really a very important
part of our study to ensure that we have their training and education
right.
(Vice-Admiral Band) And appropriate to the civil service
as well, because the canvas is all four of our labour streams
and we are looking to ensure that the development programmes for
the civil service are correct to spot talent and things like that
and give people this training at the right moment. It is an all-encompassing
matter.
(Mr Fisher) If I may say so, we are getting a lot
of help from the trade unions on that because they are very keen
to improve the training and education which we offer to our civilian
workforce, including the industrials who they feel have not had
such a good opportunity as the non-industrials. Civilians are
one third of our workforce, 100,000 people. We have to make sure
we have their training and education right. That is an area where
we are working very closely with the trade unions.
Chairman: That is a very exciting field
which you are exploring.
Mr Cohen
385. One more shifting trend is of course more
equality for women which is particularly relevant to the armed
forces. Is that reflected in your training so they can come all
the way through?
(Mr Fisher) Yes, that is certainly one of the social
trends we are trying to ensure is reflected in our training and
education system. Yes; very much so.
Mr Brazier
386. What are your assumptions about the effects
of technological development on military training? Do you for
example think that we may continue the trend of fewer and fewer
people, more and more training towards the use of technology,
which has basically featured across all three services in the
last 20 years?
(Vice-Admiral Band) Our technology work has embraced
a number of themes. One is looking at the equipment coming into
service, making sure that we are training to meet the relationship
between the kit and the people. There is no doubt that with the
advances in software, the bringing together of some of the technologies,
although they are used in different equipment in different services,
they are of a similar type. There are various trends there and
I have seen this in my time in the service. You used to have 25
stokers and marine engineers to keep boilers going. As soon as
we went to gas turbines we dropped it by one quarter and the next
propulsion system will have another different mix. That is all
being factored. The other side is the reverse: how good we are
and how we can improve the use of technology to support our training,
the use of computer based systems, synthetics, the whole e-dimension
to learning.
387. Focusing on the main part of your answer,
is there not a danger of what my church would call a phoney irenicism
between the three services here in the sense that your service
and the Air Force man equipment, but if we look at the success
on a small scale in Sierra Leone with the recent Para raid or
the Russian disaster in Grozny, there are circumstances when the
Army finds it cannot use technology very much and what actually
matters under some scenarios is having people who are very fit
physically and morally and are capable of operating in what is
basically a personnel intensive operation?
(Vice-Admiral Band) Yes, there is no doubt that the
environment differences, land to land, sea and air, have specific
drivers on training. That is reflected in the training. What we
are not trying to do is say, forget the operational circumstances,
and say these people are all the same. They are not the same.
They have quite different training objectives to be achieved during
their training and you can talk to the commandants about how that
emphasis changes in the officers. There is no doubt that personal
fitness, aspects like the dislocation which happens in a land
environment, has a different driver to, say, in the Navy where
I can assure you there is no less moral component because when
the Captain gets it wrong the cook goes swimming as well. There
is a pretty good moral component there. It does mean that if the
job this person is doing in the services has a lot of kit around
him, more of the training will reflect the interface with the
use of that kit. If it is one which does not have much kit then
you concentrate on other aspects.
388. You do not think there is a danger that
the training will orientate too far towards technology at all
levels. You are still keeping the single service differences.
(Vice-Admiral Band) Where we are looking at rationalisation
is where there is clear evidence that syllabuses or elements of
syllabuses are common. We then look at whether we can teach it
together and what the benefit is. Other areas are where the process
is converging. For example, in the supply and personnel administration
area the situation from now and in two years will change almost
certainly. In time there will be a common personell administration
system across the three services. At that moment it makes sense
for people who are crunching IS systems to organise people moving
around to be trained together where logistics convergence is also
occurring. What we are certainly not doing is trying to convince
ourselves that a sailor is the same as a soldier.
389. You have actually already answered our
questions on the skills and learning initiative and making more
use of civilian facilities and some impressive news on getting
civilian recognition for military qualifications. As somebody
who wrote his first paper on that 11 years ago, I welcome what
you said there but I am going to take it a little wider. We have
the service commandants coming after you to talk about officers.
Where do you think our future sailors, soldiers and airmen are
going to come from, given that it is fairly unlikely that we shall
be recruiting graduates as other ranks? At the moment we have
30% university participation, which is rising to 50%. America
is already at 60%. The birth rate has fallen and if we look across
the water to America we can see just how rapidly that pool of
people you are attracting is shrinking. Would you like to develop
what you were saying a little earlier on the learning and skills
initiatives?
(Vice-Admiral Band) I am the wrong person to ask because
it is not my responsibility to talk about recruiting and the challenges
there. What we certainly have done is take a pretty deep look
at the whole HR scene from attitudes, to fitness, to things like
this. The services do have a challenge. We have to continue to
attract very high calibre people to be our officers and to drive
through to be our leaders in the civil service and the military.
At the same time we have tasks in the other rank area where you
do not need a rocket scientist to do it; indeed a rocket scientist
would not wish to be a member of the Paras. It is not the fit.
If in the whole country, everyone coming out of the school system,
were bound for a university, then I am not quite sure how we would
find people to be marines because they are not the right sort
of people. The fact of life is that the country is still made
up of people with a whole set of different aspirations and views
and we must engage and pull the groups we want and if in areas
the national system does not give us what we want, that is the
sort of training we have to do. That is why if you talk to the
commandants, you can have the most brilliant young officer with
lots of potential for leadership and everything, but someone has
to train him and educate him and that is what service conversion
is all about. I personally believe that there is still sufficient
evidence that there is a large number of individuals, when they
get to know about the services, who are actually attracted to
them. Maybe they are not attracted like I was 35 years ago for
a full career, sign up at 18. You may need to convince them of
that. We certainly get in a lot because we do offer a different
style of life, different responsibilities. The trick then is,
having got these people in, to persuade them that they have a
career which has lots of options, lots of variety, lots of chances
to make themselves better people and that is where the through-life
training and education is so important.
390. Absolutely. I was very struck by what you
said earlier about transferability of skills. You were making
the point that many of the issues even apply in the combat areas.
(Vice-Admiral Band) Absolutely.
391. Do you not think we could learn something
from the Americans and Australians in terms of having more of
a concept of integrated careers with people spending some time
as regulars and some time as reserves? It is going to have to
come anyway on the medical side but is there not more scope for
doing that across the board?
(Vice-Admiral Band) I have some personal opinions
on that but it is frankly not an issue which is my responsibility.
All I would say is that this is another aspect of the SDR which
we have certainly taken into account-the reaffirmation of the
role of reserves and the fact that as of today 1,000 individuals
are operating as reserves with the forces. We certainly see our
training and education system having to fit the needs of the reserves.
We know the pressure on their time and there are parts of using
e-learning and things which can make aspects of their training
easier in the future. We can take it a bit more readily to them
rather than bringing them to us.
392. As other countries have been for a long
time.
(Vice-Admiral Band) Yes. We have seen a lot of evidence
of the distance and e-learning in other countries. I am not convinced
how effective it has been. The key thing about using these new
tools, including distance and e-learning, is to make sure that
it actually does meet the requirements that the training objective
needs. There is a lot of evidence now that some parts of the skill
learning and knowledge learning are very, very good conducted
by the new interactive computer aids available. When it comes
to making people operate and fight as a team, team building, the
whole interaction issue, which is a theme through the whole of
military training, then actually you have to get people together.
I give you an example. In America they offer officers a chance
to do a staff course without going to a staff college. That does
not produce the quality of staff officer the British forces need.
Part of staff training, as I am sure the commandant JSCSC will
say, is getting these people together, seminars together, learning
together, modules together and all that. It is a balance.
Chairman: We shall be coming back onto
distance learning later on.
Mr Gapes
393. I should like to ask some questions about
training for operations. As a Committee we visit various parts
of the world, we have seen our forces in Bosnia, in Kosovo and
with Unicom on the Iraq/Kuwait border and obviously there is the
role in Northern Ireland. It is clear to us at least that missions
in support of UN or peace support missions in general are becoming
more frequent. How do you assess the need to change training to
take account of and accommodate the different needs of different
kinds of operations, particularly given the increasing requirements
for working with other nationalities or working in UN-type operations?
(Vice-Admiral Band) We have covered some of this in
our whole approach to joint and multinational training for officers
and the need to engage. That is what prepares the staff officers
and the commanders. As far as the forces and the units are concerned,
what one must realise is that individual training is the bottom
of a process which you might say ends up with a joint coalition
operation as in the Iraq war. A balance you have to strike when
you decide when and what training you do is what bits are best
inserted at what level of the game. Essentially the vast majority
of the military training we are looking at in the individual area
is that required either to convert civilian into military individual,
initial induction training, giving them their initial specialist
qualifications that they need to be a driver, a tank driver, a
REME person, a marine engineer and then that individual training
where it is sensible to bring them back into the training machine
to tell them about a new radar or increased responsibility. The
vast majority of the force preparation to take part in an operation
in Bosnia, for example, is actually at the collective end of the
game, where a battalion, a battle group, knows it is going there
and the whole collective training regime builds up all those little
individuals into a team. It is at that stage that you adapt the
training in a collective sense; they are due to go to Northern
Ireland so they go to do pre-Northern Ireland training. The reason
we are right to say we make most of the adjustments in the collective
area is that if you do not train the individual at the start for
his or her potential war fighting role, if you get into the situation
where you do peace support, and then you go on for an "angry"
operation, I doubt you will have the skills. Indeed the last Sierra
Leone operation has shown how units which have been on a whole
range of operations were put together for a joint operation which
required high intensity skills and they pulled it off. I am a
great believer that the basic machine is equipping people for
the most challenging and then you adapt at the collective end.
That is how we do it.
394. The way we do it is different from some
other countries where there are people who do the peace support
type things and do not do other things.
(Vice-Admiral Band) Correct. We are a set of armed
forces and the Government wish us to take part at their choice
in high intensity operations. That is the main driver for our
final attainment level. If a young sergeant going through his
sergeant's course on the Brecon mountains, cannot take part in
a company level attack then when he is called to do that later
for real he will not be able to do it. He can then take the principles
of all that military leadership and training and adapt it in the
less challenging areas. If you do not start with that core understanding
that you may have to lay down your life in a high profile operation,
you end up with either first or second division outfits within
your defence forces or, even worse, you end up with a set of defence
forces which is not deployable in the high intensity operations.
(Mr Fisher) The peace support operations can of course
rapidly become high intensity operations as we have seen time
and again.
(Vice-Admiral Band) For a young corporal on the wrong
road in Bosnia it gets pretty high intensity pretty quickly. Unless
he has been taught the ultimate challenge, I do not think he will
do it.
395. I think members of this Committee would
be very pleased that this is the case. May I switch focus? You
talked about recruitment and a majority of graduates coming in
and recruitment of other ranks. One of the things we do in this
country which is almost unique, and I have here an Amnesty International
report on it, is recruit under-18-year-olds into the forces. According
to Amnesty we have the lowest deployment age in Europe and we
are the only European country to send under-18s routinely into
armed conflict situations. I do not want you to comment on the
policy side because that is obviously a matter for Government.
I should be interested to know whether you are aware of any human
rights cases which might be pending relating to this area which
might affect training and what you might have to do as a result
of that.
(Vice-Admiral Band) I am not aware of any particularly
human rights cases. I would say that we have noticed that when
people join as other ranks into the three services, they come
in an age bracket which can be 16.5 to 29. What we have looked
at is whether the way we do it at the moment is appropriate to
those age groups, whether for some reason you need to treat them
differently. In the Navy and the Air Force, all sailors and airmen
go to their respective single service recruit training place and
they take them in at all ages. Clearly there are aspects of care
and nuance and flavour which you adapt, depending on what the
person's background is, but essentially we put them through the
same training with a view that they will then take their place
in the front line. In the Army they do in fact have a slightly
different system because historically the Army had a very successful
scheme called the Junior Leaders' Scheme which was one way of
attracting people quite young as recruits for two reasons: one,
to get them at the stage where they could give them a harmonised
training, get them in early and if they were good and proved to
be good, they then became young NCOs and the cadre. The Army is
very keen in the future to keep sufficient numbers coming in at
the young end rather than 25-year-olds who may have done two or
three jobs before they joined the Army. We do believe that to
attract people at that age you do need to give them not a different
training but a different slant on training, particularly to encourage
parents, gatekeepers, to support their entry. Harrogate is the
place the Army has their foundation college which is a huge success.
What they do try to do with an 18-year-old is put the training
in in a slightly different way, a slightly greater education element,
because their expectation for the bright youngsters is that they
will travel through the Army quite fast. The policy decision is
outside my remit. People who run young recruit training do not
say that because he or she is under 18 he or she cannot do that.
The question is whether they can meet the task they are being
asked to train to do. There comes a moment when they are too young,
when they are not ready for training, which is why you have to
be very careful with the younger ones you select, but other younger
ones are absolutely first class.
396. You are obviously aware, as we are, that
this area is controversial and there are some organisations, Amnesty
being one of them, who are quoting the fact that we are signatories
to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states
that a child is "... every human being below the age of 18
years unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority
is attained earlier". They define 18 as the threshold rather
than 16. In that case, if there were to be some kind of prohibition
on personnel under 18 because of some Human Rights Act implication,
a legal challenge of some kind, what would you do? Are you looking
at what might be needed to change things if that were the case?
(Vice-Admiral Band) I am not prepared and I am not
qualified to answer that in terms of the chance of it happening
and the policy implications. All I am saying is that the UK training
structure will train what is required to make people operational
within the context of the rule book we are given. Likewise with
the change of bringing women into the armed forces the training
machine has entirely adapted to that and frankly it is not an
issue. If the country says you can only have Armed Forces between
35 and 45, we shall somehow train them. I think it would be quite
a challenge. I really cannot answer any more on that. We act in
respect of the policy we are set.
397. Do you not think that you need to modify
the training for a 17-year-old?
(Vice-Admiral Band) No, what I have said already and
I shall reiterate, is that depending on the age and the previous
experience, of course you adapt the system, which is why, particularly
in the Army, where large numbers are required of the younger element,
it is sensible and the right way to do it and if you were to go
to Harrogate you would find that they are producing an extremely
refreshing and exciting product. People at 18 do not have the
same robustness so you build it in a slightly different way. That
said, look at the company in Sierra Leone. The company had soldiers
between 18.5 and 28. The older ones had worked in KwikFit for
five years or something. Of course they are different and that
is why our trainers are really professional and they balance it
out.
Chairman: I do not have quite the same
anxiety as Amnesty. At least it is an improvement on the Georgian
army where lots of guys were commissioned aged three. Progress
has been made. Perhaps we lost the colonies because of too young
military personnel.
Mr Hepburn
398. We shall later be taking evidence from
the commandants of the service colleges. We should be interested
to know what the implications of your training review would be
for those individuals and the institutions?
(Mr Fisher) In terms of officer training generally,
our overall view is that it is actually very good. What we are
trying to look at is ways of making it even better. I should say
that we are really looking at four themes here. The first is whether
we should undertake more joint multinational training to reflect
the shift in operations and we have already spoken about that.
On that, if you start at one end of the extreme, which is the
advanced staff course, that is already pretty joint. We may propose
it become even more joint in certain respects but basically that
is a very joint and very good course. What we are looking at is
whether we need to do more early on and that may have implications
for some of the initial officer training establishments. Generally
what we think is the right model there is that there should be
a gradual progressive increase in joint multinational awareness
as people go through their careers so they get it at the point
when they need it. You start off with a fairly small injection
at the point when they join, when that is primarily a single service
environment and should remain so, and it then steadily increases
throughout their careers. That is the first area we are looking
at and that will have implications for all the colleges. The second
area, which we touched on earlier, is to look to see whether the
training and education we are providing really meets the new business
needs of the department. We set up these new establishments, the
Defence Procurement Agency, the Defence Logistics Organisation,
we have a host of agencies with people we are appointing as chief
executives to the agencies. Are we giving them the right training
and education to meet these new business needs? We do not think
we entirely are and there are various changes which we think are
required to give people the right skill there. That in turn will
have implications for the colleges. Another big issue is whether
we are doing the training in the most cost-effective way. Perhaps
a better way of putting that is whether it is focused on the career
needs of individuals so they are getting the training and education
at the right point in their careers to enable them to do the jobs
they are doing. Are we giving them too much training at some stage
in their career? Could we reduce the training? That could actually
have very beneficial effects in terms of reducing the strain of
operational overstretch if we can reduce the length of some residential
courses. Whether we have the overall balance right is another
measure and that is going to affect all the colleges. The fourth
area which is a big issue is whether we can make the training
and education more integrated, both between the services, so that
where it is common between the services we do it together, but
also with the civil service. This picks up something we were saying
earlier: are we making enough use of the staff colleges who are
providing a lot of training which would be interesting for our
civilians? Could we attract more civilians there and what implications
would that have for the staff colleges. One of the things we are
looking at there is whether we can make the training and education
more modular, because it is very difficult for civilians to go
on long residential courses and they are not very popular. But
if you have short modules in defence studies or some subject of
interest to both civilians and the military, can we then open
up those modules to the civilian workforce? Those are the four
big themes we are looking at and clearly they will feed through
and affect all the colleges.
(Vice-Admiral Band) They will affect them in different
ways. Essentially the main role of Dartmouth, Sandhurst and Cranwell
is to take the person who has chosen to go into those three services
and convert them from civilian into officer of that service and
to prepare them for their first pair of tours which largely is
environmentally and single service driven. We are not trying to
turn businessmen out of Dartmouth. What we are doing later on,
as officers' careers broaden, their skill sets are recognised
and developed, when they then come back to the more post-graduate
element at RMCS or JSCSC, is bring in there the appropriate side
operation or business or process. Very much on the lines of: when
do they need it? How do we get it into them in the best package?
They are all core colleges but they are all very different and
I am sure they will explain that to you.
Chairman
399. How successful have the privatisations
been of education and training? Quite a few things have been happening
in the last few years.
(Mr Fisher) We have not actually privatised anything.
What we have increasingly done is make more use of the private
sector. You can certainly ask the Staff College and RMCS on that
where the Staff College is now in partnership with King's College.
I think that is working very well but they will be able to tell
you. RMCS is in partnership with Cranfield and again I think that
is working well. I should say that one of the general aims of
our study is to try to encourage that process forward and to make
more use of the marketplace because we do feel we want to be able
to take the best expertise wherever it is available and make it
available to our people. If the universities or part of the university
sector are doing something very well that we do not have to do
ourselves, then it is silly for us not to make use of what they
are doing. I would make two general comments on that. The first
is that there has been an enormous change in the academic marketplace
in the last few years. It is now much more organised as a business
to respond to business needs. They are much more prepared to adapt
themselves to meet business requirements, to offer modules rather
than lengthy courses, if that is what business wants. They are
very much in the business of offering their services to meet our
requirements. The second point which is a very important point
which we have perhaps neglected in the past is to recognise just
how big and powerful a body the Ministry of Defence is. Our training
and education budget is over £3 billion a year in cash terms.
We are by far the biggest user of training and education in the
country. Are we using our muscle to best effect to get the service
we require from the private sector? In the past we probably have
not been organised as well as we could be to ensure that we get
this. With one of the things we were talking about earlier, like
defence accreditation, if we try to do it in a more rational defence-wide
basis, we shall be able to get a much better deal from the private
sector. Our general objective will be to get the best we can from
wherever we can get it.
Chairman: We are moving on to the Learning
Forces Initiative. There will be some overlap with what we have
asked so far.
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