Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
WEDNESDAY 11 DECEMBER 2002
MAJOR GENERAL
A D LEAKEY, CBE AND
MR MARTYN
PIPER
100. I do not want that answer. That does not
answer the question. The question is surely if you are in charge
of the organisation and there is a serious concern—whether
it is founded or not in the media—that there is a problem
in the training organisation, surely if you are in charge you
do not wait for somebody to come to you to give you that information.
You should be monitoring, should you not, to see if it is a problem?
(Major General Leakey) I have answered the question,
I do monitor it.
101. No, you do not because you have just told
us unless somebody comes to you and gives you the statistics on
a routine basis you are not monitoring.
(Major General Leakey) Chairman, the man who does
these statistics has come to see me twice this year, once when
I was very new and did not know he existed and he came to tell
me and the second time more recently when I called for him. I
called for him and therefore I have seen the disaggregated statistics
of the ATRA and I have even written to my operating division commanders
on the basis of those statistics pointing out some things in there
and the trends. I am aware that the trends are down. I do see
it regularly and I do monitor it.
102. No, you do not, you just said you did not
even know the man existed until he came to see you.
(Major General Leakey) No, what I said, I must correct
that if I may—
103. Surely your job as the head of an organisation
is to monitor on a regular basis and not just to wait until somebody
comes to see you?
(Major General Leakey) He came to see me in about
my second week in the job and I did not know he existed. I am
new to the organisation.
Chairman: Let us move on.
Mr Jones
104. Can I just ask one other question which
you did not answer about suicides. Are there any statistics kept
and do you monitor as routine, for example, how many people commit
suicide when they are going through the training of your organisation?
(Major General Leakey) Yes.
105. Have you got the up-to-date figures?
(Major General Leakey) Not with me.
106. Could you supply them to us?[13]
(Major General Leakey) The figures are
available.
Mr Jones: That is not the question I asked.
Will you provide them to us?
Chairman: I think the General meant the
figures are available and he will provide them.
Mr Jones: That is not what he said.
Chairman: That is how I interpreted it.
Mr Cran
107. General, not unnaturally we have spent
a lot of the morning on the recruiting side of your job, the other
side, of course, is perhaps equally important and that is the
retention. In answer to Mr Roy, tangentially, you spoke of retention.
I wonder if you would go into a little bit more detail. Are you
concerned about retention levels? If I go to training, the statistics
you have provided indicate clearly that the leakage is going down.
You are successful to that extent but the figures are still fairly
sizeable, are they not? Therefore the question is what are you
doing to ameliorate that? Similarly, when we went to 45 Commando
in Arbroath yesterday, the commanding officer there said the problem
he has is he has a five year cycle with the troops under his command
and after five years he is finding they simply want to leave,
it could be because of their salary, it could be anything. Therefore
anything that you or he or anybody else could do to extend that
from five to five and a half or six years would have benefits
flowing from that. Tell us about retention.
(Major General Leakey) Can I deal with the second
part of your question first. The retention once people have left
the ATRA, it is not my responsibility, and I am not fully cited
on everything. In a general sense I know what is going on.
108. Okay. Concentrate on ATRA.
(Major General Leakey) Just to say, we do touch on
some of the retention measures that are going on in the Field
Army because we have a role in it. One of the big retention measures
is to give people bonuses for staying in the Army, particularly
targeted at some of the high tech, rare breed people who are difficult
to replace if they leave and we have invested a lot of training
in them. We have been running some retention bonuses for some
time. What we are doing now—and this is where ATRA comes
in—we are retargeting those, in fact it has just been approved
by the Armed Forces Pay Review Body and the Minister that we should
run a scheme for re-enlistment bonuses again, targeted very specifically
at some of the high investment, high quality trades in which we
are in short supply, what some people call the pinch points. I
think the figure for next year is 330 at a cost of £3 million
which is being invested into this. This is to attract people to
come back in with a bonus or incentive of £6,000 before tax
with an obligation to serve for—I may have my facts wrong—either
three or five years, I think it is three years but I may need
correction on that. That has just been announced and cleared by
Ministers so that is one thing that is coming in. Of course where
the ATRA has an involvement in this is that of course very often
when people want to come back into the Army their first point
of contact is back with the recruiting officers so we have an
engagement with that. The measures we are taking inside the ATRA,
ie whilst people are in the training pipeline to get through—I
think I have touched on some of them before—the nurturing
which has made a big difference, we know that, that is measurable
and we are seeing it in the surveys, that comes from the induction
courses that we run for the Phase 1 training and we know that
because that has been remarked on. The NCOs themselves—we
go and talk to a group of them—they comment very highly
on that, it is an extremely useful course. The measure that we
have taken, and it has not been well implemented and I am just
having it redone now, is induction courses for the instructors
in the Phase 2 establishments. The standard of what we do there
is inconsistent across the piece and I have just run a review
of what people are actually doing. It is not consistent in my
view and in some cases is inadequate, and I am putting that right
now. That is a measure which we are taking to improve I hope the
nurturing and therefore increase the retention—let us be
positive—in the Phase 2. The other thing that we are doing—and
again something I mentioned earlier—is that we are making
as much of our training as possible related to civilian qualifications,
civilian accreditation. Now it is a double edged weapon. If you
give people civilian qualifications or accreditations then, of
course, that can be an incentive to their leaving but we have
found that it has had actually a positive effect. People feel
it is both a recruiting incentive for people to come in, they
see they are getting a qualification which has some meaning in
civil society, it gets them over that fear factor of recruiting
that when they join the Army they will be trained for something
which has completely non transferrable skills outside but it is
part of this accreditation and vocational training, it is through
life, it is not just in the ATRA. We start it in the ATRA and
to avoid it becoming a double edged weapon we are constantly putting
vocational incentives on so that at each further stage of training
the longer some of it stays in then the higher grade of NVQ or
HND or degree qualification they get during the progression of
their career. That is an incentive to retention starting in the
ATRA and continuing through life. The other thing which we are
doing is we are much more amenable to what I would describe as
back squadding. What was happening before was if a chap was going
through courses and he was failing modules because he was not
up to it he was leaving. We are saying now "Let us give the
guy another chance. It is expensive because we are constantly
churning these people round inside the organisation so it is expensive
having to pay them. It is taking longer to get this chap through
the training but at least we are not having to recruit him again."
We are more willing to back squad people and give people a second
and third attempt to get through the module of the course or if
they are not technically up to it we do what we call cascading
down to another less demanding career employment group, so that
is another measure we are taking and that has paid dividends too.
I think the point I made earlier was that we are spending much
more time and effort in rehabilitating people physically before
discharging them which is what we used to do much more before.
If a chap had an injury which was going to take more than a few
weeks of rest or recuperation he was discharged and re-enlisted
again later once he has got himself fixed but we are taking a
more pro-active approach "Right let us get the chap fixed
inside the ATRA". It is costing us money, it is taking us
time but I think it is an efficient way of doing it because if
a chap says "Right well I want to go through this rehabilitation
programme" his motivation is increasing and he or she becomes
a better soldier. We do have some guidelines on this, we try not
to keep people in rehab for too long because it is simply not
cost effective but I have to say there are some commanding officers
out there who are breaking the rules because there are some really
highly motivated people who are going to make brilliant soldiers
and it is worth investing six months of rehabilitation in getting
them back on the road.
109. Very kind of you. You and your colleague
should take credit for all of them and also because the statistics
are going in the right direction. Just so I can understand it,
are you concerned by the fact that there is a current 15% wastage
rate at Phase 1 for standard adult entry and 18% for the apprentice
entry? Does that concern you?
(Major General Leakey) Yes.
110. What is the next stage then if you are
concerned about it?
(Major General Leakey) It is rather like any flaw
you have got in the system we are never going to make it perfect
because one has to go back to look at the reasons why people waste
out. It is not just because our nurturing or our ability is not
good enough at retaining them, sometimes they waste out because
they come in with an undeclared medical defect, they did not declare
it to us. You are never going to get rid of some of that. Some
people come in and we then find that they have a criminal record
which bars them from service in the Army. So there are people
who have been ineligible to join, who have got through the filter.
Now you could say, quite rightly, we ought to be doing better
at the recruiting office end, but there are only so many checks
and you have to trust people's honesty, headmaster's report writing,
the efficiency of police records and so on, and with 14,000 people
there are going to be a few who slip through that and there will
be a percentage of those who will be unavoidable wasters. You
drew the distinction between the standard entry and the Army Technical
Foundation College. These guys in the Army Technical Foundation
College are young, they are 16 year olds and so they are more
fragile. You know a 16 year old is less mature, he is going to
be more sensitive to being away, homesickness is something that
is going to probably be more prevalent with him than it might
be with an older more mature person.
111. What I am trying to get you to say—perhaps
you are not going to say it, but I am going to try one more time—is
simply this: You are the boss of this outfit, you can set any
damn target you like. I am just asking you if you have sent out
an edict or are you going to send out an edict at some point to
say to your underlings: "These figures are far too high,
I want them down by 5% next year." Are you doing that?
(Major General Leakey) I am sending out edicts and
they are under instructions and orders. I do want the targets
down, I want the output up and I put it that way to them. It is
mission command down there. What I cannot do is give them a quota,
because if I give them a quota then I will get my numbers and
not the quality. When I go to my customer, I go to the commander
in chief, and my operating divisional commanders have the COs
come and visit the training arrangements and we get the customer
feedback. The commander in chief and the commanding officers from
the units who are receiving these trainees out of the ATRA are
saying two things to us: One, "On quality we recognise the
constraints of the time and the resources which we, the Army,
allow you to have these people in training, and we recognise the
diversity of backgrounds they come from and, given all those constraints,
we are content with the quality that you are producing. We would
like it to be more polished, we would like them to have better
training, more thorough training and so on, but we do not want
them to spend any longer in the ATRA because there comes a motivation
point where they want to get out in the Field Army and the Field
Army want to have them." So in terms of quality they are,
by and large, content. Where they are not content—and this
is their second point—is with quantity, they want more of
them, but what they say is: "Do not send us passengers."
Mr Crausby
112. Can you tell us something about relations
with your customers, I mean not necessarily the Field Army but
obviously the other services that you mentioned earlier? How do
you interact with them and at what levels and at what frequency
do you discuss their requirements?
(Major General Leakey) The owner's board which sets
the overall targets and the generality meets in September every
year—I think that is in my report—and that sets the,
if you like, overarching requirement. Our main customer is Land,
I guess 90% of our output goes into the Field Army and the majority
of our dialogue is with Land, with our customer. The Land individual
training board probably meets I guess about every month and sometimes
more often if there is a requirement to do so. It has subsidiary
committees off that which meet as required. I can remember a time
earlier this year they met about three times in a fortnight, so
it is on an as required basis with my headquarters to set the
overall requirement. Further down the organisation the individual
schools are talking on constant dialogue with the special to armoured
advisers in Land headquarters. Let me give you an example just
to illustrate this: At the Bovington Army Centre it is co-located
direct to the Royal Army Corps. Direct to the Royal Army Corps
is the Land special to armoured adviser on armoured matters, and
so every time there is a new bit of equipment coming in, a new
technique coming in or a new requirement from the Field Army,
there is a constant dialogue of setting or resetting training
objectives and readjusting our courses. That goes on on a daily
basis, so we are in constant dialogue at the lower level.
113. In the past there have been some complaints,
for example, about continuation training and the extent of it
and the lack of continuation training has been demotivating and
has really led to the problems with retention. Now that ATRA is
an agency does it have an avenue to express dissatisfaction with
the Field Army, for example, about continuation training and do
you get any feedback from recruits about that as opposed to the
Land Army?
(Major General Leakey) Do you mean continuous once
they have—
114. Yes.
(Major General Leakey) Once they have left they do
not get the continuity training in the Field Army.
115. Do you get feedback?
(Major General Leakey) Not really, no. What goes on
out in the Field Army is out of my—
116. That is the end of it really. What they
are doing in the Field Army is their business?
(Major General Leakey) What we do is the Phase 3 career
development training, so people are constantly coming back through
their careers into the ATRA to do upgrading technicians' courses
and instructors' courses. In every corps throughout the Army they
are coming back to do those career development courses. Now if
there is any dissatisfaction then that is because their commanding
officers do not recommend them for those courses and do not think
they are up to doing them, or they have failed the quality test
to come in and do those courses, but that is a matter for the
selection at the time.
117. Some training is done only in units, is
it not?
(Major General Leakey) Yes.
118. How do you decide? Your light support weapon,
for instance, is done in units. How do you resolve with the Army
over what types of specific training you should be responsible
for and what they should be responsible for?
(Major General Leakey) The light support weapon is
taught inside the ATRA. Every infantryman who goes through Catterick
is taught the light support weapon.
119. The team aspects of it would be done in
units?
(Major General Leakey) Which aspects would be done,
top-up training I guess. The principle is what we train people
for, if they are going through Phase 1 and Phase 2 training in
the ATRA, so that they can take their place in the unit for their
first tour. So, for example, for an infantryman he must be able
to operate as a rifleman in a platoon and he would be able to
operate the light support weapon because that is something he
may be required to do on his first tour. He would be required
to fire a grenade at the light anti-tank weapon, for example,
so he would be trained in all those things. He would not be trained
in the 81 millimetre mortar or the GPMG and the SF probably because
the general purpose of a machine gun is to sustain fire off. He
would not be trained in those because those are all specialist
things and he would come back into the ATRA at a later stage for
retraining once he has had experience. The question you really
asked there is which bits of training are and should be done inside
the ATRA and which bits are and should be distributed, and this
is one of the subjects which is under constant dialogue between
Land and ourselves. It is a question of where it is most effectively
and efficiently delivered. For example, let me take the Armoured
Corps—
Chairman: Sorry, could we move on, please.
13 Ev 34. Back
|
