Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260
- 279)
WEDNESDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2002
COLONEL MICHAEL
J E TAYLOR CBE TD DL, COLONEL
SIR DAVID
A TRIPPIER RD JP DL AND
COLONEL J RICHARD
G PUTNAM CBE TD DL
260. What they are training them for is now
in some sort of manual, is it, so every regional brigadier will
know what the capability is expected to be?
(Colonel Taylor) To say they are in manuals is premature.
This is very much work in progress, and bear in mind this is not
our responsibility; we can only observe what is going on in the
chain of command.
Patrick Mercer
261. Yes. I do appreciate that we are asking
questions of you unfairly because you are the executives not the
designers of this—
(Colonel Taylor) We are not even the executives. That
is the regional brigades.
262. Perhaps you are the informed observers?
(Colonel Taylor) That is better, yes.
(Colonel Sir David Trippier) We are informed supporters.
(Colonel Putnam) The theme of your question is right
because, if you look at what it means, we are talking about something
that happens very quickly and we have to react to it very quickly.
Some of these people are being asked to be available for service
within 6-12 hours of the event—God forbid—whatever
it may be. These people are not like the regular soldier. They
have to disengage themselves from civilian occupation and their
families, who are not living in barrack blocks as are the regular
services, and their third job is their Territorial Army career,
or Royal Auxiliary Airforce, or RNR. That to me is a hugely complex
decision for someone to make in a hurry, so what the CCRFs are
having to do is say, "How are we going to get hold of these
people?" The only equipment we have is in the form of a duty
officer within the CCRF organisation with a mobile phone and a
list of phone numbers to pre identify those who might be able
to come in very quickly. Now, that is a very thin way of organising
a call-up but that is what will, in fact, happen.
Mr Hancock: But surely that begs the
question, is the—
Chairman: I am sorry, but we have to
be disciplined. We have a lot of questions to get through.
Patrick Mercer
263. Gentlemen, you are unpaid non executive
directors of this organisation, are you not?
(Colonel Taylor) That is exactly the right assessment.
264. "Unpaid" being the principal
point?
(Colonel Taylor) Very much so!
265. I understand that the whole reserve organisation
is now swept up in this and, at the risk of leaping on a hobby
horse, as soon as September 11 occurred in America, the Air Guard,
the National Guard—all of which are organisations which
I recognise we do not have—were instantly on the problem.
Fourteen months later, despite the stream of intelligence coming
at us, we are still working on this. What is the delay?
(Colonel Taylor) I think we need to go back a fraction,
if you will forgive me. To make the reference to what is the situation
in the States with the National Guard is an important reference
point but it is a totally different concept. In the States the
National Guard is a rite of passage for most youngsters. Every
town of any size has one of their drill halls—it is normal
for people to serve there. It is part of the lifestyle of the
States to have the National Guard available. Anybody who has been
in the States recently knows it is the National Guard providing
the security at the airports. They are part of the fabric of life
and society in the States and it is resourced accordingly in a
way that has never been the case in this country. You cannot compare
our 40,000, or whatever, and the National Guard in the States.
266. I am not trying to—
(Colonel Taylor) No, but it is only their speed of
response. They are there.
267. But we have a problem that we have not
experienced in this country probably since Napoleonic times when
the reaction of the reserves, the militia, the special reserves,
the defensibles and all the rest, was splendid. Here we are, I
say again, 14 months after this cataclysm; we are getting daily
warnings; and yet our reserves are still trying to grind into
action. Why?
(Colonel Taylor) With respect you have it the wrong
way round. The reserves are ready. Who were the first people at
Lockerbie? Who were there for foot and mouth? Who were there for
the floods? It was the Territorial Army and reservists. They are
willing and ready. It is the infrastructure that is only now being
put in place and it is being put into place, but it really has
to be looked at in that context.
268. It is taking a mighty long time.
(Colonel Taylor) I do not think I want to say anything
about that.
Mr Hancock
269. Taking you back to the problems you were
exposing us to, the individual who is going to be called out will
have to come to terms within the timescale needed for that person
to get their house in order to be able to go off for a period
of time which is not really determinable. Is the 36 hours for
the callout quick enough to respond properly to a civil emergency
in your opinion?
(Colonel Putnam) It depends on what the circumstances
are. You will always get a small pool who will come in very, very
quickly because they are "military maniacs", which is
why they are in the reserve forces in the first place, and they
are very enthusiastic, which is what makes up the Territorial
Army in particular. The best numbers that you need will take a
longer period of time but going back to the previous question
we have to come up with a structure which makes it easier for
people to slip in and out of full time service. The bureaucracy
surrounding a transfer from a territorial to full time for six
months is very onerous and it is an education problem. People
now need to understand that post 1989 and the Cold War the army
will be made up more and more of a smaller, full time army and
reserves, and it is this interchange of reserve into full time
service which we have to make simpler to do. Whether we have enough
is a big question that it is not for us to answer but post September
11 last year has already seen some significant enhancements.
(Colonel Sir David Trippier) Mr Hancock, I think you
are on to a very good point because the call-up time you are referring
to is difficult enough for regulars, let alone reserves. Firstly,
what we have to do is oil the wheels to make it work better. Secondly,
it has to be officially dealt with, and I made the point earlier
that it would require the 120% support of a tremendous number
of employers to support that, and that is a very significant role
for us to perform at a regional level because we are equipped
to do it, and I did say earlier that we did deliver that form
of employer support at that level. I also made the point that
it may well require another look at the Act RFA 1996, which we
all welcomed and it was welcomed across parties in this House,
but we may have to look at that again—the speed of reaction.
270. That is what I was going to come on to.
I think we in this House have a responsibility to make it easier
for the individuals concerned who want to do their part for the
country to do that, and it would be interesting if you could help
us by saying what you think Parliament needs to do to require
employers to give that time in a more generous and more speedy
way than at present. I know from my own experience seeing how
difficult it was when people wanted to go to Bosnia, for example,
and found employers putting real obstacles in the way—"The
whole firm depends on you not going, so please don't put your
name forward and don't try and be there"—and it was
shameful, some employers' attitude to some of their staff who
wanted to do their duty for the country.
(Colonel Sir David Trippier) Can I give you three
ideas that perhaps the Committee might consider embracing? First
of all, what you have is the complete support, as we understand
it, from the Secretary of State for Defence. What is not understood
across government as a whole is the kind of support that is required
from these employers where the encouragement, if you like, is
not coming in as much as it should be from the Department of Trade
& Industry. In the case of the Department of Health, what
we need badly, because of recruitment of medics and we have already
talked a lot about that, is a joint statement from the Secretary
of State for Health as well as we need a statement from the Secretary
of State for Defence, and everybody should be in this together.
It is not wholly and solely the problem of the Ministry of Defence.
We can do more and I think you will probably hear later from Mr
Bridgeman as to what is being done with SaBRE and so on, all of
which is good stuff, but much more will have to be done with New
Chapter—much more—and we will have to galvanise ourselves
into delivering that on the ground. What you should and may not
know is that there has been a timely appointment for all of us
in the region of an employer support executive where we have been
given the money to pay for someone full time within our organisations
whose sole remit is to galvanise and capitalise on that form of
employer support, and we welcome that.
271. That is helpful and I think is news from
our point of view as well. Do you suggest that the timescale,
the 36 hours, could or ought to be shortened in a heightened state
of emergency? If we are to believe what we have been told over
the last few days where there is a real serious threat here, part
of the call-in of these reserves ought to be starting to kick
in?
(Colonel Taylor) Briefly, this is one of the issues
being very actively pursued within the chain of command at the
moment, and I was aware of this at the weekend at the Shrivenham
conference I was at. A lot of work is going to go into place to
identify the willing volunteer, so they know exactly who to call
at very short notice, and I think you will find it will work.
272. But do you see, if that is the plan, that
it could be a deterrent for somebody getting involved that they
will not have the time? We want to encourage people to come forward
for the reserve forces, but what is expected of them and the timescale
when they have to prepare their families and jobs and everything
will be such a tight period of time that they will say, "This
is not for me"?
(Colonel Taylor) There will be some for whom it is
a problem—one cannot deny that.
273. Finally, one of you—I cannot remember
which—made the point that you expected that the units of
500 will be topped up by full time servicemen because you could
not obviously meet the 500 in total from reserve forces. Is that
planned for?
(Colonel Putnam) No, but it is a chain of command
issue and the brigade commander at the time, and many of the brigades
are mixed—they are part full time and part territorial—and
he will have to make a decision depending on circumstances as
to who he deploys depending on who is available.
274. I thought the point of calling you up was
to replace the full time soldiers or service personnel who were
not available, so I am slightly confused. If the government are
suggesting we can have these units of up to 500 fully staffed,
and there is a suggestion they will be topped up by full time
ministry personnel, I am a little confused about how they can
achieve that in some areas?
(Colonel Putnam) Not really. Post SDR the recruitment
processes have changed, because we came out with the Territorial
Army and it was more deployable. So people on enlistment are being
briefed as to what might well be expected of them later in their
Territorial Army career, and that is changing. I think we also
need, as we mentioned earlier on, when RFA 1996 comes up for review
in 2006 we have to start work now on looking at the changes that
we think ought to be made to it.
Mr Cran
275. Could we move on to the so-called war on
terrorism? Mr Mercer asked one or two questions on that but I
want to come at it from a slightly different angle. How do you
feel, given the situation he outlined, the reserves can contribute
towards the fight on the war on terrorism, and has the government
got greater expectations of your ability to deal with it than
you have?
(Colonel Taylor) Firstly on that the CCRFs are intending
to be part of that war. It is meant to be a series of organisations
around the country available to respond to almost any civil contingency,
including acts of terrorism, so the reserves will play a major
part in that war and are going to have to be trained up to deal
with it in terms of nuclear, biological and all the other issues.
Much of that training already occurs, of course, but it is going
to be part of it, so the reserves' contribution to the war on
terrorism will effectively be through the CCRFs.
276. Could you give me more detail on what the
contribution you think you can give is going to be, given what
the United States happens to be beginning to develop?
(Colonel Taylor) Just to go back to the United States
point again, we always have to make the point I made already that
making comparisons is always difficult because of the vastly different
approach to that, but I have to make two points, one of which
I have already made: the CCRFs will be the key vehicle for that
but also it is important to understand that the reserves bring
to the party a whole range of skills, knowledge and expertise
which is much wider than the particular role they are fulfilling
or expected to fulfil within the reserves. For example, when it
came to foot and mouth—and I know it is not the war on terrorism
but it is the nearest parallel I can offer you at the moment—it
was the fact that there was a Royal Engineer Territorial Army
Half Colonel who happened to be an urban planner very familiar
with issues of disposal of waste who was brought in purely as
a Territorial Army guy who manned up that headquarters for the
regional brigadier.
277. But is that not rather a haphazard—?
(Colonel Taylor) It was purely haphazard but that
is the point about the reserves. That haphazard bonus is there
all of the time. You only have to talk to the people who have
seen the reserves in Kosovo, Bosnia or wherever to understand
that they bring a whole range of skills over and above the tasks
they are recruited to do. It is a part of being in the reserves.
We bring all of those skills into play.
278. So there is no difference between the expectation
on the one hand of what it is the government expects from you
and your ability to deliver?
(Colonel Sir David Trippier) I think the point to
make is that the brigade commander is in a strong position to
know what strengths he has under his command at the moment. He
is well aware because he commands, certainly from the army's point
of view, a number of disciplines which Mike Taylor has just referred
to, and we saw that he easily mobilised, if you like, during foot
and mouth—which again we do not necessarily compare to anything
like a terrorist attack but it worked. Not only did it work but
it worked speedily, and there were hardly any complaints from
employers—which is interesting, and those that there were
were dealt with in a diplomatic way and so on. So I think the
range of skills which the reserve forces can bring to the party
outweighs those that the regular forces can bring because it is
a massive canvass.
279. Just so I understand this completely, would
the level of expertise, ability to deliver and so on be fairly
equal throughout the regions of the UK?
(Colonel Sir David Trippier) I would say so, yes.
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