Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
26 MAY 2004
LIEUTENANT GENERAL
ANTHONY PALMER,
REAR ADMIRAL
SIMON GOODALL,
COLONEL DAVID
ECCLES AND
MR JULIAN
MILLER
Q20 Mr Jones: That is not the question
I asked you.
Colonel Eccles: I am sorry.
Q21 Mr Jones: He is actually making a
quite specific point that in his opinion the ATRA does not have
a coherent supervision policy which can be costed and measured.
General Palmer: I think there
is some truth in that comment. There was a whole plethora of regulations
and Haes lays them all out in Annex E. They run to two pages of
issues which need to be dealt with running from alcohol abuse,
drug abuse, representing soldiers in court, the whole range of
welfare issues. It is probably true that it was difficult to wrap
them all up into a very coherent policy, but that is not to say
that those policies did not exist and that people were not aware
of what the rules and regulations were. I accept that it might
be more coherent.
Q22 Mr Jones: Surely if you have not
costed it and measured it, so there is no way of measuring it,
you may have individual policies—and I accept that the colonel
has given an example on suicides where something was implemented—but
the fact of the matter is that we are then relying on commanding
officers and other people who are dealing with recruits to have
a broader overview of all these issues. It is quite clear from
what he is saying that there is no overall cohesive report, like,
for example, you would have in some other organisations such as
children's homes, prisons, young offenders' institutes where they
have quite clear, laid-down policies covering the entire aspect
of supervision which people know.
General Palmer: He lays them all
out and there is a whole raft of regulations which we do expect
our commanding officers, who carry responsibility for their individual
training organisations, to know and understand.
Q23 Mr Jones: Do we now have a coherent
and costed and measured—
General Palmer: The Haes report
was as much related to instructor welfare as it was to recruit
welfare. What it was basically trying to do was to provide an
objective, evidence-based summary of the sort of working hours
that would constitute an acceptable level of work. It was done
in order to make a case for extra resources in the training organisation,
to say we believe it is fair for a captain in this organisation
to work so many hours. It is different across each organisation:
the infantry is different from the armoured corps and the engineers,
as I am sure you appreciate. Therefore we are trying to produce
an objective summary of how many instructors we need, based on
the amount of training that they are doing. As Haes himself said,
this was a first step. We then had to analyse the figures he came
up with and some of them actually looked quite quaint in terms
of how many he thought were needed. Off the top of my head, Sandhurst
was one where he thought an enormous extra number of staff were
required, when actually all the cadets there come from university
and were quite used to looking after themselves. There is a lot
more work to be done to make the incontrovertible case that we
needed to define what the supervisory care regime was going to
be in terms of the number of hours we expected people to work
in the various areas, in the area of training recruits and in
the area of supervising recruits. Frankly, it is true to say that
the training organisation and the people within it were working
all hours to try to produce the proper standard of care and we
got the supervisory ratios wrong. My concern was with the instructors
and how they were struggling to cope with the consequences of
people being returned to the Field Army.
Q24 Mr Jones: Do you not see how important
it is, if you are going to have confidence, not just for families
who have people going in as recruits, but also for the trainers
and people who work in the industry of training itself, to have
a duty of care policy which is comprehensive? Surely that is something
which is vital when you are dealing with young people? Do we have
that, yes or no, yet? We have not. Is it not a fact that in five
years' time we shall see this is just another report, though some
things have been taken on board, I accept what the Colonel is
saying, and the overall holistic actions to get things right will
not have been put in place?
General Palmer: I think we have
now gone an awful long way to producing that coherent level of
support for our people, both the recruits and the instructors.
In your visits presumably you will talk to them about whether
they feel they are being overworked, whether they feel we have
paid adequate attention to the ratios of staff to recruit. After
all, one of the major recommendations of DOC was that we should,
quite rightly, put more people back into the supervisory roles
and that is what we have done. We have taken people now from the
Field Army and we have put them into the training organisation.
We went too far in that direction; I have absolutely no doubt
about that. We have taken steps to correct it.
Q25 Chairman: We have taken 40 minutes
over the first question, which means you should not plan to do
anything before midnight unless we can speed up.
General Palmer: We work 24 hours
a day as you do, Chairman.
Q26 Mr Hancock: I have to say to you,
Admiral, that I was a little surprised to see that you, living
in Southsea, were not a Pompey supporter and I should have thought
that to confess to being a Stoke supporter in a city like Portsmouth
was extremely dangerous, not only in Portsmouth but in the Navy
generally. May I draw your attention to what we were told by the
Minister this week about the Adult Learning Inspectorate and the
role they are going to play? Could we hear from the four of you,
possibly starting with you on this occasion, Mr Miller, about
the appropriateness of that being the organisation we are going
to look to for the right sort of advice for the future?
Mr Miller: The admiral can give
you more detail, because he has been intimately connected with
the development of this relationship with the ALI, but from my
perspective what they provide is a clearly external organisation,
an external organisation which can come in with the relevant expertise
and look at how, across the board, the training organisations
in the MoD are doing their business and that we know they have
the ability not only to look at the skill with which the training
itself is conducted, but at the way the duty of care—to
use the generic phrase—is applied and to look at the supporting
arrangements which are in place for the trainees. We know that
the ALI have an established record, although they are quite a
young organisation, of looking across a wide range of training
activities and doing so effectively and objectively and they have
the added attraction of being able to bring in people with specific
expertise so that they can create teams which are well adapted
to the particular institutions they are investigating. When we
were looking at the options for providing a degree of external
involvement, they commended themselves as being an especially
well adapted organisation.
Q27 Mr Hancock: So you were confident
that they had the sort of experience base to be able to deal with
this issue.
Mr Miller: We were confident that
they were an organisation which was experienced in itself, but
also had an established pattern of bringing in additional expertise
to strengthen their teams when they needed to.
Rear Admiral Goodall: I would
just point out that the system we have in place to monitor our
training is a well tried and tested system. We use a system called
the systems approach to training which we have just translated
into a defence systems approach to training (DSAT). This relies
on a customer/supplier relationship, the trainer providing the
customer with what he requires to give operational capability.
The Committee suspended from 3.59 pm to 4.11
pm for a division in the House
That process, the defence systems approach to
training, is a fundamental underpinning to our training organisation
and indeed has been awarded a BSI standard as best practice.
Q28 Mr Hancock: Was that a very old training
system?
Rear Admiral Goodall: In creating
the DSAT, the defence systems approach, we revamped it in the
last year and it was awarded a BSI standard within the last year.
The key point is that that is a process driven system. It determines
what we should train, how we should train it and to whom we should
deliver that training. What it does not do is look at the whole
environment of the learning experience. I determined, in my role
as DGT&E that we needed to add that capability to our process-driven
system. To that end we looked at the ALI, which administers the
common inspection framework and is mandated to look at post-19
training on a national scale. The common inspection framework
is a structured way of looking at the whole learning experience
and there are essentially seven questions to it. The key and fundamental
point is that it looks at the learner experience, the support
the learner is given, the whole area we are looking into today
which is duty of care; it can look at that whole learning environment.
In putting our well-developed process, the DSAT, together with
a common inspection framework, we have an all-round look at the
training experience. The second and most important point is that
in bringing the ALI in to do that, they are independent, they
provide us with the opportunity to benchmark our capabilities
on a national scale and they bring with them experience across
a very broad area of training and education.
Q29 Mr Hancock: They have been working
with all three services now for well over a year, have they not?
I am interested to know whether or not what the minister was telling
the House of Commons on Monday, in respect of the issues raised
by the Surrey Police report, goes beyond what they are already
committed to doing. What is the new, added element of their involvement
with you?
Rear Admiral Goodall: Yes, the
ALI have been involved to some degree with the services to date,
because they are mandated to look at any area which draws down
LSC funding. In those areas where the service draws down LSC funding
today, the ALI are mandated to inspect that to make sure that
value for money is given for that drawdown. That is the involvement
today. We intended to enlarge the involvement so that they looked
at all our training on a selected basis and that was where we
were progressing. What we have identified is that they have capability
to focus specifically on the duty of care issues, have done similar
reviews in the past in other organisations and can act as an independent
authority on a specific functional area.
Q30 Mr Hancock: But you are different,
are you not, to other organisations, because your recruits are
with you 24 hours a day? They are not being trained 24 hours a
day, but they are subject to your supervision 24 hours a day.
Where is their remit to cover the out-of-training-hours' supervision
and elements of the delivery of training? Living together is part
of the training, is it not, how young men and women get used to
the idea of living as a unit rather than as an individual? That
is part of the problem, is it not? The Surrey Police report and
other reports have suggested that is where the breakdown starts
to emerge and the pressures start.
Rear Admiral Goodall: Yes. There
are two things there and referring back to the general's comments
earlier about supervision. As part of the DOC report implementation
we have had a very strong look at the supervision ratios. We have
divided the day into three areas, the training day, the out-of-hours
and the silent hours, to determine how best to apply supervision
in those periods and indeed the way you apply supervision will
vary from establishment to establishment and is as much to do
with the function of the geography of the establishment, the way
the dormitories are arranged in the silent hours and the quality
of the recruits and their age and their situation and their training
issues. We have done a lot of work to determine how we apply the
supervisory ratio sensibly and we have not yet scoped the actual
terms of reference for the ALI involvement. I have no doubt that
in scoping those terms of reference, they will be looking at a
24/7 operation to determine what does go on in the silent hours
because that is all part of the duty of care and the learner's
experience.
Q31 Mr Hancock: Will part of their remit
be looking at the way you train the trainers?
Rear Admiral Goodall: There is
no reason why we cannot include that in their overview. Certainly
the training the trainer area is an area of significant effort
in the post-DOC environment. Certainly a lot of the training we
are now conducting includes duty of care and mentoring and coaching
skills. To go back to the general's comment, a fundamental point
was that we used instructors in our organisations who are high
calibre non-commissioned officers, but they needed extra help
in their training to ensure that they spotted people with duty
of care problems. We believe we have put that in place and I have
no reason to say that the ALI should not be free to have a look
at that because that is all part of the learner experience.
Q32 Mr Hancock: Absolutely. I hope, General,
that you would encourage them to do that on behalf of this Committee,
because I think it is very, very fundamental in getting the ethos
of the training camp brought into a more modern era.
General Palmer: If it would help,
I am very happy to make sure that you see the terms of reference
that we give to the ALI in the memorandum of understanding (MOU)
which we are shortly going to write and we can make sure they
go and visit the instructor training school. I am very happy to
do that[3]
Chairman: The Committee visited Halton
two weeks ago, saw part of the training the trainers' scheme.
I have signed up for the two-day July course. Maybe it will encourage
me to spot any signs of weakness in my Committee or to improve
my chairmanship skills. I thought it would be a very good idea
to see how the process operated.
Q33 Mr Hancock: You should have the extended
course. May I take you back to the specific task of the Adult
Learning Inspectorate and the ability of the recruit, maybe even
the trainer, to have access to them during the time they are investigating
it. The minister made it quite clear that he felt that the Armed
Forces Ombudsman was a step too far. I should be interested to
know what your objections are in principle to that idea of the
Armed Forces Ombudsman. Firstly, what role will the ALI have in
giving access and being available to recruits and trainers who
want to make specific points to them in a confidential way? Also,
more importantly, are you seeking out those young men and women
who have left the Armed Forces after initial training because
of something which happened to them during that training period
to give evidence to them? I know that is not going to be easy
to achieve, but it is one of the criticisms about the lessons
not being learned, that we did not pay enough attention to the
reasons why people left the military very soon after the initial
training period or during it. It appears that no real follow-up
has ever been undertaken to speak to them six months after they
left.
General Palmer: On the first point,
absolutely, we can make sure the ALI inspectors have access to
individuals at any stage and anybody in the training organisation
who wants to come forward.
Q34 Mr Hancock: They may have access,
but I want to be sure that individuals will have access to them
without having to go through the chain of command and be vetted
before they can see them.
General Palmer: We can do that.
Probably the ALI will insist on it anyway, but if they do not,
we will make sure that can happen.
Q35 Mr Hancock: Will you send us a note
about how that is going to be organised?
General Palmer: I will send you
a note of the MOU that we draw up with the ALI, so you will have
an opportunity to see it and if you have a comment on it, I shall
be very happy to discuss it to make sure that the inspection regime
which the ALI will carry out in the training organisation is as
you would wish it[4]On
the issue of people who have left, it is much more difficult,
because a lot of them do not want to be found and it is quite
difficult. We will have a look to see whether or not we can contact
them. I know you have had a website, I know this has been given
some publicity, but in the real world, it is unlikely that a lot
of the people we may want will see that they can give evidence
to the Committee on this subject. We will see whether we can track
some of them down. I do not want to sit here and say we can do
that, because it is going to present quite a lot of problems.
Q36 Mr Hancock: Objections to the ombudsman?
General Palmer: I think we should
like to see how the ALI goes. We have, quite understandably, quite
a plethora of people who are currently inspecting and looking
at the training establishments. There are five different organisations,
including all the MPs I wrote to on behalf of the minister who
signed the Early Day Motion. Those visits are still going on.
Disappointingly we have only had seven so far, but they have all
had a positive experience.
Q37 Mr Hancock: I must say that I was
one of them and I have not been written to.
General Palmer: I am very surprised.
I am very sorry and I shall certainly check on that.
Q38 Mr Hancock: I will check, because
when the minister said that I was rather surprised and I have
spoken to other colleagues who signed it and have not been written
to[5]
General Palmer: I do apologise
if that is the case. We shall certainly follow that up. We want
as many people as possible to visit the training organisation
and see it. We have them, we have you, we also have the DOC follow-up,
we have the ALI and we have our own central organisation. I do
not think there is going to be any shortage of independent
organisations that are going to visit the training organisation.
I am not very keen at the moment to introduce yet another one.
Q39 Mr Viggers: To recapitulate, what
major changes have been made to the care regime over the last
few years and what further changes to the care regime are still
to be implemented?
General Palmer: May I make a brief
statement and then hand over to David? One very fundamental point
I really do want to make is that from the moment somebody walks
into an Armed Forces Careers Office, and I know you are going
to visit one, an attempt is made to make sure that they understand
exactly the nature of the commitment they are making. Very often
they come with their parents and our recruiters specifically encourage
the parents to come with them so there is no doubt that they understand
they are not going to an organisation which is like school, but
they are going to go to a robust organisation where they will
be put under pressure and that they have to understand that when
they sign up for this, they are themselves making a commitment
to us as well as we making a commitment to them, which I shall
ask David to talk about. They are given videos, they are given
visits if they want. This is before they have even joined up.
When they go to the recruit selection centre, again they are given
access to recruits who are already in the process, in the evening,
with no instructors present, so they can actually ask them what
the hell it is like. We now have a training team in the recruit
selection centre and have had for three or four years, so they
are given an example of a lesson. I would not begin to pretend
that is anything more than a fairly rudimentary attempt to say
"Look. If you don't like this, if you don't like the way
the organisation runs, please, nobody will think any the worse
of you if you walk away now. But if you do take on this commitment,
this is roughly what it is going to be like". There is a
certain responsibility on the individual and, if they are under
18, their parents. We really do try to stress this point to make
sure that people who start training do understand and subsequently,
during training, that if they are unhappy, we are running a voluntary
organisation and they can leave. There are various rules and regulations,
but in my experience no individual who is really unhappy is forced
to stay in the training organisation, because it is no good for
them, it is no good for us and it upsets some of the people who
want to stay. The welfare starts right from the beginning and
well before they even enter the recruit selection process. There
are statistics which I can give you which show how many people
who look to see whether they want a career in the Armed Forces
actually do not take up the offer because they have decided, quite
understandably, that it is not something for them.
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