Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
26 MAY 2004
LIEUTENANT GENERAL
ANTHONY PALMER,
REAR ADMIRAL
SIMON GOODALL,
COLONEL DAVID
ECCLES AND
MR JULIAN
MILLER
Q40 Mr Viggers: My question was about
changes. Do I assume that what you have just described is a change
from the previous situation?
General Palmer: It depends how
far you want to go back. The changes to the recruit selection
centre happened about three years ago. This is evolving. We are
continually looking to see how we can improve the training organisation
and one way we have been very keen to improve it is to make sure
that people who join it have a very fair expectation of passing
through it. David can tell you about the changes specifically.
Colonel Eccles: I shall briefly
enumerate some of them, if I may, rather than listing them exhaustively,
as we touched on a number of them already. First of all the single
most important element is the ability of the military staff to
improve not just the pastoral care and support of trainees when
they are out of the training environment, as we have heard, but
also that has a direct effect on the quality of their training.
Our first-time pass rates have gone up because they have people
there to mentor them and help them with their work and so on.
That is the single most important thing. The second is something
which we have called the ATRA code. I have an example of it here.
There are two sides, the contract between the organisation and
the individual and the CO of the organisation promises on a card,
which both of them sign, that he will train them to be a professional
soldier, in an inspiring, challenging, exciting and enthusiastic
manner, treat them as an individual, honestly and fairly and so
on.
Q41 Mr Viggers: When does that date from?
Colonel Eccles: That has been
in place for 12 months now. In contrast, the recruit says that
he will work hard, enjoy himself, try his best to be committed
to becoming a professional soldier. There are several other items
on either side. That is the ATRA code. The third thing I would
highlight is the recruit trainee survey. A number of institutions
and organisations within the training organisations across all
three services have had exit questionnaires from the training
establishment. We have now pulled these together and in the Army
we have had one going now for a year, a common one across all
Army training establishments and in November of this year we are
going to let a contract to an organisation which will deliver
one for all three services' training establishments. So we are
harmonising that.
Q42 Mr Roy: You said that they do an
exit survey. Who does that and where is it done?
Colonel Eccles: It is administered
by the training staff, but we have a contractor, a professional
organisation which runs these polls, which takes the reports,
synthesises the results and passes them back to us.
Q43 Mr Roy: The question is: where is
it done, who does it and how is it done? Is it an officer standing
beside a recruit and telling him to fill in the survey? Is it
sent to their home?
Colonel Eccles: At the conclusion
of the training, if an individual is leaving part way through,
for whatever reason, he fills it in before he leaves. If a course
has finished, they all fill it in together in a room like we are
in now.
Q44 Mr Roy: So it is not sent to their
home, to a neutral place. That would suggest it is a survey which
could be done in front of a commanding officer.
Colonel Eccles: It is not done
in front of the commanding officer. It is organised. We ask them
to fill it in. They do not have to fill it in.
Q45 Mr Roy: Are the surveys numbered?
Colonel Eccles: No, they are not
numbered, they are anonymous. There are some quality controls
to ensure that data is valid. That is the third area. The fourth
area I should like to highlight is in the improvements to the
infrastructure which we have made and we should like to go further
of course. There are several institutions which have put in both
non-public and public money to improve the recreational areas
for recruits. The Council for Voluntary Welfare Workers for example,
a number of Christian based organisations such as the Sandys Homes,
the Church Army, produce quiet areas, non-alcoholic areas where
youngsters can go to relax, watch television, play pool and so
on. Those have improved over the last few years as well. Finally,
the last point I would make is the additional staff we have had,
for example additional WRVS ladies who have been posted to our
training establishments, who are there as the mother figure to
whom young recruits can go if they have concerns and worries which
they do not feel they can take up with their immediate chain of
command.
Q46 Mr Viggers: And further proposed
changes to the care regime?
Colonel Eccles: All of those will
be developed. For example, in the infrastructure we want to do
more and make that better, more sports facilities, additional
staff, more internet cafés. It is building on that which
we have and it is an evolving process.
Q47 Mr Viggers: Would you please arrange
for us to be sent a paper giving further information about the
testing at the end of the training regimes and also, following
the point made by Mr Roy, about the manner in which the tests
are administered?
Colonel Eccles: Indeed[6]
Q48 Chairman: Perhaps for the last three
years, if that is possible, and Army, Air Force and Navy.
Rear Admiral Goodall: There was
a big review of training; the Defence Training Review was conducted
in 1999 and reported in 2001. It made some very key recommendations
strategically about the delivery of training, one of which was
that we lacked a single point of focus in the MoD to spread best
practice. So my post, the post I occupy now, was founded and has
been in being for only 18 months, but it provides that focal point.
The key point about that is that when we have initiatives, new
studies and the DOC is a classic case, we have a single point
of focus to implement the recommendations of those reports on
a tri-service basis. With the DOC report, which made 58 recommendations,
under my authority we created an implementation team, that is
a tri-service team, which seeks best practice in both the implementation
of the report and beyond. The implementation team will now stay
in being, not simply as an implementation team, but as a best
practice working group, to go out and seek best practice. David
mentioned the code of practice for the ATRA. I have in front of
me the code of practice for the NRTA, which was a direct crib
from that because it was good practice; a small but tangible example
of the sort of work we are trying to develop and ensure that we
learn the lessons and where we have good practice it is spread
across the piece and will be enduring under the DGT&E organisation,
an organisation which has only existed for 18 months.
Q49 Mr Viggers: To what extent have you
been constrained by lack of resources?
Rear Admiral Goodall: In respect
of implementing DOC and other recommendations?
Q50 Mr Viggers: If I read to you a quotation,
the Directorate of Operational Capabilities re-appraisal of initial
training notes that as late as July 2003 ". . . resource
constraints . . . continued to dominate the initial training organisation
and affected morale, ethos, motivation and the welfare of both
staff and trainees". That is very, very damning. To what
extent is that continuing to apply?
Rear Admiral Goodall: I would
make two points. The first is that the DOC and indeed all reports
highlight the excellence of the training organisation and the
ability to turn out very good people. The DOC expressed it as
a taut organisation and even DOC uses the word "fragile"
on occasions because resources were taken from the training organisation
and put more to the front line in previous years and we have had
to cope with a tight resource environment. However, resources
are always tight; we always have to make very difficult decisions
about where resources go. What we have put in place is a whole
series of actions, some arising from the DTR and some arising
from DOC, to rationalise our training provision and, for example,
reduce the size of the training estate to make better use of the
resources we have and that work is ongoing. In implementing DOC,
we have gained resources to implement, up to date, 48 of the 58
recommendations. Something like 10 recommendations remain outstanding
which do need more resources, but which will be bid for as part
of the normal resource round. This year £23.25 million were
given to implement some key recommendations out of the DOC and
we are seeking further funding, but the services are going back
to do their sums again to look in the next STP round for funding
to help us implement the remaining 10 recommendations.
Q51 Mr Viggers: Is it possible very briefly
to point to the main heading in those 10, the remaining outstanding
recommendations? Accommodation, for instance?
Rear Admiral Goodall: Yes, they
are basically: recreational facilities, more supervisors for sport,
some more WRVS assistants in supervisory ratios and an ambition
in the Royal Navy to run a pre-acquaint course. That is effectively
what it comes to.
Q52 Mike Gapes: Professor Geoff Chivers,
the Director of the Centre for Hazard and Risk Management has
sent us a memorandum in which he makes the point that management
of change features largely in training programmes and unwillingness
to change is most commonly the biggest barrier to improvements
in risk management. In the context of that, we have also had a
document from the parents of one of the people who died at Deepcut,
Private Geoff Gray where they say "Across regiments and across
the country, service families suffering the pain of bereavement
are experiencing their grief compounded by failure to investigate,
failure to accept responsibility and failure to change".
Would you like to comment on that in the context of how you are
monitoring and evaluating the changes which have been made and
the care system as a whole?
Rear Admiral Goodall: Across the
training environment what we are aiming to do is review those
changes we have made. May I say that actually my belief is that
within that training environment there is not a resistance to
change, indeed many of the recommendations of DOC arose out of
ideas and concepts which were emerging from the training machine
itself and were ideas and issues which the trainers, and those
in charge of training, wished to take forward. What the DOC and
other studies have enabled them to do is profile those initiatives
to move the organisation effectively into the 20-first century,
given that this is a large training organisation which was founded
to support three services which were much bigger in the past than
they are today and is spread across quite a large training estate
with all the problems of communication, infrastructure and so
forth. So there is a big ambition to change and bring it forward
and modernise it and use good practice. In doing that, we have
energised the organisation, with a focal point in the DGTE, to
bring this best practice to bear. As part of my organisation,
I have a monitoring and evaluation unit which has been formed
and which aims to go out and inspect in a third party audit role
what is going on there; ie whether the policies have been implemented,
and how effectively they have been implemented. This is part and
parcel of a regime which the ALI will add to as an outside authority
and indeed the DOC was part of; we actually put the DOC into the
training organisation to see what was happening.
Q53 Mike Gapes: How does that monitoring
and evaluation unit work and how many people are involved? What
do they do?
Rear Admiral Goodall: The monitoring
and evaluation unit comprises six people at the moment and we
are looking to upgun its role into a much more focused inspection
team to take over where DOC leaves off, to go out and be targeted
functionally, to look perhaps at initial training again or look
at care and supervisory factors or even whether all the policies
which DGT&E is writing are being implemented. They will be
targeted on a programme and they will draw from the best practice
working group and see whether they can add to best practice, find
more best practice. In essence they would then make reports which
then come up through the chain of command, through me to
DCDS (Pers) and the PPOs, making recommendations about how we
can both improve, or where we are falling short in actually implementing
the policies.
Q54 Mike Gapes: What indicators are used
in this process to ensure that there is an appropriate level of
care and that it continues to be provided and that we do not again
get a situation where it slips back to below an acceptable level?
Rear Admiral Goodall: As we develop
this work and the team develops fully into an inspection role,
first of all we will identify the performance indicators (PIs)
against which they will monitor the training estate, but we shall
be using things like the responses to questionnaires. We shall
be doing that as part of the work to develop this organisation.
That is where some of the responses from the questionnaires will
be appropriate and the best practice working group will be picking
up trends and themes for us to follow up.
Q55 Mike Gapes: Is there an early warning
system? If something comes up, where it is clear that standards
are slipping back, at what point are you able to intervene? What
would you be able to do?
Rear Admiral Goodall: If an alarm
bell rang, I have direct access through DCDS (Pers) to the principal
personnel officers of each service who are responsible for the
strategic personnel administration of their services. We have
a direct line into the management of the personnel organisation.
Q56 Mr Jones: May I pick up on the point
raised there by one of the families involved at Deepcut about
dealing with relatives after a bereavement? I have had experience,
because I have one constituent whose son died in Bosnia in 1995,
when it comes to the MoD or the Army returning answers to questions
or even replying to letters, of finding it very difficult to get
answers. Has something been put in place to look at the way families
are dealt with? In this case she has been writing now for nearly
five years and in some cases never even gets a reply to letters?
Is this an important part of this overall duty of care system
which goes past a tragic event, whether it be an accident or somebody
who takes their own life?
General Palmer: We are well aware
that some of our dealings with bereaved families in some cases
was not up to scratch and this has come out from Op Telic. We
have done a complete review of the procedures for dealing with
bereaved families. They all have very different needs and they
react very differently to their bereavement. One of the most significant
recommendations which has already been implemented is that in
dealing with the families there should be within the command,
or indeed the PPO area, depending on where the individual has
come from, a senior officer, probably not below one-star rank,
who is responsible to the frontline commander of the principal
personnel officer for the treatment of that individual family.
For instance, in terms of boards of inquiry and their speed, which
has been a comment from some of the families about knowing the
details of how their children died, they felt they had not had
information either quickly enough or in a comprehensive enough
way, we have put in place somebody who has sufficient clout that,
when he hears from the casualty visiting officer who is in direct
contact with the family, he can actually take forward the complaint
and get something done about it by elevating it right to the top.
Q57 Mr Jones: I accept that might be
a movement forward, but have you considered, for instance, the
example of police forces where family liaison officers deal with
this?
General Palmer: Absolutely. I
can give you a written note on exactly what the procedures are,
if you would like that[7]
Q58 Mr Jones: The skills of dealing with
bereaved people are specialist. No disrespect to senior officers,
but they may not have the expertise or bedside manner of some
professionals.
General Palmer: Absolutely; I
could not agree with you more.
Colonel Eccles: I know a little
bit of the detail of this, just to give you a flavour for it.
What we have done now is split the role into two. You have a casualty
notification officer, who lets the family know about the death,
and then a casualty visiting officer who takes over about 36 or
48 hours later and acts as the conduit which the general has just
been describing to higher authority to deal with any problems
or concerns which they may have. An example of the way the policy
has evolved. Those are officers who are selected for that, there
are several dotted around the country and they have done a number
of these. We are getting people who are used to doing it.
Mr Miller: As the general said,
it is ensuring that behind the notification, the visiting officers,
there is someone in the system with extra clout to drive forward
the proper dealings with the families. That will be a significant
development. We have also now been rather clearer about the need
to keep families informed as information becomes available, rather
than waiting necessarily for the completion of the whole process.
I hope that will also be of benefit. Additionally now there is
a central mechanism to bring together boards of inquiry information
on a regular basis through the general and submit it to the top
of the department, so that we know that these new rules and these
new ways of doing business are being effectively instituted and
if anything is slipping through the cracks, there is now a better
way of spotting that.
Q59 Mr Jones: May I suggest to you that
they are not working? My constituent wrote in March of this year
and has yet even to see a reply to the letter. She wrote again
in early April and still has no reply to her letter asking for
a copy of the board of inquiry report into her son's death[8]
Mr Miller: These new arrangements
really are new and I hope that they will address that specific
case.
General Palmer: Would you like
to give me details?
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