Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-197)
16 JUNE 2004
MR LAWRENCE
WATERMAN AND
MR JEREMY
CORFIELD
Q180 Mike Gapes: May I ask some questions
about firearms? You will have seen the evidence we had from the
Chief of Staff of the Army Training and Recruitment Agency, Colonel
Eccles, who pointed to a number of measures which had been taken
to control access to firearms. In the document you sent to us
you advocated limiting access to firearms until recruits are fully
trained and have undergone psychological evaluation. How far do
you think that the measures which the armed forces have taken
to limit access to firearms meet your concerns? Have they gone
far enough? Is there more they should be doing?
Mr Corfield: To go back to Lawrence's
previous point, it is about physical controls. Colonel Eccles
mentioned competency, that people are trained to use the weapons.
There is more to using a potentially dangerous piece of equipment
than just knowing which buttons to push and how to use that particular
piece of equipment. It is a much bigger issue than that. There
is a whole range of other issues around the behavioural safety
and whether people are appropriate to use that equipment from
a mental point of view, their own psyche, whether they are up
to this particular job. That does not mean that somebody is competent.
Competency is a much larger measure than just knowing physically
how to use a piece of equipment. You also have to look at the
abilities and the psychological aspects of that as well.
Q181 Mike Gapes: How useful do you think
it would be to have an annual psychological evaluation to determine
whether somebody was fit to use a weapon?
Mr Corfield: The Institution do
not profess to be experts in this particular area. That type of
psychological evaluation is used widely amongst law enforcement
agencies worldwide, so even though we do not know about it we
certainly think it is something which should be investigated and
at least ruled out of the equation if it is inappropriate.[3]
Q182 Mike Gapes: Is there any evidence
that where such tests are used they have had any impact by reducing
incidents of injury or death or self-harm?
Mr Corfield: Again, you would
have to talk to an expert in that particular area. The amount
of data available to analyse from the United States' law enforcement
community is massive and it would be a big job of work to look
at the efficiency of that particular activity.
Q183 Mike Gapes: At least it is an area
we might explore with some other organisations.
Mr Corfield: Yes.
Q184 Rachel Squire: May I ask about reporting
and feedback mechanisms and begin by asking your views on what
the armed forces should be doing to encourage the reporting of
occupational safety and health incidents, including bullying?
Mr Waterman: There is a number
of aspects to this. One is one I referred to earlier when I was
talking about a culture in which people say being a really good
team and doing our job well involves identifying aspects of behaviour
which are not acceptable and we will not tolerate it and will
report it. Rather than relying upon supervisors to spot it, you
have the whole team responsible as the eyes and ears. That cultural
change runs like a thread through everything IOSH wishes to say
about all of these matters. In addition, our experience in dealing
with other health and safety matters is that if you honestly believe
in any organisation that there might be problems about bullying
or harassment, you have to identify independent routes by which
people can raise those concerns and in a military establishment
you have the additional problem of the social and cultural gap
between officer and recruit. The idea that the officer is the
person to whom a recruit can go to make a complaint is just failing
to recognise that it would be a bit like asking the recruit to
call on the Queen. It is just not something which would happen.
There is a lot of evidence in other fields of people who feel
themselves to be in a different group and a different class being
reluctant to report. Just think about the obstacles to parents
visiting schools to see teachers about the progress of their children,
or data on the earlier reporting of signs and symptoms of disease
amongst working people going to their GPs. There is a direct relationship
between age of leaving school and fulltime education and unwillingness
to go to see people in authority. You have to recognise that there
is this huge obstacle for people, plus all the social pressures
of not being seen as a complainer or a whinger; you are supposed
to be stoical and put up with these things. There has to be a
mechanism whereby people can make independent reports and know
that it is not going to be plugged in to the command structure,
that it is not going to get back to people who have a direct impact
on their likelihood of getting a commendation, getting promoted
and all of those things later on in their careers. We do not think,
from the material which has been supplied and which we have read
to date, that those obstacles are really fully addressed in the
proposals which have been developed hitherto.
Mr Corfield: There is some really
interesting information in the DOC's report about this, about
the level of people who have been appointed to be empowered officers.
There is also information in there about the unwillingness of
people to approach officers and that is going to be an issue when
you look at how to get people to report problems. Again in the
DOC's report is that on occasions some of the telephone numbers
were wrong and there were not people at the other end of the telephone
line to listen to the concerns. As a confidential helpline for
people to discuss their concerns that would not operate very well
and it certainly would not be saleable to anybody within the civilian
environment as a service.
Q185 Rachel Squire: You have touched
on the other three areas I was going to ask about. I do not know
whether you would like to add further to them. One was the introduction
of the empowered officers and the fact that although they were
outside the recruit's direct chain of command, they were still
military personnel. Would they really be seen as independent routes?
Could you comment on whether there are parallels with other internal
complaints' systems in other sectors which you have been made
aware of which do work, or seem to work more effectively in encouraging
an individual to believe that the issues and complaints they raise
will be seriously dealt with but will not lead to a kickback on
their own progress in future?
Mr Waterman: In private industry
and in public bodies there are examples of a medical department
in an organisation being one of the places where people can take
problems to do with harassment, stress and all of that sort of
thing and get non-directive counselling and advice. Personnel
departments and other organisations build up a reputation for
managing confidentiality, but in those places you are typically
dealing with much finer gradations between individual levels within
the organisation and people have a variety of routes. In a disciplined
military structure with this enormous gap between officer and
recruit it is much harder. It is interesting that in other areas
there is huge emphasis these days on evidence-based work; that
you make changes on the grounds that there is evidence it works.
I am about to head up a new pilot being launched on occupational
health in construction designed to get evidence of what works
in that sector rather than just barging on and saying "Let's
set up a national scheme". Given the scale of the Army training
programme, which must rank as one of the biggest training programmes
in Europe, possibly the world, it would be possible, if there
is doubt about whether officers can do it or be independent, or
whether there can be civilians to whom these reports can be made,
I would have thought it would be possible to pilot two or three
ways of doing this and have them evaluated and just use the independent
evidence to decide which way to go. One of the problems is the
sense in which things have got to be perfect and assured and all
of that before we move forward. A slightly more experimental "Let's
see whether this will be an improvement" and trialling it
in a particular area like those trials about merging Phase 1 and
Phase 2 would actually represent much more the way in which private
industry does things. It does not go for big bangs before pilots
have been entered into to see whether or not they are going to
work.
Q186 Rachel Squire: You referred to obstacles
and I was going to ask how effective you think it is for an organisation
to have a written published policy on bullying. Am I right to
suspect that it is perhaps not uncommon for a lot of recruits
never to think of actually reading or referring to written policies?
What is your view on how effective and useful they are?
Mr Waterman: That is a bit like
health and safety policies. We wear the health and safety anorak
and most people are fortunate in their lives in not having to
do that. We have to be aware that policies are written with an
eye to the legal implications and almost pave the way for compensation
claims and all sorts of other things. They tend to be written
in the sort of language which would make even The Times
leader read like Janet and John storytime. That means that the
material, even if you presented it to the recruits, most of whom,
if they read a newspaper it is going to be one of the "red
tops", they are not going to say "Oh, goodie" and
then pour over it and expect to answer questions in a week's time
on sub clause 3.2. If you really want to communicate to people
your seriousness—and it goes back to this cultural issue—then
you have to do things, there has to be evidence, people have to
see that bullying is responded to the moment it is identified.
People have to be given a five point card which just says these
are the bullet points of our anti-bullying policy. That is not
talking down to people. Busy officers could also do with sub-sets
of the regulations and the policies because they also do not have
time to read War and Peace every time they are working
out what to do next, so it benefits everyone. If you just say
we have got this documented and therefore we are all right, what
it actually sounds like is that people in authority have done
something to cover themselves rather than genuinely make the change
at the sharp end which is to the benefit of the people who would
otherwise suffer from the bullying. Part of the cultural change
we are talking about is to end up in a situation where a recruit
at the end of five, six, seven weeks in that basic training, can
be asked "By the way, what is our policy on bullying?"
and be able to give three succinct responses to that which define
the intolerance of bullying, what happens when it is identified
and what their personal responsibility is if they espy someone
else in their group actually suffering in a particular way. That
is much more useful than just having local policies which are
elegantly drafted.
Q187 Rachel Squire: You have effectively
dealt with what I was going to ask you finally, which was: what
more can the armed forces do to ensure that recruits are made
aware of the support systems which exist, are able to access them
and are not discouraged from using them? It is very much that
less documentary approach.
Mr Waterman: Having a recruit-centred
communication strategy would be the modern jargon way of putting
it.
Q188 Mr Blunt: Can I just be clear? What
you actually seem to be suggesting is that this is something where
the responsibility lies firmly with the chain of command down
to the people who are delivering the training themselves. It is
not something for which empowered officers, sitting outside the
immediate unit which is delivering the training, or some association
overseeing things from outside, or a detailed document which is
completely impossible to communicate to recruits are responsible.
This is actually about the chain of command itself taking responsibility
for delivering these things. Whatever learned tomes are produced
by the people in the anoraks, this is actually about making sure
that the lance corporals, corporals, who are delivering the training
in the sections, the young officers who are immediately responsible
for the training at the sharp end are the ones who will actually
ensure this culture is delivered and the whole chain of command
is responsible for it. What would be your view about having people
sitting outside it, what Brigadier Thorp said ". . . you
will only get fearless questioning of the system by someone who
is wholly outside the system"? It strikes me that what you
are saying is that actually that is not an answer for the system:
the system has to deliver this.
Mr Waterman: The system has to
deliver. If you asked whether the solution to financial control
in ICI is that KPMG carry out an annual audit, any shareholder
would say "Good Lord, what happens between the annual audits".
You need a system of internal controls, there is no question about
that, but I have some caveats. I agree with what you said, but
the implications are, first of all, that you have to ensure you
have a training and developmental regime for those people with
those responsibilities so that they really are equipped to engage
in that cultural change and cultural maintenance we are talking
about. You cannot just say "By the way, this is what we want
you to do", you have to equip them and help them. Secondly,
there has to be some sort of outside of the chain of command verification
that it is happening, some sort of sampling exercise, independent
auditing, annual reporting on the developments of health and safety
management and the culture and all of that in order to bring a
fresh pair of eyes to see the wood for the trees, and also to
end up with a mechanism which can leverage best practice from
one element to another, from one unit to another. The third caveat
is that however well you manage bullying and harassment in terms
of the internal culture, you have to have a safety valve which
is wholly independent of the command structure, because otherwise
recruits will not have confidence in making use of it. Whatever
else you do, however good you think it is, it is the equivalent
of having really good controls of the management of dangerous
chemicals: you still engage in a degree of health surveillance
to make sure no-one is getting dermatitis. There still has to
be a safety valve mechanism for the recruits to be able, with
confidence and in confidence, to report that things are going
awry, that despite the best efforts of everyone concerned something
is going on, that it is not being adequately responded to. They
have to have that independent safety valve so that they can make
that report with confidence that it will not affect their careers,
but that it will be acted upon. Using the empowered officer is
probably not the right route because of the officer obstacle to
which I referred earlier. That does not mean that the central
drive is not to change the culture within the command structure
itself. In the same way that if you wanted improved financial
controls in a limited company, you would look at the way in which
the staff within that company operated; you would not rely upon
the external annual audit to do it for you.
Q189 Mr Hancock: Could we move to the
MoD's role, the building over the road? Maybe the unit gets it
right, but is it possible, from what you have seen and heard,
for the MoD to exercise overall control over all that is going
on and have the right reporting mechanisms put in place which
would give you the confidence to say that they are truly exercising
a duty of care? Is that something you believe the MoD bureaucracy
can actually cope with as opposed to the military chain of command?
Mr Corfield: That is why you need
external oversight, to feed back to you, to confirm to you that
the right things are being done on the ground and within the chain
of command.
Q190 Mr Hancock: Would you two recommend
to us as a committee that one of our recommendations to government
should be that the only way to exercise the duty of care and to
ensure that these things were properly happening would be to bring
in some regular outside scrutiny of the whole of the operation,
from initial training right through that exercise, through the
chain of command into the MoD?
Mr Waterman: As a sampling exercise,
not that everything is looked at every 30 seconds, although someone
once told me that the letters AWE did not stand for Atomic Weapons
Establishment, but Audit Without End. Obviously there is a danger
in all of this which needs to be proportional. I should have thought
that the Joint Services Health and Safety Committee, this Committee,
the Ministry of Defence and the minister would benefit from having
regular independent reports. I made reference to the Prison Service
approach.
Q191 Mr Hancock: They are not exactly
made welcome, are they? I have a prison in my constituency and
the annual visit of the Prison Inspectorate is not exactly something
for which people put out the flags. They are bracing themselves
for the coming event for some particular time ahead. Is there
an armed force anywhere which has this sort of scrutiny currently?
Mr Waterman: I do not know.
Q192 Mr Hancock: You do not have any
knowledge of one?
Mr Waterman: No. Remember our
evidence began by saying that there were some benefits to learning
the lessons of what is happening in civilian occupational safety
and health and there has been growing recognition of the value
of independent validation and verification of health and safety
arrangements. I am loath to draw examples which might create even
more problems, but a look at independent audits in the rail industry
tells us something about the way in which contractors are operating;
in construction it is the way that things are increasingly going;
in the pharmaceutical industry you get independent audit as almost
the standard, okay, involving the medical inspectorate. If you
look around large, complex, multi-site organisations do not try
to understand themselves wholly and solely with internal resources,
they make use of the fresh view, the independent view and the
regular audit report. I refer to financial audit as an example
of that.
Q193 Mr Hancock: May I ask the most provocative
question of all? Do you think the British military system is capable
of accepting that sort of scrutiny?
Mr Waterman: Absolutely. There
is a huge amount of evidence and Jeremy alluded to it earlier
on in our response to these questions today. There is an enormous
amount of acceptance in the armed forces that you set certain
targets, you set up certain audit and inspection routines and
they are treated with respect, they are the way we operate and
we deal with it that way. I would say that the military might
argue that some of what we are suggesting is otiose, unnecessary
or whatever. However, I would be astonished if any senior officer
or anyone from the MoD argued that the military would not be able
to cope with it, would not be able to respond professionally to
it. Everything that we know about the military suggests that it
would be able to respond incredibly professionally to whatever
particular responsibility was placed upon it for transparency
and public reporting of its performance in occupational safety
and health.
Q194 Mr Hancock: Why do you think they
have not done it then?
Mr Waterman: Self-confidence.
Q195 Mr Hancock: Over-confidence?
Mr Waterman: Over-confidence?
There are lots of arguments for saying that we have an excellent
military in the UK. We do not have a military which is shy and
retiring and tremendously lacking in self-confidence and we would
not have been able to engage in some of the things we have done
in recent years in terms of peacekeeping or whatever, if we did
have such a diffident military. I would not presume to say that
it is over-confidence: I would just say that the culture within
the armed forces hitherto has been "If there's a problem,
we're up to solving it with our internal resources." I think
that is perfectly understandable and in many ways historically
commendable. If you are looking at a more modern approach, which
says that the public also expects a degree of transparency and
public reporting and that political control requires that as well
and there are some benefits of cross-fertilisation because new
ideas can be brought in through that mechanism, the military will
be just as capable of saying that these are changed circumstances
and they are perfectly capable of responding properly to those
changes.
Q196 Chairman: Two proposals have been
made: one is the idea of an armed forces ombudsman. Would this
run counter to what you said earlier? Would this be, as Adam Ingram,
the minister, said a step too far? Would that be externalising
inspection to such a level that the Army might really reject it
and say this is superfluous? There is also the proposal for the
Adult Learning Inspectorate as an appropriate organisation to
inspect care and welfare and safety issues in initial training
organisations. You have covered most of this ground, but here
are two concrete proposals.
Mr Waterman: May I take the second
one first and Jeremy will speak to the first one in a moment?
On the Adult Learning Inspectorate, we are not familiar with the
make-up and competency of the team which is being put together
for that, but it is due to report late winter/early spring. There
will be an opportunity then to see whether they did bring to bear
the appropriate spotlight and did bring to bear a team with all
the competencies required. We are not really in a position to
say at this stage whether a new inspectorate has the health and
safety and in particular the cultural competencies. It would be
perfectly possible, going back to that example of the workshop,
to see everything spick and span in a particular place and not
recognise that the accident waiting to happen was the person the
next day doing something inappropriate despite the physical environment
which had been provided for them. They will need to tap into those
cultural issues. That kind of independent scrutiny seems perfectly
proper and if it turns out that is the right agency for doing
it, we would welcome it. That to a certain extent prefigures our
response to the question of an ombudsman, because we are really
arguing principles here rather than the detail of exactly how
that independence can be achieved.
Mr Corfield: I would just reiterate
what Lawrence has said. It is the independent, external oversight
which is important rather than the particular body or person who
delivers that.
Q197 Chairman: Lastly, this is not meant
to be a provocative question or to be hostile to what the Army
are trying to do, but the main purpose of spending £35 billion
a year on defence is to produce a bunch of men and women who go
out ultimately and put their lives at risk and know what they
are doing. It is absolutely right to create a culture of health
and safety. In your experience of training, is there any problem
of encouraging people to be obsessively safety conscious and not
put themselves at risk and then when a whistle blows to move into
a different culture where taking that approach in a military environment
may be detrimental to the whole purpose of the armed forces. How
would you train people to be safety conscious, even in the battlefield,
where it would be necessary?
Mr Waterman: It is because health
and safety is not about "Don"t do that it's dangerous".
It is about "Since you wish to do this, let us help you do
it safely". It is not about the group of "job's-worths"
coming up with sets of rules and restricting what people can do
and telling them from the health and safety platform "This
is what you may or may not do'. It is from being engaged directly
in whatever is operationally necessary and working out the best,
most satisfactory, safest and healthiest way of doing it. Therefore,
once you get that mindset right, it is exactly the way you want
people to think on the battlefield as well as in the training
workshop or on the parade ground. In each circumstance you want
to say "This is our objective, but we wish to reach that
objective with the least damage to the individuals who are engaging
in it". It is not about constraining the objective at all
and nothing that we have been saying on behalf of the Institution
should be regarded as trying to put a straitjacket on the armed
services and what they want to achieve.
Chairman: Thank you very much, not just
for the quality of your written evidence but the quality of your
responses. We are deeply grateful to you.
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