Examination of Witnesses (Questions 198-199)
16 JUNE 2004
PROFESSOR GEOFF
CHIVERS AND
MR TOM
MULHALL
Q198 Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you very
much for coming. You heard the earlier evidence and the range
of questions which we are interested in. You have heard the comments
of the previous witnesses on the main strengths and weaknesses
of how the armed forces currently provide for the safety and welfare
of personnel under training. You know of the inadequacy of the
MoD's proposals for further change. Have you had all the literature
necessary?
Professor Chivers: Yes.
Q199 Chairman: This is the same question
we asked the earlier witnesses. Do you agree with the assessment
of the last witnesses in response to that question: are the proposals
by the MoD adequate to deal with the problems which have been
manifest in the last few years?
Professor Chivers: I should put
on the agenda that Tom Mulhall and myself are speaking as individuals;
we neither represent our university, nor even the Business School
where we work. From my point of view, I have some expertise in
risk management which I thought might be useful, also in professional
development and training of trainers and looking after large numbers
of young people through my 40-year career in higher education.
We face some of the same issues that the youngsters do in the
training environment in the armed forces. Tom's background is
in security and he runs our security management programme. My
background is more in health, safety and environmental risk management,
so we thought we might be useful as a double act today. What we
have just been muttering to each other is that we would concur
with everything which has been said this afternoon, but we think
in some respects it does not bite deeply enough. Tom has had more
time to look at the initial documents and he would like to run
through some initial thoughts arising from that and then perhaps
I can handle a lot of the detailed questions which will follow.
Mr Mulhall: The very first document
I had a look at was the summation of the Deepcut final report
and I have some thoughts. They identified bullying possibly had
a role to play; I am only saying "possibly". Also I
received the impression that the Army are aware of the problems
around suicide; for example, with self-harm it is a fairly reasonably
conclusion that something is going amiss but they fail to deal
with it. No records seem to be maintained, no intervention strategies
are available. Another problem I found was the age of the young
soldiers, as low as sixteen and a half years of age, which raises
a question mark for me about their mental suitability. Then when
you go into another document, where you find that 50% of the recruits
on a sample of 500 have a literacy and numeracy age equivalent
to or less than the average eleven-year-old, my immediate reaction
is to ask whether that is a problem. That was a common theme but
I must give credit to the Army because, from my experience of
dealing with people who come to my course with an Army background,
a lot of them do not have any formal academic qualifications and
they do extremely well. Whilst the Army tends to recruit people
from broken homes, people with literacy problems, people who have
been in and out of jobs, those who stick with the Army can do
remarkably well. They must have credit for that, but of course
there are a lot of issues. For example, the welfare of the recruits
is obviously problematic and the ratio of trainer to recruit is
a bit of a problem. In a previous life, having run a team of only
15 and found that three of them went off with stress-related problems,
not induced by me, I hasten to add—
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