Select Committee on Defence Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 700 - 719)

WEDNESDAY 13 OCTOBER 2004

MR DENIS O'CONNOR CBE AND CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT CRAIG DENHOLM

  Q700  Mr Roy: I am very interested in your remark that we need to learn lessons as we go. I fear that, although we will learn lessons, it would be quite easy for the Army to forget those lessons as times move on. I am also interested in your thoughts as regards the need for an independent oversight. I have no doubt whatsoever that we still get young men in the Army who are feeling vulnerable to the point of being suicidal. This should not be taken in the past context because there is no doubt whatsoever that it is still a major problem at the moment. In your memorandum you were speaking about the supportive frameworks. I would like to ask you to think back to what you were saying and ask you to elaborate on the need for a supportive framework. Could you tell us exactly what you would expect a care regime to come up with and where you think the Army had failed to provide a supportive framework.  Mr O'Connor: I will ask Mr Denholm to deal with the support framework. To go back to the beginning of your observation, the watchword for us in relation to all of this, given what we have learned over time, is: Trust but verify. That is the point of having some independent oversight. Trust is good, but verification is even better, particularly if some people are vulnerable and that is easily suppressed. In terms of the support framework, we were working from a preventative model which is used in policing, to which we refer in our submission. That advises you in any situation where bad things happen or problematical things happen, to look at: Is there somebody who is a guardian for that situation? Is there somebody who is looking at who might be motivated or vulnerable? And is there an opportunity of needs? All the stuff that has come from us around the Learning Account is by applying that model, because that is a model for crime and difficulties in general. But I suppose we would have to underline this and say that we did not presume that that, plus our observation about the key issues we identified in here over time—the key issues about which I know the Committee has been asking questions: the issues of supervision, screening, welfare and so on—would be sufficient necessarily for your needs, but we felt that that model of   preventing bad things happening and this identification of some key issues would be a starter for ten for somebody identifying a fully fit-for-purpose care model in the modern Army now, given all the tensions around it. I will ask Craig to speak in a little more detail about the care model.  Chief Superintendent Denholm: The generic themes are very much, as has been mentioned, that of providing appropriate guardianship; identifying motivated individuals or de-motivated individuals; and then making sure the means for people to harm themselves, for example, are not there. So you have those three key elements. Sitting underneath that, one of the most important things that needs to happen is clearly a robust risk-assessment process which means that at each element of your business, both operationally and strategically, you are considering what the risks are to individuals/to the organisation, and you have a framework that gives you the ability to fully consider all the vulnerabilities that are presented to you. Obviously that is a process that we use in quite some detail in the police and is definitely one that can be transferred across, in our view. Another very important tool, if you like, to use is the effective use of data. Data is absolutely crucial in terms of identifying what your vulnerabilities are/where your vulnerabilities are. For example, the guardroom logs, which have already been mentioned, catalogue a whole series of events which take place in the camps. If those guardroom logs were subject to any form of analysis, they would give you a readymade temperature gauge, if you like, as to what is taking place in your camp because they report incidents of bullying, they report incidents of harassment, they report incidents of self-harm. So, if you actually had mechanisms to capture that type of data—empowered officers, for example—-

  Q701  Mr Roy: How would you do that? Your guardroom log then could be perceived to be the whistleblower of the camp. Surely that would bring an awful lot of people under immense pressure. We have heard in the last few months of the kind of peer pressure and we are all aware of the peer pressure that was on in the various camps. Surely peer pressure there could cloud someone's decision-making process from writing in that log if that log turned out to be the whistleblower that brought everything down.  Chief Superintendent Denholm: I think it depends on where your priority lies and what you consider to be important. There are obviously other mechanisms you can use, but the reality is that, if you do not gather the data, you do not know what your problem is: you do not know what you do not know, effectively. If you do not grasp whatever mechanisms you have got to record it/analyse it, even if you do it at a higher level . . . If you used the guardroom log, for example, and if that was a particular issue, you could use it at a slightly higher level, in terms of statistically pulling out how many self-harm incidents we have had in the last month at this camp, for example. It would give you that gauge. I would actually argue that the guardroom log should be used in specific incidents as well. We have an incident, for example, in the guardroom log of a female soldier who reported that she had been raped in the male quarters. She was warned, she was advised, that if she continued with the allegation, she would be likely to be under charge for being in that accommodation block, as opposed to that being reported properly. That was recovered by another NCO, but, nevertheless, that type of incident should be being captured, should be being seen in those guardroom logs, and should be being dealt with.  Mr Roy: Who captures it? Surely you need to take someone from the outside to be able to capture that. It is the same with the chain of command. If you have a problem with the chain of command, you might write it down, but, if the person you have a problem with is two steps up from you, it is very difficult for you to do that because you may feel isolated at some point.  Mr Hancock: That is exactly it.

  Q702  Mr Roy: Surely it has to be someone outwith that, who does not feel vulnerable, who has a force-field round about them to protect them.  Chief Superintendent Denholm: Potentially, yes. That is where the independent oversight comes into it, in terms of the higher end of it, if you like. But, in terms of inside the camp itself, there should be the mechanisms to capture that sort of data and then a mechanism internally which actually feeds it up the chain of command. So that, for example, all the lessons from boards of inquiry are all captured in a central location and allowed to be developed in terms of policy development etcetera, so that you have a central policy-collection unit that actually is utilising this data, utilising the information that is coming through to identify what is important, what policy developments are needed, but also to start looking at what priorities should be being set, in terms of where funding is going, for example. That is key. Further, in terms of other support models, support mechanisms around the individuals themselves are crucial: the ability to refer people to counselling, the ability to have a sickness monitoring process so that you are actually again checking why people are going sick and what the underlying causes are, etcetera. Also an effective supervision ratio is crucial, as we have touched on before: if you do not have the right number of supervisors for the number of recruits that you have, then it is going to be extremely difficult for you to intervene, identify problems and deal with those effectively.

  Q703  Mr Hancock: May I ask a supplementary on the guardroom logs, because I am curious and fascinated by the concept you expose. As somebody looking at this now, along with you, I am surprised that note was not taken of what is in them and that there was not a response. Without identifying any of the specific cases you looked at, is there anything you saw in the historical guardroom logs at Deepcut which, if they had been looked at properly, would have identified that there was a problem in that base?  Chief Superintendent Denholm: I think that is very difficult to say. Over a long period of time there were a number of incidents that were recorded in those guardroom logs that would have warranted further investigation. It is difficult from the guardroom logs to tell whether or not they were or were not further investigated, because that is not the purpose of the guardroom logs effectively.

  Q704  Mr Hancock: Where did those guardroom logs end up?  Chief Superintendent Denholm: They are just an occurrence book, if you like, that is just stored within the camp.  Mr O'Connor: It is a book of events which is as good or bad as how many events get recorded.

  Q705  Mr Hancock: What was the way in which, say, the commanding officer was made aware of these things? An entry about a young soldier being raped going in the logbook would have been something that ought to have been brought to the attention of the commanding officer. What was your experience when you said that these things were in the log? Were you given any assurances that any of it was taken seriously? Where did it go in the Chain of Command?  Chief Superintendent Denholm: We had extreme difficulty in auditing that guardroom log through the Chain of Command. The guardroom log does not effectively give you that audit; it just gives you the report of the occurrence itself.  Mr O'Connor: Looking back in time, in other words, Mr Hancock, there was not an individual identified beside it or necessarily sufficient specificity to be able to pursue it to find out who actually did what about it.  Chief Superintendent Denholm: It would be signed off by a senior NCO daily. You would assume from that that it would then be taken up the Chain of Command from there.

  Q706  Mr Cran: I do not want to intrude upon Frank's time, but perhaps I might just ask one question to be clear in my mind. What was the point of the log if it was not to do all the things that you have outlined that it should do? It seems to have done very little.  Chief Superintendent Denholm: I think the point of the log is actually to record events that are taking place in the camp.

  Q707  Mr Roy: It is called going through the motions.  Chief Superintendent Denholm: You would assume that the purpose of it was actually to report up and you would like to think that that senior NCO was reporting into the Chain of Command. Where it went beyond that, in terms of statistical benefit and then any form of analytical work that took place on top of it . . . Clearly that was not the case. That did not happen.

  Q708  Mr Cran: So it had no use at all.  Chief Superintendent Denholm: I think in terms of its higher-level use, in terms of data, it appears not.  Mr Roy: It is called going through the motions.

  Q709  Mr Jones: Unless the NCO did something about what was in there, like the serious case you referred to, to be honest it would just sit in the book, would it not? It did not really go anywhere, did it?  Chief Superintendent Denholm: Quite.

  Q710  Mr Jones: Are you aware that that system has now been changed? Is there a system in place now, where, if there are serious incidents like that, it is not just left to an NCO to sign it off? Are you aware of any changes since your investigations?  Chief Superintendent Denholm: I am not aware of what changes have been made to the guardroom log system.

  Q711  Mr Hancock: How did you find out about the young soldier and that she had been warned that if she took it any further . . . ? You saw it in the log, did you?  Chief Superintendent Denholm: That incident was recorded in the log in the terms that I have described it.  Mr Jones: It was actually written down like that.

  Q712  Mr Hancock: It was written down like that?  Chief Superintendent Denholm: Yes.  Mr Jones: What an indictment on the British Army!  Chairman: I was hesitant to jump in. Everybody has jumped in and Mr Roy had not even finished his questions.

  Q713  Mr Roy: I will stay on the theme of trust and the perception of trust. Why did you question whether the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Policy has sufficient independence to form what you call an "effective, competent and accessible" investigative structure?  Mr O'Connor: They may very well be independent. The issue, I guess, is the perception of the people they are serving of their independence. That is the bigger issue. Presumably the military will be better prepared to speak to that perception than we are, but along the way, during the interview process that was undertaken, that issue did occur. That cropped up, as did some practices which were associated with having somebody present when people were interviewed, which was regarded as inhibiting, for fairly obvious reasons, people necessarily telling the whole story. There are issues, I think, of perception there. Whatever the skills and competencies—and we are not going to go into that in detail here, I   would imagine—it is about perception of independence.

  Q714  Mr Roy: If you go to my constituency and ask the majority of my constituents who the police work for, my constituents would say they work on behalf of the community. If you went to an army barracks and asked the British soldiers who the Royal Military Police work for, would they say the community of the solider or would they say the community of the Chain of Command in the MoD?  Mr O'Connor: The best way, I think, would be to ask them, Mr Roy, and see what response you get. You know that there is, if you like, an agreement at a level at which the civil police intervene in crime.

  Q715  Mr Roy: Yes. I do not have a problem with that. I have a problem with the perception of neutrality. Do you have any continuing concerns over issues of primacy between the civilian and military police overall?  Mr O'Connor: Since we have had revision of L&SA, which I think usefully says that the civil police will be involved in "deaths"—it does not prescribe it any longer to be just murder or suicide—you do not get yourself into the difficulty of pre-defining issues, so that you potentially define out your involvement, the civil police involvement. I think putting "death" in there is a good thing. It is better to put that in than the way it was framed previously. That has been helpful. I think that in the medium term there probably will be some debate about the civil police only involving themselves at rape or higher. That is a high tariff, given the nature of injuries and difficulties that can happen below that level, and I am sure there will be dynamic discussion (as they say) on that issue of at what point the civil police come into play.

  Q716  Chairman: You were very diplomatic, excessively diplomatic, on the competence of the Royal Military Police, and said "that is the perception". They have now lost primacy over suspicious deaths, but that surely could not have come about because of the perception of punters in the camp; that must have come about for a specific reason or a specific set of reasons. Are you prepared to go any further from your inquiries as to the conduct, the efficiency of the . . . I am getting dangerously close to an area—and I do not want to rule myself out—but you must have—or maybe you could tell us in private—your view, your professional view of the competence of the Royal Military Police, especially the SIB—more than a perception.  Mr O'Connor: If we start with ourselves and deal with this issue, in relation to the inquiries in Surrey—and we are aware of others elsewhere—the passive approach by the civil police to allow SIB to take on deaths unless it was an obvious murder is regrettable, to say the least, and it is something that needed fixing, and, sadly, it is being fixed now. It would have been better done earlier. During this process of the Learning Account, we were keen that the L&SA was revised. I do not know whether you are aware, Chairman, but the previous L&SA was very much oriented towards what the military did about crime and difficulty rather than the division of labour between the military and the civil police. Our judgment was that, notwithstanding what we did not do in the past, we know an awful lot about investigating death and about evidence capture and we have a lot of very sophisticated equipment and people who can service that issue. We were clear that in relation to handling death in any form, before one made any assumptions or came to any judgment about why death had occurred, that it would be essential for the civil police to be involved because they would and should be much more experienced at dealing with those issues, they would be able to call on a huge infrastructure very quickly, which, frankly, the SIB could not hope to match. It is a pretty clear-cut issue in relation to handling death, in order that you do not pre-define things wrongly or miss things that you should catch. Below rape, there is still a lot of sophisticated territory to play in. But we have not conducted an analysis of how good, bad or indifferent that investigative effort is in order to be able to give you a considered judgment about the strengths of SIB. I would say—and I think it is noted in the DAG's report (although Mr Denholm may correct me)—that the issue for the Army will be that, as it has a large domestic foothold—albeit it moves backwards and forwards—there will be pressure for the same sort of standards of independence, of access to forensics, to be applied lower down the tariff of crimes in the future. I would have thought that pressure would be strong because people will come to believe, I imagine, that soldiers should have the same standard of care, as it were, in that sense, as others. But I think it would be inappropriate for me to comment in detail about their strengths and weaknesses.

  Q717  Chairman: I understand that. I have been on this Committee for a long time and we have done endless inquiries into the Ministry of Defence Police and the MoD have seemed to cut the numbers down over the years. If I remember correctly, the Chief Constable of the MoD police is in ACPO.  Mr O'Connor: He is an ex-ACPO officer and we regard him as part of—

  Q718  Chairman: As part of the ACPO process.  Mr O'Connor: As part of the ACPO process.

  Q719  Chairman: Is there a case for the head of the Royal Military Police to have some sort of associate status with ACPO, so best practice can be transferred, if necessary? I know the investigations in the Army and the other services are assumed generous, but is there a case for some form of associate membership of ACPO? I can see some advantages in that.  Mr O'Connor: I think that could be a very profitable line of inquiry, Chairman.


 
previous page contents next page

House of Commons home page Parliament home page House of Lords home page search page enquiries index

© Parliamentary copyright 2005
Prepared 14 March 2005