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 timethe
key issues about which I know the Committee has been asking questions:
the issues of supervision, screening, welfare and so onwould
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 dataempowered 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
competenciesand we are not going to go into that in detail
here, I would imagineit 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 suicideyou
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 areaand I do not want to rule myself outbut
you must haveor maybe you could tell us in privateyour
view, your professional view of the competence of the Royal Military
Police, especially the SIBmore than a perception. Mr
O'Connor: If we start with ourselves and deal with this
issue, in relation to the inquiries in Surreyand we are
aware of others elsewherethe 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 sayand 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 footholdalbeit
it moves backwards and forwardsthere 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.
|