Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1340
- 1359)
WEDNESDAY 15 DECEMBER 2004
RT HON
ADAM INGRAM
MP, COLONEL DAVID
ECCLES AND
MR MARTIN
FULLER
Q1340 Mr Cran: We
have to get this, at least I do, so you are confident this issue
I have raised is going to be examined? You may follow whatever
recommendations are made or you may not, but it is going to be
examined?
Mr Ingram: It has been examined
by DOC. Within the three Services they are looking at it anyway.
We would anticipate, because that is the very nature of your inquiry
into this, something of that nature, and I am saying I would expect,
given the nature of the ALI, for them to comment on that as well—the
variants, what is the best practice and what could be better practice.
Q1341 Mr Cran: Could
I raise one other issue with you—I could raise a whole number
but just one more—the question of the empowered officer?
The empowered officer is an important post, there is no question
about that at all, but he or she is seen to be part of the Chain
of Command. They are not supposed to be but they are seen to be.
Is this in your view a weakness? If you do think it is that, what
can you do about it?
Colonel Eccles: First of all,
the empowered officer concept has only been running about a year
so we are very much developing it as we go. The way to describe
this is a series of strands, if you like. There is the Chain of
Command, the hard core, in the middle and that is where any concerns
should go up. But if a person has a worry about the Chain of Command
and is reluctant to complain up the Chain of Command, which is
the best way to do it, there are routes to go round the sides.
The empowered officer is one route. If the person is not comfortable
about that, there are other agencies outside that, and you have
come across the WRVS and other agencies—the doctors, the
chaplains—all of which are alternative routes to make their
concerns felt. I do not believe there is one single solution but
it is an amalgam of different systems which give us our strength
and ability to deal with any issues which arise.
Q1342 Mr Cran: You
say the empowered officer concept has been around for a year and
it is developing, where do you see it developing? Have you reached
any conclusions about it?
Colonel Eccles: We need to make
sure the person is sufficiently removed from the normal, day-to-day
Chain of Command of each of the recruits, so he or she can be
seen to have that separation. That is certainly something we would
want to develop because perception is more important in this instance
than reality, so they need to be outside the immediate Chain of
Command of the individual and, in that way be seen to be independent.
Q1343 Mr Cran: Is
the empowered officer trained? I ask that question because I would
not make a very good empowered officer, I know that.
Colonel Eccles: I think you would.
Q1344 Mr Cran: How
do you choose them? How do you train them?
Colonel Eccles: They are simply
identified as the most suitable person to whom the recruits have
ready access, and that is the important thing. .But actually every
officer or NCO has a responsibility, has a duty and has the commonsense
to be able to handle a serious issue. If something comes to them
which they recognise is a major issue, they need to pass it on
to the appropriate agency. It might be a specialist, a doctor,
or it could be back to the Chain of Command. No, we do not train
them at the moment because those qualities which are required
are innate within our system.
Mr Cran: That begs a lot of questions
but we have not time, Chairman.
Q1345 Chairman: After
one year of operation, is there some form of appraisal, ie how
many people have gone to the empowered officer, what has happened
after that person has gone to the empowered officer, who does
he report to, what is the consequence, are they happy with the
empowered officer? At some stage it might be a good idea if there
is some form of appraisal of the system.
Mr Ingram: I think that is important
and we can impart to you our assessment of that. It may be too
soon to tell us anything.
Colonel Eccles: I think that is
the case.
Q1346 Mike Gapes: Can
I throw something in which you will probably regard as totally
unacceptable, but many other Armed Forces in Europe—and
when we were in Iraq last week we were taken round by a Danish
Captain who told me this—have a trade union structure. When
I was at Hendon yesterday they have the Police Federation, which
is not a trade union but nevertheless provides a mechanism for
people who have grievances and complaints to go outside the Chain
of Command, and it is a way to get something addressed within
the structure. Have you thought of looking at either other organisations
in the UK or internationally for experience as to how you might
have modifications to this system if it is not actually working?
Mr Ingram: That is probably more
a policy matter than anything else. As an ex-trade union official,
I would say that trade unions are not perfect either. I can see
the general philosophy, is there another means by which grievances
can be best captured and channelled? I think all the time we have
to look and try and find the best ways of ensuring there is a
means by which people have certainty and surety within the system
so if they do make a complaint it is addressed and hopefully it
is being fixed. I just do not see us going down the route of the
Danish forces. I do not think I am persuadable but I will await
your report with some interest.
Q1347 Mike Gapes: You
have prior warning!
Mr Ingram: I only hope it is a
minority view and not unanimous! I hear what you say on that.
The general flavour is one I do not think we would really take
but some of the specifics may be a way forward.
Chairman: My good friend, Mike Gapes,
who alerted us all to poor reading ages, should have read the
last question which I was going to ask—alternative assurance
mechanisms—so the Minister will have the privilege of answering
that in rather more detail.
Mike Gapes: I thought it would be one
of those where you would say, "We will write to you".
Chairman: We have been going for an hour
and a half so we will have a five-minute break.
The Committee suspended from 4.37 pm to 4.46 pm
Q1348 Mr Roy: Minister,
the DOC reappraisal this year highlighted the poor perception
of training as a career. How do you propose to improve the status
of trainers?
Mr Ingram: In terms of the instructors?
Q1349 Mr Roy: Yes.
Mr Ingram: I think we have to
address this. If that is the perception—because some will
not take that view and there will be some who will say it and
some who will not—then we have to work out why this is because
what we have to get is quality people into that environment who
are enthusiastic and determined to do it well. I found it quite
salutary, because I had some information before I came into this
session, to find the number of corporals who are in the training
environment under ATRA, and it is one in five of the Field Army
actually involved in the training environment. If you ask teachers
in the teaching profession, probably some of them would give you
the same answers as you will get from some of the instructors,
but that does not mean you should be complacent about it. You
have to say, "Is there an issue here" and think how
you make it better and how do you make it part of a career path,
and how do you make sure people are enthused of the importance
of what you are seeking to do. We have to find the answers to
this. I do not know whether Colonel Eccles wants to add a supplement
to that.
Colonel Eccles: We have one or
two ideas for ways of taking this forward because we recognise
that this is the case with some of our instructors, particularly
in the more technical arms where the attainment of professional
qualifications is afforded a higher priority than serving in the
training organisation. There are a number of arms and services—and
I choose the Royal Engineers and the Royal Artillery as good examples—where
they select and reward in career terms the very best NCOs to serve
in the training organisation. We are looking in conjunction with
the Army Personnel Centre in Glasgow, about how we can learn lessons
from those two parts of the Army and read them across to the more
technical parts of the Army where that perception exists more
strongly.
Q1350 Mr Roy: One
of the things which has come across is the training and the trainers
course. We have been given evidence of trainers who, although
they are carrying out their duties to the best of their abilities
at the moment, have not even been on that course. Does that lead
to the perception that lipservice is being paid to the role they
carry out?
Colonel Eccles: Attendance at
the various courses within the Army is mandatory within the first
six months, so maybe you spoke to people who have only just started
in the organisation. If that is not happening across the piece,
we need to tighten up on it. The problem is that we have so many
staff in the training organisation—5,000 servicemen actually
in contact with trainees, which is a large chunk of the Field
Army—turning over all the time. We would love the incoming
person to be trained before he joins, but given he or she would
need to be relieved in the Field Army before they do that, it
creates a problem.
Q1351 Mr Roy: That
is the problem because that is where you have to find out where
the priority is, because it is a big problem if they are not released
to be trained before they actually go into work. We had a memorandum
last week from a family in Edinburgh who described eight pages
of atrocious behaviour towards their son by trainers. I just thought
if those trainers were properly trained to be trainers, maybe
it would not have happened—maybe it would.
Mr Ingram: I am not saying what
you have been told is not the truth, but I would be grateful,
if you are getting these types of allegations, if they could be
pointed out. There are usually two sides to a story and they may
not always equate but there may be another part to that, so do
not just take that evidence without it being tested. I am not
saying what you have been given is not the truth, it could well
be.
Q1352 Mr Roy: I
accept there are always two parts to it. One thing to say about
that is that it was from a family with a very strong tradition
of serving people who were senior officers, and they were talking
about one of the members of their family, so they have not taken
the Army life lightly because they had this very proud tradition.
Can I ask about the current commitments the Armed Forces have
throughout the world? Does that squeeze on the need to prioritise
the training regime?
Mr Ingram: There has always been
a balance between the front line and training. In my opening statement
I gave a flavour of how we are having to prioritise in these areas.
Again, before my time, in the 1990s, in Front Line First there
was a movement away from the training establishments into the
front line because that was where the intensity of the demand
was. What we have sought to do is try to get a new balance on
that. If you examine what was happening in the 1990s—you
may or may not want to do that—in terms of the experiences
or some of the judgments which were out there and some of the
resource decisions which were taken at that time, which then impact
later on, you then have to work your way out of the resource decision,
whether human resources or capital or cash, and you cannot just
simply move away. If you take it down to a lower threshold then
you have to build up on your training because it has to be progressive,
you cannot just give a big tranche of money back into this from
somewhere else. These are not easy equations. I am conscious of
the fact that when we started getting the first indication of
our successful recruiting strategies and we were getting that
pool of new people in, the Vice Chief of Defence Staff came and
said, "We have an issue here, it looks as though we may have
to put more resource into the training environment in the Army"
but we are just watching it at the moment because it may be just
a glitch. If you suddenly throw the resources in and you try to
deal with that in that reactive way and then all of a sudden it
tails off, you have to rebalance, by which time you may have misallocated
resources. This is not an easy set of equations for the planners
and decision-makers. Those people are trying to play all the tunes
and make sure they get it right. That is why there are pauses
in recruitment as well because if you suddenly have a lot of people
coming in making enquiries, it goes back to the point, are you
going to strengthen that training in anticipation of them coming
in, and have real people in the system, but then if they do not
come in you have misallocated resources and you have drawn people
away from something they are really enjoying and saying, "You
have to go off and do that now" and then there is demotivation
and people think, "I built myself up for the new job and
the new job never materialised and now I am back". So the
human resource management of this is very complex.
Q1353 Mr Roy: You
do recognise the concerns though?
Mr Ingram: Absolutely.
Q1354 Mr Roy: There
have to be commitments to do the training which in effect will
be in a year or two years' time for the trainers?
Mr Ingram: In the course of your
investigation, if you find the right formula which gives the best
answer on that, I would be grateful to hear it. I think it will
be a bit like Fermat's Last Theorem; it will be very complex.
Q1355 Chairman: We
are all victims, everyone here, in many ways of bad teachers who
have inflicted their appalling incompetence on us.
Mr Ingram: Mr Chairman, you used
to be a teacher yourself.
Q1356 Chairman: Yes,
I was, but I was not very good. They have been inflicting for
years their incompetence on generations of young people. I have
seen the trainers in RAF Halton and it was scintillating. I was
a bit sceptical of the chaplain service as trainers, but not any
more, these were incredibly competent people. When I went to Lichfield
I was incredibly impressed by the quality of the trainers but
to find somebody who is qualified as a trainer is quite difficult,
and I am not certain everybody can cut the mustard. When it comes
to training the trainers, the corporals, this is where some of
the problems begin. It is the changing the culture, a culture
which in some cases is dependent upon the social area they come
from which is very difficult to change, and I am not certain whether
in a five-day course in Lichfield you are going to turn around
somebody who frankly will not make a very good trainer. One of
the reasons would be because they have not yet gone through the
social process of recognising what we have to go through, the
process of recognising they are now living in a different world.
I would see the changing of the culture—not making them
good people who can tell you how to fire a gun or how to do a
whole range of tasks, I do not think that is a desperately difficult
problem—how to create in their mind the kind of attitudes
that will inhibit them from passing on their prejudices and attitudes,
as being most important. I am not pointing a finger at anybody
but I sat behind a few guys and I thought, "My God, I do
not want these coming anywhere near young soldiers." I say
that despite all I have heard and all I have seen which has been
overwhelmingly positive, the quality of the people in Collingwood,
in HMS Sultan, in Halton, outside in Cosford, incredibly dedicated
people in whom I will have absolute faith that they are totally
fitted to do the task they are being required to do. In the case
of the Army, progress has been made and it is quite remarkable
but this is the challenge that you are going to have to be able
to meet to reassure parents that the people who are doing the
training, the rather mundane training really, are going to play
the game which you have set. That is the challenge of the post-Deepcut
environment. I am sorry to be almost like a vicar on this but
I have spent five days in Lichfield and I came out of it in many
ways exhilarated by the quality of the people there and they were
on-message and they knew exactly what they had to do, but I was
not convinced some of the corporals coming in who had to go out
weeks later and do the training had gone through that process.
Mr Ingram: I am grateful for the
one you visited. It is always good to go and see it in reality
and you are getting the best quality assessment. I do not want
to sound like a production line manager here but the system was
not broken and is not broken. It does not mean to say that it
cannot be made better. Look at the outputs, look at the outputs
even when we were not doing all the new things we are doing now—high
quality, first-class young men and women joining the Armed Forces.
That cannot be gainsaid. We need to look at what we have achieved.
It is young recruits coming out of Phase 2 training right into
the front line and doing some remarkable things. Now we are putting
in place a whole range of new attributes and focusing better on
how we do all this, so that is being taken only with the higher
threshold, the capabilities of those people who are having to
undertake that instructor role. I do not think we will see a diminution
in quality standards. I think we will see at the very least the
same high standards and we may actually get an uplift. We then
have to think about all the changes that are going to take place
in terms of digitisation, the higher demands that will be placed
upon a field Army, and we have to progressively address all those
issues. On any independent assessment of what we are doing defined
in output terms we have very high standards, second to none, but
we have to get better. That is a hard task that we are facing.
Q1357 Chairman:
When we produce our report there will be a pretty strong section
on that. I am sure it will come right, but this is where the potential
problem might be and it is absolutely vital that once these guys
have gone through their training programme they are taught how
to recognise problems, they are taught about the dangers of race
discrimination and anti-female attitudes, and that they are part
of the new Army and that when they go out to do their instruction
there is a very robust system of observation to ensure that what
they have learned has been carried away with them.
Mr Ingram: Perhaps I could also
say that, given the fact that we recruit from society generally,
the climate within society also assists in awareness of people
We all need to look, those around the table, at some of the attitudes
that are out there in terms of racism and sexism and all the rest
of it. Remarkable changes have happened in society in a relatively
short period of time. It is quite clearly there and it is at unacceptable
levels in the rest of society, but there has been a seismic shift
in people's understanding of what is right and wrong in these
areas. It is not political correctness; it is the need to treat
people with equal values. That has happened in one sense almost
overnight in my experience. You could almost hit the point in
the recent past when the sea change started. Our recruits, our
young soldiers who are part of that, come from that same society,
so they will carry those attributes probably everywhere. It is
just making sure they are best focused on how they deal with it.
Q1358 Mr Roy:
Well said. Minister, can we go back to the issue of bullying?
What is your definition of bullying? When does robust training
become bullying? When do we cross the line?
Mr Ingram: The definition would
be any form of harassment or intimidation. I do not think there
are lines to cross on that. If it is harassment or intimidation
it would fall into that general generic of bullying. I think you
have alighted on the other aspect of the type of training that
is needed. I am not an expert; I am not military. Colonel Eccles
can give you a better flavour of it, but you do need to drive
people forward, it would seem to me. You have to instil discipline
into them. I can only go from my experience when I used to be
a mountaineer, when I was learning to do alpine techniques. Wow—that
was dangerous stuff. You had to be pushed to the edge of your
capability and your life depended upon it, and that is small scale
compared to what we ask of soldiers. As they come out of that
Phase 2 training they could find themselves in Iraq or Afghanistan
or in some other hotspot, and they then have to have that steel
and that resolve. They have to look after themselves but they
have to look after others round about them. Robustness should
not be bullying or aggressive but it seems to me to be about instinctively
driving that discipline into people so that they know they have
to perform because their life depends upon it, other lives depend
upon it, and they have to perhaps make the ultimate sacrifice.
It makes them unique. None of the rest of us has ever been asked
to do that. The Armed Forces are unique in that sense.
Colonel Eccles: At the risk of
over-simplifying a very complex subject, "What is bullying?",
I think that a rule of thumb perhaps might be to look at the motivation
of the person who seems to be perpetrating the activity. If it
is in support of robust training and a challenge and it is all
pursuant to that end, and there is very careful consideration
of what is being done in order to achieve that training objective
in a given situation, that is fine. If it is for some less honourable
motive then perhaps we would define that as bullying. That is
a useful way in which we try and describe it to our people.
Q1359 Chairman:
I am sorry to add to this, but it was difficult for us to define
what bullying is. Imagine what it is like for somebody who is
told, "You should not bully", if he knows, "This
is bullying; this is not bullying", not just for the trainers
but also for the recruits, that if you are the subject of this
you should not be subjected to this. What efforts are being made,
Minister, to overcome the definitional problem and clearly state
to people, "This is acceptable"? Maybe "bullying"
is a wrong word. Maybe it should be, "This is behaviour that
we are prepared to accept and this is behaviour and action and
words that we are not prepared to accept", and this should
be made available to everybody so that they know exactly what
is beyond limits in today's Armed Forces.
Colonel Eccles: If I can start,
Chairman, I think it builds on the answer I gave to Mr Roy a moment
ago. It is incredibly complex to explain to people, and that is
why we try and use these simple definitions or explanations for
our instructors. Bear in mind, of course, that our instructors
are not just getting this short, two- or three-week course. They
have been NCOs and throughout their lives and careers in the Armed
Forces they will have been exposed to this issue, they will have
been taught about this, they will have learned the difference.
We have our values and standards that we try and inculcate right
the way through training and right the way through their careers.
It is very complex and what we say to NCOs, classically, is, "You
have to make a judgement on every single occasion with each set
of personnel and each set of circumstances that you are in. These
are the kinds of things that are acceptable; these are the kinds
of things that are not acceptable, and if you want to try and
get your head around what the definition is, look at your own
motivation".
Chairman: I do not think people will
be convinced by this; that is my only concern. When I was at school
the woodwork teacher had a wonderful system of discipline. At
every mistake I made he put my head in a vice and applied one
twist of the vice. He did stop before killing me. It did not do
me any good but that was not seen as bullying then. He was just
seen as a rather eccentric woodwork master. I am just anxious
to be absolutely certain that everybody going into the Armed Forces
as a recruit knows exactly what he or she must be prepared to
accept and this is what they must complain about, and with the
trainers the same. Whether it is done with videos or books I have
no idea. It is almost like a definition of terrorism. Nobody agrees
and probably people will not agree on what bullying is. If they
see with a red line through it, "This is an offence and you
will be punished for doing this", then maybe over a period
of time this will get through to everybody.
Mr Roy: Do not take up woodwork!
Chairman: I am sure Kim Howells thought
I was bullying him when I was giving him lines or putting him
on detention, but look what happened to him. It has obviously
not had the slightest effect upon him.
Mr Cran: The Chairman made a very serious
point. I am astonished that there was a vice big enough, but that
is another issue!
Chairman: I was a little boy then.
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