Select Committee on Defence Minutes of Evidence


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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