Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1360
- 1379)
WEDNESDAY 15 DECEMBER 2004
RT HON
ADAM INGRAM
MP, COLONEL DAVID
ECCLES AND
MR MARTIN
FULLER
Q1360 Mr Cran:
We are getting on now to a very serious point. The Committee felt
it was quite important for you, Minister, to be given the opportunity
to respond to what I can call allegations which were made by both
the Deepcut and the Catterick families when they were before us,
and they made it very clear to us, and these are their words,
that "widespread bullying is ongoing at training establishments
as we sit here now". I am bound to say to you that I agree
with your analysis: you can never be sure that it is going to
be stamped out by whatever means you put in place. I have gone
to a lot of our visits. We have had access to trainees. No officers
or NCOs were present and I am bound to say to you that I found
nobody who was prepared to say that there was any bullying going
on. My colleagues have had similar experiences but we just feel
that you should have the opportunity to respond.
Mr Ingram: I have visited and
I have listened and spoken to them and I think we are fairly knowledgeable
people in assessing when someone is hiding something or not telling
the truth; that is part of the skills you bring as a Member of
Parliament because we see so many people with so many problems
that we begin to bottom out these things. I have done these visits
as well and you say, "Be open, be honest", and you encourage
all of that, and there is not a senior officer looking over their
shoulder. You make sure that is the case. They have to be insulated
from all that type of worry, that there is someone saying, "Don't
dare say this". But, of course, these are only momentary
visits, so you will probably not fully establish that. Then you
have got to recognise that there is a reality out there, and I
make this point: we are no different from any other organisation
or any other part of society. There must be bullying going on.
It is in the very nature of our society that that happens. It
happens in schools, it happens in public organisations and it
unquestionably happens in the Armed Forces. That is why I said
earlier that the levels, if you can measure this at all, indicate
that within the Armed Forces it is immeasurably lower than it
is in comparable organisations elsewhere, the way in which people
report what they believe is happening to them. I do not think
this is a sophisticated analysis but the Doc Analysis, the Documents
2 and 3, can track us through from Doc 1 through to Doc 3 and
they ask this very question, and this is contained in the appendix
to Doc 3, "Have you ever been bullied during your training
here?", and this was across the three services. In terms
of Doc 1, it was 7.6% respondees. By the time it got to Doc 3
it was 4.5%. That does not prove necessarily that things have
improved. I think it is encouraging to think it may have. That
of itself shows up people who think they have been bullied, so
we have then got to ensure that what we call zero tolerance is
really being determinedly pushed forward by everybody. It goes
back to what the Chairman was saying earlier about how we get
this message over about what is not even wholly unacceptable but
what is unacceptable to any extent. Anything that encroaches on
that is not tolerated and cannot be tolerated because out of that
can come a broken person; out of that can come a failure. That
is not what the training environment is about. It is not to break
people; it is to make people. It is working all of that through.
I am really encouraged because from the top I think that culture
is there, but I am conscious of the fact that there will be failures
within that system, so I cannot give that guarantee that these
things will not happen in the future or that it is not going on
even as we speak. I do not know whether some of it related to
the Surrey Police statements, these 173 allegations. I am sure
within that, and indeed we know within that, there are some serious
problems. That is why the Police are still carrying out one criminal
investigation and we are trying to bottom out some of the other
aspects that fall within the Ministry of Defence Police domain
to investigate, and yet we are working against that heavy caution
that the Surrey Police gave us which said, "These are uncorroborated,
untested. Treat them with extreme caution", but we are treating
them as serious because we do not want them to happen. Even if
they are sometimes distant in the past and it may be difficult
to get to the reality of what happened at the time, it is a good
exemplar of dealing with the present as well. Wherever we find
it, it will be homed in on and it will be dealt with, and punishments
will arise from it. If it is an instructor on a trainee, it could
be that person being busted or Court Martialled. If it is a trainee
on a trainee, it would have to be dealt with in terms of the provisions
which apply in those circumstances. So this is a complete zero
tolerance philosophy and there is nowhere within the system that
is not well understood and I believe it to be applied with rigour
and vigour. But we will never be perfect.
Q1361 Mr Cran: I
entirely understand what you have said, indeed I support what
you have said. I want to tie it down a bit because the word or
inference we were given by these families was this use of the
word "widespread" and that has a very clear connotation.
I say to you, in my limited experience going round I have not
seen this, and am I getting from the words you use that you do
not believe that to be the case either?
Mr Ingram: I do not have any evidence
to say that, which is why I take this analysis from the DOC out
there, who were investigating this, trying to establish this,
and I think there is a measurable decline. I would have thought
it would have gone the other way because we are encouraging people
to come forward, so you would have thought there should be an
increase, because we are saying, "You must report, please
report, we will give all protection and support", yet if
that is a measure it shows it is not widespread. I think it is
encouraging but we can never be complacent.
Q1362 Mr Cran: I
have received a supplementary from the wings but I can do no more
than read it out because I have not had time to digest it. What
does "zero tolerance" mean? How many NCOs and officers
in ATRA have been disciplined in the last 12 months?
Colonel Eccles: In the last 12—and
we did an analysis of the number—we identified there were
239 formal allegations of discrimination, harassment or bullying,
of which 137 were upheld. Now the majority of those cases were
dealt with summarily, which I think indicates the severity of
them, that they were of a relatively low level, however three
did go to court-martial. If one looks back at the number of courts-martial
in the last few years, it is a similar sort of number—one,
two or three—serious cases which have gone to court-martial
within the ATRA because of those sorts of incidents.
Mr Ingram: Those are Army statistics?
Colonel Eccles: ATRA statistics
over the last 12 months.
Q1363 Mr Cran: Is
there differentiation between bullying in the ranks, as it were,
or in the training establishments between recruits and bullying
by officers? Again, there were allegations made when the families
came before us and I would like somebody to take me through how
these are dealt with. Are they dealt with differently? Are they
dealt with in the same way? If it is an officer, given his rank
and all the rest, is he or she treated in a more harsh way?
Colonel Eccles: First of all,
if we take the example of an incident where we have a trainer
who is found to have bullied in a substantial way a trainee, of
course each case will be judged on the circumstances and so on,
but as a rule of thumb the more senior the person, the more severe
the way it will be dealt with. If an officer were involved, he
would be dealt with extremely seriously, whereas a relatively
newly-promoted NCO would not be quite so severely dealt with,
but they are treated in exactly the same way and an investigation
rigorously done. When we turn to, let's call it trainee on trainee
bullying, of which I have to say there is a fair amount, as we
all know, again one deals with that in the same way. If a complaint
is made, it is investigated, and we deal with the perpetrator
in an appropriate manner, but we do take it very seriously. I
would say of course we also take all measures we can to prevent
such activity by supervising our people and, of course, also supervising
trainees. A point which has come out is that the Adult Learning
Inspectorate suggested at Catterick, which they had just visited,
that we ought to give the recruits more space in the evenings,
and they tried that and what happened? They had a few more incidents
of what one might call "horse play", so a degree of
supervision has to be there. It is a fine balance between giving
them room to manoeuvre and supervising properly.
Q1364 Mike Gapes: Can
I ask you about welfare improvements? In our visits to various
training establishments we got the impression that improvements
have taken place. Commanding officers have told us these improvements
are largely due to the increased resources they have been able
to have as a result of the short-term programmes in 2003-04. I
am interested to know what the long-term position is going to
be. There have been recent press reports that this funding level
is only guaranteed until the end of financial year 2005-06. Is
there an on-going commitment to improving the welfare system?
If so, where are the resources coming from?
Mr Ingram: There are a lot of
questions there! The resources ultimately come from you and me
as taxpayers. While there have been other examinations and other
reports out there, what I wanted to do was to get an independent
assessment, and DOC I believe is independent of the Chain of Command,
in fact it is independent of the Chain of Command, and I wanted
to do it across all three Services, because the last thing I wanted
to do was make this an Army-only examination because that was
where the criticism was and then find the same problems popping
up elsewhere. So that is why I said, "Let's take time, let's
do a full examination." Out of that came an action plan of
course and most, if not all, of the recommendations have now been
implemented, and one was the uplift in terms of numbers of instructors,
179 it was hoped was determined, and the £23.5 million which
was put in. That was taken out of the SDP 04 Programme. I do not
know where this argument comes from, although I was faced with
it in a recent television programme, Despatches, this allegation
that it only runs to a point in time and then it all stops. That
could apply, by simple logic, to every bit of spending on Defence.
The truth of the matter is we are spending now to that higher
level and there would have to be very provable reasons why you
reduce that spend, why you reduce those instructors or all the
other areas of spend which are going on now. All the direction
of the questions today and I think all of the answers have been,
"We are moving towards a different type of environment in
which there is going to be more commitment in terms of welfare
support, duty of care", and a very big part of that of course
is human resources in terms of the number of instructors and in
staff relations. So I have no plans to cut it, and I do not think
there are any plans to cut it, and those who make those allegations
do not understand the intensity of the way we are addressing this
issue. It was one of those allegations they make not based upon
any facts.
Q1365 Mike Gapes: Would
you accept something which was highlighted by Surrey Police, which
is that previously there had been over a number of years an identification
of problems and improvements needed with regard to the welfare
of recruits in training which had not been carried out? Do you
accept that was mainly because of resource constraints? I am talking
about the past.
Mr Ingram: There was a period
before this Government came into office when a decision was taken
to take a big tranche of money out of that environment. That was
a decision that was taken and, as I said earlier, once that happens
then you have got to work your way back up again. I am not making
this Labour against Tory Government but what we have done progressively
since 1997 is to try and recruit as many people as we can. We
have begun to see the benefit of that and there was a whole new
strategy put in place to try to attract people in, some of it
worked and some of it did not, and that happened with previous
governments. What you need to look at is the success in the recruitment
figures over recent times and success in recruitment then means
you have to resource your recruiting estate. There are many issues
that still have to be attended to in all of that. Accommodation
is a big ticket in many ways because it depends what it is you
are seeking to do. If it is new build of accommodation, you can
see that does not come cheap and you do not have that resource
sitting around easily. One of the things that we are looking at
in terms of the Defence Training Review is to look at the overall
estate to see whether there is a better way of doing this. Is
there a co-location, a rationalisation, efficiencies that can
be driven in to release more resources so that we can then tackle
those issues that were neglected in times past. One of the key
indicators that came out of the DOC report was the staffing ratio
and that was immediately addressed and immediately implemented
once it had been analysed what it was we were going to do and
how much money was required and that money put in. That is why
I say—I know the Committee is aware of this but others outside
are not—just how much effort has gone in to change that
environment. That is not to say that the previous environment
was broken, it was not, but looking at it in output terms it is
just that we are now doing it better.
Q1366 Mike Gapes: There
are now more resources going in. Is that because of the DOC reports
or is there some other reason why we have got more resources going
through? How was the MoD able to get extra resourcing? Were you
able to point to this and say to the Treasury, "We need money
to deal with this?"
Mr Ingram: The Treasury does not
quite operate in that way with us. What happened was that I commissioned
the report and I got those recommendations and said "I am
now going to implement them" and you can imagine happened
next, "Where does the money come from?" You have to
find out what the problem is and then you have to find the resource,
and that was what was done. DOC gave us the platform on which
to do that but I would just say that everyone else within the
decision making chain are also seeking additional resource and
this is something that has to be addressed. Sitting alongside
that, of course, was great public concern about the tragic deaths
at Deepcut and the need to try to preserve the good name. There
was a concern and it was being addressed. There were many other
recommendations about welfare support and various other aspects
which did not carry the same cost elements but, nevertheless,
had to be addressed and those changes built upon changes that
had been happening from 1996 after the first Board of Inquiry
and some changes took place then and there were some changes that
took place progressively after that.
Q1367 Mike Gapes: You
mentioned the need to make further improvements and you talked
about housing, accommodation. Do we have anywhere near the resources
to do what needs to be done? Are there other areas that also will
need resources? Are we talking very big money here, in which case
where is it going to come from?
Mr Ingram: There has to be a balance
between the front line equipment, between training and exercises,
and, broadly speaking, that is how we cut the cake. The examination
of the Defence Training Review is to look at are we doing all
of these things in the best way and say you can find efficiencies
within your own system. That is part of the driver at the moment
in the MoD: do not assume there is someone out there with a pot
of gold who is going to give us money. Although we have had very
substantial uplift from the Treasury on this in the last Spending
Round and in this but, like any spending department, you could
do with more money. What you do have is you have then got to make
sure it is properly allocated and properly spent and you are getting
the returns that you seeking from it. I say this: we have a programme
at the moment that is trying to drive out £2.8 billion of
spend so that can go to the front line. We have not achieved that
yet but we are making some good progress. We have got some way
to go. As that happens, that frame of resource then gets reallocated
out across all the various areas of demands. It so happens that
I do not have ministerial responsibility for this area now, that
is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary who is now taking it forward,
but I know that he will be aggressively campaigning for his share
of the cake. It is never an easy equation—I use that phrase
again—to solve this because there are massive demands within
defence, we have only got so much to spend and we have to do it
wisely and best. In my earlier statement I said this is one of
the key components of our capability, what comes out of that training
environment, it is of high quality, it was of high quality and
it has got to remain at high quality, so investment is required.
Q1368 Chairman: Where
we come from on this is time and time again we have been told
over the last six to nine months that it was this period, 1998/1999/2000,
where the ratio of trainers to trainees really got unacceptably
high and it was this bad ratio that led to lack of control, abuses,
and you are paying the price, we are paying the price, all sorts
of people are paying the price for that failure to appreciate
you might think you were saving money by not training more trainers
but in the long run it was a bad, bad decision. I have no anxieties
about what you are doing because we have seen an enormous amount
of progress in the course of this inquiry, but I have probably
seen ten people in your job, not designated Ministers of the Armed
Forces but doing the job that you have been doing, and what we
want to see is that there is an historical memory in the Ministry
of Defence, that somewhere downstairs is a 30-year-old Member
of Parliament who is going to be occupying your position at some
stage in the future and I want to be absolutely—
Mr Ingram: I have never been sacked
in such a way before.
Q1369 Chairman: There
is always a first time, but I am sure it will not happen. The
point I am making is that your experience and the experience of
your colleagues has got to be passed down to future generations
of Ministers of State to tell them, "For God's sake look
at the enormous number of files that we acquired, do not let the
ratio of trainers to trainees get out of sequence because you
will really suffer for it". That is why Mike has asked that
question and that is why we will ask the question, because whilst
we are reassured now we know that governments cannot bind their
successors. We are anxious to know that somewhere above your desk
is a sign that says "Deepcut" and, whatever the problems,
it is etched into the memory, do not ever, ever let the situation
arise in the future if you possibly can where we are going to
create potential crises in the future. That is put in an excessively
friendly way. I am sure you are very much aware, Minister, that
we are not just seeking reassurance, we really want to be absolutely
certain that we are not going to go through that kind of period
which has scarred all sorts of minds and institutions.
Mr Ingram: You can never say what
a future minister or government is going to do, it does not fall
to us to do that, in the same way we do not have the opportunity
to look at the policy papers of previous governments and why they
made those decisions. They may have made them for the right reasons,
they may not have, but they made those decisions and there was
an impact and the recovery then happens. We have now got a framework
with very clear understandings. That is not to say that some of
the studies that have been going on did not point in the direction
but there was no momentum coming out of those, although in some
cases the key recommendations were being progressively implemented.
It was based on the tragic incidents and in a sense, and it is
sad to say, that became the spur. Nonetheless, that became something
that had to be addressed as well as other issues about the climate
and public concern and so on. We now have that awareness. I think
the way in which the MoD is now beginning to look at the constituent
parts, and I am saying there is a whole transformation programme
going on, is about making sure that we have that professionalism,
we have that level of commitment that is then sustainable and
continuity of people in post becomes an issue as well because
people move on quickly. I am not talking about ministers here
but others who when they are just beginning to do a good job or
just beginning to get informed get moved on and they do not have
to live with the consequences of some of the decisions they have
made and the next person may not have that level of commitment.
One of the keys is that at the top level there is a longer term
spent in key positions so that we can ensure that continuity and
intensity so there is that level of knowledge. Ministers are different,
we are here at the behest of the Prime Minister. The Secretary
of State has been there for five years and I have been doing the
job for three and a half years and there is a lot of knowledge
there. It takes a long time to get on top of a department like
this to begin to understand it in order to drive it. It is not
because there is inertia but there does need to be a direction
at times and people seizing issues and moving forward. I cannot
see that backsliding because of the whole intensity of the attention
that has been given to it, but just remember that when I am not
Minister I may be on the back benches so I will be able to point
a finger.
Q1370 Chairman: You
might be Chairman. My time expires in a couple of months.
Mr Ingram: I can see myself in
my dotage as Mr Angry of East Kilbride saying "That is not
the way it was done in my time". I make the point that that
is out there, this is serious, and we have got to learn from what
has happened and the experience will continue.
Chairman: James, you will be leaving
sooner than me, will you not?
Q1371 Mr Cran: I
am indeed, I am just waiting for the General Election. On to the
subject of investigations. You know, as I do, that the rules were
changed in 2002 on this question of primacy of investigations
as between the military and the civilian Police.
Mr Ingram: Yes.
Q1372 Mr Cran: Of
course, that relates to the potentially serious deaths of soldiers
on MoD land. Are you happy that this demarcation is working properly?
Mr Ingram: No, it is not.
Q1373 Mr Cran: Talk
me through that.
Mr Ingram: There is not as of
today. It happened in terms of the earlier period but not in terms
of those initial two deaths. You have got to understand, and you
have questioned the Surrey Police, and you have read the report
where they apologised for all of this, the Ministry of Defence
took on some of the forensic role, some of the issues that they
should have been doing. Let me see if I can give a better answer
to this than the one I have just given. The Surrey Police have
apologised, we have had to apologise, and, therefore, had to be
very firm in these matters, and we have said this to the Surrey
Police, as we would say to any Police Force no matter where they
were, "This is your responsibility". Having said that,
that does not mean to say that we do not find the Ministry of
Defence Police working alongside them because they may have to
do that in terms of the expertise that is out there. They have
primacy, they have responsibility and they have to carry this
out. There is no question at all in this. Again, that was an invaluable
lesson and it should not have been handled in that way. I cannot
take that back. I cannot make it not happen, it did happen, and
I do not know the extent of what problems that caused, I just
do not know. Perhaps the new review may just pick away at some
of that, I do not know, we may get a benefit. The point here is
that the Police always have primacy.
Q1374 Mr Cran: Absolutely.
Mr Ingram: It just was not applied
properly. That was what was wrong. Hopefully that never happens
again in the future.
Q1375 Mr Cran: The
rules/guidelines that we are talking about no doubt will be applied
by the Surrey Police. Are you satisfied that every other Police
Force that has these training establishments in them understands
these rules too?
Mr Ingram: Absolutely. I do not
think there is any question at all about that otherwise the Police
are failing in their duty because they should immediately take
on the problem if it is rape and above.
Q1376 Mr Cran: Do
you take the view—and I have to ask this question because
it has been put to us by the families—that there is a certain
amount of concern that the evidence surrounding an incident—after
the initial investigation when it is then, let us say, decided
that it was not a wilful killing, it was suicide perhaps—in
some cases has been destroyed and cannot be relooked at, is this
something that worries you? If so, have you a view about what
should be done?
Mr Ingram: Clearly what worries
me, if something fundamentally was done wrongly, that must be
a worry but I cannot reinvent that.
Q1377 Mr Cran: I
am looking at the future.
Mr Ingram: I am not sure I have
the solution to that. That is where the Coroner's inquest should
have dealt with this; that is where the Police should have been
attending to this. They have to take on that responsibility if
inappropriate things happen, and there are indications that was
the case in a number of the instances and a whole lot of bad handling
in terms of communication to the family and so on—all of
which we said sorry for—and I repeat again that this should
not have happened, and it is a matter of great regret that it
did happen in that particular way. Let us see what happens with
this new review. I think this is a legal mind coming to it. I
am not a lawyer and I do not have the qualities that man has.
This new approach may just drill down and that is why he has given
himself that leeway. There may be new lines of inquiry which he
may want to pursue. I have encouragement in the way that he is
approaching that.
Q1378 Mr Cran: Our
notes here say that civilian Police have primacy on MoD property
in the case of investigating deaths and allegations of rape. If
I am correct in this, why is that so? Should it not go wider?
Have I got this right?
Mr Ingram: That was why I said
rape and above. If it is rape and then non combat death, that
is where the line is drawn. I do not know historically why that
would be. I do not know if we have an answer to that?
Colonel Eccles: I believe that
it is a simple division of labour, if you like. It is a formal
arrangement that has come out between the Police Forces but I
am not absolutely sure of that.
Q1379 Mr Cran: Perhaps
we could have a note to explain that.
Mr Ingram: We will get you the
answer of when that happened and why it happened and the reasoning
for it.
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