Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1380
- 1396)
WEDNESDAY 15 DECEMBER 2004
RT HON
ADAM INGRAM
MP, COLONEL DAVID
ECCLES AND
MR MARTIN
FULLER
Q1380 Mr Cran: So
we can come to a conclusion as to whether it is sensible or not.
Mr Ingram: Yes.
Q1381 Chairman: We
have had some documentation on this. If we need any more we will
drop you a note. We are pursuing Police Forces in the next few
weeks.
Mr Ingram: Okay.
Q1382 Mr Roy: Some
of the most harrowing evidence we have received came from families
whose sons and daughters had died at Deepcut and other places,
especially in relation to the way that those families were treated,
the lack of information given to the families. We heard sons had
died, and I had it in my constituency as well, a young man had
died and the box with his personal belongings was delivered to
the next door neighbour and left on the doorstep which was deeply
distressful for those families. Listening to those parents, that
obviously was discussed and there is still a deep anger at the
way they were treated. There is anger, also, at the fact that
they feel they were not given the information that they should
have been. Also, I have another constituent whose son died at
Catterick who split up from her husband before the death. The
husband was notified of the son's death and subsequently notified
all the way through but the mother has never received so much
as a phone call to explain what was happening with the investigation.
It has been very upsetting as the constituency MP to hear that
in a surgery and obviously in here as well. Can you explain, according
to evidence received from those families, why on numerous occasions
the Army failed to follow its own regulations when discharging
its own obligations in relation to the next of kin of, specifically,
dead trainees? I am speaking about the lack of information given
to them.
Mr Ingram: I do not think there
is any question at all, and I said that in terms of earlier answers,
there was bad handling in some of these cases, and we apologise
for that. The lesson has got to be learnt, that cannot be acceptable,
that that is not properly applied. There should be no insensitivity
shown at all. It is not necessarily done on the basis of insensitivity,
sometimes it was done because it was always done and it may not
have been recognised what the proper procedures were. All of that
is unacceptable, we cannot approach it on this basis. I think
those lessons have been learnt and we have to make sure everyone
is aware what they should do in these sets of circumstances. You
raise another issue about split families. This is a most difficult
area because if someone said "That is my next of kin, and
I do not want you to communicate with someone else in my family"
we have to honour the views and wishes of the dead.
Q1383 Mr Roy: I
know what you are saying, Minister.
Mr Ingram: If we tread over that
and we start communicating to other members of the family because
we are trying to be over-compassionate, people will say "They
have no right, they have no ownership of that grief". This
happens all the time and the people who have to manage this are
put into a very invidious position. It is not unique to the Army,
it is anyone who has to deal with those sets of circumstances,
whom do you speak to, how do you communicate, who are you offending
by not speaking to or who are offending by speaking to. This is
very problematic.
Q1384 Mr Roy: I
have a problem. My problem is the world has moved on a great deal
and more marriages now split up. I am worried the same question
being asked, who is your next of kin, was relevant 20, 30, 40,
50 years ago, but now do we need to look at cases where a mother
and father have split up? Of course the father is marked as next
of kin but two years down the line the mother has not received
a phone call.
Mr Ingram: We ask that they put
another point of contact as well. We try and get that approach.
Again, people in the Armed Forces are unique because they have
to do this. We do not have to do this, we do not have to specify
that in the event of our demise someone should be contacted. Look
how many people in this country do not have wills. Now, we have
to have that in terms of the Armed Forces because of the very
nature of what we ask of them. If someone does not want to comply,
if someone is saying "I do not want someone to be contacted",
we have to respect those wishes.
Q1385 Mr Roy: I
accept that.
Mr Ingram: That is the sense of
territory we are in in all this. You are right in terms of the
nature of society has changed but then you have a situation where
partners know and they are not spouses. The mother may say "It
was my son" but they may have been in a partnership for 15
years and the family will not recognise the partner but that is
the relationship. Imagine the complications in all of that, the
offence that could be caused by the wrong contact, causing more
grief and intruding into the family disputes that are out there.
I marvel at the people who work their way through this in such
a sensitive way. Having said that, mistakes have been made and
we have to learn lessons from them.
Colonel Eccles: Can I just add
a couple of little points, if I may. The first is we do not call
them "Next of Kin" now, we call them "Emergency
Contacts" to explain, their role, for precisely that reason
so a person understands the reason for filling in the form in
that way. Also we have split the notification. We now have a Casualty
Notification Officer who makes the initial contact with the Emergency
Contact. He or she then passes responsibility to the Casualty
Visiting Officer who stays with the family for as long as necessary,
in some cases months and years beyond the funeral, in order to
maintain the contact with the services and the Army. We are very
aware of this area and we are developing new procedures all the
time to make it more sophisticated and tighten the bolts.
Q1386 Mr Roy: Can
I just move on to the Board of Inquiry process. We have heard
some disquiet from the parents that the parents were not consulted
in the Board of Inquiry process. Why is that?
Colonel Eccles: A Board of Inquiry
is an internal process that is designed to identify what went
wrong and why in order to prevent a recurrence. It is not a public
activity and it is held internally. Now in very sensitive cases,
and we are aware of this, there may be an occasion when a member
of the family has something to add to the Board of Inquiry. I
will give you an example. I was involved in the assassination,
you may remember, of Brigadier Stephen Saunders who was assassinated
in Athens. On that occasion we believed his wife might have been
able to add something to the lessons which could be learned by
the Board of Inquiry and she was involved, so in exceptional circumstances
it does happen. The point is although they may not be involved
there has been direction that we should always give a copy of
the findings to the Board of Inquiry to the family once the process
is complete. That will be done normally by the Casualty Visiting
Officer who maintains this link as I described earlier.
Q1387 Mr Roy: If
you have a parent who knew that their child was being bullied,
for example, and is subsequently found dead, is that an example
of exceptional circumstances where someone should have listened
or someone should have been able to say to the parents "It
is relevant that your voice is listened to in this"? This
has happened in my constituency whereby parents knew the child
was bullied, they phoned the Army, they phoned the barracks and
three days later their son had died.
Mr Ingram: Can I say, going back
to the earlier comment I made, that if you have specific instances
of this, please furnish us with them so we can then see the veracity
of them. I am not saying that people tell lies but we need to
bottom all these things out. We cannot make comment, anecdotal
or on wrong data, as if it is a definite because you have heard
it. We need to be able to make the same level of judgment. I just
say if you have specific instances let us have them because we
would like to get to the bottom of those things as well. Also
remember that the Coroner's inquest is a judicial process by which
this is done. That is where the family's legal protection sits,
maybe not legal protection but the legal entitlement sits to get
that examined. That is the forum, the Board of Inquiry, and we
have tried to do better with the Board of Inquiry to get them
on to the case quicker and to make sure they learn valuable lessons
immediately so we can implement them. It does not have the status
of the inquest. There is an inquiry mechanism there for the families
to raise on that.
Q1388 Mr Roy: Would
that stop that whole process, Minister, if those families were
told the Board of Inquiry was going to sit and they would be able
to read a transcript and know when it was going to take place
or be there as listeners to that process?
Mr Ingram: The other aspect of
this is we seek to get the best information from those serving
personnel. The danger is if you are confusing the two mechanisms
between the inquest or any other court of law with what we are
seeking to do in military terms to establish what went on, and
we ask serving personnel to come and give honest evidence so we
can establish quickly what is going on, if other people are in
that process you are into a much more judicial process and people
have the right of legal protection in those circumstances, so
you change the whole characteristic of that. That may be desirable
to some people but it may not get quickly to that immediate problem
which has to be addressed and then remedied from a military perspective.
Q1389 Mr Roy: What
value does that Board of Inquiry process add that is not gained
from an investigation by civilian Police?
Colonel Eccles: Normally a Board
of Inquiry will take place once all investigations into an activity
have been completed, including civilian Police, as you say, and
any other inquiries that are going on. It will draw together all
the threads of that. If it identifies anything during the course
of its inquiries something that may require disciplinary action
to be taken, it ceases its proceedings and refers the matter back
to the Police authorities. What it is doing is trying to draw
it altogether at the end of the process in order to distil the
lessons that can be learned from the activity and from the incident.
As the Minister said a moment ago, that is the end piece. The
front end piece is the Learning Account which is established within
48 hours of any immediate lessons. It is a combination of those
two things, one to get the immediate lessons in the Learning Account
and a sweep-up Board of Inquiry in which we hope to gain every
last ounce of knowledge from that case.
Mr Ingram: I do not know what
you have got on explanations of the Board of Inquiry process and
the casualty procedures, but we could give you a note on that.
Q1390 Chairman: I
was about to ask for that.
Mr Ingram: We can give you a memorandum
on that.
Chairman: You said that you were thinking
of ways of improving that.
Q1391 Mr Roy: Lastly,
on the Coroner's inquest, Minister. Is it policy that someone
from the Armed Forces attends the Coroner's inquest because I
know that it was not previously and, again, in the case of one
of my constituents nobody turned up?
Colonel Eccles: Normally, the
Casualty Visiting Officer will be the person who attends the Coroner's
inquest. That is the procedure that we have established from now
on.
Q1392 Chairman: A
few more questions. In fact, I will not ask for a response to
this. I will read it out and perhaps you could provide a short
note. The DOC reports identify duty of care shortcomings in the
Services, how does the MoD assess and ensure best practice is
shared in relation to duty of care? I think that deserves more
a written answer than a verbal answer. The next question should
be fairly quick. Since 2002, DOC has produced three appraisals
on initial training in three years. DOC plans to produce its next
report on initial training in 2007. Does this mean that you are
satisfied with the current standard of duty of care or is there
some other explanation?
Mr Ingram: What we decided on
the back of the Surrey Police report in March of this year when
we examined what they were saying, out of which came this establishment
of the Adult Learning Inspectorate and, of course, that will be
an ongoing rolling programme of examination by another independent
body, we did feel that it is a good thing to keep our own eye
on the ball as well on those things that have a military edge
to them. There is double-checking in all of this. If you look
at the timescales, ALI are reporting next year, probably March
or whatever I think they have said, in that timescale, we will
then have to analyse that, and, if it is a case of resourcing,
how that is going to be funded. You can see how it will take some
time, so we are into the middle of 2005, towards the end of 2005,
and some of the recommendations may not be fully bottomed out
until 2006. ALI will continue to keep a monitor on that and then
we will drop in a DOC in 2007 on the back of all of that. This
goes back to the earlier question of are we going to go sleep
on it again, and we are not.
Chairman: It should be on the diary of
any Minister to say how are things going on in DOC rather than
waiting until three or four years ahead.
Q1393 Mike Gapes: The
Adult Learning Inspectorate usually inspects training and education
institutions, is it really competent to judge welfare across the
three services?
Mr Ingram: I have had two meetings
with them. We set them up because we had to when we were looking
at them as an organisation to try to bottom out some of those
issues. Subsequently, as they have gone through the process, they
have kept very closely in touch with the appropriate people within
the MoD as they have identified issues. I have no doubt in my
mind about their competences and qualities. You have got to make
your own judgment on this. There must be areas where they do not
quite comprehend or understand, that must be inevitable, but then
we give them best advice and guidance. At the end of the day these
are independent people and professional people, they will not
want to produce anything, given the intensive level of examination
that is going to go into it, that falls short of a high standard.
I think my feel for this is they have a really good touch on this
and I genuinely await their final report with interest.
Q1394 Mike Gapes: You
said you have given them advice and guidance. Is that advice and
guidance making clear that the Armed Forces' training regime has
a particular military context and is not like run-of-the-mill
institutions that they might have had to deal with in the past?
Mr Ingram: There must be things
like the handling of firearms, there must be things like the type
of accommodation that we see the recruits in, that they would
not come across anywhere else. The type of people we are dealing
with and the way in which we manage them and the volume of people
we are dealing with makes it unique for all those reasons. The
other thing about the Adult Learning Inspectorate is that they
have experience across a range of other big establishments as
well. This is not just a first exercise. Not only that, but they
had been working with us at a different level, a lower level,
before we appointed them into this bigger inquiry giving us advice
on good educational standards and so on. This is a quality organisation.
I know that people have tried to diminish it but it goes back
to an earlier point I made probably about three hours ago that
there are people out there who, no matter what we do, are going
to try to knock it down and we are not being given credit for
the quality of the effort we are putting into this. They can live
with their conscience, I am living with mine.
Q1395 Chairman: I
went to Coventry with a member of staff for a day and I was very
impressed by what they have done, what they are going to do and
their enthusiasm. The only minor problem was the point Mike raised.
I am not certain at this stage that they recognise that the military
is a bit different from ICI or Marks & Spencer and you gave
some explanations for this. I think it goes much deeper than that
in the nature of discipline, the nature of command, the nature
of risk, the nature of obeying orders in a crisis. I am not trying
to second guess the way they work. Before they start operating
fully, I am wondering if they are absolutely aware, and I know
they do have military personnel involved in the inspections, that
they recognise that the work they are doing now, and the very
important role they are undertaking, which I am sure they will
discharge very effectively, whether you do convince them that
although there are similarities between the military and the private
or public sector outside, there are sufficient differences to
mean that they have to have due cognisance of this when they are
undertaking their very important work.
Mr Ingram: Let me put this in
another context. I came in as a Minister in 2001 and I had no
experience, yet I was supposed to be making decisions across all
of these issues. I said earlier that it takes a long time for
a Defence Minister to get up to speed and you have got to get
out in the territory, you have got to understand, you have got
to absorb best information and you grow in your knowledge in all
of this. I think that will happen with the ALI, I do not think
there is any question about that, because civilians do not have
experience of military life so they must go through that process.
They are bringing that type of professional, analytical brain
to it which can only be judged, in their case, in the report.
We have said to them that it would be useful, and we have encouraged
this and asked for this, to see the aftermath of the training
environment, so I understand that they are going off to Iraq at
the turn of the year to have a look at what comes out of the training
environment. That will give them a good rounded feel for it. We
are not that far away from the report.
Q1396 Chairman: Thank
you very, very much. As I said, we will be on your back for another
three months before we finally produce our report. I would like
to thank you, Minister, for your staff who have been very helpful
to us in our inquiry so far and I am sure you will do a good job,
whatever you do. Thank you very much for giving evidence to us.
Mr Ingram: I genuinely look forward
to your report. Have a good Christmas in Kiev.
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