House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

DEFENCE COMMITTEE

 

 

DUTY OF CARE

 

 

Wednesday 1 December 2004

MRS LYNN FARR, MRS JANETTE MATTIN, MS JUNE SHARPLES,

MS CLAUDIA BECKLEY-LINES, and MR JUSTIN HUGHESTON-ROBERTS

Evidence heard in Public Questions 906 - 1094

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.	This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
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4.	Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee.

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Defence Committee

on Wednesday 1 December 2004

Members present

Mr Bruce George, in the Chair

Mr James Cran

Mr David Crausby

Mr Mike Hancock

Mr Dai Havard

Mr Kevan Jones

Mr Frank Roy

Mr Peter Viggers

________________

Memorandum submitted by Mrs Lynn Farr

 

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Mrs Lynn Farr, Mrs Janette Mattin, Ms June Sharples, and Ms Claudia Beckley-Lines and Mr Justin Hugheston-Roberts, Solicitor Advocate, Messrs Rose Williams & Partners, examined.

Q906 Chairman: Good morning, ladies, this is the first of two evidence sessions today in our Duty of Care Inquiry, an inquiry we are still in the midst of, although we hope to report in March. Thank you for giving up your time to come to see us this morning, for what I hope will be as informal a meeting as a Select Committee meeting can be. We appreciate that these times are intensely personal and distressing for you; we obviously understand. Before we begin I would like to repeat what I said when we began our inquiry; although our inquiry was prompted by the deaths of young soldiers at initial training establishments, we are not a substitute for the police nor for the judicial process. We have not and will not be considering the findings of the police or of the coroner about how the deaths occurred. I am obliged to remind you and the wider audience who may be following the Committee's work in this area that this inquiry and this evidence session is not the appropriate forum to make allegations about named individuals. Our task is to see whether the Armed Forces are learning the lessons of the past and whether they are doing everything that can reasonably be expected of them to ensure that their training regime and culture promote the well-being of the people they are training. Having said that, we could not have concluded our inquiry without having heard from you, the families of those involved with these tragic events. This session is an opportunity for you to tell us about your experiences and to give us your views on how the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence should improve the care and welfare of recruits. Thank you, Lynn, for your memorandum and, in case anyone gets conspiratorial, the names at the rear of this memorandum as available have been deleted by the Committee, I understand in consultation with you; there is no sinister attempt to prevent any truth coming out. Before you start, please would you like to introduce yourselves?

Mrs Mattin: I am Janet Mattin.

Mrs Farr: I am Lynn Farr, my son Daniel was 18 when he died at Catterick.

Ms Sharples: I am June Sharples, my son Allan died at Catterick; he was 20.

Ms Beckley-Lines: Claudia Beckley-Lines, my son died at Catterick when he was 22.

Q907 Chairman: Thank you very much. I will start off with the first question - and there are lots of questions that we would like to ask. If you would like me to ask a question again, or any of my colleagues, please ask, or if at any time you want a little time out, then that is perfectly acceptable. You do not all have to answer the same question, if whoever is coming second or third thinks the question has been answered, then there is no obligation to repeat, because we have a lot of questions and we want to cover as much ground as we possibly can. If a question clearly applies to all of you, then of course do not in any way hesitate to speak. Whether a question could be addressed to you all and whether we go from left to right, will that be okay?

Mrs Farr: Yes.

Q908 Chairman: When your children applied to join the Army were you as parents given information about the training regime that they would be experiencing? Janet?

Mrs Mattin: Just a printout, a small pamphlet that I remember, nothing that I felt was particularly aimed at me, it was more for the new recruit.

Q909 Chairman: Thank you, and you were not alarmed in any way, it seemed a natural document to be published for any applicant or parent to read.

Mrs Mattin: No, I was not alarmed. Mark had been in the cadets from a youngster, and it was a natural progression as we thought.

Q910 Chairman: Thank you. Lynn, please?

Mrs Farr: I do not think there is anything aimed specifically for parents, it is all aimed at the younger person wanting to go into the Army and, again, you are not alarmed - I would be alarmed now, but at that time I was not alarmed, no.

Ms Sharples: The same for me, yes.

Ms Beckley-Lines: No, we were not given anything, and my son was a cadet so he just wanted to get into the Army.

Q911 Chairman: You did not have a document and he did not have a document?

Ms Beckley-Lines: No.

Q912 Chairman: Might he have had one and did not show you? It seems strange that you did not have a document.

Ms Beckley-Lines: He lived with me, so I would have seen it anyway.

Q913 Chairman: We will ask about that, if it is a matter of absolute routine that every applicant for initial training receives a document that would cover the information that we ask. Thank you. Were you in any way informed about the welfare and supervisory regime at initial training establishment prior to your son joining up?

Mrs Mattin: Mark initially went to Bassingbourne, which I visited only the once on his first and only passing-out parade. They seemed super, they were really nice, but prior to him going down there no one called me or I did not receive any mail or anything in particular, it just seemed that Mark knew what was expected of him and I was not particularly involved in the process, so no.

Mrs Farr: In Daniel's papers that he got from the recruitment office there was one in which the Army stated that they would uphold the duty of care to the soldiers, and you take that as their word, but fortunately that has not been so. My first concern was when he was at Glencorse he had to have his large toenail removed, and within an hour of that being removed he had to put his socks on and go on a run in his boots. That was the first time any concerns came to light.

Q914 Chairman: You did not know about the small operation then until afterwards?

Mrs Farr: I did not until afterwards that it had happened.

Ms Sharples: The same for me, all I remember was them saying that there would be the duty of care and that Allan would be looked after. That was it, basically.

Ms Beckley-Lines: The same, we trusted them - we trusted our sons to them to take care of them. I noticed my son, he got leaner and leaner. He was 18 stones when he joined, he was 12 stones when he died. He just got leaner and leaner and leaner and I asked him what was the matter. He was a quiet boy, never used to talk, and he got quieter and quieter and quieter, and he would never tell us what is going on.

Q915 Chairman: So you saw a personality change in him.

Ms Beckley-Lines: Yes, a lot. I tried to tell his father, I said "Look at this boy ..." Because my children are mixed race I would say it is the white side coming out, that is why they are so quiet, but then he just got quieter and quieter until never he would say anything, until he died.

Mrs Farr: I think there is a personality change in them all, even after the first few weeks of being there, and some of it really I have got to say is for the better because they are a little bit more independent, but then there is a personality change where they do not speak to you any more and you get the feeling that they are not yours any more. I cannot explain what it is, but you can just sense that they do not belong to you any more, and that is just after probably the first few weeks.

Chairman: We have been to a number of establishments and clearly there is an attempt at changing behaviour patterns and attitudes, so you are right to say that, it is almost inevitable. Thank you for the first question, Peter is our deputy chairman.

Q916 Mr Viggers: Did you discuss the transition from civilian to service life with your son?

Mrs Mattin: In my case, no, because as I stated he was a cadet from a young age and I assumed he knew everything that the life entailed, all the hard work and the training, and he was very happy to enter into it. The change in Mark did not occur until he moved to Catterick, but up to then everything was just fine.

Mrs Farr: I think it is as new for the parents as it is for the recruits and if the parents were briefed - especially on the younger soldiers, the under-18s - prior to their children going into the Army, so that they would be aware, because I do not think the parents are aware of any culture change or social change, you just take what is in these leaflets and basically that is it. You discuss the future with your child, but unless you have actually had somebody in the Army before then parents are not aware of this.

Ms Sharples: Allan and myself spoke about it and about the changes that would be made, and Allan was aware of what he was going into.

Ms Beckley-Lines: My son was really aware of what he was going into but because, as I said, he did not talk a lot, he could not even ask questions. He said, "Mum, we can't even ask questions" and then he would say "They would make this sign to us like this", the officers (draws hand across throat) and I just thought, whoa. He was intimidated all the time, that is what he said, he said the man would say "And if you go home we'll go back and get you" so he knew he was doomed to them, "If you run home we'll go back and get you" and that kind of thing. It was just intimidation and you cannot ask any questions, just obey, and then he said they were sworn to secrecy, that they should not tell, so they did not know whether they were doing the wrong thing talking about their lives to us, or the right thing, because they were sworn to secrecy.

Q917 Mr Viggers: When you started moving into this area did you notice a change in your children's character or behaviour after they joined the armed forces? You started intimating that you did indeed, but can you explain how this impacted?

Mrs Mattin: At Catterick he started not looking anyone in the face. He was there such a short time, it is hard to be really concise. He went AWOL, he sat on a friend's sofa and just sat with his head in his hands all night, apparently, and kept repeating "I'm not going back, I'm NOT GOING BACK." He did not tell me, he just was so quiet, introverted, would not look you in the face. I knew there was something wrong, or afterwards I knew there was something wrong. He did not visit his girlfriend of two or three years by that stage on the last weekend he came home, he just - well, he was not really there, it was not Mark any more, he was not himself.

Q918 Mr Viggers: This was not, I think I understand you to say, from the beginning of the time he joined the army.

Mrs Mattin: No, he was great at Bassingbourne, it was just for the short period that he was at Catterick and he totally changed.

Q919 Mr Viggers: Lynn, changes from the time he joined the Army?

Mrs Farr: When Daniel first joined, after he came home from his initial training up at Glencorse, he was a completely different person. In some respects he had a little bit more pride in his appearance and things like that, which was not a bad thing, but like I said before you just had that feeling that they are not yours anymore and there is a type of barrier there, they will not discuss things with you, and every time that you tried to bring up a subject regarding the Army he just did not want to talk about it, and that was the end of it, different things like that. He did go through a series of being homesick and wanting to come out, but I think that is a natural thing with the young recruits. Then he got as though he did not want to go back, but he did not tell us, he was telling his friends this, but he kept going back. Then the week before he died he actually went AWOL and I went to pick him up and he wanted to speak with me, but because I took my younger son with me he would not speak to me, so I honestly do not know what he was going to tell me that day, yet there was a general progression of going down really with Daniel, from him being at Catterick to him dying, it was just like a general downward slope.

Q920 Mr Viggers: June, focusing really on the first time that your son was in the Army and thereafter the early stages.

Ms Sharples: When Allan was at Glencorse he was fine, he used to come home and he used to tell us everything that he had done and he was very enthusiastic, really enjoying himself, and he changed from going to Catterick. He was only there a short time but he used to come home and he used to say nothing, we used to ask him how things were going and that and he would just say "Oh, fine"; he was just different from then.

Ms Beckley-Lines: The same thing, the same pattern, he would not talk, and I kept saying "What is wrong with you?" and he said, "It's the food, I don't like the food" and I would see marks on his face, because he is so pale, you would see the marks, and I would say "Where did you get all these marks?" and he would not answer, they would not talk. It is like a child who is being bullied at school, they do not talk, they just keep quiet, quiet, quiet. Then one day he phoned me - he only phoned me three times and he only stayed in the Army for seven months - I said "Why, why do you only phone three times?" He said, "I'm always locked up in the guardroom, I'm always in punishment. I can't do the right thing, nothing I do satisfies them." Then one day he phoned me and he said, "Mummy, all the Indians have gone" and I thought - because half of the time I do not understand what my children say, I think it is a generation thing or something - and I say "What do you mean, the Indians have gone?" and he said, "All the Indians have gone" and I thought, Where? What? I did not understand; it was later on they told me the Indians all ran away because they were going to get them first, so they all ran away. He said "All the Indians have gone, I want to come home, I want to come home." That was the last word I ever heard from him.

Q921 Mr Viggers: From your own experience do you think there would have been some useful guidance that might have been given by the recruitment section to you to help you to understand the changes that your boys were going to go through?

Mrs Mattin: Oh yes, but I do not think they were likely to come out and say "Watch for bullying; watch for a total change in personality", that is not going to sell them new recruits wanting to join up. If I had known, if this had been in the press, then I would have discouraged him, obviously.

Q922 Mr Viggers: Trying to draw lessons as to what should be done now, do you think there is advice and guidance that recruitment officers should give?

Mrs Farr: I do, yes, even if it is just a short briefing session with parents, especially for the younger soldiers, because I think a lot of them are actually going in for the wrong reasons - they have not done very well at school. I am getting a lot of recruits contacting me now that are having problems at Catterick, and the majority of times it is the same story you are getting told, he did not do very well at school, he is a little bit dyslexic, and these young men are actually prime targets for what is happening. One recruit had actually been AWOL that many times he was going to be court-martialled and he was given the soldier' right book to read, and I said could I have a copy of this, and he sent me it. It is like a small A5 book on solders' rights and he was sent away to read this. He was given an hour to read it and he is a dyslexic, they said they knew about his history but no help was given to him. So there are lots and lots of things that can be done.

Q923 Mr Viggers: Thank you. June, I think you were nodding.

Ms Sharples: Yes, I agree with that, yes.

Ms Beckley-Lines: I think they should be given a guidance counsellor within the barracks, somebody who is not a member of the Army or the armed forces, whom they can go and talk to, because they cannot talk to anybody you see. If they had somebody - like in the schools we have somebody, a guidance counsellor, and once you tell that lady your problem, nobody hears it. We need that kind of person for them.

Q924 Chairman: Claudia, did your son complain about, perhaps, racial discrimination? Was he in any way subjected to that, either by fellow recruits or ---

Ms Beckley-Lines: There was just one case. He did not tell me he told his sisters and his dad, because he said "Mummy has a lot of problems, I wouldn't bother her" but he told the rest of the family of one case of racism, but all the boys loved him. In fact, when he died, the day, they said everybody was crying in the barracks, they said "Zeus" - they called him Zeus as a nickname because he was so strong - "Zeus is dead." The man next to me said he had never seen anything like that, everybody was crying in the barracks. That means they really loved him.

Chairman: Thank you. Some brief questions from Mike Hancock, please.

Q925 Mr Hancock: June, if I could ask you a specific question, because your son actually joined up and then left and went back.

Ms Sharples: Yes, he did.

Q926 Mr Hancock: Can you tell us about what he had to say when he left the first time and what he said to you about that, and what went on through that period of time before he had made a decision to go back?

Ms Sharples: He did not really say a lot, just that he rang me a couple of times to say that he wanted to come out and I tried to convince him to stay, give it a bit longer, and he just kept saying that he wanted to come out.

Q927 Mr Hancock: Did he say what was wrong?

Ms Sharples: He didn't, no, he just kept saying that it was not what he wanted, he had realised it was not what he wanted. Then he came out and he was probably home for about a week and he said "I want to go back in", he said he realised he had made a mistake.

Q928 Mr Hancock: So it was as clear as that as far as he was concerned, it was just a mistake on his part.

Ms Sharples: He said "I thought I wanted to come out, now I wish I had stayed in" and that is when he went back to the Careers and tried to get back in.

Mr Hancock: Thank you.

Q929 Mr Jones: Lynn, you referred to a case at Catterick; we visited Catterick a few months ago now and I have got to say the commanding officer's presentation was the fact that everything in the garden is rosy. You say that people are contacting you that are there now; could you - obviously not mentioning names - give an indication of how many people have contacted you and what type? You mentioned one, but are there any other types of instance that have been raised with you in the last 12 months?

Mrs Farr: Probably four, one quite recently, but this young man was not on training, he was on another part of Catterick, on Alma Barracks. He was late on guard duty and his corporal hit him and he ended up with a fractured jaw in two places and a plate inserted in his jaw.

Q930 Mr Jones: That was this year?

Mrs Farr: Last July. He sent in a sick note and they have now demanded that he go back to Catterick to go back on duty and his jaw still has not healed. He is now AWOL at home. Another young soldier contacted us last November; he had been AWOL - again, this was a recruit that was having problems because he had gone into the Army because he was having problems at school, this was his last chance to make anything of himself.

Q931 Mr Jones: When was this?

Mrs Farr: He contacted us a year last November after he had seen the publicity at our last meeting when we had been down to London. He had been accused of urinating on his bedding and the corporal started then intimidating him and saying "Come on then, hit me" - I think they had had a few words. He did not hit him and things sort of settled down, this young man was adamant that he had not urinated on his bedding, but he had been absent then, I think, a total of 30 days at that point, absent without leave, and the only place he was going was going home, every time he was bullied he went home. He had been sentenced to 15 days in the guardhouse and then this was another incident on top of that. That night when he went to bed six squaddies pulled him out of bed and started kicking him about the head, and then he heard the corporal's voice to say "Come on lads, now, he has had enough", so that corporal must have known that that was going on and allowed it to go on, and then he went AWOL again and he did not go back and he has been discharged. Nearly a year later he was discharged. One of the young soldiers who went to Bassingbourne - he was doing really well at Bassingbourne again, getting certificates, and then when he went to Catterick he was being abused to the extent that he was self-harming himself. He is now in mental rehabilitation; he has been out 18 months and he has just signed himself into mental rehabilitation because he still cannot cope with what is happening.

Q932 Mr Jones: In terms of these cases, one of the issues which the MoD are pressing very heavily on us is the fact that Deepcut was a one-off picture in time, that there were things that were clearly wrong there and that things over the last few years have actually improved, certainly in terms of things like support for soldiers, young soldiers being able to complain and actually putting in complaints about instances that you have referred to. So I am interested in what you have said in terms of these incidents have happened in the last, say, 12 months. Did any of those recruits explain to you why they did not use the complaints procedure or report any of these incidents through this system which we have been told actually exists?

Mrs Farr: Well, it is a complaints system through the chain of command, so if they go higher up the chain then it comes back down and then they get abused even more. That incident of the young lad who was accused of urinating on his bed, he actually did complain to his sergeant who then took the complaint back to the corporal and then his treatment of this young lad actually got worse. There are no independent people for the young soldiers to go to.

Q933 Mr Jones: The issue is that they do not feel that the complaints system is independent enough from the people that possibly ---

Mrs Farr: It is not, and even if they want to see a padre they have to ask permission, why they want to see him, and I have great concerns over padres because I do not know how they can serve two masters, I do not know how they can serve God and see what is going on. Who do they put first? They put the Army first. There is nowhere, no independent people for these young soldiers to go to confidentially.

Chairman: Thank you. Frank, please.

Q934 Mr Roy: In your excellent memorandum you bring up the fact that some young people go into the Army for the wrong reasons, and you state, obviously, young men who are dyslexic, and I totally agree with you on that one, I have found that some young men do join the Army for all the wrong treasons. With that in mind therefore, do you believe that the Army's recruitment process is able to identify individuals who are not suited to military life at the time when they first go in or afterwards?

Mrs Farr: I honestly do not think it is case of that, I think the recruitment office have got numbers to keep up. I was actually invited up to Carrick to ITC to voice my concerns, and one of the things that was told to me on there by the commanding officer, the first in command at Catterick, is that some of the recruits at that time - and it is about 18 months since I was there - they had sat some of the new recruits through the BARB test, the Army entrance exam, and a large percentage of them had actually failed that exam. Even the officers on the ITC are under the impression that the recruiting officers are helping these soldiers pass this Army entrance exam. That was from the Catterick commanding officer.

Q935 Mr Roy: Janet, can I ask you the same thing about recruitment?

Mrs Mattin: I think they sell them a dream, don't they? It was not the case for Mark, Mark's main aim at that time was to go back to Germany because he spoke German fluently - we used to live there - and he wanted to see the world, but he was just sold a dream. He was not one of these under-achievers at school. It seems so long ago now it is hard to pinpoint anything, but he believed in the Army and he believed in the dream. I mean, they are still selling it to this day, "Join the Army, see the world." We will train you, you will have a trade, but it is just a dream for a lot of the young soldiers who join up.

Q936 Mr Roy: June, can I ask you the same thing?

Ms Sharples: I think it is just a dream, I do not think they think about it as such when they are going in. They just think they are going in and they will get a better career, but it does not seem that way at all. There are just so many that want to come out.

Q937 Mr Roy: If it is a dream to the recruit, therefore to the recruiter is it a matter of a numbers game? In my constituency there is a certain amount that is expected to be brought in.

Ms Sharples: I think they just take them in regardless, I do not think there is enough selection in it at all, I think it needs narrowing down.

Ms Beckley-Lines: My son wanted to be a soldier and after he died his friends in the barracks told me he would not even take his uniform off; when everybody took their uniforms off he said "I just so love being in here", but he could not cope - when they are in school you should not touch them, but in the Army they beat them. They do not do this in school, they do not sexually abuse them, but they do it in the Army. It is a vast change for them from school - all what you have been told not to do to the child at school is the opposite they do in the Army. One of them told me that he had to run naked up and down. It is all about command - power and control. "Take off your clothes" - you cannot say "No, I am not going to take off my clothes" so the man did run up and down. He said that was the first time in his life he was so humiliated, then the officer raped him.

Q938 Mr Roy: He raped him?

Ms Beckley-Lines: Yes. He told me this on the phone. I got in touch with a lot of them through the News of the World, they helped me, they put an article for me in the newspaper and they said, "Do you want to talk to William's mum?" and they all said "Yes" so they phoned me and they told me all of it. I said "Who knows about all this? You should have gone to the police", but it shows it is a different world in there.

Mr Roy: A different culture. Thanks.

Chairman: Thank you. Mike Hancock, please.

Q939 Mr Hancock: A lot has been made, and you have expressed already, about the responsibilities of the Armed Forces to these young men and women, and the duty of care is of vital importance. We have been told that at least one commanding officer has sent a letter to all parents explaining that he does not accept that he has loco parentis for young soldiers under the age of 18, but there are put in place special additional measures to safeguard this group. What you have told us already this morning would suggest that for young soldiers that is not the case, that there are not these certain measures in place which would enable them, with confidence, to complain. What was your understanding of the Army's responsibility to your young men when they joined up? What did you reasonably expect the Army to do on your behalf, in your absence, for these young men?

Mrs Mattin: Behave as much like a parent, an overlooking parent, as they could. When a child is under 18 they cannot be allowed to run riot, they need guidance, but as far as I was aware there was nobody that they could actually go and talk to. There was nobody independent of the Army, if they had any problems. I think they felt totally alone, I do not think they felt as if they were old enough to cope with what was happening to them, yet there was not anyone that they could use as a parental figure and look up to and go to for any help. They were all just swept in and swept along and expected to keep up.

Ms Sharples: They would not say if things were going on.

Mrs Mattin: They were little boys, playing at being men - I know my son was.

Mrs Farr: I think one of the main things as well is when they get these young ones in straight from school, they are going into platoons now which are made up of an age range which is from, say, 16 to 26, and so within that platoon you are getting young lads straight from school and then you are getting, probably, older people who have seen a bit more life. That fosters bullying as well, within that platoon, whereas at one time when the junior leader divisions were in they were kept in a separate bit on their own until they became 18. From what I understand they raised the recruitment age to 18 and they got rid of the junior leader divisions, and then when they brought it back down to 17 they were never reinstated. I think there is too big an age gap when they initially go into a platoon.

Q940 Mr Hancock: June, do you feel much the same?

Ms Sharples: Yes.

Q941 Mr Hancock: On the duty of care issue - because it is the nub of where we are trying to get to, who shares this responsibility and what exactly is it - since your tragedies, for each of you, have their friends come forward and said things to you that your lads had said to them about that experience and what was going on? Claudia, you spoke about the lad who was sexually abused; your lad was a big lad, you said he was 18 stone.

Ms Beckley-Lines: He was very big, yes.

Q942 Mr Hancock: Not somebody who was easily pushed around I would imagine.

Ms Beckley-Lines: He used to phone and he said every evening they had to go and get drunk. There was a pub and they said you all can go down to the pub; when they were drunk, they would come and there was a fight. He told his dad, he did not tell me, that he was tired of the fighting, he said "Daddy, I'm so tired, every night you have to go and get drunk and come and fight. I'm so tired of it." He was so strong, they said he used to beat them all, that is why they gave him the name Zeus, because when they were fighting they would like, 'come all of you' and he would get to beat all of them, and they nicknamed him Zeus because of that. But he was tired of that life, he said it.

Q943 Mr Hancock: You have a picture of your lad there, maybe you should show us his picture. He is a good-looking boy. He did not tell you what happened, but you said he told his dad and his sister.

Ms Beckley-Lines: He told his dad and his sister.

Q944 Mr Hancock: What did he tell them? What was it that he said?

Ms Beckley-Lines: In his own story the one incident, there was this Scotsman he said who got drunk and then he said he came to him and wanted to fight him. He said "No, I am tired of fighting, I don't want to fight, I don't want fight", so where the man ended up, nobody knew. The next morning he showed up for whatever, when they were lining up, and he was like bruised all over. The man said "Who did it to you?" and he pointed to my son. My husband said "I asked him three times, you don't have to lie to me, tell me the truth, did you touch him?" and my son said "No, I told him I didn't want to fight, that night I didn't touch him." One of his friends said when he died and the junior officer was there and he said "This is such a fine boy, he never used to want to fight" and the man said "It's payback time for what he did to the Scotsman, payback time." He said that was what the officer said to them, "It is payback time."

Q945 Mr Hancock: Do you think, on reflection, any one of you, that your sons suffered any form of abuse that they would not want to share with their family but you have learned of subsequently?

Mrs Mattin: Yes, three things with me. The lad that was in the same barracks as him at the time told me he knew something was going on, but he did not know what because Mark would not talk to anyone. After the funeral his regiment were there and after they had all loosened up with a few drinks there were a lot of 15,16 year old kids at Mark's funeral and word went around all the young people who were there, which then got back to me the day after, that the reason Mark had died - not that he had killed himself - was because he was being raped, and on the day in question an unnamed commanding officer, who I have no idea, came onto the firing range where he was and said something to him. At that point Mark walked off the firing range, put down his kit and walked up to a toilet block and that was the end. Then most recently - in fact in the last three weeks or so - we have had a chap who has contacted us via Lynn, via the website, at first anonymously, but we have now got a name for him and a phone number and verified who he is; this chap was not actually with Mark when he died, but he was at Catterick when Mark had gone AWOL and would not go back for the one time this happened. He told us when Mark returned he had had £1,000 worth of equipment stolen, which he was going to be expected to replace - Mark did not tell us this - and this chap said he left the Army shortly after what happened to Mark, because of what happened to him, and that it would never have happened if he had been moved to another regiment.

Mrs Farr: He said that Mark's death could have been avoided - he contacted me - and said he had had a long chat with Mark and that he had reported this chat to his commanding officer, a sergeant major, who he has named. The sergeant major's response was "We don't need the paperwork, let's ship him off to another company", and that is what they did.

Q946 Mr Jones: Have you - all of you - had the opportunity of seeing your sons' Army records?

Mrs Mattin: No.

Q947 Mr Jones: Have you asked for them?

Mrs Mattin: Yes, I have asked for his inquest papers, everything has gone missing.

Q948 Mr Jones: But his Army records which surely have not gone?

Mrs Mattin: No, we have never had anything, they are missing.

Q949 Mr Jones: Have you made a formal request for them?

Mrs Mattin: Yes.

Ms Beckley-Lines: Yes.

Q950 Mr Jones: Why have they said you cannot have them?

Mrs Farr: They haven't, they just do not answer.

Mrs Mattin: They have not got them.

Q951 Mr Jones: They just do not answer requests?

Ms Beckley-Lines: No.

Ms Sharples: No.

Mrs Mattin: No.

Mrs Farr: It took me six years just to get Daniel's post mortem report.

Q952 Mr Jones: That is a different issue, this is about specifically requesting paperwork relating to your son in the Army.

Ms Beckley-Lines: No.

Mrs Mattin: No.

Mrs Farr: No.

Ms Sharples: No.

Q953 Mr Jones: But you all have asked for that?

Mrs Mattin: Yes.

Ms Sharples: Yes.

Ms Beckley-Lines: Yes.

Mrs Farr: Yes, and a medical report as well from the Army. I asked when I went up to Catterick and I have never received anything.

Q954 Mr Jones: You have never been given any reasonable explanation of why you could not have those papers?

Ms Beckley-Lines: No.

Ms Sharples: No.

Q955 Mr Jones: Or even see them?

Mrs Mattin: No.

Q956 Mr Jones: No explanation at all?

Mrs Farr: No.

Mrs Mattin: No.

Ms Sharples: No, nothing.

Q957 Mr Roy: Can I just clarify this? You are saying you have asked for the records and you have received not even an acknowledgement to them?

Ms Beckley-Lines: No.

Ms Sharples: No.

Mrs Mattin: No.

Mrs Farr: No. I went up to Catterick, like I said, to voice some of my concerns and there were a few concerns; one was about the way the belongings of the soldier comes home after the soldier has died, and in my case it just turned up on the doorstep one day, no explanation that that was going to come or anything. I asked to see Daniel's records then and they said they would get back to me. The only letter I got back from that visit was saying that they are addressing the way that the effects are sent back to the families, they are going to start notifying, and that was the only reply that I got. There was nothing at all about Daniel's records, even though I had asked for them.

Q958 Mr Crausby: Have you only asked verbally?

Mrs Farr: I only asked verbally.

Q959 Mr Crausby: Has anybody put that in writing or asked formally for records?

Mrs Mattin: Yes, we have.

Mrs Farr: Yes.

Ms Sharples: Yes.

Ms Beckley-Lines: Yes.

Q960 Mr Crausby: You have just not had any response, even to a letter?

Ms Beckley-Lines: Nothing, no. Even at the inquest I asked, "Can you give me the papers?" Nothing.

Q961 Mr Jones: On this point, which I think is important - because some constituents of mine had a similar response when they wrote, they did not get acknowledgement to letters -would it be possible through you, chairman, after this, to let us know when you actually wrote and what you actually requested, because it is important for our inquiry, not just what actually happened in terms of your individual cases or the recommendations we could make, but I think it is vitally important that if there are deaths in whichever Service, the way the families are treated afterwards is vitally important. Clearly, not even getting a reply to a letter for basic information or a courtesy, I just find appalling. If you could let us have that it would perhaps be useful in terms of just being able to question the MoD as to how they are actually dealing with people like yourselves who, frankly, should be treated with a great deal more respect than clearly you have been.

Mrs Farr: Another thing that you do not get either, in my case we did not get any of Daniel's certificates that he took, and also one of the concerns that is coming out from families as well is that you do not get private letters back and photographs. I asked at Catterick why don't you send these letters back, and they said "Well, really they are not for the parents to see, they might be upsetting," and I said, "Surely that is the parents' prerogative", and they do not send like half bottles of aftershave back, and in some cases that is the smell of your child. You need that, that is what you need. They dispose of all these.

Q962 Mr Jones: Did any of your children talk to you about the difference between Phase 1 training and Phase 2, because one thing we have picked up through this inquiry is that there is clearly a big difference between when they actually go in for the initial training and then Phase 2. There are really two questions: one, did they talk to you about it, and did you see any difference in your children in terms of their initial training and when they actually went into Phase 2?

Mrs Mattin: He did not speak to me, obviously, about it, but in hindsight the body language said it all, it spoke in volumes, but moody teenagers, you do not always pick up on it, especially as in my case it happened so quickly. Is it just a moody teenager or a very depressed child?

Q963 Mr Jones: When did you see the change?

Mrs Mattin: As soon as he started Phase 2 training in Catterick.

Mrs Farr: I think that is general.

Mrs Mattin: Whether there was any mention made of his mood, say, at the Board of Inquiry, I have no idea because I have never been allowed to see the papers. The Army have their own internal inquiry, as we know, but they will not let me have the papers.

Q964 Mr Jones: What do you put that down to in terms of the difference in this Phase 2 training?

Ms Beckley-Lines: In Phase 1 when they go there you know it is hard, the discipline and everything - like with the shoe polish. He would send for 10 packs of shoe polish, he said his shoes have to shine, but they were enjoying it. When they got to Catterick I do not know what is going on in Catterick, it is a tremendous change. My son used to eat and eat and eat, and when he went to Catterick he cannot eat any more. What I notice is the mess of their mind; there is a Latin proverb which says mens sana in corpore sano, when the mind is messed up everything else messes up. I think they mess up their minds, that is what they aim at. They cannot think straight, all the things that happen in Catterick make them so different, I do not know how to put it.

Ms Sharples: Can I just say that in Allan's case there was no Board of Inquiry, and I would like to know who gives this decision. I just had a letter to say - well, I did not at the time, I have just got it now - that someone had made the decision that there was no need for a Board of Inquiry, they would just assume suicide with Allan, they had not investigated it properly. There was no scene of crime, his gun was washed clean and put back on the rack, nothing was used in evidence.

Mr Jones: I want to come back to your case actually, later on in the questioning, but that is interesting.

Q965 Mr Roy: Just on the Board of Inquiry and the fact that in this country justice should not only be done but be seen to be done, Janet, did you ask for a copy of the minute of that?

Mrs Mattin: I did, but I do not know if they even had one because no one will answer me.

Q966 Mr Roy: That was my next question, were you told beforehand that the Board of Inquiry was going to be set up on a particular day and that they had ---

Mrs Mattin: No.

Ms Sharples: I have only just found this out now.

Q967 Mr Jones: They are speaking about the death of your child, and what you are saying is this inquiry is held, you do not know that it has been held, you do not know what has been said ---

Ms Sharples: They do not inform you of anything like that.

Q968 Mr Roy: Obviously, you are not invited to it or you are not given the option of should there be a Board of Inquiry and if not, why not? You are not even given the chance to give your opinion.

Mrs Farr: No.

Mrs Mattin: No, there is nobody to tell you about it at all.

Q969 Mr Roy: If there is to be a Board of Inquiry, and if not why not?

Ms Sharples: None.

Mrs Farr: No.

Q970 Mr Roy: You are obviously just absolutely kept in the dark.

Mrs Mattin: Yes. We are not important, they want us to GO AWAY, and that is how we were treated from the minute it happens, "Go away". They just do not want to know.

Mrs Farr: My case is slightly different to these, but Daniel never had a Board of Inquiry either. I was told the reason behind that was because he died in a civilian hospital, and I said "Yes, but you took him there." I said "Do you mean to tell me that if it is a gunshot wound and you take him to a civilian hospital and he dies, there is no Board of Inquiry"; he said "Well, I cannot comment on that." That was the commandant at Catterick when I asked that.

Q971 Mr Roy: That just seems to be an absolutely ridiculous statement to make to you, that we would not have a Board of Inquiry because a person dies in a hospital, never mind the reason he is in the hospital is because something happened.

Mrs Farr: Yes.

Q972 Mr Jones: On the Board of Inquiry that you talk about, do you actually think - thinking about recommendations that we can make - there should be a set procedure for reporting on deaths that occur in the armed services, that should be dealt with in all different cases?

Ms Sharples: Yes.

Mrs Farr: Yes, and I think it should be more independent.

Mrs Mattin: I do too, not the Army investigating the Army, it has got to be independent to be effective.

Q973 Mr Havard: I am sure my colleagues will come back to this question about the Board of Inquiry, about what the statutory procedures ought to be and what the relationships are between the civil police, the military police and the military service and so on, and the coroners, the inquest process and what relationships there should be between them, but I was just interested that you have all universally said that the initial training at places like Bassingbourne and so on, there was not a huge set of problems that came from that, it was all in this Phase 2 transition and just afterwards. My colleagues asked you about what information had been given right at the very start when the boys were going in; did you get the opportunity at that stage to actually go and visit the initial training centres they were going to?

Mrs Mattin: No.

Q974 Mr Havard: Did they hold open days, did you go and see the WRVS?

Ms Sharples: No.

Mrs Farr: No.

Q975 Mr Havard: The short answer clearly is no, and presumably you were not given any access or any opportunity to go and visit Catterick at any point?

Mrs Mattin: No, not until their first passing-out parade.

Q976 Mr Havard: The first passing-out parade, which is at the end of the initial training.

Mrs Farr: Yes.

Mrs Mattin: Yes.

Q977 Mr Havard: But no opportunities, no open access in that sense.

Mrs Mattin: He had been there six weeks, he had done six weeks training.

Q978 Mr Havard: Did you know who the people in Catterick were that your sons were talking about? Did you know that there were WRVS people, that there was the padre, who the padre was and so on?

Mrs Mattin: No.

Mrs Farr: No.

Ms Beckley-Lines: I got to know the padre reasonably well ----

Mrs Mattin: He was not there long enough.

Ms Beckley-Lines: The day he died the padre turned up at eleven o'clock at night at my house.

Q979 Mr Havard: But that is after the event rather than before.

Mrs Farr: The padre spent the day with us. I was lucky really because we actually got to the hospital before Daniel died.

Q980 Mr Havard: But you were not armed with that information so you could help to advise your sons on how best to proceed?

Mrs Mattin: Oh no.

Mrs Farr: No.

Ms Sharples: No.

Ms Beckley-Lines: No.

Chairman: Thank you. James Cran.

Q981 Mr Cran: Thank you, chairman. Janet, you really have pre-empted my question in the sense that I took down very carefully the quote that you just gave us which was "They just want us to go away." That is what you said, did you not?

Mrs Mattin: Yes.

Q982 Mr Cran: Therefore this begs the whole question of the relationships between the bereaved families on the one hand and the MoD/Army on the other, which should be I think rather better, in my own humble opinion, than they apparently are. I have a quote here from you, Lynn, "When my son died the Army was very good at the funeral, but afterwards we never had any further contact with them at all," and the sad thing about all of this is that it is not just you who is saying it, it is everybody who is saying it.

Mrs Farr: But you need that contact because with your son being in the Army he was away and I think that helps with your grieving because you are not expecting him to come in, because he was away. You still in some ways need a little bit of contact with the Army to help you over that period because you do not visualise your son still there, but that was his last place when he was basically.

Q983 Mr Cran: You all have similar views about this, this is how you have been treated, just "Go away, do not bother."

Mrs Mattin: Just go away.

Q984 Mr Cran: Let me ask another question, because as we have gone around the MoD/Army estate, there are indications that there have been improvements, that lessons have been learned. We have yet got to evaluate that of course, but there is a case for saying that. You would have thought that if that was happening at training establishments there would have also been an improvement in the relationship between the MoD and you. Are you really all of you telling us that there has been absolutely no change in the relationship at all between the time of the bereavement and now?

Mrs Farr: There is nothing at all in place for parents; there is a support mechanism for wives, but there is nothing at all for parents.

Ms Beckley-Lines: And they keep dying, 27 have. Since my son died, my son was the 19^th because we keep counting.

Ms Sharples: Yes.

Ms Beckley-Lines: 27 have died. I was saying mine would be the last one, I made a lot of noise, I wrote so many letters to them, I said, "Please say that this will be the last, nobody else will die" because of the pain. It is 27 now and it is going on and on, and it will continue to go on. If there are changes then the deaths should be less, should it not, but it has not been.

Q985 Mr Cran: Therefore, the question that is going to be very important for the Committee, when we come to consider the recommendations that we would like to make to Government, is what improvements should be made in the way you are treated by the MoD when these dreadful things happen. Are you able to give us any of the concrete improvements you would like to see now, or would you like to have a memorandum prepared for us after the event? Maybe you would like to do both; could you give us some initial indication of the improvements?

Mrs Farr: Probably an independent body where they actually can go and where the soldiers can make complaints or raise concerns, that they do not have to ask permission to go, or if they have to ask permission so that they do not have to give a reason, because if they give the reason then the person that is bullying them will know why they want to go. So it has to be confidential and it has to be independent.

Mrs Mattin: Helplines, confidential helplines.

Q986 Mr Cran: Is that between the Army and parents?

Mrs Mattin: Yes, somewhere that parents can ring and somewhere that young soldiers can ring if they cannot speak to the parents and they cannot speak to their superior officers.

Mrs Farr: And like you were saying right at the beginning, probably a little bit more involvement with the parents at the actual initial recruiting stage.

Mrs Mattin: When they are straight from school, definitely.

Mrs Farr: And involvement of parents in the training, and if there are problems for them to contact the parents, the parents to be involved with problems.

Ms Sharples: To be maybe a bit more involved with them so you know a bit more about what is going on.

Ms Beckley-Lines: You will never know what is going on.

Q987 Mr Cran: I would just ask you to consider whether you felt it would be worthwhile, all of you, just sitting down and thinking carefully about improvements you would like to see, because at the end of the day there is no set of people in a better position than you are to tell us what should have happened after the bereavements that we are talking about, so go away and consider that.

Ms Beckley-Lines: I have one suggestion. Everyone who dies is involved with one junior officer on the day of his death. I would like to see that junior officer suspended, not driven out just suspended, until they are able to work out what happened between him and the soldier because there is always one officer present just before they die - just one. If they are suspended and told, "You are not going back on duty until we find out what has happened between you and this soldier", I think that would begin to do something.

Q988 Mr Cran: You have made it very, very clear - and you have been very articulate in the manner in which you have said it - that the Army was actually not very good in the manner in which you were treated and so on and so forth. Did they do anything that you thought was commendable after the death of your sons or was it just all pretty bleak?

Ms Beckley-Lines: The funeral was excellent. They all turned up in their sharp uniforms.

Ms Sharples: In my case, everyone was there, all Allan's friends were there, and I asked the corporal if they could stay behind later, if we could have a drink and a chat, and he said, "Yes" and, as soon as we got back, they were shipped off.

Q989 Mr Cran: So, at the individual level, i.e. of individual soldiers, they were pretty humane and so on. It is the establishment, as it were, that has treated you pretty badly.

Ms Beckley-Lines: They do not allow the soldiers to talk to us. On the day of the funeral, they did not allow the soldiers to say a word to any of us.

Ms Sharples: They were kept to one side.

Ms Beckley-Lines: They were there but not near us.

Q990 Mr Crausby: I would like to ask some questions about bullying and harassment in a little more detail. Everywhere we go, the Army now say that there is absolutely zero tolerance on bullying and they would say that now. Obviously, they would say that and I would have been really surprised if they had not said that with all this publicity, but I would like to know about the culture before and whether that was the case and whether, deep down within the culture, bullying is acceptable for the future. I think that, as a committee, we have to ensure not just that things are right now but that things stay right and that there is a system that ensures that it stays right. For example, the first duty of care report suggests that the weak, introspective, vulnerable or less capable individuals may be exposed to bullying, harassment, insensitivity and unfair treatment. What do you think about this feeling that it is just the weak and the vulnerable? Is that fair? The weak and the vulnerable do get bullied in all walks of life but is their attitude that it is just the weak and the vulnerable fair?

Mrs Mattin: I think that is wrong. It does not apply to my son and I do not think it applies to most of these ladies' sons either, not at all.

Mrs Farr: I would not say that it was just the weak and vulnerable because, in the Army, they have to follow orders and I think that is the bottom line. If they do not follow orders, they get punished and some of the bullying could be as a result of an order given to them and abuse as well. Daniel came home and he had some marks around the middle of him, like bruises around the kidney area, around his waist area, and he would not tell us how he got them. He just said that they could be webbing burn, but we never got a proper explanation. They dare not tell us, they dare not speak.

Q991 Mr Crausby: Is there a culture of not grassing up on your mates as well? Do you think that the bulling comes from peers, from other recruits, or from superiors? Where is the major problem?

Mrs Farr: It is the NCOs and the junior NCOs because they were probably bullied themselves when they were recruits and young soldiers and now it is their turn and that is what is coming across the board.

Ms Beckley-Lines: The junior officers are the ones involved. The majors, the big ones, they will watch it but they will not say anything and they would not put their hand there. The junior officers, the SIB, they are the ones because that is what the boys told me in my son's case. The Military Police will get involved. The junior officers and the sergeants will get involved but not the majors. They will watch. It is like Abu Ghraib - they will not say anything but they will watch it. They will watch it happen and, if you come and complain to them, they do not want to know.

Mrs Farr: It does not stop there because we do know of a major who was bullied by his brigadier. It is across the board but it is more prevalent in the younger soldiers.

Q992 Mr Crausby: Do you accept this question of zero tolerance even now?

Mrs Farr: It is all right saying it, it is showing that they are doing it.

Q993 Mr Crausby: Well, it is an easy phrase, is it not?

Mrs Farr: Yes.

Q994 Mr Crausby: Do you not accept that there is zero tolerance even now?

Mrs Farr: No.

Q995 Mr Crausby: You clearly do not accept that that was the case and I do not accept that that was the case in the past, but they argue very strongly that all that is dealt with now.

Mrs Farr: This young man who has had his jaw broken says in his statement that, on the day of the Queen Mother's funeral, he actually broke a recruit's ribs and then, this year, he has broken this other recruit's jaw. It was all reported and they knew about it and nothing has been done.

Ms Beckley-Lines: My son was six feet and three inches; he was like a giant and he was bullied. So, it is not the weak. He was six feet and three inches.

Q996 Mr Hancock: You mentioned this terrible incident of the young soldier with the broken jaw. Do you know what repercussions there have been for the perpetrator of that?

Mrs Farr: At the moment, I just know that it has been reported to the Military Police.

Q997 Mr Hancock: But this is some months ago now.

Mrs Farr: Yes and I do not really think that anything has come out of that. No, nothing has come out of that yet at all.

Q998 Mr Hancock: I think, in confidence, it would be enormously helpful for us if you could give us the actual details of that, not in public session, because I think we need to establish with the MoD what has happened in those sort of circumstances to make sure that appropriate action is being taken because one of the things that we found from the Surrey Police's appendix to their report was that there were a number of allegations and it was very difficult to find out what had happened. This is a pretty horrendous case which you have described.

Mrs Farr: And, when he went back to the guard room, when he had to report back, on the whiteboard as he walked in it said, "If ever you are late again, a broken jaw will be the last of your worries" and he actually took a photograph of that with a camera and sent it to me, so I have that photograph.

Mr Hancock: It would be very helpful if you could send us that as well.

Q999 Mr Jones: This is clearly a very serious assault and, if it happened in Civvy Street ---

Mrs Farr: Exactly and, if this number of deaths had happened in a village in Civvy Street, there would be alarm at what was happening.

Q1000 Mr Jones: We are going to cover this later on in terms of primacy but who is actually investigating it?

Mrs Farr: RMPs.

Q1001 Mr Jones: So, North Yorkshire Police are not involved?

Mrs Farr: I suggested that he contacted North Yorkshire Police but this only came to light on Friday, even though it has been going on since July. I told the family to contact North Yorkshire Police.

Q1002 Mr Jones: But it is the MoD who are investigating rather than the North Yorkshire Police?

Mrs Farr: Yes.

Q1003 Mr Roy: I would just like to go back to the approach of the families. Jim and Helen McKenna are constituents of mine whose son David died in the care of the Army and, in the many discussions that I have had with Jim and Helen, they were very, very bitter that no one from the Army turned up to their son's inquest. I would like to ask, was that a one-off that they did not turn up to David's inquest or does it happen all the time? What happened in your cases?

Mrs Farr: At Catterick, it is a bit of a unique situation. I never had an inquest. When Daniel died in St James's in Leeds, one coroner wanted an inquest. We went to the North Yorkshire Coroner who said that an inquest was not necessary. You go along with these people. Our coroner is now in prison.

Ms Sharples: Allan's inquest lasted ten minutes with the same coroner.

Q1004 Mr Roy: Were the Army there?

Ms Sharples: There was a retired sergeant major who had been retired years representing the Army, and a corporal.

Q1005 Mr Roy: Was a serving officer there?

Ms Sharples: There was a corporal who gave the arms out the morning that Allan died and that was it. No statements were read out, nothing.

Mr Hugheston-Roberts: I am Justin Hugheston-Roberts, solicitor acting on behalf of the Catterick families. If there is a question of fault as far as the Ministry of Defence are concerned, then Treasury Counsel and Treasury Solicitor are always instructed and they are also available and that has happened in a number of inquests; there will always be Treasury Solicitor and Treasury Counsel present.

Mrs Mattin: In my case, Mark's junior corporal came to me after the funeral and gave me an awful graphic description of being the one who found Mark and the mess on the floor; he gave me a lot of details that I really did not want to know. I did not go to the inquest, which was up in Carlisle, because I did not want any more clinical details. My husband went with my brother-in-law and, at this inquest, two military policemen were trotted out who told a completely different story and said that they were the ones who had found him and that they had heard the shot from 500 yards away. So, we had two completely conflicting stories.

Ms Beckley-Lines: In my case, the coroner, the same coroner who is in jail now, was the coroner and the lawyer and he ran the inquest. When we went to the inquest, I took a lawyer and my own pathologist. I had never met them before; I met them on the day of the inquest; we had only spoken over the phone. I asked them if they could stand by me and if they could look at the body again for me and the pathologist stood up and said, "The Army kindly gave me their notes." I thought, I hired you, you charged me, I hired you. Why do you go and take notes from the Army? I could take notes from the Army if I wanted them to tell me what the pathologist found. The one I hired stood up at the inquest and told everybody that he took his notes from the Army. I thought he had defeated the whole purpose because I wanted him to come to his own findings and make his own notes in order that we could compare it with the one that the Army would give us. No, that did not happen. The inquest took three hours and they did not allow anybody to speak except for the junior officer who was on duty with my son on that day. He was the only one who spoke.

Q1006 Chairman: I have been trying to work out how many visits we have made either to training establishments or to courses that the military are now obliged to go on if they are training. It is probably 20 though I stand corrected. I think that, on every single visit we have made, we have raised this dilemma and I am seeking your views on this. Joining the Army is a difficult job and you know that. I am not being patronising, you are intelligent and articulate women, but it is difficult. You are likely to be sent off to fight some pretty difficult people who do not play by the Queensberry Rules. To train people for this incredibly tough career that they chose to join in, that regime has to be tough. If you send a team of social workers to train them, when your sons or other mothers' sons go off to fight, they will be at a profound disadvantage. Where do you think - and perhaps it is an unfair question - that dividing line should be between a tough regime and respecting the young men and women who are going through that? Do you see the dilemma? Tough but not brutal. If you are too soft, you are causing problems. You must have given thought to where that difficult line is and that line must bend and it must be very difficult to answer. Have you given any thought to this, ladies?

Mrs Farr: They need the discipline because, as you say, at some point, their lives are going to depend on this discipline, but I think there is a very fine line between discipline and abuse and this line is getting crossed over too much with the abuse. There is no reason to hit someone on the jaw because they are late on guard duty and things like that. That is not discipline.

Q1007 Chairman: I think you know when it is brutality but it is really difficult. What is the decibel level a sergeant can reach in communicating his thoughts? Is above a certain level excessive? It is a dilemma that I certainly have not been able to resolve.

Mrs Farr: I think it depends what he is shouting out. Not so much what he is shouting but what he is saying.

Chairman: Perhaps it is an unfair question but, if you have any further thoughts on this, please, drop us a note. As my colleague James said, certainly your ideas, some of which you have expressed so far verbally, will be quite helpful. We are not just looking at the infantry of the Army, we are looking at all of the Armed Services, and some of your recommendations on what the military ought to be doing subsequent to a soldier's death will be really helpful.

Q1008 Mr Hancock: Lynn, if I could turn to you as the holder of the website, I would be grateful if you could tell us what you have been now told about ongoing issues of bullying and whether or not recruits or others who have contacted you have said that there is a mechanism now for them to be able to complain properly about it. Have you had any contacts through your website or contact by any serving soldiers who have said, "We know what happened to your son was terrible but we believe that things are better and we can now complain and we are convinced that something will be done" or do you still get a very negative view?

Mrs Farr: It would be lovely if they did say that but unfortunately they do not. That is the opposite of what they are saying.

Q1009 Mr Hancock: The Army are telling us that things have changed, that they have appointed people, and that there is a clear identification for all recruits and all trainees, whatever phase a trainee is in, to be able to turn to a person whom they can trust. A superior, yes, but somebody they can trust. You just do not believe that?

Mrs Farr: No because they still have to ask permission, probably off the NCO who is abusing them, for them to go and see these people. They cannot just go and see these people confidentially.

Q1010 Mr Hancock: I think the Army are suggesting that they can.

Mrs Farr: The recruits who are coming forward to us have not been able to.

Q1011 Mr Hancock: I think it would be enormously helpful to us if you could give us some of that comment you are getting about the current situation from serving soldiers, men and women, who are contacting you about some of the issues they are facing today and they are not able to go through the procedures that the Army are now claiming is part of the solution to maybe the problems they have. If you could do that, Lynn, it would be helpful to us.

Mrs Farr: Do you mean as now?

Q1012 Mr Hancock: As current as you can get it. Not today but if you could send it to us.

Mrs Farr: I have a wife of a young soldier who is emailing me. He is based in Germany and he has been hit in the face on a couple of occasions with the butt of a rifle by his corporal. She says, "We just do not know where to turn. We just do not know who to speak to." That is just one example.

Q1013 Mr Hancock: And that is a current case?

Mrs Farr: That is a current case.

Q1014 Mr Hancock: This is a female soldier ---

Mrs Farr: No, this is the wife of a soldier who is sending me emails.

Q1015 Mr Hancock: The wife of a young soldier who is hit in the face repeatedly with a rifle butt by his corporal and does not know how to deal with that.

Mrs Farr: No. I said, "Do not go up the chain of command. Go as high as you possibly can. Miss the chain of command." She says that he is not even able to do that because he is frightened of repercussions.

Q1016 Mr Hancock: This is an extraordinarily personal question and I accept entirely if none of you want to answer it. Has the circumstances arisen since your sons' deaths where the Army have suggested to you that your son was not psychologically suited for the army and that he might have had psychological problems or mental health problems which they knew about and they have suggested to you was the cause? At any of the inquests that have been held, was that ever raised?

Ms Beckley-Lines: No. They never told us that at any time.

Ms Sharples: No.

Mrs Farr: No.

Mrs Mattin: No.

Q1017 Mr Hancock: The Army never put it to you that maybe your son had made a wrong move in joining the Army?

Mrs Farr: No.

Q1018 Mr Jones: Lynn, in terms of not the occasion that was referred to but others, it is very important that we try and get a snapshot of what is happening now because, as the Chairman said, we have lost count of the number of visits we have made but, everywhere we go, we are told that there is a system of complaint through the chain of command. It is held up that there are also other alternatives such as WRVS and other things and they trumpet the independent confidential help line but I think that in most cases when we ask the number of calls they have had, there have been very few calls to that independent help line. How many - and, if you cannot answer, could you let us have the answer subsequently - current serving members are you having, say in a 12-month period, contacting you with complaints like the one you have just described?

Mrs Farr: I personally have had about four young soldiers from Catterick and one of them told us of other things that are going on there with soldiers who have not come forward. I have had a couple of emails from somebody serving overseas and I think Elaine Higgins, who deals with overseas, has had one as well. I have had about ten in the last 12 months, but they are the ones who dare come forward. There are lots who cannot or who will not. To be fair, did you announce your visits to these establishments because, when I went to Catterick, everything was laid on and they took me round to see various things and stuff like this? If you just turned up, would you get the same sort of reception?

Q1019 Chairman: Have you had any communications from people outside the Army? As I said, we are looking at the other services. It would not be fair just to look at the Army and assume because there have not been so many problems that have gone public that there are no problems in the other services. Have others written to you?

Mrs Farr: Just one member of our group, her daughter was in the RAF.

Q1020 Mr Roy: This website is obviously very important. For anyone who is watching today's proceedings, what is the website address?

Mrs Farr: My own?

Q1021 Mr Roy: Yes.

Mrs Farr: I have put a shortcut because it was too long. It is http://embark.to/DANIEL and there are links on there to other websites: one to Paul Cochrane and there are various others on there.

Q1022 Mr Jones: Lynn, could you let us have the list of those people you have actually had complain to you. If you do not want to give names, fine, but if you could give the incidences after today, it would be useful.

Mrs Farr: Can I send them because I do not have them with me?

Mr Jones: Send them to us.

Chairman: Perhaps you should ask your legal adviser as to what you can pass on because it might have been passed on very confidentially.

Q1023 Mr Cran: Still on the subject of bullying and harassment, the problem with bullying and harassment is that it can be very subtle at the one end and it can be very overt at the other. We have received a certain amount of evidence, particularly from the Surrey Police, which says that there is really a culture in the Army that just puts up with bullying, it tolerates it and, on the other hand, also discourages recruits or in fact anybody else from reporting it. Given your pretty vast amount of contact with this sort of subject and the people you have talked to in similar circumstances to yours, is this something that resonates with you? Claudia, you are nodding your head.

Ms Beckley-Lines: When the News of the World did that article for me and the soldiers contacted the News of the World, the man passed them on to me and my daughter told me, "Mummy, get a pen and put down their names because some of them might tell lies." So, we put their names down, we took their phone numbers, their addresses and what they said. I did not know how to record on the phone, so I did everything manually and I have a copy of all of them. Every single one of them said, "Don't say my name, they will not only kill me but they will kill my family." Even the man, a civilian who took my son to the hospital, said that the officer said, "Go and take off those soiled clothes and put a clean uniform on him" and he said, "Sir, can I take him to the hospital now?" because he told me that my son was disappearing into unconsciousness and coming back, and he said, "I will tell you when I am ready" and then he said, "Take him" and they took my son, washed him and put on a clean uniform. I said, "If they needed to save his life, how could they do all that?" and he said, "They didn't want to save his life" and then he said that after they had done all that and put on the new uniform, two soldiers put him into the man's car, this is a civilian's car. The man said that my son was still speaking. He said that he must be strong because he survived it all. He was still speaking; he was speaking to them and telling them that he needed air to breathe or something and they put him into this man's car, and this man took him to the hospital. He phoned me and said to me, "My job is on the line." Do you know what I said to him? I said, "If I were you, I wouldn't want to work in a place like that. Why do you want to work in a place like that when all you do is take half-dead soldiers to the hospital after they have been beaten or something?" Then he said, "Please, please, I love my job, I don't want to lose my job, I sometimes help out in the Army." He is a civilian and he gave me his name, his phone number and everything and he was begging for his job. Nobody wants their name out there but they do not like what is going on in there.

Q1024 Mr Cran: So, you believe strongly that there is this sort of culture in relation to bullying?

Ms Beckley-Lines: Yes, that is why I have told you all this.

Q1025 Mr Cran: Do you ever sense - and it is important for us to know this because we have to come to a decision about it - that anything has changed? It is clearly the case that, in your personal experience, that is how it was and I am not arguing with that, but do you have a sense of whether it has changed from then to now?

Ms Beckley-Lines: If it has changed, why are the deaths ...? These people started dying in 1995. Twenty-seven of them have died. Why are there so many dying if it has changed? When my son died, it was 19. Now it is 27. My son died in 1998, five years ago. I was thinking that maybe they would stop dying now. No, they are still dying. What are they doing that is wrong?

Q1026 Mr Cran: That is indeed what we are investigating. Do any of the rest of you resonate with what Claudia has said? Do you disagree or do you agree?

Ms Sharples: I do not know if Allan was bullied or not. All I know is that Allan became engaged a month before he died and all his friends from the Army came to the engagement. Once he died, no one would speak to me. Yet, only four weeks before that, we got on fine.

Q1027 Mr Cran: Did Allan, in conversation with you, ever mention bullying that related to other people?

Ms Sharples: He did not, no.

Q1028 Mr Cran: In other words, was this something in his mind?

Ms Sharples: I do not know. He never said anything about that to me but, whether he would or not, I do not know.

Mrs Farr: I do not think Daniel would tell us if he was being bullied.

Q1029 Mr Cran: That is the problem, is it not? That is one of the big problems we are facing.

Mrs Farr: He was that type of lad. However, he did have the marks around his body. At the time of his death, you do not think it is unusual but, on the day that he died, his sergeant and corporal were outside his room in uniform the whole time and, once they knew that he had died, they just went. They were there for ten hours in uniform outside the door of his room.

Q1030 Mr Cran: Janet, do you have anything to say?

Mrs Mattin: I have nothing to add, really. I did not know that Mark was being bullied and he certainly did not tell me of anyone else that he knew of who was being bullied. He had become so introverted that I do not think he would have told me.

Mrs Farr: I think there is a fear that you know what parents are like and, if you tell your mum, then your mum will get on the phone and then the matter will get worse.

Mrs Mattin: Which we would have done.

Q1031 Mr Cran: You have really got to the root of the conundrum that we have in front of us which is that this propensity for some recruits, maybe quite a lot of them, simply not acknowledging bullying and so on and so forth and, because there seems to be a culture in particularly the infantry of not complaining, then all the array of improvements that the Army say they have put in place, in those circumstances, would not work.

Mrs Farr: No, they would not.

Mr Cran: That would seem to be the conclusion that I am beginning to reach on this.

Q1032 Chairman: But it is not so much about not complaining, it is to internalise your problems and not show weakness and not reveal pain.

Mrs Mattin: It is the intimidation.

Chairman: Because that is not what proper soldiers do. So, I think it is not just a question of complaining, it is part of a broader process and you were the first perhaps to see these changed characters because now they were soldiers and they do not go complaining to their mothers about problems. I think that is almost an inevitable consequence of a training regime with its strength and its weaknesses, I am afraid.

Q1033 Mr Hancock: June, you raised a very interesting point and I think it is an issue which we need to try and get to and that is that you are one mum who knew her son's Army friends because they came to his engagement party and you obviously knew them.

Ms Sharples: Yes.

Q1034 Mr Hancock: Did you try to find out why there was this distancing from you?

Ms Sharples: Not at the time, no, because you are too vulnerable anyway to think like that.

Q1035 Mr Hancock: Have you tried since?

Ms Sharples: I have tried contacting them and nobody gets back to me at all. Nobody seems to want to speak to me.

Mrs Farr: On the day of Daniel's funeral, the Army was there and, at the time, I did not think there was anything untoward but I was told afterwards that the second in command of all Catterick was at Daniel's funeral and the veterans were there and they said they had never seen as many high-ranking officers at a junior soldier's funeral. On the day of his funeral, I was told that the majority of the platoon that Daniel was in was being dispersed on the Monday and sent to different places. So, you lose that contact because you do not know where to contact these young people. That is what happens in a death because they sort of scatter them.

Q1036 Mr Hancock: We had evidence given to us that those soldiers who had been given permission to attend a funeral were ushered away very quickly after the event. These were not the guard detachment, these were the friends of the soldier who had died. We were given to believe that, as soon as the funeral was over, they were virtually ordered away/pulled away from the funeral by superior officers. Did things like that happen in any of your situations where they did not want your son's friends who were at the funeral to actually be close to you on this occasion?

Ms Sharples: I found that.

Mrs Mattin: They did not talk to me. It was just the one junior officer when he had been drinking. None of the actual squaddies spoke to me.

Q1037 Mr Hancock: Funerals are difficult and, for a mum losing her son, nothing can be worse. Did you sense that there was more than that, that there was a general reluctance?

Mrs Mattin: Yes, definitely.

Q1038 Mr Hancock: Do you think they were afraid of the questions you might ask?

Mrs Mattin: Yes. There was no real eye contact; they were just very erect and kept away from me.

Q1039 Mr Crausby: The Army now tell us that they provide key welfare information. Certainly when we go around training establishments, we see lots of WRVS, the Salvation Army and what look like some quite good welfare facilities. Do you think that has changed? Lynn, I take very much on board what you say about how, when we go to these establishments, it will be like that. I think it is almost impossible for us to do otherwise and we are very much aware of that, but we really cannot get in there as a fly on the wall and I think we depend on other people to give perhaps a different view of all of this. When we talk to WRVS people, they seem very good and caring people. Was that available for your sons in any way? Were they able to talk to anybody?

Mrs Mattin: I have no idea. I have never ever been into Catterick.

Q1040 Mr Crausby: Now they do produce credit-card type cards with phone numbers and help lines as you suggest, Janet. I do not know how much they are used or how effective they are but they do appear to be providing that now and I do not know whether it is working or not.

Mrs Farr: I know that the WRVS have gone on to a camp local to us now at Leconfield; they have a WRVS on there now which they did not used to have before. I know that has changed but whether the soldiers actually go there, I have no idea. Are they available when soldiers are off duty or are they only available during the hours that the soldiers are on duty and, if they are on duty, then they have to ask permission to go and see them? If they were available, say, at times when the soldiers were not on duty, for example on an evening time, then probably the soldiers might use them a bit more.

Q1041 Mr Crausby: We hear comments like, "My door is always open" and "You can ring" and "I do not encourage them to ring all hours of the night but, if they did ring, they would get a response." Do you think that is true?

Mrs Farr: No. I do not think it is true and, if they are issued with these cards, I do not think that they can be using them or the soldiers who have come forward recently have obviously not been using them; they have never mentioned them.

Q1042 Mr Crausby: Why would they not use a help line like that? If you cannot use a help line, what else could you do?

Mrs Farr: It depends who mans the help line and, if the Army have given them this information, are they a little sceptical and think, if the Army have given us this information, what involvement do they have in it? Is it independent enough?

Q1043 Mr Crausby: So, really back to James's questions about a fear to complain regardless of the system.

Mrs Farr: Because they do not know if it is going to be fed back with it being on camp or what involvement they have in it.

Q1044 Chairman: The most important thing we are looking at is exactly this, what are the structures that have been set up in response to the deaths of your kids and others? We are aware of the potential problems of over-reliance on the chain of command and we are very conscious of the fact that there have to be alternative structures, that people who are anxious about going through the chain of command - and not everybody in the chain of command is a martinet, there are some really decent people in the chain of command - but we would want to be absolutely satisfied that there would be no bar whatsoever to anybody who feels that they are being victimised/bullied by their fellow soldiers, sailors or by anyone in authority. We will have to be absolutely reassured that all of the necessary mechanisms are there in place in order that we can offer you that assurance. We are not totally gullible and we want assurances that this kind of thing that a large number of men and women have gone through is far less likely ever to happen again. You can never stop things happening but at least you can do all that you possibly can to make sure it is going to be a very rare occurrence. I can assure you and others that we are on the ball in that respect.

Mrs Farr: One of the other things in a sudden death would be the civilian police getting on to the scene more quickly and be able to get on to a scene where the Military Police had not already moved evidence and shifted stuff around.

Chairman: We are seeing the police as well as part of our inquiry.

Q1045 Mr Viggers: There is a chain of command and there is a separate system where young trainees have the opportunity to consult a mentor who is someone outside the chain of command at about the corporal level, someone who has been made known to him or her well in advance, then of course there is the chaplaincy and then there is the WRVS, SSAFA and the civilian side. Are you sufficiently close to the situation to understand how the situation is currently working and do you have a view as to whether younger trainees are more likely to consult someone who is uniformed or a civilian? I am interested to know whether you think the mentoring system in particular is likely to be effective or whether you think it might be affected by the chain of command. You understand that the mentor stands outside the chain of command, it is not someone ---

Mrs Farr: But it would still be Army.

Q1046 Mr Viggers: It would still be in the Armed Forces, yes.

Mrs Farr: I honestly do not think that is independent enough. They want somebody totally independent whom they can talk to.

Q1047 Mr Viggers: And the same view would be presumably for the independent help line manned also by someone from the Armed Forces.

Mrs Farr: Yes. There is a fear that if it is not independent, again it is the Army. Is it going to go back? Can they trust it to be confidential?

Q1048 Mr Viggers: Do you have any access to the facilities currently being provided by the WRVS and SSAFA? Have you seen those and can you comment on current facilities?

Mrs Farr: The only WRVS that I am aware of is the one on Leconfield Camp, mainly because I live near there, and they operate a tearoom and stuff like that for soldiers. That is the only one that I am aware of.

Q1049 Mr Cran: I have it in my mind but I did not take a note of it that, earlier on, one of you mentioned the Army padres. We have met a considerable number of them and very caring people they are and they give one the impression that they feel that they are one of the very important links out of the chain of command, although some of them of course are uniformed. Did I hear one of you say that you did not really think they did the job as we think they might?

Mrs Farr: No, I did not say that. I said that I have a problem with them because, if they are in uniform, then they are in the Army. How can they serve two masters? How can they serve the Army and serve God? Surely, if they see an incident such as the incidents that have been reported - and they cannot be unaware of them - how can they turn a blind eye to what is going on? The answer to that is that they are in the Army and they have to follow commands. I have grave concerns about that. If the padre is actually in the Army, then I do not think they are independent enough.

Q1050 Mr Cran: It seems to me that again it is a failure of the system but I think they do regard themselves as separate from the Army, albeit that some of them may wear uniforms, but clearly they have not communicated this to you, have they?

Mrs Farr: The padre who was at Daniel's death and who was the padre with Claudia was brilliant. I have never brought him into the equation because he spent that entire day with him and he was good. At the end of the day, if they are in the Army and in uniform, I do not think the soldiers will be able to see them as independent enough.

Q1051 Mr Cran: Is this view shared by all the rest of you?

Ms Beckley-Lines: Yes.

Q1052 Mr Hancock: I think of my own kids and I think the last person they would turn to for help would be a priest. Do you think any of your sons were the type of lads who, if they were in trouble, would turn to a priest?

Mrs Farr: Mine would.

Q1053 Mr Hancock: A lot of emphasis is put on the role of the padre but that assumes that people will go to them, does it not?

Mrs Farr: I do not think he would have gone to an Army padre in uniform.

Q1054 Mr Hancock: I take your point about that. Can I ask some questions about medical care. Lynn, this question is more to you than anyone because of the situation and possibly to you, Claudia, because you spoke about your son losing a lot of weight and what-have-you. Did you raise your son's medical care at any time whilst he was alive with the Army? Were you satisfied? Did you think that he required medical care of any kind? Have you spoken to medical practitioners in the Army since your sons' deaths?

Mrs Farr: The only medical care that Daniel had was that he had his toenail off at Glencorse and that was it. He was having dental treatment because my lads have a genetic problem where they cannot produce enamel, so they have to have every tooth capped and the Army were very good at seeing to his ongoing dental treatment. Apart from that, that was about it. It came out that he had had a "stress fracture", a supposed "stress fracture", but I never knew him not to come home and I had never seen him on crutches. He did not tell us about it, so I just am not aware of that side of it at all.

Ms Sharples: I am not aware of anything with Allan.

Q1055 Mr Hancock: Claudia, one of the very first things you said was about this big strapping lad, 18 stone and six feet odd losing all this weight. Did you ever put that down to anything other than what he said: bad food and maybe a lot of training and exercise? Did you think there was something wrong with him medically?

Ms Beckley-Lines: No. He said that one punishment they gave him was to take two buckets of sand and run 23 times around the field. He did not tell me, he told his father. All this came out after he had died. I said, "They did that, 23 times?" In the mornings, he would run four miles and back and he used to say, "Guess where I have been? I have been down to Bletchley" which is four miles away, and I would say, "What? You could have bought something down there for me." That is what I would have said. He said that they had made him run 23 times around the field and that, when he had finished, he went to the man and said, "So, where do I put this sand?" and the man just looked at him as if to say, "Well, we will have to find something harder for you to do now." I thought, oh, my goodness. He would never have come out alive from that place.

Q1056 Mr Hancock: I just wanted to find out about the medical care.

Ms Beckley-Lines: We did not get any records. We could ask for the records and we still could do that but I did not.

Q1057 Mr Cran: I see from the notes that we have in front of us that with William, your lad, the cause of death was exhaustion and sickle cell anaemia. Did you know about any of this?

Ms Beckley-Lines: All of us have sickle cell. Ninety per cent of the black race have sickle cell. That is the component of the cell, it is like a sickle. Everybody in the house has it. It does not do anything to you. I am 58 years of age. If I had not told you, you would not know. We live long and work hard. Everyone in the family has it.

Q1058 Mr Cran: Do you therefore contest the fact that that could possibly be the cause of death?

Ms Beckley-Lines: Sickle cell does not kill anybody except if you have the sickle cell crisis. We only have the traits, which means just a flicker of it.

Q1059 Mr Cran: Why do you suppose that the cause of death included ---?

Ms Beckley-Lines: This is the pathologist who I hired. He was the one who gave the results at the inquest. He said that, looking at the Army's notes and looking at his notes, he came to the conclusion that it would have to be sickle cell traits and exhaustion. He said that he looked at every part of his body and he did not see anything wrong.

Q1060 Mr Jones: Can I now turn to something which I think we have got to the bottom of which is the way deaths were actually investigated and these questions are really to Janet and June in terms of their two sons' deaths. One of the issues out of the Surrey Police inquiry and something which I think we want to look at is the way in which suspicious deaths are actually investigated and one of the issues, clearly not from the circumstances surrounding your two cases but, for example, at Deepcut, which has led to, let us say, a complication of getting to the truth, is how the crime scene was actually investigated at the time. Primacy over investigations has now been moved to the civilian police. Do you think that the verdicts in your two sons' deaths would be different if the civilian police had actually investigated right from the start rather than the MoD?

Mrs Mattin: Yes, I do. I have my own thoughts on what I think happened but, if the civilian police had been called, then I would not have had the two conflicting stories which are totally at odds with one another as to how Mark was found. As for the crime scene, I have no idea what happened there. I just do not know. No one has ever told me. Mark did leave a note. It sounded like it had been dictated; it was not anything that Mark would have written; the writing was his but it was scribbled with force and it was saying, "Tell my mother" as if he was saying, "You tell me mother why this has happened." I think that if the civilian police had been involved, things would have been preserved and it would have been investigated far more thoroughly rather than disposed of as quickly as possible.

Q1061 Mr Jones: I know that nothing is ever going to bring your son back and, likewise, nothing is going to convince you that there are not unanswered questions. I know from certainly constituents to whom I have spoken, not in the Army but who have had youngsters who have died, that one of the key things that people want in bereavement is actual answers to questions about what happened in terms of trying to get some not settlement but ---

Mrs Mattin: Some sort of closure because you cannot get any closure.

Q1062 Mr Jones: --- closure of those issues. Do you think that again if the civilian police had done and had a proper investigation in your sons' cases, that would have made that grieving process easier for you?

Ms Beckley-Lines: Yes.

Mrs Mattin: I probably would have had more faith in the facts that were presented to me by an independent police body rather than what the Army was wanting me to know, which was nothing.

Q1063 Mr Jones: You mentioned earlier - and I will come to you in a minute, June - that, in your son's case, clearly there are unanswered questions in your mind around how he actually died or what the circumstances were and I know it is very difficult to come to terms with it if someone does actually take their own life, but you mentioned, for example, a very serious accusation that somebody had made to you that he had been raped. I do not think you are satisfied but are you aware of what is actually being done about that serious accusation?

Mrs Mattin: Nothing was ever done. Nothing. It was very obvious to me a lot later on because I disappeared into a black hole after I had had that knock on the door. I was under a blanket. Later on, it became clear to me that obviously the lads from his regiment who were on the firing range with him knew who this officer was who arrived unexpectedly and said something to Mark that made him disappear, but they will not tell me. Not one of them will give me a name.

Q1064 Mr Hancock: Is it possible for you to tell us again how the Army first explained your son's death to you?

Mrs Mattin: They did not; I heard it on the radio.

Mr Hancock: Good God, that is awful.

Q1065 Mr Jones: What, you heard it on the radio before you were told?

Mrs Mattin: How he died.

Mr Hancock: You heard it on the radio?

Mr Jones: How did they inform you that he had died?

Q1066 Mr Hancock: And the circumstances.

Mrs Mattin: They came to my home at 8.30 on Tuesday 25 June; there was a padre and a little chap with a paunchy face; I do not remember who he was. They just said that there had been a terrible accident and I said, "Is Mark injured? Where is he?" and he just looked at me and said, "No, he's dead." I did not hear what had happened until the news came on the following day when it was said that a 17-year old had been found with a single gunshot wound to his head and then they named him, but I did not know.

Q1067 Mr Hancock: And they did not attempt to explain any of the circumstances?

Mrs Mattin: I did not know. They just said there had been a terrible accident.

Q1068 Mr Hancock: Tell us again what you said earlier about the conflicting stories because I think it is important to get this point.

Mrs Mattin: It was after the funeral. The chaps from his regiment came back to where we were having a wake and his corporal - I do not remember the guy's name but I can see his face - gave me the graphic detail saying that he was the one who had found him, that he had been in the toilet block, that Mark had asked him for a cigarette ... No, he had a cigarette and he had asked him for a light and that he had been in that toilet block when the gun went off and that it was he who had kicked the door open, and then he gave me this graphic description of what was all over the floor. That was on the day of the funeral. Then, when it finally came to the inquest, which I did not attend, out trotted two military policemen who said that they were some 500 yards away from this toilet block and they were the ones who had found him. So, it was a total contradiction.

Q1069 Mr Hancock: When you heard those two conflicting stories like that, which once again fuels all of the doubts that any parent would have, what did you do?

Mrs Mattin: I did not do anything because I did not know what to do. Something in here knew that there was something wrong from the very moment it happened. That is intuition.

Mrs Farr: At the time as well you are so raw at what has happened that everything is just one blur.

Q1070 Mr Jones: June, in your case, I think your son's weapon was actually cleaned, so there was no attempt at all to undertake an investigation into how he died, was there?

Ms Sharples: No.

Q1071 Mr Jones: Do you still have concerns? These cases were before 2002. I have not got my own mind around this yet but are you confident that the system of giving civilian police primacy over deaths will actually work?

Ms Sharples: It would help and it would help the parents a lot because it was just assumed that Allan had committed suicide and the matter was not investigated. That was it, it was as simple as that. Then the inquest, which lasted ten minutes, came along six months afterwards.

Q1072 Mr Jones: In terms of trying to improve the system, clearly you would say that civilian police primacy is an improvement. Again - and I asked this question earlier on - do you think added to that should be an inquest or some type of formal investigation or hearing in all deaths that occur?

Ms Sharples: Yes. I think somebody entirely independent should come in and everything should be as it is, nothing to be touched, as it is in civilian life. It will be a scene of crime and everything should be properly investigated.

Q1073 Mr Jones: Can I turn to the other two which are slightly different cases but are similar in the sense that I think you could say, perhaps in both cases, they are negligence cases, in the medical sense, where there is a duty of care over whether they received the medical attention they needed. In terms of getting that closure to which you referred, do you think having some kind of independent review of what happened would actually help? You were clearly let down as well by the coroner, which is the system and I have to say that I have certain criticisms of the Corners' system which I think is certainly in need of radical overhaul in this country. Do you think that some kind of independent person would have helped you not come to terms with it but to actually understand?

Ms Beckley-Lines: Yes.

Ms Sharples: Yes. In a weird way, I was looking forward to the inquest because I thought everything was going to come out and I was going to find all the answers as to what happened, what they did with Allan's body, where they put him and everything. I was just dumbfounded when it only lasted ten minutes and all I was asked in that process was whether anything else had come to light to make me believe that Allan had committed suicide. That was it. That was the inquest.

Mrs Farr: Can we go back to the police. I have spoken to the North Yorkshire Police about the last two deaths at Catterick and they have assured me that they have been on the scene within 20 minutes. Even in that time, those 20 minutes, unless there is a lockdown or a secure area where that incident is secured, there is still time for evidence to be shifted around.

Ms Sharples: In the case of the police report, you need to see this - I need to see this to enable me to know what went on, what the police found when they arrived for instance. You do not know anything.

Mrs Farr: There is a query with the North Yorkshire Police because they actually share the same building as the Military Police in North Yorkshire.

Ms Beckley-Lines: I think they all come round and have a drink. We were warned that the police and them are good pals.

Q1074 Chairman: I would presume that the police would not be the ones who shared accommodation, they would come from outside.

Ms Beckley-Lines: Would they? That would take too long a time.

Chairman: I would hope that the scene initially could be preserved until those who are doing the investigating came along. I think one of the positive things to come out of the last few years has been that the investigation has not been done in-house because I think that events of the last few years have largely discredited that in-house investigation.

Q1075 Mr Roy: I would like to move on to the call for public inquiries and I have two questions and a supplementary question. My first two questions are on public inquiries. As Catterick families, if a public inquiry were established, what terms of reference would you wish it to have? My second question is, do you think that the Army would welcome a public inquiry?

Mrs Farr: Can we put the terms of reference in writing to you later when we have had time to think about it and have discussed it between ourselves?

Q1076 Mr Roy: Okay. The simpler question is, do you think that the Army would welcome a public inquiry?

Mrs Farr: No, absolutely not. I think too much would come out that they do not want to come out.

Ms Beckley-Lines: It would open up a can of worms.

Q1077 Mr Jones: Can I ask you about this question of public inquiry and we will be interested to see what the terms of reference are because they will be very helpful. It is obviously very raw for you because, as individuals, as I think Janet was saying, you want answers to questions and, frankly, you are never going to get the answers because of the length of time and also evidence being destroyed. In order to get to that sense of closure which I think you all want, which I do not think you are going to reach because of perhaps the way in which you have been treated and the way in which these cases have been dealt with, what would you wish to come out of the public inquiry? What would you want to see? It is hard to say. You are not going to get to the bottom of some of the individual cases because of time and, as I say, the evidence and the way in which matters were investigated. If we did have a public inquiry into the deaths, what would you actually like to see coming out of that?

Mrs Farr: For the Army to be more accountable to parents and for independent oversight into all unexplained, suspicious, whatever you want to call them, deaths.

Q1078 Mr Jones: Clearly the police are now taking primacy over investigation, but you would actually like to see some independent, completely separate from the MoD and completely separate from the Army, body which actually looked at suspicious deaths wherever they took place?

Mrs Farr: Not suspicious deaths but just looked at every incident occurring within the Army, like an ombudsman or whatever you call it, but some independent oversight.

Q1079 Mr Roy: Can I just go back to my original questions and the supplementary. One thing that has been bothering me particularly over the last few days is whether you think the existence of other ongoing inquiries - and that includes the one that has recently been announced - would hinder your efforts to establish a public inquiry. Do you think they are going to muddy the waters or appease people?

Mrs Farr: I think it has to be a lot broader than just Deepcut. It has to be a great deal broader because there are far, far too many issues that cannot be ignored. Whether you can say it is a start or not, I do not know but I do not think it will cover enough. I missed most of the news yesterday because I was travelling down, so I am not really up on what has actually been said but there have to be a lot broader and wider issues.

Q1080 Mr Roy: Do you think there is a danger to yourselves that because this inquiry has been announced in the last couple of days into the circumstances - it was announced yesterday on the floor of the House - of what we have read about Deepcut, the general public could perceive that it is now being looked at and they have this final inquiry because I have absolutely no doubt that none of the points you have been raising as Catterick families would be ---

Mrs Mattin: It is not just us. We are under a big umbrella. There are more than Deepcut.

Mrs Farr: It is not to be used as a final report. If it were used as a final report, then, yes, it would endanger other camps being looked at and it must not be. Let them do the report but it does not have to be a final one, it has to be a great deal broader and a great deal wider and not just Catterick. There are other camps.

Ms Beckley-Lines: I thought the Deepcut Barracks issue has helped us. I was very happy when I heard about it.

Q1081 Mr Roy: There is a perception out there that all the problems are Deepcut and that is what makes the headlines for some of the public. I am very wary that Catterick is forgotten but, to be honest, it is not just Catterick and Deepcut, it is in other places. I know from my own constituency.

Mrs Farr: It is overseas.

Q1082 Mr Jones: Lynn, you have been very clear in what you would want to come out of the public inquiry. We have been criticised that this inquiry we are undertaking is not just into Deepcut and it was never meant to be just into Deepcut because certainly I felt that it was important to look at the wider issues in terms of death and I think it was important to look at not historically but what is happening now. The MoD has said - and the Minister said it again yesterday - that it would take on board our report in terms of recommendations. If, let us suppose - and do not draw any conclusions because we have a great deal more evidence to take - we came up with a suggestion, for example, about setting up an independent ombudsman or situations like that and that was in our report and the MoD and the Government actually agreed to that, would that help? Would that be what you are looking for? Would you still then want to have a public inquiry in terms of looking at what has happened historically?

Mrs Farr: I think so, yes. That would be a start but I think that it needs to go a lot further.

Q1083 Mr Jones: You have been quite clear what you want. If we were to suggest that - and I am not saying that we will come to that conclusion - in our report ---

Mrs Farr: I do not really think it is fair for just one person to comment on that. We are a group.

Q1084 Mr Jones: I appreciate that you have to consult other people as to what you actually want but you are quite clearly saying that you want independence and I think that has come out very clearly from all of you but, if you think about something afterwards or somebody else in your group thinks of something, could you let us know because that would be helpful.

Mrs Farr: That is fine. There are 50 families in this group and I do not think it is fair that I answer that point.

Mr Viggers: I would like to put something on the record which may be helpful. I am advised that no consolidated list of public inquiries exists. An inquiry can take many forms including planning inquiries, inquiries into Boundary Commission proposals and so on. Presumably we are looking at inquiries set up by the Government into specific one-off subjects or events rather than those more frequent inquiries. There is actually no specific definition of public inquiries as various means might be found to inquire into a particular subject. So, I respect very much the fact that you are proposing to write to us with your thoughts on this subject but, as has been put to you by my colleagues, if you can spell out the characteristics that you would wish to see in such an inquiry, I think that would be very helpful for us in reaching a conclusion.

Q1085 Mr Hancock: I think Kevan's point about the possibilities/solutions that we can come to as to what happens in the future is very interesting. There are two issues really: what lessons can we learn from this and what can be put in place for the future? The independent ombudsman idea of carrying out a review into the Armed Forces, similar to what other Armed Forces have elsewhere in the world, is part of the solution for the future and for new instances. To get to the bottom of where you are going - and this is Peter Viggers's point about the different types of inquiry - a full judicial inquiry with all of the paraphernalia to be able to request information and subpoena witnesses is what you really require, is it not?

Mrs Farr: Yes.

Mr Hancock: What did it cost for the Bloody Sunday inquiry - tens of millions of pounds?

Mr Viggers: Fifty-two million pounds.

Q1086 Mr Hancock: Fifty-two million pounds for 13 deaths. We are talking here possibly 100 deaths a year in these difficult circumstances which need to be investigated in this way. I think you need, as Peter has requested you do, to tell us what your view is on that, but it needs to be whether it is just into the issue of what leads up to someone's dying in these circumstances or is it into individual deaths. Deepcut is different and I think that your situation is different to Deepcut and that is why I think there needs to be a separate judicial inquiry into what happened at Deepcut, but I think you have to give us what you feel is the solution to Catterick because the circumstances are so different.

Ms Beckley-Lines: They are the same.

Q1087 Mr Hancock: No. The similarity is that all of the deaths at Deepcut occurred on the site.

Ms Beckley-Lines: It is the same with us.

Q1088 Mr Hancock: No. The circumstances leading to death all happened at Catterick but the deaths did not all occur there and there were different circumstances and that is where there has to be your view about what happens for the Catterick families and what happened there. Lynn, I think your point about what happened in Germany is horrendous, so it is not just UK based, is it?

Mrs Farr: No, it is not. If there were a public inquiry into Deepcut, would we not get the same scenario, "We have had a public inquiry into Deepcut ---"?

Mr Hancock: No because I think you have to clearly define the difference.

Q1089 Mr Jones: Can I be honest with you as to why I am pressing you and it will be interesting to see what your terms of reference are and also I think in terms of what you actually want out of it. I am still not clear in my mind what you would get out of a public inquiry and I have not come to the conclusion about whether we should have one or not in these investigations we are undertaking. Do you think there is a danger that the call for a public inquiry will lead to a situation whereby you will go through the motions, you will get evidence called and everything will happen but you, as individuals, will not get the closure which clearly you want? Do you think that in some ways, at the end of that process, you will perhaps feel cheated that the system has let you down yet again because clearly it has let you down up to now disgracefully?

Mrs Farr: Personally, I never expected any answers for Daniel. It has gone on too long. Within 18 months of Daniel dying, there were four or five deaths at Catterick and I was screaming then that there were too many. Time has gone on and people's memories are not as fresh. I let it go for quite a while and then what happened was that Catterick held this memorial service for all the soldiers who had died on ITC and that is how we all met and, in six years, there have been 19 deaths. I thought that if my son died, he died for a reason and, if this is the reason that I get to the bottom of this, then that is what I am going to do. I honestly think in my case and in my Daniel's case time has gone on. I do not think we will ever get answers for our sons but if we can stop other families going through the same thing as we have gone through, that would be a fine result for me.

Q1090 Chairman: We have not reached the end of our report, so we are in no position to make any recommendations of any description at this stage but, by March, we will be. I have just a few more questions. Frank mentioned a number of organisations: the Adult Learning Inspectorate which are undertaking to oversee the training establishments. Have any of them contacted you?

Mrs Farr: No.

Q1091 Chairman: They are just beginning and I was just wondering if they had sought your advice.

Mrs Farr: Can I ask a question about that because the Adult Learning Inspectorate have a duty of care into training and it is usually around training issues. What about the other side? It is not just training, it is the social and the welfare. The Adult Learning Inspectorate deal with colleges, universities and things like that. How can they have an insight into the structure of the Army and the social side of it? I have concerns about that.

Chairman: With a member of staff, I went along there and looked at their methodology and was reasonably satisfied. They are doing trials; they have not really begun yet but their presence and their arrival has been noticed by the military and I think this will be a very good continuous process of observation and evaluation to ensure that the training regimes meet the standards that need to be set and have been set. Frankly, at this stage, although they have not been functioning in the role in which they will be functioning, the signs are reasonably optimistic that this is one of the consequences of what you and your sons had actually gone through. We do have three or four more questions and then we will let you return.

Q1092 Mr Hancock: You have answered most of the questions that I wanted to ask but there is just this one question about the independent oversight that has been carried out. I would suspect that, Lynn, on behalf of all of you, you would welcome the opportunity to give evidence to them and to try and help them in coming up with a way of involving parents in that initial period of training. You all said early on that it would be enormously helpful if parents were given some guidance and, in return, it might be helpful if parents gave something back to this group who are looking at that. Would you support that view?

Mrs Farr: Yes.

Q1093 Mr Hancock: Perhaps one of the things you could again do is to write to us on behalf of the Catterick families asking for that involvement in this process. You genuinely believe that it should not be just a one-off, it should be an ongoing process that parents of serving recruits would be a very good sounding board for them to find out what their children's reactions were to army life in those first few days and their first reactions when coming home. Would you have wanted to play a part in that?

Ms Beckley-Lines: Yes.

Ms Sharples: Yes.

Mrs Farr: Yes.

Mrs Mattin: Yes.

Q1094 Mr Hancock: You would have liked to see a process in place where the Army had asked you regularly, "Could you tell us if this has affected your son in any way"?

Mrs Farr: Yes.

Mr Hancock: I think it would be helpful if you could also, on behalf of the group, write to us and, through us, maybe we can then pass it on to the Inspectorate and suggest that that should be an ongoing thing for them, not just a one-off talking to you. Other than that, I think this has been a very moving experience.

Chairman: Ladies, thank you very much for coming. It cannot have been easy for you and you have spoken with quiet dignity. Some people who appear before us are really very anxious, almost frightened, but you do not display any signs of that. What you have said will be immensely helpful. As I said earlier, we are not the Surrey Police, we are not qualified to do that and we have never set ourselves up as an alternative to some form of commission of inquiry. Our task is limited to finding out what lessons have been learnt and our major role as the Defence Select Committee is to seek to ensure not just the efficiency of the Armed Forces but how it deals with its personnel and the strength of the military is not just in its equipment and its leadership but in the quality of its personnel. We are not just around to give some bland reassurance. That is not our job. Our job is to satisfy ourselves that lessons have been learnt and, although this Committee will cease to exist at the next election, whenever that is going to be, such has been the magnitude of what has happened and the fact that we are putting more effort into this inquiry in terms of number of sessions, number of visits and the number of advisers, this is not an issue that will cease following the termination of this Parliament and the establishment of a new committee. It is something that has to be ongoing because what you are doing as parents is loaning the military your kids and you have to be absolutely confident that, when you do that, the military looks after them and, if they cannot do it and if we are not able to reassure mothers like you, then neither the military nor ourselves have done any good. I think your kids would have been proud of you. Thank you very much.