Examination of Witnesses (Questions 600-619)
MRS ANN
BOAL, REVEREND
ANDREW RAWDING,
MRS GILLIAN
GRIGG, MRS
ROSALIND DILLON-LEE
AND COMMODORE
TOBY ELLIOT
23 FEBRUARY 2005
Q600 Chairman: Do you know if it is working
to capacity or if it has spare capacity?
Commodore Elliot: Perhaps I can
tackle that question from the other direction. We have actually
discussed whether or not we should be trying to persuade Northern
Ireland that we should come together. We do not believe that the
two groups necessarily will mix to advantage. It would be better
to set up a separate component of its own rather than going in
with the Police.
Q601 Chairman: Why do you say that?
Commodore Elliot: I have to be
careful because I am not a Northern Ireland expert. I understand
there are some natural tensions between the two forces and that
that can come out a lower levels, constable and private soldier
level, even as veterans.
Q602 Chairman: I am only asking because
obviously it is most cost effective if they are joined.
Commodore Elliot: That would be
ideal. We were really keen to begin with to look at a model in
which we shared not only the facilities but also the same programmes.
Q603 Chairman: Who was reluctant: you
rather than the Police or the British Government?
Commodore Elliot: I think the
Head of that organisation at the time, Brigadier David Strudley,
who set it up and has now moved on, and I came to the conclusion
as a result of some very detailed discussions about whether the
two groups would mix and so on. As a soldier who served in the
UDI and having commanded there, he was in a very good position
to gauge that particular issue.
Q604 Mr Hepburn: You deal with mental
illnesses. Of course, if a member of the public or members of
public bodies see someone with a leg or an arm missing, there
is immediate sympathy but mental illness is not physically seen.
Do you find mental illness is often misunderstood? Do you find
yourselves at a disadvantage in that way compared to other bodies
dealing with physical disabilities?
Commodore Elliot: I think five
or 10 years ago that would have been the case, but we detect that
there is a growing public understanding and acceptance of psychological
wounding and the effect that has on a person's ability to function.
There is not this issue of stigma in the general public. However,
it is there within the mind of the soldier. This is true of all
the services and undoubtedly one of the things we are struggling
with is the military ethos. The stigma about the cracking up issue
which makes you a second-class solider in your own mind, let alone
in someone else's, is still a big problem. It is most certainly
prevalent amongst the Ulster Defence Regiment veterans we look
after at the moment. Many of them are ashamed of the fact that
they have shown some form of weakness. Their families are ashamed
as well and tend to compound the problem of sheltering them from
the big wide world and hiding them away. That is something we
battle with the whole time.
Q605 Reverend Smyth: I recognise you
answered earlier that as an organisation you are not getting funding
from Government. What financial compensation exists for the members
of your organisations who have been affected by the problems in
Northern Ireland?
Reverend Rawding: My apologies,
Chairman. At this stage, could I just ask this? We were asked
a question by Stephen Hepburn. One of us had an opportunity to
reply.
Q606 Chairman: Anybody who wants to answer
should feel free to answer.
Reverend Rawding: Before we move
on to another question, are we all going to have an opportunity
to speak?
Q607 Chairman: Everybody has not got
to answer every question. If anybody wants to add anything then,
of course, that is absolutely fine. If you have something to say,
please do so.
Reverend Rawding: I would like
to add something to what we heard from Toby Elliot. Veterans over
here also feel forgotten and not just veterans over in Northern
Ireland. They feel alienated, in fact even more alienated I would
say, because of their distribution across the country in Britain
and also because of just the sheer weight of numbers in Britain.
There are about 1.6 million people in Northern Ireland but there
could be 7 or 8 million just here in London alone. If you are
a veteran, you are more alienated here on the mainland than you
would be in Northern Ireland[2].
We provide something which statutory bodies do not provide: we
are interested in Northern Ireland and in Northern Ireland veterans'
issues. Some other ex-services organisations do not seem to be
interested; they have enough other veterans to think about. We
also provide an expertise that no-one else has, apart from other
veterans, because we are veterans and therefore we understand.
We have the same problem with GPs, psychologists and psychiatrists
who do not understand the position of the veteran and never will
because they have never been veterans. We have the same problem
of alienation from the Health Service with veterans here in England
on security grounds and with delivery of care. Unfortunately there
is also a stigma which means that some veterans will not even
go to Combat Stress because it is the Ex-Services' Mental Welfare
Society. They do not want to be seen to be going cap-in-hand to
something which links them to a mental health problem. We are
providing some ongoing support for those people. Our volunteers
are always there at the end of a telephone, albeit it is not an
official help line. We are also raising an awareness of Northern
Ireland veterans' issues. We are also focusing on the remembrance
of veterans who have been killed in Northern Ireland. We have
started a service at the National Memorial Arboretum which is
going to be an annual service specifically to remember those who
have died in Northern Ireland as a result of their military service.
This is apart from services that would happen as a matter of course
run by the Ulster Defence Regiment or regiments in Northern Ireland
itself. We are not aware of any other service over here in Britain
which currently focuses on Northern Ireland. We have had our own
problems with one other ex-service organisation in actually having
them acknowledge us as an organisation and our need for specific
remembrance of Northern Ireland. We are also the only organisation
currently that is engaging in a form of reconciliation with the
former enemy[3].
There is no other statutory body or ex-services' organisation
that we are aware of involved in reconciliation with people who
might be seen as the former enemy in Northern Ireland. I am talking
about military ex-services' organisations. I just want to pick
up on your point about mental versus physical. We have people
with physical injuries but primarily I would say we have people
with mental injuries. None of us knows the true impact of those
mental injuries. This is a very important point. If you lose your
leg, you have clearly lost your leg. If you lose part of your
mind, no-one knows. There is a real issue about this and veterans
are having to fight to be recognised. One of the problems is that
veterans who served in the early Seventies served in a situation
where there was no real paperwork; there was no real reporting
because it was absolute chaos. Therefore, there is nothing to
account for their experiences in the early Seventies. It is problematic
for them even to be recognised as having a problem. They are having
to vouch for themselves because there was no system as it was
so chaotic. The Army had just arrived in the early Seventies.
Mrs Grigg: We provide a unique
service in that most of us are military widows, whether from World
War Two or more recently. The Army, Navy and Air Force now do
provide a much better service for widows at the time of death.
A lot of people feel that not very long after the first year has
passed the military has forgotten them. Certainly I have spoken
to two widows whose husbands died in Northern Ireland in the 1970s
very early on who feel that they have been totally forgotten.
I think that needs to be addressed by the military in particular.
Q608 Chairman: We are becoming more and
more aware as this inquiry proceeds of the difference in treatment
of people from the early and mid Seventies to the late Nineties.
Mrs Dillon-Lee: My husband was
killed in 1990. I had very good care while I was still in Germany.
I stayed there for six months. As soon as I came back to England,
there was nothing. I was in contact with the Royal Artillery Charitable
Fund and I had some help from them, but that is all.
Q609 Reverend Smyth: We are aware of
the fact that public funding has not been supporting you, to put
it that way. What about your individual members, what sort of
financial compensation have they been able to get?
Mrs Boal: One of the main problems,
as you say, involves the Troubles pre-1980. The compensation of
some of our members is so pitiful. What some people who could
still be working today are paid would not even be six months'
salary. That has never been addressed. There is the problem that
anyone who was part-time in the RUC and was injured off-duty would
not be entitled to an injury-on-duty pension. Anyone who went
off pre-1984 did not have a Police pension. We have some members
who were severely injured and they do not get anything from the
Police. They live on state benefits. We have one member who was
shot in 1972. He was the first policeman targeted in his own home.
He was shot with an automatic rifle at his bedroom window. Just
recently, I was looking into his financial affairs. He was disowned
by his family when he joined the Police because he came from a
nationalist background in West Belfast. He was in a coma for three
years and when he woke up his wife had gone. I now have power
of attorney for him. I look after his affairs where he lives.
We were going through bank statements. I realised that his Police
pension was £32 a month. He suffers from tetraplegia. He
lives in a hospital room in a clinic at 62 years of age. He gets
£32 a month because they deducted his injury-on-duty pension
from his state benefits. I had to apply for money to buy him a
pipe. He had been saving up because he wanted a new pipe at Christmas.
We had applied to the Northern Ireland Memorial Fund. He pays
£2000 every four weeks, or £500 a week, himself for
the care that he is receiving.
Q610 Chairman: Who is his Member of Parliament?
Mrs Boal: I think it might be
Hamilton.
Q611 Chairman: The point I want to make
is that the committee really cannot get stuck into an individual
case.
Mrs Boal: We have a lot of cases
like that.
Q612 Chairman: I am sure you have. I
am just asking you the question: have you taken that particular
problem to the person's Member of Parliament? That has to be the
first step.
Mrs Boal: These are rules and
regulation. No intervention, unless they change the whole thing—
Q613 Chairman: Unless he has been a victim
of the system, in which case Members of Parliament can change
things. I am just asking you the question: is it a route you have
gone down?
Mrs Boal: No.
Q614 Chairman: May I strongly recommend
that you do and, if it does not work, that is up to whoever their
Member of Parliament is to make a fuss about it. Individually
that is what we are for. What we cannot do as a committee is go
into an individual case. Do you see what I am saying? In our day
jobs, we are all dealing with these sorts of injustices, trying
to get the Government to answer questions and, when they do not,
trying to make a fuss if there is a genuine case. It really is
for the local Member of Parliament, whoever this individual is,
to take it up.
Mrs Boal: Then we will have to
take matters up with Members of Parliament for the whole province
because we have members living everywhere.
Chairman: If people are clearly suffering
like that, then the Government ought to be aware of it. People
like Martin Smyth and Roy Beggs are taking this up all the time
in Northern Ireland, just as we all are in England. It is a route
that very often people do not bother to go down. I strongly recommend
that you do.
Q615 Mr Swire: Could I come in on that
point? It is depressing that Mrs Boal has not considered going
through her Member of Parliament. Can you give the committee some
indication of how many people you think might be in that category
you were describing; that is policemen injured off duty who were
in the reserve but not entitled to full benefit?
Mrs Boal: I would say that is
10 to 15 per cent of our membership.
Q616 Mr Swire: Approximately how many
people would that be throughout the province?
Mrs Boal: About 20 to 25 people.
May I finish on this point of funding? Under Patten the Northern
Ireland Police Fund was set up, which is a Northern Ireland initiative.
Mrs Grigg: You asked about what
compensation a pre-1973 widow receives. She will receive a war
widow's pension. The date of death will be relevant to when they
receive criminal injuries compensation. Post-73, they will receive
a war widow's pension, a military attributable pension and criminal
injuries compensation, and then there may be individual cases
which receive money from other sources.
Q617 Chairman: I do know this because
I played a part in bringing that change about.
Reverend Rawding: From a veteran's
point of view, there is no automatic compensation for veterans.
I do not know whether the question is about veterans or relatives
of those who have died.
Q618 Reverend Smyth: These are members
of your organisations who are veterans.
Reverend Rawding: People have
to fight for any sort of compensation they get, which is the war
pension. One issue about the war pension is this. In the minds
of veterans, if they recover, for example veterans who are being
treated through Combat Stress, in their minds, if they recover
from their treatment, they are under the impression that their
pension will be taken away from them because they will no longer
qualify for a war pension. I cannot actually say what the official
line on this is. In the minds of many veterans, they have fought
to get their pension and, now that they have got it, quite honestly
some of them are playing a game in order to keep their pension.
The moment they look as though they have improved, it is taken
away. I had one specific example where a GP came and did an appraisal
on a veteran. The GP had no experience of Northern Ireland and
no experience of the military. He asked the veteran a couple of
general questions and then said that the veteran was now perfectly
OK, yet inside the veteran's mind, he is not OK; he has not worked
since he was discharged from the Army in the early Seventies.
This is a problem across all veterans regarding compensation.
Commodore Elliot: To answer your
question, the compensation paid to a serviceman who is disabled
in service, either aggravated or attributable, is a war pension.
Of the Northern Ireland veterans we have on our books, about 700
of them, 75 per cent are in receipt of a war pension. Part of
the problem with the group we look after is that many of them
do not present to us until they have been out of service many
years and have gone beyond the seven years grace time when they
do not actually have to prove that their disability was attributable
or aggravated by service. For the group that has gone beyond that
period, one of the functions of the Society is to help them get
a war pension. I have to say that my experience of working with
the Veterans' Agency on this is that we are very successful in
achieving the war pension which these veterans deserve. The scheme
is about to change as of 6 April this year. There is a new Armed
Forces Pension and Compensation Scheme. The compensation will
effectively award a war pension or some form of compensation to
a disabled serviceman. That will not be affected by any improvement
in his condition, as has been said. It is true that the war pension
can be reduced, or indeed taken away, if the veteran's condition
improves to the extent that a war pension is no longer justified.
That does work against attempts to treat them to help them improve
their condition.
Reverend Rawding: Going back to
Mr Hepburn's point, if you lose your leg in a bomb attack and
you then run the London Marathon, then arguably you have overcome
your problem. Will you lose your compensation? No, because everyone
can see you have still lost your leg; you have an artificial one.
There is a real issue here between mental and physical injuries.
Chairman: I do not want to stop anyone
saying what they have come to say but we have been going 45 minutes
and we are at question 2. We have only really allocated an hour,
which we are going to go over a bit. Could I please ask you to
restrain yourselves a little? As I say, I am not trying to censor
anybody but we have a lot of things we do need to try to get on
the record.
Q619 Reverend Smyth: I would like to
put on record that it is difficult trying to get through to the
War Pensions Department and to claim the rights of people, even
from the Second World War. I am still fighting for a case in Canada.
The point that the Chairman made is that individual cases cannot
be dealt with and ultimately they have to be answered. Could I
ask for a quick answer? Do you think that financial compensation
goes some way, or any way, towards acknowledging the suffering
of your members?
Mrs Dillon-Lee: I think financial
compensation has two good points. Firstly, as a widow, especially
in the early years, you have a lot to cope with: your own grief
and your children's grief. If you are given some monetary compensation,
that is one less thing to worry about. Also, it is the only way
the state can show that it cares about you because in all other
respects you are forgotten.
Chairman: Thank you. I think that is
a standard answer.
2 Some veterans in Great Britian may not be aware
of the enormous changes that have been taking place in Northern
Ireland. Many are still locked into the past and are often not
helped by the portrait that is painted by the media which can
promote the perception of an ongoing security threat. Back
3
We are facilitating this in order to help some veterans come
to terms with their fears and past experiences in Northern Ireland. Back
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