Examination of Witnesses (Questions 265-279)
COMMODORE PAUL
BRANSCOMBE CBE RN, MRS
KATE BURGESS
OBE, MRS MORAG
ANTROBUS, MRS
DENISE MURPHY
AND PADRE
ROLAND OLLIFF
1 FEBRUARY 2006
Q265 Chairman: Good morning. Thank you
for agreeing to spend some time with us, giving us the benefit
of your views and experience. Would you please introduce yourselves.
Mrs Murphy: My name is Denise
Murphy and I am Head of Services Welfare with WRVS. I work with
Morag Antrobus.
Mrs Antrobus: I am a Services
Welfare Officer based at Wellington Barracks, so I am dealing
with the soldiers on the ground.
Commodore Branscombe: I am Paul
Branscombe. I am the Deputy Controller of SSAFA Forces Help, but
I am responsible overall for all of our work, both in welfare,
social work and health at home and overseas for the Army, Navy
and Air Force, but also for our voluntary activities in support
of that community.
Mrs Burgess: I am Kate Burgess.
I am Director of Social Work, SSAFA Forces Help. I have been working
with the military for over 20 years. One of my responsibilities
is also managing the Confidential Support Line.
Padre Olliff: My name is Padre
Roland Olliff. I am a serving chaplain. My post at the moment
is the Senior Chaplain of the Army Training Regiment at Pirbright,
so I have daily input to new intake soldiers as they join the
Army.
Q266 Chairman: It would probably
be appropriate to have two separate responses to this question.
Could you give us a sense of the case you get in with your individual
organisations? Could you give some flavour of the level of support
that you are able to give?
Mrs Murphy: I have looked at some
statistics. About 650,000 soldiers have come through our recreational
facilities in 2005 and just over 9,000 have asked for one-to-one
welfare discussions. We dangle a carrot, if you like, for the
soldiers to come into our areas. If they have a problem then they
speak to a services welfare officer—and Morag is probably
in a better position to give you the examples. We collate and
collect statistics because clearly we want to be able to feed
back into the chain of command with the sorts of issues. Although
it is a confidential service, we still feel it is important that
we are able to feed back to the chain of command if there is a
particular problem—a huge debt issue; or if there is a bullying
issue then, clearly, that is dealt with immediately; or any self-harm
issues are dealt with immediately.
Mrs Antrobus: The range of problems
that the soldier will come with is anything from just wanting
perhaps to go home on compassionate leave—they are not able
to get it, for whatever the reason may be, can we act as an advocate—up
to an issue that they feel they are being bullied or harassed.
That clearly is something that does take a lot more time to work
your way through with them, because a perception of bullying or
being harassed to it actually happening is very wide. Probably
the majority of problems which float across our desk are money
related, particularly with the younger soldiers.
Q267 Chairman: Debts.
Mrs Antrobus: Yes. Mobile phones
predominantly. That is the big one. They are away from home, on
the phone to the girlfriend, whatever, for an hour, with very
little notion of how much it is costing. Really the full range
is there with the young soldiers that any young teenager would
have. Homesickness is another big one. Debt. Certainly they would
be the two problems with the young soldiers. With older soldiers
who have been around a bit there are the same types of problems.
Again, debt, is always a big one. You name it, and I could tell
you that I have probably at some point had to deal with it.
Q268 Chairman: It sounds rather like
the sorts of things that we deal with in my constituency casework.
Mrs Antrobus: Exactly. As WRVS
services welfare, we are there as a referral agency. It is a judgment
call for us. We are there to assist the chain of command, but,
because we are civilians, right outside of it, we can be impartial.
We are totally impartial to what is happening, but we are not
in a position to solve anything for the solider. It is for us
to decide whether to use SSAFA, for example. If we have a young
soldier who has a problem perhaps at home, then we would contact
SSAFA and say, "Do you have anybody in this area that can
help?" We are there very much on the referral side; not there
to put their problem right."
Mrs Murphy: We are certainly not
counsellors.
Q269 Chairman: No. Is there anything
SSAFA would add?
Commodore Branscombe: We come
from a broader perspective, because we do work with all three
services and abroad and have done for a very long time. But I
would like to preamble what I say by saying that we are highly
supportive of the chain of command. We have sometimes been criticised
by some, that when we appeared before to give evidence to predecessors
of this Committee, that somehow we were anti-authoritarian or
indeed destructive. That is not the case. We are very supportive
of the military chain of command and understand the imperatives
and the difficulties it falls under. However, we very strongly
believe that our ability to speak independently and be independent
from the chain of command is extremely helpful. We come across
cases everywhere, at all levels, whether it happens to be young
recruits or older people, where it is very clear—and in
the context of your inquiry today, it is that access, transparency
and awareness of the redress of complaints—is not good in
general. We do what we can in order not only to persuade people
that their best means of redress is indeed by coming through what
is set up at the moment as the chain of command but supporting
them as far as possible in that process. Not only do we see it
on a daily basis with our social workers and other people, but,
of course, on the confidential support line which Mrs Burgess
has spoken about, many of the calls we get are asking questions
about the redress of complaints.
Q270 Chairman: To try to get it clear
in my own mind, conduit is probably the wrong word but you are
a link between the chain of command and the individual with a
problem or a complaint.
Commodore Branscombe: We like
to think we are highly supportive but semi-detached from the chain
of command: semi-detached in the sense that we are there to assist
it but there is no question about our independence, and that is
where the credibility comes from.
Q271 Chairman: You do not feel in
any way you are limited, in that you do not have any powers to
resolve an issue. You are not limited in terms of the representations
you can make.
Mrs Antrobus: Absolutely not.
Certainly from the WRVS perspective, if we thought something was
important enough we would have immediate access to the colonel.
Mrs Murphy: From my point of view,
I would have immediate access to colonels, the Army Welfare Service
or even higher, so I do not feel restricted at all in taking that
matter to the highest level—Sir Mike Jackson, if necessary.
Q272 Chairman: Is that the same for
SSAFA?
Commodore Branscombe: Yes. I think
the problem, however, is that people who by their very nature
are either distressed or disturbed in some way because of their
stressful situation do not feel either confident or competent
to address their problems. It is also true—and this is not
a criticism of the military or naval or whatever else: it happens
in any other kind of organisation—that it is very difficult
for you to be able to address the higher levels of management
if you do not know how to do it or you do not have the confidence
to do that.
Q273 Chairman: That is very helpful.
In terms of the range of issues that come across SSAFA's desk,
is it the same as with WRVS, or do you find a slightly different
mix?
Mrs Burgess: We offer a different
service. Our service is mainly for the serving population: community
health, social work services, so family problems, health problems.
We do see individual service people and they would probably have
the similar difficulties that WRVS have mentioned.
Q274 Chairman: Thank you. Is there
anything you would wish to add?
Padre Olliff: I have 1,500 recruits,
who are new into the army, from the Monday they start. I think
it is important to understand that their education of the complaints
procedure is important. As Commodore Branscombe has said, it is
them getting to know the system and then trusting the system and
having the confidence to come forward with their complaint, after
four or five or six days in the Armed Forces, never mind five
or six years. Their complaints are informal and formal. They come
and say, "I don't understand this and I would like somebody
to explain it to me" or "This has happened to me in
my barrack room and I do not think it is right"—lots
of each—and knowing where to go with that complaint is probably
the place where we sit. They come for a result or they come and
say, "I would like this to get better; I would like somebody
to explain this to me. Will you please help me in getting an answer
to my problem?" whether it is at home or whether it is in
the service. They want a result.
Q275 Chairman: Do you find any differences
of approach? Are you in a position to comment on whether or not
there are any differences of approach to these sorts of issues
of redressing grievance between the different services?
Mrs Antrobus: From the WRVS perspective,
we work predominantly with the Army, although we are getting more
and more involved with the Tri-Service because the forces themselves
are being pushed towards joining in certain areas. I think perhaps
Commodore Branscombe can talk more about the Royal Navy, because
that is probably where we are the least represented, but, certainly
with the RAF and the Army, on the ground, we would get the same
response whoever it was that we were dealing with, given that
the RAF obviously has fewer numbers.
Commodore Branscombe: I think
it is slightly more complex than that because much depends upon
both environment and culture within a particular setting. Therefore
it is difficult to draw a distinction between the three services
because it would also differ from home to abroad and in different
parts of each service. It is not homogeneous in that sense. The
only statistical indicator which we would have is that we certainly
have a disproportionately large number which come from the Army
as a service—and when I say disproportionately, it is not
necessarily pro rata. But it may be, of course, that that is something
again to do with demographics, so I do not think one should necessarily
read so much into that. But it is certainly the case that we have
more inquiries from Army personnel than we do from the Air Force
and Navy personnel.
Mrs Burgess: I have some statistics
from 2005 in relation to the confidential support line regarding
redress of grievance: 53 from the Army, two from civil servants,
four from the Royal Air Force, none from the Royal Marines, 13
from the Royal Navy and five from the Territorial Army—77
in total.
Q276 Chairman: For what period?
Mrs Burgess: Last year, January
to December.
Q277 Mr Howarth: That is a relatively
small number of calls. Have you any breakdown as to what the issues
were?
Mrs Burgess: Those were all about
redress of grievance: either not knowing how to deal with the
situation, so needing some advice about to whom they needed to
go and where to acquire the procedure, or not terribly happy with
the outcome of a procedure.
Q278 Chairman: Would it be asking
too much for you to do a sort of analysis of those statistics
and let us have a note on it—obviously anonymised. I think
we might find that very helpful.
Commodore Branscombe: It should
be emphasised that those are calls from people who either were
knowledgeable enough or brave enough to ring the confidential
support line, and therefore would represent only a proportion
of those overall experienced.
Chairman: We would need to make that
qualification, but nevertheless it would be helpful. Thank you.
Q279 Mr Breed: Previous witnesses
have said—and I think you have confirmed it as well—that
there is this general lack of understanding, knowledge and everything
else. Are you telling us there is no basic piece of material which
is issued to every serviceman when they come in to give them some
guidance as to how this works?
Commodore Branscombe: There is.
I have to say, of course, that there are very clear instructions
in a Joint Service Publication, but of course that is quite a
complex document and not—
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