Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
MR TIM
CORRY AND
MS SARAH
BAXTER
1 APRIL 2008
Q100 Mr Borrow: One matter picked
up in the NAO report was concern about the robustness of the assessment
of fitness levels of reservists before they went into theatre.
The question was whether the assessment was as good as it should
have been and potentially it created difficulties for reservists
when they reach theatre and have not achieved the level of fitness
required to be fully effective.
Mr Corry: I am not qualified to
comment on that other than to say that if a person is not assessed
at the same levels inevitably he will by definition be at a lower
level than perhaps his regular counterpart. If that is the case
then clearly it would be an issue.
Ms Baxter: To go back to the point
of what they are going out to do, there may be a certain amount
of flexibility. For instance, there may be a little more leeway
for a surgeon compared with somebody who is concerned with force
protection.
Q101 Robert Key: The NAO report looked
at reservists who within a year of joining decided they wanted
to leave. They found that 48% cited personal and family pressures
as the reason for wanting to leave. Can you explain the family
pressures to which reservists are subject and to which apparently
regulars are not?
Mr Corry: There is a range. If
we are talking about routine-type training, every reservist takes
on a commitment. From personal experience, for the TA the commitment
is 30 days' training a year. Most of that is taken at weekends,
but there is a period in the middle called the annual camp where
in consultation with employers they get time off to go away and
train. Some employers are very generous and will give additional
time over and above annual holiday, and the most generous ones
even pay them to be there, whereas others say they can go away
but they must take it out of their holiday time. If you are an
employee who has only four or five weeks' holiday a year and you
have to use two of them to go away and do your annual camp then
that person's partner or spouse might become a bit fed up with
it and say, "Come on! This is holiday time." That is
certainly the source of one of the pressures.
Q102 Robert Key: What is the answer
to it?
Ms Baxter: We need to keep on
plugging and doing what we do. Ultimately, while we are there
to support employers we make no bones that we seek to create as
supportive an environment as possible. When it comes to the three
legs of the stool we try to make the employer's leg as sturdy
as possible and encourage employers to be as flexible as they
can be and, even better, to provide special leave for training.
Q103 Robert Key: One of the problems
referred to last week by the Families Federations was that whereas
the regulars tended to be in garrison communities the reservists
were spread right across the country and that made a very big
difference to the sense of welfare and belonging. Can you explain
that to us a little more?
Mr Corry: For a regular the military
culture is like one big family whereas reservists are dipping
in and out of it. Clearly, there is strength in all being together
and the reservist does not have that natural support mechanism.
Therefore, when you are dealing with the support and welfare side
it is very much more difficult to support reservists. I am not
fully aware of what is being done to deal with that, but I can
certainly understand why there would be difficulties there.
Q104 Robert Key: The NAO study said
that part of the problem was that the Ministry of Defence did
not have a family-friendly approach to getting information out
to members of the reserve forces because, after all, a lot of
reservist families were not used to service life and there is
a big difference here. How do you think the Ministry of Defence
could improve its relationship with reservists, making the whole
approach to them more family-friendly?
Mr Corry: Probably the level at
which that could happen would be the unit. I know that there are
variations in how much people do and do not do, but certainly
commanding officers, through the people who work for them, are
able to make sure that families are included in broad communications
about what reserves are doing and for them to feel included, particularly
in the very difficult periods when reservists are away on deployment
and perhaps are mobilised for 11 months with their training and
then come back, to make sure that families are kept in the picture
as to precisely what is happening to their spouses.
Q105 Robert Key: How does the Ministry
of Defence keep in touch with families and employers? Do they
just do it with the odd letter two or three times a year or do
they have dedicated websites where families and employers can
get information on a daily basis? How does the MoD communicate?
Mr Corry: I am not aware of what
happens with families; that is not my speciality. Certainly, for
employers generally SaBRE is there to provide an information and
support campaign. There is a website that gives general information
about what it means to employ a reservist. It is not a news site
and so it will not give up-to-date information about what is happening
to a particular individual. We certainly encourage the Chain of
Command, but our particular remit is to encourage employers to
maintain contact with their reservists when they are deployed
because, apart from anything else, that also helps with reintegration.
If the individual feels that there is someone back at home, his
employer, who is still thinking about him then when he comes back
reintegration is that much easier.
Ms Baxter: We focus very much
on the support we can provide to the employer. Equally, there
are examples of the support that employers provide to families
when reservists are away. I have examples of dedicated reservist
points of contact who have helped spouses with mortgage arrangements
because reservists have departed, so it can work both ways.
Q106 Robert Key: On the SaBRE website
is there information available for employers as well as families
about this sort of thing?
Mr Corry: Employers, yes. What
we tend to do—we are developing it all the time—is
produce case studies where employers and reservists work very
well together and, through peer pressure, we hope that other employers
pick up the good practice. As a further step, last year we launched
a list of supportive employers. We know that there are lots of
supportive employers, but we want to get employers to put their
heads above the parapet and publicly declare their support. There
are definitions of what that support means. It is not just "I
am supportive"; they must have a positive attitude and display
supportive behaviour as well in terms of their HR policies, giving
time off, etc. We believe that by promoting good employers others
will through peer pressure will feel that they should do some
of that too. It is encouragement rather than that they must do
this.
Q107 Robert Key: When was the SaBRE
website last redesigned?
Mr Corry: Five and a half years
ago.
Q108 Robert Key: Do you have enough
resources to do what you would really like to do with your website?
Mr Corry: Currently, no.
Q109 Robert Key: Whose fault is that?
Mr Corry: It is the defence budget.
Q110 Mr Hamilton: It would be the
defence budget, would it not? Where I live we have Redford barracks
and a number of other places that people can visit. I cannot recall
regular meetings with employers in the various barracks throughout
Scotland, for example Inverness, Perth and a whole host of places.
We also have RAF Leuchars and a number of other places where this
could be done on an annual basis. Do we do that?
Mr Corry: We do have a programme
of employer visits which is regionally organised. We also have
a national programme where we take employers out to theatres of
operation. A trip to Afghanistan with some key employers is to
take place later this month. We have also done this in Faslane
in Scotland. As to how much we do on visits, again it is a resource
issue. In relative terms they may not be very expensive to do.
It is not just a monetary consideration; it also requires manpower
to organise it, but across the country there are lots of visits,
and we could do more.
Q111 Mr Hamilton: Does that apply
to the families of reservists?
Mr Corry: We do not focus on the
families but I am certainly aware anecdotally that the Chain of
Command does that. Having commanded a reserve unit myself, we
used to have families in. It will vary from unit to unit and,
whether or not there is a policy in place, there is certainly
encouragement to do that.
Q112 Mr Hamilton: But it is left
to the Chain of Command to deal with it?
Mr Corry: Yes.
Q113 Mr Hamilton: I think the point
Robert Key makes is a valid one in the sense that it seems you
have one organisation that does one thing and another does something
else. I am trying to work out the crossover. Invariably, there
is a crossover throughout the whole process and I am not very
clear where there is co-operation between the different areas.
How these things are dealt with is just as important to the family
of the reservist as it is to the employer. Looking at the table,
you can see quite substantial family pressure and that is one
of the reasons why reservists leave?
Mr Corry: Yes.
Q114 Mr Havard: The idea of having
mentors seems to be current all over the place. Is there merit
in having people to whom employers and families can go in a consistent
fashion to get advice and entry into the process? Robert Key is
saying that you could make that information readily available
so somebody could tap into it. It seems to me that it could be
made more consistent. I refer to your case studies, for example,
of how you get it across. Are people and employers given mentors?
In that way you can help to guide them through the process rather
than having to make telephone calls every time they have a strange
question to ask.
Mr Corry: Perhaps they are not
mentors in the way you suggest. I go back to the SaBRE regional
campaign directors.
Q115 Mr Havard: Do they fulfil that
role?
Mr Corry: No. SaBRE is very much
a support campaign, if you like. We cannot do it by ourselves,
so there is a bit of stove-piping in what is happening here.
Ms Baxter: We have to acknowledge
that.
Mr Corry: Indeed, even in the
employer support arena we find that there are a lot of people
playing out in what I call the employer battle space. They are
all doing really good work, whether it is the recruiters, the
Armed Forces or the Reserve Force and Cadets Associations (RFCA's).
It is not always that well co-ordinated.
Q116 Mr Havard: I was very interested
in what you said about types of reservist. It strikes me that
if you are to ask somebody to join in the first place a different
type of person will respond to that question. If people are already
in how you retain them is another matter. I wonder whether a number
of reservists are ex-full-timers, as it were, because they understand
some of these things. They have done their bit but then remain.
Is the profile changing? Is it the case that you are now getting
new people who have never been involved before? Is the profile
changing in terms of how many old sweats you keep on, as it were?
Mr Corry: I am not aware of the
profile of recruits that come in. I know that there are quite
a lot of reservists who have had previous regular service. I suspect
that the individual I describe will not necessarily have previous
military experience. He is the sort of person who wants to give
it a crack. He comes in for three years, or whatever the minimum
period is, does his mobilised tour and then he will leave. I am
not aware of the figures but I am sure that the recruiters have
them.
Chairman: We shall have to ask the Ministry
of Defence. I said that we would come back to medical matters.
Q117 Mr Jenkins: You mentioned stress.
We have one statistic in the report of Kings College which identifies
that reservists who come back from operations have a higher rate
of stress than regulars. Are you aware of that report?
Mr Corry: I am but not in detail.
Q118 Mr Jenkins: My difficulty is
that in the past evidence we have received shows that people present
with mental health problems 13 or 14 years after the activity
and we do not have a system where we can detect it early on. If
we have reservists who have served in the Armed Forces in the
past and have come back from action is their mental stress related
to that or maybe a previous action? We do not know. What worries
me is whether the report will get publicity. How well do you believe
the MoD funds medical treatment for reservists?
Mr Corry: I know that it is better
than it was. I am not an expert in this area. I am aware that
a huge amount of work has been done to improve the medical provision
for reservists post-operation for the very reasons you state.
I am not aware of the detail of the report of Kings College.
Ms Baxter: This is another very
complicated area. As a result of Professor Wessely's work, the
reserves mental health assessment programme was set up. Certainly,
SaBRE helps to publicise that clearly amongst employers to make
them aware of the support available to them from the Chain of
Command. I have heard that the programme is not being used as
much as one might have thought it would be and so that raises
some questions. All I am doing is putting more into the pot but
not giving you any answers.
Q119 Mr Jenkins: In four years an
average of 25 a year presented themselves with mental health problems.
That does not really fit into the 25% found by the Kings College
report. There is a lack of information or misinformation. I can
understand the difficulty, but in civilian life it may be thought
that with a really abrupt return to the workplace the condition
might manifest itself faster than remaining in the military. When
they come back what does the sudden impact do to them and their
families? Is there any data to show an increase in the level of
breakdowns in families?
Mr Corry: I do not have that information
and I just do not know the answer to that question.
Mr Jenkins: We have a lot of questions
but we do not have the answers.
Chairman: Are you able to say how you
see this flowing through into the work that you do?
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