Select Committee on Defence Minutes of Evidence


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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