Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200-211)
MR CHRIS
SANDERSON MBE AND
MR CHRISTOPHER
BEESE MBE
1 APRIL 2008
Q200 Mr Borrow: I gained the impression
earlier in the discussion that the majority of ex-military people
you recruited had gone into civilian life before joining your
companies. They did not leave the Armed Forces because they were
not happy and go directly to one of your companies which could
offer better pay and conditions than, say, the Army. They left
the Armed Forces for reasons A, B and C, worked in civilian life
for a bit and then saw the opportunity to use their skills by
working for your companies and, by the way, the pay and conditions
would give them a chance to take a leap forward in a short period
of time to set themselves up to do something else later in life.
Is that the correct dynamic?
Mr Sanderson: That is correct.
There is also the historical dimension that although there was
always an industry of security and risk-associated activities
which drew on ex-service personnel, it became a great deal larger
in the aftermath of the second Gulf War. Interestingly, when I
interrogated the statistics the proportion of personnel we took
direct from the Services even in 2003 and 2004 when hundreds of
people were being recruited was still between 10 and 15%. If that
proportion of direct recruitment from the Services has risen it
is only because the numbers are much smaller.
Q201 Mr Borrow: Would it be wrong
for the Committee to draw the conclusion that there is a direct
link between retention problems within the Armed Forces and your
existence as private companies in the security industry recruiting
ex-servicemen?
Mr Sanderson: That would be a
wrong assumption in my view. Perhaps I may observe that probably
the majority of the work we do provides security services to government
and government-funded activities in hazardous areas, so some would
argue that if the work were not done by private companies it would
be done by the military.
Q202 Mr Jenkins: Are all of your
employees British?
Mr Sanderson: No, and it depends
on the nature of the client. If we are working for the British
Government, for example, there may well be nationality requirements.
They may have to be British or Commonwealth citizens, and there
may also be security vetting requirements. Clearly, we can work
for a range of other clients who may be non-UK Government or commercial.
Q203 Mr Jenkins: When you employ
non-British personnel I take it you are quite happy with them.
Do you have a chance to compare them? If they are ex-military
from abroad are they as well trained as British ex-service personnel?
Mr Sanderson: For control risks
we employ UK and Commonwealth ex-servicemen, UK and typically
ex-Police Service of Northern Ireland policemen. We employ what
is known in the industry as third country nationals who typically
will be ex-British Army Gurkhas. The third category of employment
is local nationals drawn from the indigenous populations of the
countries in which we are working.
Mr Beese: We have a similar experience.
Of our 1,600 employees in Iraq nearly 800 are Iraqi trained by
us who perform very reliably. There are a large number of Nepalese
and Fijians who perform admirably. The remainder, some 500, are
British Commonwealth personnel and there is no apparent difference
between them in performance.
Q204 Mr Jenkin: You said that poorly
resourced training was one of the prime reasons for people leaving
the Armed Forces. Could you enlarge on that?
Mr Sanderson: That is a reason
they cite. I cannot observe directly what the frustration is,
but the factors raised—I did a straw poll a few days ago—were
lack of training ammunition and, in a very general sense, availability
of equipment, but I am unable to comment authoritatively on the
detail.
Q205 Mr Jenkin: Do you think that
is reflected in the quality of personnel or professional competence
that people leaving the Armed Forces display today, or is it as
good as ever because of their combat experience? To put it bluntly,
they do more training on the job.
Mr Beese: In our experience, they
consistently improve; they are better today than they have ever
been.
Mr Sanderson: Obviously, we are
in a position where we have a lot of applications to work for
our companies. We can select the best of those who apply.
Q206 Mr Jenkin: But you do not find
the high operational tempo a reason for people to leave the Armed
Forces?
Mr Sanderson: That is not cited
as a reason, interestingly.
Q207 Mr Jenkin: But you may have
a self-selecting sample in that respect?
Mr Sanderson: That is true, but
we also take a lot of personnel into non-deployed appointments,
so people will be working in managerial positions in our offices
in London, for example. They cite a batch of reasons for leaving
similar to the ones I raised before and operational tempo is not
one of them.
Q208 Mr Jenkin: Do they get more
predictable training from an employer like you? Servicemen often
complain about their training and personnel development being
interrupted by too many operational requirements. Do you think
that is so?
Mr Sanderson: Companies will differ.
I can speak only for my company which offers a reasonably predictable
and well-resourced training programme for those who join us.
Mr Beese: Training itself does
not appear to be an issue, but still time away from families is.
Social trends change and husbands are now expected to spend more
time with family and children and take a greater hand in their
upbringing. That will be reflected also in military personnel.
Quality time at home and reasonably regular communication are
important. All of our employees in Iraq have the ability to community
by email with their families. Webcams help and they can keep in
reasonable touch. It helps to have regular rotations and to know
that you will go back not simply to see the family but take them
on holidays that you can now afford. Quality of life is improved.
Q209 Mr Hamilton: Mr Beese, I think
the last point you make is extremely important. I was in Basra
three weeks ago and one of the issues that came up was retention
and turnover. They were over there for so long and personal circumstances
changed. For example, single people join up and then get married.
Mr Sanderson, surely when personnel complain about the Armed Forces
and say they want to leave for these reasons they are not likely
to tell you that the reason they are doing it is because they
are being nagged by their wives.
Mr Sanderson: I would not dispute
that at all. That is why one always makes a distinction between
the reasons offered by the serviceman himself and the impact of
family pressures.
Q210 Chairman: Do you suggest that
your experience is something on which the Ministry of Defence
could draw in any respect in terms of length of tours, quality
of training, flat command structures or pay?
Mr Beese: We come from an industry
that provides defensive protective services and therefore at any
one time our operational tempo should be less than that of the
Armed Forces. If I were a commanding officer who required my men
to travel up the foothills of the Hindu Kush and stay there for
a month I would need a mechanism and environment that allowed
me to do that. We do not have to do that and therefore can afford
to take a different approach. We can afford to be flexible with
staff. If they need to take a month off to resolve a family problem
we can change their rotations and accommodate their needs. That
helps our own retention because that person will come back and
continue to perform for us and we shall be seen by a wider market
to be an employer of choice. But I suggest that we have more luxury
in our ability to provide these benefits than the Ministry of
Defence. At the end of the day I can instruct no one to go anywhere;
they are all volunteers. The military has to be able to send people;
we do not.
Mr Sanderson: There are significant
differences between the way private companies and the Armed Services
operate particularly in the duration of operations. We employ
personnel on contract to meet specific client requirements. Those
contracts might last a matter of weeks, months or years. The individuals
will be employed for as long or short a time as they want to be
which could be a matter of months or years. We have personnel
who have been with us since the Gulf War and the start of private
security operations in 2003. A second important distinction is
that typically our training cycle has two components: individual
training and collective training. The individual training component
has some similarities with that of the Armed Services, but the
collective training component really looks at individuals who
work as part of small teams typically of no more than six or eight
personnel, whereas the Armed Forces must generate a training and
operational cycle which supports the operations of sub-units and
formations which is a much lengthier process.
Q211 Mr Jenkin: One of the debilitating
factors in our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq is the six-month
rule which means that all the skills learnt by the outgoing brigades
hardly if at all transfer to the incoming brigades. Would it be
possible for you to construct a package for the Ministry of Defence
so it could have long-term military staff attached to brigade
headquarters and GOCs in theatre to provide the continuity which
at the moment does not exist and career opportunities for people
who want longer-term commitments than are currently provided?
Is that idea completely off the wall?
Mr Beese: No, it is not. Certainly,
we are asked to brief rotating brigades before they go out to
ensure that their staff and senior NCOs understand what the private
sector is and what it can offer by way of advantage and what it
cannot offer. If a new brigade command team arrives in Lashkargar
in Helmand province it will find our same people sitting at operational
desks alongside the staff working with the Foreign Office, DFID
and other government groups and providing a degree of continuity.
Typically, also in peace-keeping operations—we do not simply
support the British Government—where we support United Nations
staffs and operations the same is true. In the Balkans we had
people deployed for four years in all parts of the former Yugoslavia
and they provided a huge degree of continuity which was essential
in logistics operations. People were not scrabbling for route
maps and an understanding of the relative risks on a road. Our
drivers and logisticians understood every metre of every road
and the problems they presented.
Mr Sanderson: I agree. I add that
probably the problem of continuity for formation headquarters
in the field is exacerbated by what is historically a very high
level of augmentation required to make them operational—I
have no reason to believe that has changed—by individuals
from outside the parent headquarters to give it full manning to
be able to perform on operations. The flip side to that is that
when we drew individuals from elsewhere to support deployed headquarters
they obviously came from their parent headquarters or units and
therefore there was some degree of turbulence and disruption as
a result.
Chairman: Thank you both very much indeed.
We have no further questions. We are extremely grateful to you
for a fascinating end to the morning.
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