Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260-279)
MR CHRIS
BAKER OBE, REAR
ADMIRAL CHARLES
MONTGOMERY CBE, MAJOR
GENERAL ANDREW
GREGORY, AIR
VICE MARSHAL
SIMON BRYANT
CBE, MAJOR GENERAL
SIMON LALOR
TD AND VICE
ADMIRAL PETER
WILKINSON CVO
22 APRIL 2008
Q260 Mr Hancock: I am interested
to know what sectors you specifically target, not for officers
but rank and file service personnel coming into the Armed Forces
at the bottom of the rack. From which sectors you are now engaging
to recruit?
Vice Admiral Wilkinson: I do not
know whether the Committee has heard the phrase "One Army
Recruiting".
Chairman: That is a matter to which we
will come in some detail.
Mr Hancock: Referring to the educational
aspirations of young people, more and more people seek to go into
further education, whether it be FE colleges or otherwise.
Chairman: Before we get to that perhaps
on the first question I might bring in Mr Bernard Jenkin.
Q261 Mr Jenkin: Is it not the case
that in concentrating on recruitment at national level we rather
under-value traditional recruiting pools? For example, if battalion
commanders were given more responsibility to ensure their individual
units were recruited as part of their overall task there might
be more recruitment to the British Army. It is true, is it not,
that some battalions are very well recruited and some are not
and it depends very much on the emphasis that the commanding officers
places on recruitment among his officers and men?
Major General Gregory: Partly.
Inevitably, the emphasis that the commanding officer places on
it will depend on other things he is doing and his other commitments.
If he is committed to operations he may not be able at that time
to commit resources specifically to recruiting. When they have
time most of them see this as a priority, but what we are trying
to do—the Chairman has mentioned One Army Recruiting—is
to make sure we have a more coherent overall approach to recruiting
for both the Regulars and Territorial Army and look at all the
factors available. We have to make sure that as young people come
to Army recruiting teams we can look at their personal circumstances
and aspirations and see which part of the Armed Forces best suits
their aspirations and abilities and then direct them towards that.
That is the key thing. That is then supported by regimental initiatives
at a lower level but co-ordinated within the regional chain of
command and through the activities of recruiting groups. We try
to make sure there is coherence between the high level piece,
the Army piece and the regimental activities within the various
regions.
Q262 Linda Gilroy: The Services are
not alone in facing these recruiting challenges and increasingly
learning and skills councils and employment and skills boards
are taking a role in seeking people out proactively. What links
do the Services have with the learning and skills councils?
Vice Admiral Wilkinson: I sit
with the permanent secretary on the Sector Skills Council for
Central Government, so from the MoD's perspective we are covering
both the military and Civil Service as we work our way through
the skills agenda for government.
Q263 Linda Gilroy: And further down
in the regions and cities?
Vice Admiral Wilkinson: It filters
down our policies to try to make sure that as many courses as
possible are given civilian accreditation and that we are in tune
with the up-skilling agenda, because we know that if we give people
qualifications that are recognised in civilian life they stay
for longer. It is in our interests to do so. Initially, it seems
perhaps counter-intuitive, but we know they stay longer because
they have greater confidence that when they do decide to go outside
they will be able to get a job. It is in our interests to make
sure that as many courses as possible have a recognisable read-across
to the civilian world, and we think we are doing reasonably well
in ensuring we are up with the government's agenda on that.
Rear Admiral Montgomery: I think
there is a very positive story which spans all three Services.
LSC funding and engagement with us is quite profound. I can give
you some headline figures. In 2006-07, for which we have the latest
statistics, 25,000 recognised LSC awards were made in our Service
which I think you will agree is a fairly significant degree of
award over a relatively small Service.
Q264 Mr Hamilton: On traditional
recruitment pools, if we take the regiments in Scotland as an
example traditionally it would have been the Black Watch in Perth
and the Royals would have been down in the borders and the Edinburgh/Lanarkshire
area. Have there been basic changes since they changed the regiments
in that area? That is a fundamental change in traditional recruitment
pools. Before you answer that, the Highlanders are based in Midlothian.
The tradition referred to earlier of officers trying to recruit
in their area is quite difficult if you are based in the lowlands
and you are a highland regiment.
Major General Gregory: I cannot
pick up your specific example. What I would say is that in terms
of regimental recruiting affiliations to areas are seen as a strength.
It promotes identity where applicable, but once again it is done
within One Army Recruiting where the only regimental recruiting
team still out is the infantry where appropriate.
Mr Hamilton: I ask that you try to get
some information about what measurable changes have taken place
since the Royal Regiment joined up. I like to think that has not
happened but I would like to see the figures because there are
other organisations and parties who argue the opposite.
Q265 Chairman: Perhaps you would
write to us in due course.
Major General Gregory: I will
do my best.[9]
Q266 Mr Hancock: I want to return to
the educational issue. The government now expect that at some
stage 50% of young people will go to university or further education.
What has that done for you? Has it meant you have had to lower
your thresholds educationally, consequentially holding on to recruits
who are then recruited and join up and in one way or another fall
by the wayside because educationally they are just not up to it,
or the challenge is too great to overcome to make them effective
servicemen and women?
Vice Admiral Wilkinson: I do not
think we have seen an effect, but I shall ask my colleagues from
the individual Services if they have. We are certainly aware of
the challenges that the government's push for more people in higher
education will cause the Services. On the other hand, we also
see as an opportunity the government's intention on education
and training for all those up to the age of 18. I say it is an
opportunity because we understand that military training and education
for the under-18s is considered to be part of that. Therefore,
that is an opportunity for us to enable people to continue their
education and lifelong learning at that stage.
Rear Admiral Montgomery: Perhaps
I may pick up the answer to Mr Hancock's question. First, the
most notable effect it has had on my Service has been an increase
in the average age of entry which obviously has an impact later
on career compression and so on. Those are issues that we manage
on a day-to-day basis, but you ask for effects and that is one
of them. The key point I register is that we have not lowered
our educational qualifications or the bar one jot to compensate
for this.
Q267 Mr Hancock: Over what period
of time?
Rear Admiral Montgomery: I am
going back over a significant period of time. The last time we
altered the academic attributes of an individual group of entrants
it was upwards and not downwards, so we have not altered the educational
attainment required of people entering our Service in a downward
direction. I made the point about having 25,000 accreditations
in the Service over the 12-month period. I am really focusing
here on the rating rather than officer structure. These span all
the way from the Royal Yachting Association up to level 2 apprenticeships.
These are heavyweight civilian qualifications. To an extent, therefore,
we are responding to the understandable desire for higher education
by accrediting more and more of our courses to satisfy that appetite.
Air Vice Marshal Bryant: I endorse
that. We have to embrace this because that is where society and
government policy take us. There are two ways of doing it. First,
I observe that we are an 80% technical service, so an awful lot
of people are not disadvantaged or advantaged by this because
we are looking for that type of qualification in the first place.
Second, where possible within service along with the learning
and skills council—we have figures similar to those for
the Royal Navy—we embrace it by incorporating within our
courses the ability to get foundation and subsequent degrees as
a counter to creeping ageism which does not work well for us.
Therefore, that is something that we have to work with but it
does not cause a particularly bad effect at the moment.
Major General Gregory: First,
I remind you of the Armed Forces college at Harrogate where each
year 1,350 young people go to get educational qualifications.
Second, there is a current trial in London and the North West
into further education bursaries with the aspiration eventually
to have 3,000 people as part of it, getting their educational
qualifications and being supported through that and then coming
in as more mature but better educated individuals in the Services
who are able to fill the roles that we seek of them.
Q268 Mr Hancock: I am always very
impressed when I meet young sailors in the Royal Navy who tell
me that the only time they only ever learnt anything was during
their period of service in the Royal Navy. Education had either
failed them or they had failed education, but they were very grateful
for what the Royal Navy offered. I remember talking to five young
sailors in one particular ship all of whom had had the same experience.
But when you come to talk to people who are about to leave the
Service and have been in the recruiting stage but do not make
it, how many are unable to cope with the educational requirements
once in and they leave because they are not up to it educationally
rather than physically?
Air Vice Marshal Bryant: For the
RAF it is a tiny number.
Major General Gregory: I have
figures to show why people are leaving during training. Training
wastage is a challenge as you will have identified. Of the 38%
we currently lose in training, 16% discharge themselves as of
right (DAOR). Exactly how many of those cite the fact that they
feel either embarrassed by or unable to cope with the educational
qualifications I cannot tell you, and I am not sure we would be
able to get that information. We can say when they go but not
why they choose to discharge themselves. We have surveys but I
am less clear about whether they are prepared to put that down,
because it is quite a revealing thing to say about oneself.
Q269 Mr Hancock: As far as concerns
the Army, when we were looking at duty of care Colonel Haes's
report stressed the fact that a lot of disciplinary problems were
associated with educational level and the ones who were more susceptible
to bullying were those who simply did not understand what was
expected of them because intellectually they were not up to it.
He registered that loud and clear, but nobody seemed to notice
it at the time and his report was all but ignored.
Major General Gregory: My wife
has worked in a pupil referring unit dealing with children who
have been excluded from schools and so I absolutely understand
what you are talking about and the challenges faced by people
who perhaps have needs that have not been detected and therefore
lose their self-esteem and they face all these problems.
Q270 Mr Jones: Are you not under-selling
yourself a little? Certainly, in our duty of care inquiry we went
to Catterick and saw the excellent work that you were doing at
Darlington College about basic literacy. Having visited Harrogate,
some of those people are really getting a second chance educationally
which they would not have got if they had not joined the Armed
Forces?
Vice Admiral Wilkinson: Yes. Likewise,
I visited the infantry training centre and was hugely impressed
by the links with Darlington College. For whatever reason, you
are quite right that infantry soldiers are being given a second
chance. In view of the way they come on through dramatic contextualised
learning and training, yes, we are under-selling ourselves on
that particular score.
Q271 Mr Jones: I was also impressed
that they spotted things like dyslexia which had not been identified
earlier. In terms of the evaluation of that you need to ensure
that it is sung from the rooftops because it gives some of those
kids chances they would not otherwise have.
Vice Admiral Wilkinson: Thank
you.
Chairman: We shall write to ask you various
questions about careers advice and things like that, but now I
should like to move on to manning balance.
Q272 Mr Crausby: I begin by asking
you to describe what is meant by "manning balance" and
then perhaps you can tell us what the latest position is regarding
the position for each Service.
Vice Admiral Wilkinson: Perhaps
I may start before handing over to the individual Services. The
manning balance is achieved when our numbers are between minus
2% to plus 1% of that stated in the public sector agreement. I
think you are aware that we are not in manning balance as at 1
April. I offer to send a note to the Committee round the end of
May when the final quarter's figures are available. They are still
being scrubbed through by the analysis agency. We are working
on figures up to the third quarter. Before handing over to the
Navy perhaps I may say that manpower planning is an inexact process.
We are working with gains to the trained strength and retention
on one side of the equation and a changing liability on the other.
These three factors tend to move independently which makes the
problem more difficult. Perhaps the individual Services can enlarge
on that and tell us where they are with their particular manning
numbers.[10]
Rear Admiral Montgomery: From
the Royal Navy's perspective—you will have seen the figures
in the note sent previously—at the moment we are at about
minus 4% and so outside manning balance. We expect to close the
manning balance in 2009-10 and possibly get into balance briefly
before we dip back out of it again in about 2012.
Air Vice Marshal Bryant: The Air
Force figures for the turn of the year show that we are marginally
outside manning balance because we have drawn down people as part
of our medium-term work strengths down towards the 41,000 target
but the posts have lagged behind; they have not been disestablished.
It is artificial. In effect, I believe that the note to be provided
will tell you that as of 1 April the RAF is in manning balance
but it is a transitory position. I believe that we will dip beneath
manning balance probably by the end of the year and it will then
stabilise and go up by 2010-11. The extent of that dip obviously
depends on the recruiting versus retention battleground that we
are fighting at the moment.
Major General Gregory: For me,
manning balance will not advance my career. What I am being told
to deliver is full manning. There is a step between manning balance
and full manning and that is full strength. Full manning is having
the right person in the right job fully trained at the right time.
That is very difficult to achieve, but what the Army has to reach
is full strength. In terms of manning balance we are currently
outside it. As you will have seen from the figures, we are about
3.5% down and the balance is minus 2% and plus 1%. We have a range
of measures in place to try to get us back up. The modelling suggests
that provided things work as we predict—that is a balanced
prediction—we should get there around April 2010.
Q273 Mr Crausby: Can you pinpoint
some of the major reasons why the Army and Navy in particular
do not achieve manning balance?
Rear Admiral Montgomery: There
are three factors in achieving manpower balance. I totally agree
with my Army colleague's comment that this is rather more sophisticated
than headline manpower balance issues. One key factor is the requirement—the
manpower liability—another is recruiting and the third is
retention. As you will have seen from the notes already submitted,
we are not achieving our recruiting targets and our voluntary
outflow rates are higher than we wish. But another issue is liability
reductions. We make balanced decisions on what we see as the future
liability requirements of our Service and we make that against
a continually changing backdrop of change programmes elsewhere
in defence and make assumptions about those in our forward planning.
Those assumptions sometimes do not come to fruition and the reductions
that we anticipate and plan for do not materialise in the profile
we anticipate. That is the reason why just at the moment we are
not due to achieve manpower balance as quickly as we would wish.
Q274 Chairman: I am afraid I did
not understand that. You have problems with recruitment, retention
and requirements. What assumptions did not come up to scratch?
Rear Admiral Montgomery: Let us
take the examples of the change programmes, the Defence Equipment
and Support organisation, the changes in the CINC Fleet headquarters
reorganisation or the changes in the head office organisation
in London. Those are three big change programmes all of which
are forecast to reduce the total number of people that defence
requires. As a single Service we provide manpower to those organisations
and it is our responsibility at least to plan for the numbers
and sorts of people required up to 10 or 15 years in advance.
If those programmes do not achieve the forecast savings in the
profile in which they are supposed to be achieved then the liability
eventually will be higher than that which we were planning for
at the time and there will be a mismatch.
Q275 Chairman: So, the issue is always
that your assumptions tend to be more optimistic than reality
turns out to be?
Rear Admiral Montgomery: That
has turned out to be the case just recently. Again, one must make
a judgment on the balance of risk. If there is one thing that
is worse than being in manpower shortage it is being in manpower
surplus because then we are spending money on people we do not
need. There is a very careful balance of risk judgment here in
terms of the assumptions we make about manpower planning for the
future.
Q276 Chairman: So, you are by design
optimistic?
Rear Admiral Montgomery: We have
been proved to be optimistic. This is a dynamic. We continually
go back and also learn from these programmes in our future planning.
We have been optimistic in the past and we now introduce a greater
amount of realism into the assumptions we make about the change
programmes, but I am sure the Committee understands that this
is a difficult and very complex business management process.
Major General Gregory: There are
three factors related to manning balance: liability, inflow and
outflow. As to the Army's regular liability, the 101,800 is reasonably
static. We have talked quite a lot about inflow in terms of recruiting.
We are not meeting our recruiting figures by a little over 10%.
The real challenge at the moment is seeing people who come in
at the start of phase 1 training and going out at the end of phase
2 training to join the field army where our numbers are down against
the numbers we need. As to voluntary outflow, the numbers are
broadly static: 4.3% for officers and 5.9% for other ranks, though
over the past year we have had trouble ascertaining exactly what
the figures are due to problems with some of the computer systems,
particularly some of the fields that are not available. In terms
of what we are doing to deal with it, we have recruiting, training
and retention action plans that look at all the various elements
that we consider apposite to target to try to improve these two
critical things and get us towards manning balance. In terms of
the retention action plan, we have some 70 measures that look
at a range of things from the applicability of financial retention
incentives—certainly, a measure of last resort but very
effective—through to looking at the tempo of activity between
operational tours, or what we colloquially term "the stuff
in between", to make sure that where possible we reduce the
load on soldiers and their families.
Air Vice Marshal Bryant: We have
the same three problems. The reason I anticipate we may go outside
the manning balance is because we expect as a result of PR08 uplifting
the requirement which was not forecast. With regard to the recruiting
challenge as we ramp the Air Force back up we are having difficulty
recruiting particularly in specialist pinch points, so I anticipate
falling short in those areas. There are some gentle indications
that the outflow will exceed those that are in the planning assumptions
that had us sitting at that level. Obviously, I am trying to address
the last two points and where we bottom out of our draw down to
41,000 will depend on how successful we are in that.
Q277 Mr Crausby: As to consequences,
to what extent does it lead to a vicious cycle of overwork and
pressure and dissuade people from joining up? How serious is that?
Rear Admiral Montgomery: Manning
balance is not the issue which really keeps me awake at night.
What keeps me awake at night is the issue referred to earlier:
the key pinch points where we are short. This is not an issue
of manpower balance per se; it is an issue of key pinch points.
Major General Gregory: I wholeheartedly
agree with that. You have seen our list of operational pinch points
and manning pinch points. We have specific activities designed
to address those key area of shortfall in capability.
Q278 Mr Crausby: What about the financial
implications? Given the stresses on the defence budget as things
stand, can the MoD afford to be absolutely up to strength?
Vice Admiral Wilkinson: We have
the resources that are allocated and the manpower picture you
have heard. In terms of money to retain and the offer we make
to our servicemen and women, the pay rises that the AFPRB recommended
to the government last year and this have assisted us in working
on the retention side of the equation. A 3.9% pay arise in 2007,
a 2.6% pay rise this year plus 1% for the x factor and
another .3% for financial retention incentives all help us in
trying to balance the numbers. All three Services and me and my
colleagues in the MoD centre are working hard not just to try
to achieve manning balance but full manning. Manning balance is
a helpful step on the way but I think you are getting the flavour
that we are not talking here about big numbers but in a high operational
tempo about handfuls of people in some instances that are in key
operational pinch points who have an impact on capability that
is out of proportion to their numbers. They are the key areas
that the navy secretary in particular is targeting, and the air
secretary and DG personnel will certainly agree with him on that.
Q279 Mr Jenkin: With respect, I do
not think that was quite the question asked. For example, the
Army is 3,000 under-recruited. Three thousand extra soldiers would
cost a lot of money, but I do not get the sense that that money
is knocking around the defence budget unused because the Army
is 3,000 under-recruited. Supposing all three Services were on
target, where would the money come from to pay that extra wages
bill? Is the money there?
Air Vice Marshal Bryant: The answer
is that the money is there in that it is finite and it would have
to be redistributed elsewhere. My answer to Mr Crausby's point
is that personally I do not believe that particularly in the pinch
point areas we can afford not to be fully manned because the effect
he spoke about in terms of the downward spiral is a challenge
at all points, and it is made worse by the extraordinary things
being asked because of the overreach we have through operational
stretch against defence planning assumptions. I think we have
to target it. At the moment that will cause some shift of resource
but from an air force perspective I aim to be at the top end of
that manning balance.
9 See Ev 173 Back
10
See Ev 183 Back
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