Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280-299)
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
Q280 Mr Jenkin: So, it would be a
greater sin to be over rather than under-recruited?
Air Vice Marshal Bryant: I did
not say that.
Q281 Mr Jenkin: You did not say that
but your Royal Navy colleague did.
Rear Admiral Montgomery: I said
"overmanned as opposed to undermanned". The simple reason
for that is that if we are overmanned we are denuding resources
from elsewhere in the defence programme. If you are overmanned
that leads to notions of redundancy programmes which we very much
avoid.
Chairman: If you are overmanned the Treasury's
eyes glint.
Q282 Mr Jenkins: Vice Admiral Wilkinson,
I sit here listening to the manning issue and totally agree that
you have a problem. With a decreasing number of personnel and
draw down of the Services and privatisation of function I know
that it becomes harder and harder with a smaller number. Do we
not now have a position when we shall soon be conducting a review
on the merger of the three forces so we can have interoperability
and you can meet pinch points by the transfer of operatives from
other parts of the forces? Are they not their own worst enemies
in keeping ever-diminishing forces independent in this way?
Vice Admiral Wilkinson: The three
Services work very closely together on a whole range of operational
and administrative matters. We work, live and fight together.
We are using the resources allocated to us as effectively as we
can.
Major General Gregory: Mr Jenkins'
question is very astute. We do have mechanisms where appropriate
to look at loaning ability between Services to support pinch point
trades, so we are not in one Service discharging people where
we have a critical shortage in another. We do exactly that, which
is your point. We now have the mechanisms to address that.
Q283 Chairman: I have one question
to which I would like a one-word answer from each Service. It
may be a bit unfair to insist on that and you may prefer not to
answer in that way. What do you say is the weakest link in the
whole of this chain of recruitment and retention in each of the
Services? Is it at the level of money, entry into schools or the
recruiting office stage?
Air Vice Marshal Bryant: I think
I would go for balance, if you want a word, that is, trying to
get the resources appropriately spread so you get the best overall
effect, because this is a complex equation. If you want to go
into recruiting that has an effect. If you charge at that, whether
it is people to go and do the outreach or the resources to fund
it, that takes away resources from elsewhere. At the same time,
we have operational pressure points that are sitting there which
will be further challenged. To go back to Mr Crausby's point,
the question is whether the net effect is a downward spiral. Therefore,
to try to find balance is the most difficult part of the equation
for me.
Rear Admiral Montgomery: I agree
with that. There is not a single point that I register. It is
a matter of getting the right balance between the three Rs: retention,
recruitment and requirement. I make one point that we have not
yet touched on which is germane to my service. One of the key
pinch points in achieving the right kind of trained people in
the front line of the Navy is the training capacity at sea. That
is one of the key factors to bear in mind when we come to the
issue of over-recruiting. If we over-recruit and do not have the
capacity to train at sea we will end up with unhappy sailors on
jetties trying to get themselves to sea which is bad for retention.
Major General Gregory: The greatest
challenge is retention in training and in the field army. My greatest
concern is our ability to see things before they happen. It is
an art and not a science with a whole host of factors that play
into it. To make sure you can spot things and have the mechanisms
rapidly to react is a challenge.
Q284 Chairman: Major General Lalor,
does any of this come onto your desk?
Major General Lalor: Yes, it does.
I have responsibility for facilitating and co-ordinating the three
Services' manning levels and their reserves. If we are at a point
where it is considered a concern then it is certainly my job to
make sure the necessary focus is put upon it. Manning balance
in the reserves is less critical and you can take greater risk
against the reserves component. Obviously, the key area in the
reserves is: do you have the necessary capabilities that the operations
require to deliver them? If you do not have manning balance it
is not the end of the world in the short term as long as you can
deliver those individuals and skill sets as a reserve that you
are requested to deliver. The only other point is that you must
ensure you retain a critical mass in the reserves. Whether it
is at unit or formation level, if the manning balance gets so
low that there is not critical mass to provide sufficient activity
manning balance would be a very significant issue for us, but
the management of manning in the reserves area is exactly the
same as it is on the regular side. The three single services need
to ensure that they apply the effort and resources to get an acceptable
balance, but they can take greater risk against the reserves manning
area.
Chairman: I have been shoving everybody
off the issue of tri-Service matters but now we can go back to
it.
Q285 Mr Jones: I would be interested
to have your observations on my earlier question about cadets.
What importance do you attach to the three individual Services
recruiting separately? What would be the advantage or disadvantage
in having a single point of entry into the Armed Forces in terms
of recruitment?
Vice Admiral Wilkinson: All our
evidence shows that people wish to join a single service, not
defence. That must be the starting point. Our careers offices
on the high street are Armed Forces careers offices and again
the advisers in there work very closely, intelligently and perceptively
with the people who come through the doors to try to direct them
to the best career and Service. We consider that we are using
our resources as effectively as possible, but I defer to my single
Service colleagues for their views.
Major General Gregory: I totally
agree. I believe that this is linked to Mr Jenkin's question and
whether we are managing liability and whether we are doing it
from the start as sensibly as possible. The ethos of the Service
remains very important and within the Army one then has the ethos
of the various cap badges. We are making sure that, first, as
people come into the Armed Forces careers office they are targeted
as effectively as possible; and, second, we have much better mechanisms
to allow transfers within the Army but between cap badges if people
find they have made the wrong choice.
Q286 Mr Jones: This point arose in
our duty of care inquiry. I know that in the Army a good deal
of emphasis is placed on regimental recruiting, but there is not
a lot of evidence that people say they want to join a specific
regiment, is there? They want to join the Army, do they not?
Major General Gregory: Generally,
unless they have family affiliations they probably want to join
the Army. Part of the responsibility of careers offices is to
make sure that the range of opportunities open to them and the
skills they will get in the various areas are properly presented
so they can make an informed choice.
Air Vice Marshal Bryant: I have
nothing substantial to add.
Rear Admiral Montgomery: I absolutely
agree with the Army's perspective. We have exactly the same feedback
as that to which Vice Admiral Wilkinson referred. There is a desire
on the part of people to join a single service rather than join
defence. This is really important at the entry point into the
Services. We have done some work on identity in our Service. Right
at the top of what people in our Service identify with, particularly
the younger community which we were surveying at the time, is
the Royal Navy. That is fundamental to their sense of belonging
to our service. Later they will develop their identities with
a ship or team mates, but when they join the Navy the identity
is with the Royal Navy.
Q287 Mr Jones: Or the Royal Marines?
Rear Admiral Montgomery: Yes.
Q288 Mr Jones: The Royal Marines
is almost a hybrid service?
Rear Admiral Montgomery: It is.
People are recruited by the Armed Forces recruiting office but
the identity there is with the Royal Marines, not defence.
Q289 Mr Jones: If someone came into
a recruitment office and wanted to join the Navy but having talked
to the adviser felt that perhaps that was not what he or she wanted
would that individual be referred to the Army or Air Force?
Rear Admiral Montgomery: Yes,
absolutely. I believe that Vice Admiral Wilkinson picked up the
point that this is very much the modus operandi of the
Armed Forces Career Offices.
Q290 Mr Jenkin: Do the recruitment
strategies among the Services fundamentally differ and, if so,
how?
Rear Admiral Montgomery: It is
important to understand that we have different issues in terms
of our image among the target audience. When we conducted a survey
into the levels of awareness of the Royal Navy before our latest
campaign 12 months ago it showed a very worrying lack of awareness.
People were distinctly less aware of the Royal Navy then than
they were of the other two Services. Therefore, our campaign plan
which started 12 months ago began by raising awareness in the
wider community. There is an example of where a particular Service
issue was reflected in a particular Service's recruiting strategy.
We tackled the fundamental issue of general awareness at the start
and then channelled effort in parallel towards the submarine and
marine streams, for example. That approach would be unique to
this single Service.
Air Vice Marshal Bryant: I think
that our footprint and structures will ultimately result in a
significant differential. There is the issue of national awareness
to which the Admiral referred but that is very much reinforced
by local effect. Clearly, with different footprints and resources
to support that, for example in regimental terms the way the station
commander would liaise and support an Armed Forces presence in
his area will be different.
Q291 Mr Jenkin: But that is an historical
anomaly rather than a different objective?
Air Vice Marshal Bryant: Yes,
it is, but that is conditioned by resource. You are absolutely
right that we are where we are and we would like to do better,
but that is the most cost-effective way of achieving it.
Major General Gregory: I do not
think our strategies are that different. I think they are very
well co-ordinated between the directors in the three Services
responsible for recruiting right down to the Armed Forces career
office level. As a generalisation what must be recognised is the
different roles within the Services particularly the Army which
is a very people-heavy organisation where one equips the man,
whereas the other Services are rather more technically-based in
terms of manning equipment and things like that. There will be
a difference, but in terms of recruiting strategies they are well
co-ordinated and sensibly brought together where appropriate.
Q292 Linda Gilroy: Presumably, interoperability
has driven much earlier joint or shared training. Given what we
continually hear from our colleague John Smith about the virtues
of training coming together on the St Athan site, is there not
an inevitability about the Services coming even closer together—not
just one Army but one Service?
Vice Admiral Wilkinson: There
is certainly an inevitability about coming even closer. I do not
think it will result in our being one Service. We are very cognisant
of the Canadians in this respect and their attempts at a defence
force which effectively they have had to reverse over the past
few years. Even a nation with very small armed forces—I
think of New Zealand—has still found it effective in terms
of ethos and people's association with their own service to keep
individual services. Like Mr Smith, I am certainly a great fan
of the exciting prospects of the defence training rationalisation
programme and work at St Athan.
Q293 Mr Hamilton: I fully understand
the argument and importance of the Services being able to retain
their personnel, but when we come to recruitment I am reminded
of the fact that as an ex-miner when I started in the collieries
there were 400,000 people in the industry. By the time I left
there were only 230,000 people. They had a personnel department
that dealt wholly with recruitment. I have listened to and looked
at all the evidence very carefully and I do not understand how
Mr Baker and your department should not be involved directly in
all the recruitment that takes place because once they get in
you offer three different Services, which is understandable, but
when you went into the pits you would become an electrician, engineer
or collier. You applied for different services and when you went
into the industry there was a department that dealt with that.
Are you not under-selling yourselves by trying independently,
although there is close co-operation, to do recruitment when a
single entry point would be the logical way forward?
Mr Baker: Viewed from the perspective
of the Ministry of Defence where we are now makes good sense.
We fully recognise the importance of the single Services marketing
themselves on their own terms. Each has an individual offer to
make and all the evidence shows that people want to continue to
join single Services and it is important that they can make their
own pitch in that context. What we do in the Ministry of Defence
is facilitate the co-ordination of that. I run a defence manning
committee where colleagues from the three Services come together
and discuss how to co-ordinate and resource campaigns and how
to spread best practice where single Service practice appears
more broadly applicable. I think that is the right level of integration
as things stand. We do not want to homogenise the recruitment
process.
Q294 Mr Hamilton: I understand that
much of what you said will happen after they come into the various
Services. What I am saying is that when an individual comes along
and says he wants to go into the Navy, Royal Air Force or the
Army that does not require the Services to carry out recruitment;
they can be better utilised to do other work and that should be
a civil service issue. Once they are recruited then it is up to
each Service to deal with it. That makes sense to me. It just
seems that you are duplicating the work.
Air Vice Marshal Bryant: I can
see there is much sense in where you are coming from, but the
other observation is that at that juncture people probably have
made up their mind where they want to go and they will need some
education, possibly some persuasion, which again depends on someone
with some authority who can relay what that individual is about
to embark upon, not someone who does not wear a tri-Service hat.
Mr Hancock: But to do that requires quite
a lot of skill, does it not? Are you equipped with those skills
to give that help to somebody? It is easy to say someone should
join the Army or Navy and see the world, or whatever. If my father
having spent 30-odd years in the Navy was sitting here now he
would say that it was the best thing you could ever do, but that
would not necessarily be the case.
Q295 Chairman: Do you have those
skills?
Air Vice Marshal Bryant: Personally,
undoubtedly not, but we spend a lot of time ensuring that we select
the right people for the front of the shop for the Royal Air Force.
Again, within the personnel department I deal with my fellow Air
Marshall on the training front and the key is to make sure that
the right image is there in the first place and it has the right
cross-section so that if somebody comes along a particular avenue
we do not provide advice on just one particular strand of the
Royal Air Force.
Q296 Mr Jenkin: I turn to reservists
and put the same question. To recruit reservists basically do
you use the same technique across the three Services or do you
require different things?
Major General Lalor: Reserves
are very regionally based. Whether it be an air base, a TA centre
in the Hebrides or a naval base, you must have a very local campaign.
The marketing to facilitate that local recruiting is very much
co-ordinated as no doubt we will discuss, for example on Project
OAR (One Army Recruiting). But for the reserves it is fundamentally
different because you recruit more on a local basis which is supported
by national marketing.
Q297 Mr Jenkin: Are the three services
basically trying to recruit the same kind of people?
Air Vice Marshal Bryant: No. Obviously,
there is a lot of overlap. Again, the Royal Air Force is very
technically oriented. It is not that the other Services are not,
but the percentage of our people who are technically based is
significantly larger, so to a degree that drives one to different
conclusions.
Q298 Mr Jenkin: But even in the case
of the Army is there not technological convergence?
Major General Gregory: But the
fact is that 80% of the people who come into the Armed Forces
careers offices are interested in joining the Army rather than
a specific part and the guidance which we have discussed then
points them in the right direction depending on their skills and
aspirations. One must also remember, picking up Mr Hamilton's
point, that to be an electrician in the depths of Afghanistan
is very different from being an electrician on a fighter base.
It suits some people to be in one environment and others to be
in another, so it is all part of getting a collective balance
and informing them sensibly. That is why the importance of having
people with the right skills in the careers offices is fundamental.
Q299 Mr Hamilton: I am aware of that.
A special type of skill is also required 3,000 ft underground.
The person who gave career advice fully understood that because
he came from that background. That was the point I tried to make.
The people who would be giving the advice would be those like
yourself who had left.
Major General Gregory: That is
very fair.
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