Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
MINISTRY OF
DEFENCE
18 FEBRUARY 2008
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon. Welcome
to the Committee of Public Accounts. Today we are considering
the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report on Leaving the
Services. We welcome back Sir Bill Jeffrey. Should I congratulate
you on your knighthood, Sir Bill?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: You may do,
yes. Thank you.
Q2 Chairman: Mr Chris Baker and Air
Commodore Phil Miles. Air Commodore, we should thank you for arranging
a very interesting visit to Aldershot where the Committee looked
at what you do to help people who intend to leave the Services.
Can I just ask, Air Commodore, you arranged the visit and we enjoyed
it, but I just wonder whether, as often happens in this sort of
thing, help tends to go to those who need it least? I was struck
by the very high quality of those people we spoke to, people who
were fighter pilots and the rest, who were learning building skills
which they had no intention of carrying out in private life; they
openly admitted to us that they were looking forward to doing
up their bathrooms with those new skills. It may all be very useful
but I wonder if what I said is not true and whether you should
be more proactive. There is evidence in this Report, for instance,
for Early Service Leavers that we know this is a very skeleton
type service. I am not just talking about Early Service Leavers;
I am talking about people who may have real problems when they
leave the Services. I wonder whether you should be more proactive
to help those who might really have problems rather than just
having a reactive service where there is possibly one little job
you want to learn, motorcycle maintenance skills or whatever,
but it may not be necessarily part of the public interest. What
do you say to that?
Air Commodore Miles: Chairman,
I think there are several aspects to your question. Firstly, as
regards the training that is available at the Resettlement Training
Centre, it does cover a broad range of disciplines, some 55 in
all, some of which lead very much to vocational qualifications
which are recognised outside. There are some courses, small, short
courses, which are much more life skills courses but also give
people a taster for particular avenues of employment which they
may or may not wish to follow up later on. As regards the Early
Service Leavers, I am sure we will discuss that later on this
afternoon. We do provide a service overall which seeks to deliver
resettlement commensurate with the service that people have done.
We very much look at resettlement as an incentive to, and a reward
for, longer military service.
Q3 Chairman: I think this is mentioned
in paragraph 2.31: " ... 16% of Early Service Leavers were
unemployed and looking for work" compared with 6% of Service
Leavers overall. That should worry you, should it not?
Air Commodore Miles: In terms
of the Early Service Leavers, it is true that there is a higher
proportion of those who are not in employment six months post
discharge, but it is actually comparative to that of the general
cadre of males under 25-years old. Of course, that includes a
very broad numbers of capabilities. Remember also the Early Service
Leavers are people who have limited skills to offer the job market.
Q4 Chairman: Those may be just the
sort of people you should do more to help, should you not, rather
than the very experienced men that we met on our visit who, frankly,
were highly employable in any event.
Air Commodore Miles: I come back
to my point, Chairman, that the philosophy of resettlement is
very much to actually deliver a reward for further service. Many
of the people who are Early Service Leavers—
Q5 Chairman: —So the philosophy
is to reward those who have given most to the Services—
Air Commodore Miles: Very much
so.
Q6 Chairman: —rather than to
help people get jobs.
Air Commodore Miles: Of course,
most of the Early Service Leavers leave the Armed Forces without
actually reaching their trained strength and, therefore, have
actually failed the military training.
Sir Bill Jeffrey: If I may, Chairman,
this is a difficult balance. It is interesting that your observation
is that this is the group that needs most attention. Objectively
it may be but we also need to bear in mind, however, that one
of the most important issues for us at the moment is to encourage
retention and to keep people serving. I think also we are getting
better at hitting the Early Service Leaver market than we were
even when this Report was written.
Q7 Chairman: Sir Bill, why is it
such a painfully bureaucratic process? Why is there so much form-filling
involved? As I understand it, the culture in the Armed Forces
is not an individual form-filling culture, they are often not
used to filling out their own forms, yet here you are asking them
to go through many form-filling hoops. Is that fair to them?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: We need some
form-filling so that there is a proper audit trail for entitlement
and delivery and adequate stewardship of public funds. We have
reduced the number of resettlement specific forms.
Q8 Chairman: In paragraph 2.24 it
says there are 11 different forms during resettlement.
Sir Bill Jeffrey: We have reduced
the resettlement forms to eight recently and I think, of these,
only one, which is the one relating to authorisation of resettlement
training, could be said to be very complex. It is something we
keep on working at because we appreciate, as you do, that the
population we are often dealing with certainly does not want to
be going in for any more form-filling than they have to. I do
not know whether the Air Commodore wants to add to that.
Air Commodore Miles: The numbers
of forms that you quoted do, of course, include forms for use
of extended learning credits and, therefore, they are forms which
are in general use throughout people's careers where they are
entitled to take up learning credits. The resettlement forms,
as the PUS has said, there are only ten of those and we have reduced
those to eight already, and there is only the complex form there.
The complexity of the form is not actually driven by us, it is
driven by and large by where competences lie within the single
Service structures for authorising various things because each
Service is structured differently and different people have different
authorities and accountabilities.
Q9 Chairman: Can we look at figure
nine now, "Reasons for not attending the Career Transition
Partnership (CTP)". Clearly people think highly of this operation
but it is one in ten who cannot attend these courses. Should you
not ensure this is an entitlement? Should you not say that they
must be able to join these courses rather than they can?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: For the Early
Service Leavers I think we are now saying that they must attend
for the interviews and briefings. Air Commodore, do you want to
deal with this question?
Air Commodore Miles: May I clarify,
Chairman? Are we talking about those who are entitled to access
to Career Transition Partnerships?
Q10 Chairman: That is right. If you
look at figure nine it says that some, for instance, are delayed
on operations, some have too much work to do. It occurs to me
that perhaps commanding officers are not enabling all their people
to actually attend these courses because they are involved on
operations or they have got too much to do, too far to travel,
and there are other reasons.
Air Commodore Miles: It is true
that there have been pressures in the past and, indeed, there
still are pressures to do with their other work activities which
are militating against people attending. We have actually taken
quite a lot of steps already to mitigate that. For example, in
the Army if one has served four years then your last four months
of service have to be within the UK. That was introduced in November.
We always encourage Service Leavers to begin their resettlement
preparation as early as possible to offset the disruption of operational
tours.
Q11 Chairman: Is that being adhered
to? The National Audit Office told me in the briefing just now
it was six months, is that right, or is it four months?
Mr Andrews: It says in the Report
that it is six months.
Air Commodore Miles: Six months
is what we aim at for everybody, they have their last six months
of service in the UK, however within the Army, to accommodate
particular issues that they have at the moment with operational
commitments, they have made an insistence that certainly the last
four months of a person's career should be in the UK.
Q12 Chairman: That is being abided
by, is it?
Air Commodore Miles: To the best
of my knowledge, Chairman. As I say, this came in pretty recently,
last November. I am sure if you require further clarification
we could provide a note on it.
Q13 Chairman: That leads me to my
next question, Sir Bill. Obviously the level of operations is
at a more intense level than ever before in peacetime. Why are
you allowing this intensity of operations to militate against
people's ability to attend these courses which are vital for their
future employability prospects?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: It is worth
bearing the numbers in mind. If you look at table nine the most
common reason given for not attending the CTP was the view that
it was not useful or relevant to the person's needs or they wanted
to waive their entitlement. Out of 5,000 people surveyed just
over 20 cited delayed on operations as a reason for being unable
to do this. That is 20 too many obviously but it is not a huge
issue. I am very keenly aware, and we have discussed it in front
of this Committee in the past, of the pace of operational deployment
at the moment. As the Air Commodore says, we are trying very hard
to conduct things in such a way that as people get towards the
end of their service they do have space and time to concentrate
on this.
Q14 Keith Hill: I would like to ask
one or two questions about the housing prospects of those leaving
the Service. My presumption, or the evidence, is that the military
life is a pretty peripatetic one and that means that Service personnel
are unlikely to stay in one place long enough to put down roots.
Sir Bill Jeffrey: It varies, Mr
Hill. That is certainly true of the Army. A figure that surprised
me in preparing for this hearing was that 61% of Service Leavers
already own their own homes, so it is not as uncommon as all that
and we are trying to encourage it. Obviously Service families
move more than others, generally speaking, but it varies depending
on which Service you are in.
Q15 Keith Hill: Since you have mentioned
the survey and that 61% let us go straight into what the survey
shows. One thing that we ought to bear in mind is that the response,
which was not a bad response, was only 13% and actually the NAO
says that their respondents are likely to be the people who are
most settled in terms of their life after the Service, so already
it may be a slightly skewed sample that we are looking at. If
I could draw your attention to figure 11 on page 25 which shows
what has happened to that 32% who did not own their home prior
to leaving. This is two years out after leaving the Service and
it shows that a third are still living with relatives, one is
inclined to say, and only 23% of those who did not own their own
initially own their own home. Do you not find those figures a
little worrying?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: I certainly
take the point that we should be cautious about over-interpreting
this survey for the reason you give. The 61% I gave of those who
owned their own home at the point of discharge was, I think, an
MoD figure and the NAO survey found 68%, which rather bears out
what you say. It is very hard to judge whether roughly a quarter
acquiring their own home within a couple of years of leaving,
given the population that we are dealing with, is a good result.
We would be aiming higher obviously.
Mr Baker: We have to bear in mind
that a very substantial number of these people leave the Forces
at a very young age, at an age where in typical society you would
not expect them to be able to get on to the housing market.
Q16 Keith Hill: But the sample is
a cross-section of all those who have left.
Mr Baker: Yes.
Q17 Keith Hill: The number of Early
Leavers amongst the respondents, I seem to recall, was about 10%
of the overall sample, so actually most of the people who were
being surveyed here were people who on the whole had done the
appropriate amount of service in any circumstances.
Mr Baker: An Early Leaver is defined
as earlier than four years.[1]
Looking at people who join the Services at 16 or 17 sometimes
you can be not an Early Leaver and leaving at the age of 21 or
22, which is still substantially in advance of the likelihood
of owning a house taken across the population as a whole.
Q18 Keith Hill: I take your point there,
but if you look at figure 31, which is in Appendix Six, it is
perfectly clear that there is a very clear variation in who actually
is the owner-occupier under Service personnel because figure 31
indicates that 75% of other ranks did not own their home prior
to leaving the Service. 75% is very high, would you not say, who
were not owner-occupiers? If you look then at figure 33 it suggests
that of those other ranks two years out about a third of them
now own their own home which kind of fits in anyway with what
we see in figure 11. If my calculations are correct, what it means
is that 50% of other ranks do not own their own home after two
years. If you look at the national figures of home ownership,
over 70% of households in the UK now are owner-occupiers, so ex-Service
personnel do not really seem to be owner-occupiers on the same
scale as the rest of the population. Is there any explanation
for this?
Sir Bill Jeffrey: The only explanation
I can think of is the one that Chris Baker has given, which is
that because of the point in people's lives when they tend to
leave the Armed Forces, it is not as disproportionately young
as the Early Leaver population but it is a disproportionately
young population. I have a family member living in my own home
in his mid-20s with a perfectly good job.
Q19 Keith Hill: He says with a note
of frustration.
Sir Bill Jeffrey: Not in the slightest,
it is a pleasure. I do not think we are, as it were, sitting here
defending that percentage. Obviously it would be better if it
was higher. We are talking about events that take place in a period
after people have left our employment. All we can be expected
to do is to give them as good a start as possible. On the whole,
without being defensive about it, this Report suggests that we
are quite successful in that. If you look at employment outcomes
rather than housing outcomes, in my view we are remarkably successful.
1 Note by witness: Early Service Leavers also
include those who are compulsorily discharged under circumstances
incurring loss of normal time-accrued resettlement entitlement. Back
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