Examination of Witness (Questions 40-60)
DR SUSAN
ATKINS
17 MARCH 2009
Q40 Mr Havard: The Service Complaints
Panels. You report in 2008, I believe, there were four.
Dr Atkins: Yes.
Q41 Mr Havard: None of them dealt
with prescribed behaviour, which is slightly surprising from my
point of view, in the sense that the whole motivation or the original
spur to doing all of this was particularly bullying in the Services,
harassment and those sorts of issues which assaulted complainants
talk about changing behaviour over, and yet none of the cases
dealt with seem to deal with that. Why is that?
Dr Atkins: I think it goes to
timeliness and the fact that they come in at level three. I can
check on the numbers, but I think probably four to six will be
sitting with independent members in the next few months, and they
are in those prescribed behaviours, but they have just taken,
you know, starting from the beginning—
Q42 Mr Havard: You have anticipated
my other question about what is happening now, what is happening
subsequent to 2008.
Dr Atkins: Yes.
Q43 Mr Havard: So there are a series—
Dr Atkins: There will be some
coming through, yes.
Q44 Mr Havard: —dealing with
them. As you probably know, all over, national news, by which
I mean Wales, maybe it has not got to England, there are two boys
on the run from a training establishment in Wiltshire, claiming
they have been beaten up, their teeth have been loosened, they
are afraid for their safety and all of this sort of stuff. So,
clearly, bullying must take place, or something happens, prima
facie. I do not know whether their story is true, but there
must be cases about that must be coming through the system. Could
you not make inquiries about things like that, that just come
to public notice, without having to wait for the 30 days?
Dr Atkins: Absolutely, and, more
than that, last year I raised with the MoD and Service chiefs
my concern that I be informed about non-combat deaths, any death
or unexplained incidents, particularly in training establishments
across the three Services, and that was started at the end of
2008 and I get, as ministers do, confidential reports, so reports
from the two young men from Hullavington Barracks came through
to me, as did others. So I get that information and I can ask
questions, and where there are incidents, I have had Commanding
Officers ring me up and ask for advice on that reporting system.
The other thing that happens: I talked about working closely with
support organisations. If parents go to some of those support
organisations, then they can contact me and let me know, and we
have had a case (of course it has got to be confidential) where
I and my office have worked very closely with the Service to ensure
that a young man who was very scared about going back to his Service
went back to the training establishment, and he and his parents
are very happy about how that has been dealt with.
Q45 Mr Havard: It really brings me
on to a question about your resources. One of the specific things
I was interested in is your need to appoint your own wholly independent
legal team or legal advice. Do you think that that would be useful
to you? Should you have resources for that? What other resources
do you think might be useful to you in terms of publicising your
staff, and so on, because, as you say, you have a very small staff
and limited resources?
Dr Atkins: Yes. When I was appointed
I had a choice whether to be a commissioner in the model, say,
of Commissioner of Public Appointments or Civil Service Commissioner,
where actually the department provides the corporate resources
for you or to go to a non-departmental public body. Quite clearly,
it did not make sense to go the latter route, because it has got
a huge overhead, but what I did do, and got agreement as a principle,
was where there was any perception that provision of services
by the Ministry of Defence would interfere with my independence,
then I would be given the resources to get those services externally.
So I am not given legal advice by the Ministry of Defence lawyers,
I purchase it independently from the Treasury Solicitors, and
I have got a budget line this last year, and this year it has
increased, for such legal advice. So there are no restrictions
and, indeed, although I have been given a budget line, the MoD
will take that on-risk and there is an understanding that I can
go for the legal advice that I need, and that seems absolutely
right. Similarly, I have had independent communications services.
At the very beginning, my very first website, because that went
live on 1 January 2008 within a month of me taking up post, was
provided by the MoD, but I now have external services. So I have
a small staff. The MoD has agreed that I shall have two extra
staff: I have got one of those people in temporarily and the interviews
for the third person happen next week. So I am being provided,
or will be provided with the resources I need; I am afraid it
is just taking rather a long time.
Q46 Mr Havard: We would like to congratulate
you, I think, on producing the report that you have already produced
with a limited amount of resources, frankly. It is impressive
what you have done in a short period of time. I was just concerned
that the perception of fairness may be one thing in relation to
Service panels and all the rest of it, but also the perception
of your independence to provide fairness is clearly crucial in
you getting confidence from people to participate with your organisation.
Dr Atkins: Yes.
Q47 Mr Havard: I do not know whether,
therefore, you would make any recommendations about extra resources,
for example, for communications and getting your message across?
Dr Atkins: I have been given a
budget line of £230,000 for non-staffing, including communications,
for 2009, and that seems perfectly adequate for what we can do
this year.
Q48 Chairman: How are you going to
raise your profile?
Dr Atkins: In a number of ways.
We have a leaflet to go out for junior ranks which I have involved
young soldiers in helping me design. We will be trying to get
that out to all recruits. The recruits themselves have suggested
that that should go out with the joining literature, because that
is when they and their mums and dads read things. Leaflets are
not necessarily read. I have already talked about the advert going
out on BFBS.
Q49 Chairman: That is the website.
Dr Atkins: The Services have said,
and ministers and Service chiefs have agreed, to get another communication
through official channels out and about, but my communication
staff are working on another blitz to make sure: because, as you
will see, it is an objective to try and increase that. I hope,
by having a question about the Service Complaints Commissioner
on the Continuous Attitude Survey, there are now 25,000 Service
people who do know about me, but I have to say, when I first started
doing visits and asked a group of people who had heard about me
before I arrived, I was lucky if one person put their hands up,
I am now lucky if it is six out of a room of 30 or 40. So there
is a huge mountain to climb.
Chairman: That is a step forward.
Mr Holloway: I think you would be making
a very big mistake if you put this stuff in the joining literature,
because you would be absolutely overwhelmed. When people arrive
in training establishments it is a hell of a shock to the system,
and the system also needs to weed out people who are not robust
and at the moment there is already the WRVS, the Chain of Command
padres. I would suggest, unless you want to have a gigantic department,
you would be making a great mistake.
Q50 Chairman: Have you found that
you are absolutely overwhelmed?
Dr Atkins: No, I have not found
it overwhelmed. My experience is, talking with parents at passing-out
parades, or after a passing-out parade, at phase one establishments,
when I asked them did they know about how to contact the Commanding
Officer or to contact the training establishment when things went
wrong—so they are not asking about me, not asking about
complaints—a lot of people said, no, and then somebody gently
reminded them of the credit card that they were given with all
the numbers, and then they remembered. So I think you have more
confidence in—. You know, it is one step, it is a way of
getting to people, but just sending information does not mean
that people will be inundated, and in the Recruit Trainee Survey
I think it is very encouraging that above 80% in the survey knew
about how to make a complaint, felt that they were being given
resource and four times the numbers had made a complaint in training
establishments than in general units. What I do say in there is
there is a difference between phase one and phase two, and some
of that may be because actually Service life is not for people,
and it takes a while at phase one. They have got to come and then
they can leave, and that is a good thing. Do not get me wrong,
I do understand that there is a difference between people in the
Services and people in Sainsburys, and I am not saying that they
should be treated in that way, they have a job to do and a culture,
but I do think it is congruent with the culture that they can
raise concerns and have them dealt with seriously when there are
things that they need to make a complaint about.
Mr Holloway: We are on the same page,
but as somebody who used to train young soldiers, I think you
run the risk here of the system self-adjusting so that it does
not get lots of complaints from young men and women who have had
an almighty shock to their system and, as a result, it could well
have a detrimental effect on the training of these people.
Q51 Chairman: I think that amounts
to a comment of Adam Holloway's rather than question. I am now
going to ask a question. In the complaints that you have received
and in the visits that you have made to different establishments
have you found a pattern? Have you found that the same issues
are cropping up time and again?
Dr Atkins: I think there are a
number of areas. I would not say there is a pattern, but I think
there are a number of areas of concern. I am concerned about the
numbers of allegations coming from women, and looking at my case
bag and talking with women when I am out and about, I think that
there are areas of concern there, and it is not what you might
imagine. It does tend to be women who have been in the Services
for longer rather than young women of only a few years, and it
does appear that the longer you are in the Service the more you
suffer from sexual harassment, and particularly if you are in
the areas, not regular and in the Grenadier Guards where they
do not have women, but in an area where there are lots of women.
Q52 Mr Holloway: They do actually.
Dr Atkins: A Captain of the Engineers,
a woman from the Royal Engineers, was working when I did visit
the First Battalion, so you are right, there are women working
alongside them, but it is the areas around the Territorial, the
Reserves, the medical areas where I am seeing that there are issues
arising, and I have flagged that up as an area of concern. I do
not know why that should be, but I think that is something and
I have shared that with the Service chiefs and it is something
that we agree that we need to look at.
Q53 Chairman: So you have a process
in place to look at that, do you, or are you saying that they
have a process in place to look at that?
Dr Atkins: I am flagging up that
this is an area of concern, and then I am asking them to meet
with me to say, if this turns out to be well-founded—because
the allegations I have had and I have referred into the system
still have to be completed and there is a difference between an
allegation going in and what the situation is when it has been
investigated. I go back to the point that too few of these have
completed their course of action, but there are issues of concern
that I think are issues of potential concern and, if they are
well-founded, then I will want the Services to pick those up and
tell me what they are going to do about it.
Q54 Chairman: Would you say that
in establishments where you find a pattern of cases that the Commanding
Officers of those establishments are aware of them?
Dr Atkins: To date I have not
found in individual establishments sufficient cases to say within
that establishment there is a pattern, and remember I have only
been going a year, and because also of the way of Service life,
that people move around, sometimes a complaint which is made to
a Commanding Officer is about an incident that occurred elsewhere.
So I think it is too early to say within individual units for
there to be a pattern. What I would say is (and it is in one of
the quotes there) that I have found that there are some places
where any suggestion of a complaint is perceived that that individual
is failing, and I think that is what I am asking the top of the
Service system to pass the message down. It is not having a complaint
on your watch that is a failure, it is failure to take action
when you have that complaint, you have investigated it and found
that there was something that needed to be fixed.
Chairman: Are there any further questions?
Q55 Mr Jenkins: Chairman, I thought
the report was brilliant but, of course, with such a small staff
you could not have produced this report, the design or production?
Dr Atkins: No, I had external
assistance with the design and the production, but we wrote every
word.
Q56 Mr Jenkins: What assistance did
you have? Did you have any assistance from the MoD in its production?
Dr Atkins: They helped us get
some of the photos, and I make the point in the report that the
only thing where they exercised their statutory rights to say
what was to go in or was not was in relation to the photos. People
did not have to be recognisable unless it was a trip that I had
made and a visit that I had made.
Q57 Mr Havard: I was wondering whether
or not there was any difference in what was coming to you from
personnel when they are based in the UK and when they are based
elsewhere, either in a garrison or on operational activities.
Have you observed anything in relation to that?
Dr Atkins: We had very few from
theatre, and most of those have come through more recently. We
have had some from Germany and from Cyprus, and sometimes we get
queries from much further afield and those are picked up when
they come back.
Q58 Mr Havard: You have not received
anything in particular?
Dr Atkins: I have not received
anything yet, but it is early days.
Q59 Mr Havard: What I was thinking
of is whether or not, if you like, the utility of someone's understanding
is carried with them when they leave the shores and whether or
not there is a bigger job to do in terms of getting the same ideas
across consistently outside the UK as well as within the UK?
Dr Atkins: I do not know, but
I will let you know. I went to Afghanistan last year. Janet and
I are going to Germany in May and are planning to go to Cyprus
probably at the end of September, beginning of October. So I will
be in a better position next year to answer that question.
Q60 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed, and thank you for starting early and for being available
to start early. We have finished just before the vote and that
was a most helpful session. Thank you very much indeed.
Dr Atkins: Thank you very much
for the invitation.
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