UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 277-iHouse of COMMONSMINUTES OF EVIDENCETAKEN BEFOREDEFENCE COMMITTEE
THE WORK OF THE SERVICE COMPLAINTS COMMISSIONERFOR THE ARMED FORCES
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This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
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Transcribed by the Official Shorthand Writers to the Houses of Parliament: W B Gurney & Sons LLP, Hope House, Telephone Number: 020 7233 1935
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the Defence Committee
on
Members present
Mr James Arbuthnot, in the Chair
Mr Dai Havard
Mr Adam Holloway
Mr Bernard Jenkin
Mr Brian Jenkins
Robert Key
Richard Younger-Ross
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Witness: Dr Susan Atkins, Service Complaints Commissioner for the Armed Forces, gave evidence.
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon, Dr Atkins.
There may be a clutch of votes in the House of Commons shortly after
Dr Atkins: Thank you, Chairman. In the light of the time constraint, I will not do so, other than to say that I very much welcome the opportunity of being before the Committee because I think it is a vital part, as a statutory office-holder, of my accountability to Parliament and to service men and women and the public through Parliament. I think that goes to the heart of the effectiveness of my role. The other thing I was going to say, but it is in my introduction and I hope you will take it as read, is that I am very conscious of the background to the establishment of my role and the heartache of the families and service men and women who have suffered in the past. I pay tribute to them and I would like that to be on record. You asked me about my overall assessment and in the report I say that I have looked at the operation of the Service complaints system as against the principles for a good complaints system and in the light of the casework of the people who have come to me. In my overall assessment, it is well designed but there is room for improvement in a number of areas. Would you like me to go on?
Q2 Chairman: Yes, please.
Dr Atkins: I am very clear that a complaints system, if it is working effectively, makes a very important contribution to organisational effectiveness and in the Service context, that means operational effectiveness, but in order for that to be effective, there must, first of all, be confidence in the system, and I find that too few service men and women and their families currently have that level of confidence to come forward. They need to be confident that when they bring a complaint, they will be treated properly and seriously. In my experience, the tipping point for people bringing complaints is not simply an individual justice or individual outcome, but they fail to suffer in silence, if you put it that way; they take actions because other people will not suffer in the same way they believe they have in future. In order to be effective, therefore, there needs to be an ability for lessons to be learnt. I find, first of all, that it is taking complaints too long to be investigated and resolved. People are not getting the communication about their complaints that is there in the procedures, in some instances. Certainly, the quality of the communication when it does occur can be quite terse and to the point and therefore it is information; it is not necessarily good communication. At the outcome there are not sufficient infrastructure mechanisms for lessons to be learnt and shared.
Q3 Chairman: What do you intend to do about this with the MoD and with the Services in order to change that?
Dr Atkins: My report, as you know, makes some recommendations on those broad conclusions. In relation to the infrastructure, I did commission an internal audit of the joint personnel, the JPA ---
Q4 Chairman: We will come on to that.
Dr Atkins: That made five recommendations. The MoD immediately accepted four and have taken action on two. I am pleased to say that the forum and the joint working group which was recommended has met. They have already scoped out the business processes and the requirements and are well on track to putting that into the system to get the basic data capture infrastructure. That may take some time, I am told, because of the way IT projects and improvements can and have to be undertaken. It may be the beginning of 2010 before that is in place, but I think it is very important that it has been done. I think it is a sign of the MoD commitment that they got on to that as quickly as they did. I have also set objectives for the Services. You will know from the report that I set at the beginning of 2008 some targets for timeliness and communication. One of my recommendations for them for 2009 is that they should set interim targets to get to the goal of 90 per cent of all complaints being dealt with within 30 working days at level 1 and 2 and 60 working days at level 3. I know that the Army already are considering what target that will be. These are the issues that I have identified and the recommendations I have made. The Secretary of State has written me assuring me that the Service Chiefs are taking seriously working with MoD colleagues and will be giving me a formal reply in due course.
Q5 Mr
Havard: Moving on to your powers, I sat on
the committee that drew up the duty of care report. We asked for something that is much more
rigorous than your role and remit. We
did not get it, not yet anyway. You
obviously were the Chief Executive of the Independent Police Complaints
Commission, so you have some background in relation to that. We were looking very much in relation to a
model perhaps from
Dr Atkins: My experience from setting up the Independent Police Complaints
Commission and working very closely obviously with the Police Service Ombudsman
for
Q6 Mr Havard: That is fair, in a sense, of the process, not the merit.
Dr Atkins: In terms of the process, and what I have said is that my test of fair in an individual case will be whether the procedures have been followed correctly or whether the conclusion that is arrived at is reasonable within the circumstances. In a number of cases during the year, I have flagged up in the investigation of a particular case where I think the process is not being followed, particularly where there is a potential risk that a Commanding Officer or deciding officer is going to come to a conclusion with specific issues not addressed. In my experience when I have done that, then the Chain of Command have taken that on board and done it again. In one case where a decision was made and I explained that I did not think that the decision was fair because that particular Service's procedures had not been followed, they re-opened the case and gave him the redress that he wanted. I think there is an ability actually I would not say to intervene but to maintain proactive oversight, which is similar to supervision with IPCC or others. The other reason I think it is too soon is that very few of the cases that I have referred have come to conclusion. As you know, over 50 per cent of the contacts and allegations made to my office were about improper behaviour of one sort or another and only 75 per cent of all referrals have yet been completed. I predict that in the next few months there will be a number of those cases that I referred, particularly about serious issues and improper behaviour, which will be held and heard by Service complaints panels sitting with an independent member. I think I will be in a much better place at the end of the year to come to a view to say whether the system of the Chain of Command, buttressed in those cases with an independent member, is providing that degree of rigour of investigation and fairness that the system is intended to provide, or whether in fact the system needs to be enhanced.
Q7 Mr Havard: So any change in your powers might come through this iterative development, if I can describe it in that way. You are not finding currently any sort of conflict between your activities and this idea of the proper responsibility of the Chain of Command. Do you see a way in which your powers could be increased that would avoid there being such a conflict?
Dr Atkins: At present, any time that I have made a request, the Services have acceded to it, so I have never got to a position yet where I have asked for something to be done that they have not been entirely comfortable with. In fact, I would say absolutely the opposite, that they are proactively seeking my guidance in how to undertake investigations to complaints fairly. There could be situations where I think there needs to be more independence in the investigation, and that might be where a complaint is made about some part of Service that is integral to that investigation, but we have not got to that point yet.
Q8 Mr Havard: Do you think there are going to be any effects on your ability to work and the sorts of things you want to do from any changes that you see coming in terms of the Coroners' Service and inquests and so on? One of the things that exercised our minds when we did the Duty of Care Report was to look at the bad practices that had operated in the Coroners' Service for some years past and to see if there was inefficiency or improvement there. Are there any changes in your relationship to it? Should it be changed in some fashion? Do you have any relationship with it?
Dr Atkins: It is not something I have considered but I will reflect on that and come back to you.
Q9 Mr Havard: As for your ability to voice what you think and what you know, are there any undue restrictions on your being able to report or say anything? Have you had any concerns about that?
Dr Atkins: No, none whatsoever.
Q10 Mr Havard: The openness of the process is clearly important if it is going to encourage people to use it.
Dr Atkins: Absolutely.
Q11 Chairman: I had an email recently saying that the person involved has read through the report, is in total agreement with things in handwriting in this report and is in admiration of the recommendations but in some doubt as to whether the recommendations will actually see their way through into reality. That is perhaps a natural scepticism at this early stage of your existence, would you say, or do you understand where that person is coming from?
Dr Atkins: The reason I gave the quotes in handwriting was, first of all, to make them stand out, and I think that goes to the previous questions about whether there are any restrictions on me saying things that people perhaps might not want me to say, and it is giving the people who do not have the confidence in the system the voice. Where I thought the service men and women who had written to me, or their families, had not been very articulate in saying what a lot of people were saying in perhaps a less articulate way, I included them in, and I am very pleased that people have recognised that. I think it is inevitable; people will say "I will wait and see". I would imagine all members of this Committee will say, "I will wait and see" and I too am waiting to see the response back from the MoD, but nothing in my relationship with Ministers or with officials or with Service personnel gives me any doubt that they will be considered seriously and will be acted upon. As I said, already some of them I know are being acted upon.
Q12 Mr Havard: You say in your report that a lot of the current practice you see is predicated on individual redress and not necessarily in the organisation, structure and changes and so on, which is what you are trying to turn people's attention to. Do you think there is a lack of understanding about the difference between a grievance process, as it were, a complaints process, and a disciplinary process and the relationship between the two, very often some running in parallel with one another? Is that one of the organisational questions that you want the Services to address in terms of their expertise for delivering the process?
Dr Atkins: Yes.
Q13 Mr Havard: I have seen this as an old, ex-trade union official so many times before.
Dr Atkins: In the final chapter of my report I raise that specific issue and say that I have found - and I give a number of examples of where I think this is coming through - a confusion of the two.
Q14 Mr Havard: One needs to be speedy and the other longer considered?
Dr Atkins: I mention things like: if a complaint is made, somebody must be treated as innocent until proven guilty; I talk about the conflation of the complaints burden of proof and the criminal burden of proof. I also talk about when an allegation has been made of bullying which may be low level but persistent, and I give the analogy of schoolyard bullying, but the traditional Service way of dealing with serious behaviour is through the disciplinary route, which is the criminal route. Therefore, if a criminal investigation launched into particular aspects does not meet the criminal burden of proof, then it undermines the investigation of the complaint. There are a number of examples where I flag that up. I make no recommendations about it but I have said that this is an area that I want the Services to look at and I will keep looking at it.
Q15 Richard Younger-Ross: My apologies if you have answered these questions. I have not yet learnt the art of bilocation, which is obviously a trick you need to be in the place. Considering the problems with the consistency and reliability of Service complaints, statistics, considering that there are omissions in the recording of data, particularly in the Army, and further that there is no proposed change to the JPA until 2010, are you satisfied that the MoD is treating the recommendations to improve the JPA data recording with sufficient urgency?
Dr Atkins: I should say that there are issues about recording across all three Services. While I flag up one particular issue in relation to equality and diversity complaints in regard to the Army, you will see that on the recording of all complaints, including non-prescribed behaviour complaints for the RAF and the Royal Navy, they were unable to provide me with the statistics at level 1. So this I not just an Army issue; this is across all Services. I think I would say that in relation to data recording my experience at the IPCC and elsewhere is that inevitably these things when they involve IT take some time and when it is an aspect of a total personnel system, it is inevitable it is going to take some time. I regret that because I have a three-year appointment and if I am not reappointed, it means that it might be my successor who sees the benefit of my work but I have also said I think there are things that the Services can do in the meantime. I know that MoD colleagues, officials, are working very hard with them in order that there can be more complete data next year.
Q16 Richard Younger-Ross: Is there anything specific you can tell us that you think they can do?
Dr Atkins: The internal audit report made a recommendation that secretariats in the three Services should have more oversight of what is going on at level 1. In the past, the secretariats have been there to ensure that when a complaint got to the defence counsel - the Army, Admiralty or Air Force Board - that all the casework, the paperwork, was in order. What I am saying is that that focus at the top is the wrong focus. You need to get the support and the oversight internally of the headquarters team, actually what is going on at the first level. That may mean more paper returns, and I do not want to add to bureaucracy, but I do think that there is more which is a cultural shift as much as anything; it may need a bit more resource to get that information.
Q17 Richard Younger-Ross: Can we move on to accessibility and the communication? Do you think that the appointment of a commissioner might deter personnel from making complaints? For example, a service man or woman might think that too official, or perhaps they might are actually going behind the CO's back and more importantly perhaps the CO will think they are going behind their back. How would you feel about that?
Dr Atkins: It is very interesting: to be shown very shortly British Forces Broadcasting Service are going to what I think is technically called an "infomercial" - a sort of public service advert which will go out on their television programmes overseas to cover the gap with commercial television programmes. The angle that they took was to show that actually it is just me and a very small number of people and that they will get personal attention. I think that goes to the point that some people may think that a commissioner means that here is somebody very grand with serried ranks of people dealing with their complaint. They only have to get in touch with us and for Janet or Amit to talk to them to realise that that is not the case and they get a very personal service. We have had a lot of people writing saying that we have given them the confidence to make the complaint and without our services they would not have got the result that they did. I think the second point that you raised about people thinking that they are being disloyal is certainly true and it makes it a big barrier. One of the quotes the Chairman referred to was from a service woman who said that she felt that she had to come to us and she felt very disloyal about it but had not choice. One of the key messages that I am making, and I am making it to Commanding Officers and particularly to the middle officers, commissioned and non-commissioned, is that this is not about team disloyalty; it is about strengthening the team. I fear that there are some people who still think that people should not go outside the family, as it were, but I am not finding that at Commanding Officer level. I do think the Commanding Officers have a really important role in telling people that that is not what it is like.
Q18 Richard Younger-Ross: Do you expect the numbers who come to you to grow?
Dr Atkins: Yes.
Q19 Chairman: Do you think Commanding Officers and those beneath them have a sufficient degree of training about the powers that you have and the procedures that they can follow in relation to complaints to you?
Dr Atkins: When I have gone out and visited Commanding Officers, I find that they do know about me. I was struck, and I have put in the report, from the Continuous Attitude Survey the number of officers, particularly in the RAF and the Marines, who either did not know or were unsure about how to make a complaint. I think that my experience is that Commanding Officers understand, not necessarily everybody under their command does, but I think it is more about the complaints system and expertise in the complaints system than necessarily the commissioner role.
Q20 Mr Havard: When you say "Commanding Officer", what is in your head? Is this Major level or Captain?
Dr Atkins: No, it is Lieutenant Colonel in the Army, normally; it is a Captain in the Navy; and Group Captain in the RAF.
Q21 Chairman: What feedback do you get from them as to how well your new system is working? I say "your" system - the system involving you?
Dr Atkins: I get feedback in two ways: through the secretariats, through talking with Commanding Officers on individual cases, if I have a concern; and by going out and meeting Commanding Officers. At the very beginning, there were people who did not quite understand their duty to me of keeping me informed, and I think the figures in the report show that and that once they understand, then they get the gist of it. But the feedback has been that it has actually been very helpful. I can help in two ways: first of all, we do help people who come to us to focus on what the complaint really is and what they want to happen as a result, which may not be the same as what the individual redress is. A lot of Commanding Officers welcome finding out what is happening inside their command and welcome the opportunity of being able to grip something. I have given in some of the case studies examples of Commanding Officers who have been able either to sort out a problem without the person making a complaint or have gone ahead and still investigated, even though the individual said they did not want to make a complaint.
Q22 Mr
Havard: Is it a question of training the
officers, as it were? Lieutenant Colonel
is a fairly high level. I wonder
whether you have been to any of the training establishments at a much
lower level where they are training the trainers and to places like
Dr Atkins: I have been to training establishments and when I go to them I meet not just the Commanding Officer and the senior team but I meet usually senior NCOs and junior NCOs separately, sometimes together, and obviously I meet with the trainees and I always meet without a senior rank being there. It is a somewhat artificial environment.
Q23 Mr Havard: Do you see embedded in their training information about you in this process?
Dr Atkins: Some and I do not think complaints is very high on the training agenda, but what I do find is that for example in the Army the divisions are giving very good support. So when a complaint is referred, the central secretariat and the Service secretariat give really good guidance on what needs to be done. It is included in the training of officers but as you can imagine, if you are thinking about training for operations, I would not want it that they spend all their time thinking about complaints; I would want them to be trained on operational things. It is important that they have the guidance and access to somebody who knows and when they need it, they can get the support they need.
Q24 Chairman: That is the Commanding Officers. What sort of support is given to someone about whom a complaint is made? If someone is making a complaint of, say, bullying or something like that, is there any support in terms of advice or anything like that within the Services to those who are the subject of a complaint?
Dr Atkins: Yes. They can be given an assisting officer. As I understand it, they are not always given an assisting officer but they can be provided with that support, and I think that is best practice. I am also very clear that the duty to communicate applies equally to the person complained about as to the person who is making a complaint. You will know that some of the case studies that I give are about such people who have not been kept informed. I should say that when I go, and I talked about meeting people in units and in training establishments, I make this point that very often people come up to Janet and I afterwards and say, "This happened to me" and we say, "Get in touch; write to us and we will take it forward".
Q25 Chairman: Do they feel that they have enough people that they can contact to avoid any feeling of isolation, would you say? Would a complainant feel that?
Dr Atkins: Some complainants clearly do not feel that they are getting the support they need. It is not the majority. By my very nature because I am dealing with complaints and not what comes afterwards, I have not met and I do not have the same amount of information about the people who are complained about. I have had a few people who have contacted me who are in that position but I would not want to make a generalisation. I must say from previous experience in HR and elsewhere that having a complaint made about you can be a very distressing business, and that is why I believe that they do need support; they do need good communication and timely handling is as important for them as it is for the person making the complaint.
Q26 Mr Holloway: Can people come directly to you rather than going through the Chain of Command?
Dr Atkins: Yes, they can, and they do not have to come themselves either. About 19 per cent of people who contacted me last year were families, friends, it could be a mate, MPs - I have had a number of MPs write to me - Royal British Legion have and people through their solicitors, either through their solicitors or because their solicitors had suggested they get in touch.
Q27 Mr Holloway: What sorts of thing are people complaining about? Take the Army, what sorts of things are you hearing about, the range of complaints?
Dr Atkins: The report gives full details.
Q28 Mr Holloway: I am afraid that I have only flicked through it.
Dr Atkins: I had 193 people contact me last year, and of those 19 were about issues that could never be a Service complaint, so we have got down to 117. About half of those were about bullying, harassment, discrimination or some sort of improper behaviour. The majority of the people in those categories came from the Army but if you proportion the complaints from the Army, Navy and RAF, they are broadly in proportion to the numbers within those Services, so slightly more complaints of bullying and harassment from the Army and RAF, slightly more complaints of discrimination from the RAF and Navy.
Q29 Mr Holloway: I am sure Dai will be able to tell me how many you upheld, but what percentage did you uphold or find there was a legitimate problem?
Dr Atkins: I do not uphold them. I do not have the figures right in my head but about 18 per cent of them have been completed to the satisfaction of the person making the complaint, probably less than 10 per cent not to satisfaction, and the rest of them are still in the system. There is one that totally got to the end and I said I did not think it was fair and that was the one I was talking about where the Service re-opened it. It is too soon to say whether of all the ones that I have referred so far, I think that they have been dealt with fairly.
Q30 Chairman: Moving on to timeliness, you have set a goal for 2010 for the Services. How would you advise each Service on the action they need to improve themselves in terms of timeliness and have you given them any advice on that or have they asked for it?
Dr Atkins: I have discussed very broadly and very generally because I shared my emerging findings with the Services during the year rather than just ending up with a report at the end of the year. The advice is that you have, first of all, to work out what your track record is. That was my concern in relation to the RAF and the Navy, that they are not able to provide that information at level 1 where the bulk of the cases are. That is something that does need to be remedied. First of all, find out what your track record is, where you are now, where you want to get to, and then work out why you are where you are and what can be done. Some simple things are to triage complaints so that the ones that are easily dealt with you can then get through and put some resources in and resolve them. Some things that the Army are considering they are already doing but they want to systematise this more, and they have picked this up in discussions throughout the year with me, is that where a complaint is either going to be really complicated or the redress that is sought is a change of policy - so it is the sort of thing that could only ever be sorted out at defence counsel level - then they will fast track it. They are already fast tracking complex complaints about sexual harassment and about bullying to the Service complaints panels. That is something that has been developed over the year, but that triaging, that putting of your resources into what can be dealt with fast and moving complaints to the level where they can be dealt with properly rather than dragging it out and going through the procedure, is something that they have taken on board and should lead to a much more timely handling of complaints.
Q31 Chairman: Have you done any work with benchmarking?
Dr Atkins: I have not done much work with benchmarking.
Q32 Mr Havard: What you have just said is interesting because my understanding is that when the thing was being set up, or before it was set up and when we took evidence, the military were saying that clearly benchmarking was something they would rely on to get a better understanding about what is best practice and what they should do. Are you going to do some work on benchmarking? That was not going to be my question but it is now.
Dr Atkins: Maybe I need to explain my answer. What I have done is looked at the system, the Service complaints system, and that is benchmarking, against the BOI principles and the report gives the conclusions on that. Have I systematically looked at the types of complaints that are coming up, the processes that go through, with a sister organisation in a similar way either between the RAF, the Navy and the Army or with those forces elsewhere or some other discipline service? No, I have not. Quite frankly, working three days a week and with two members of staff, we have done, I think, jolly well. As for the things that I believe need to be done first: do I think benchmarking is a good thing to do? Absolutely. Do I think that this is something that the Services should do? Yes, I do.
Q33 Mr Havard: We will come on to ask you some questions about resources perhaps a bit later on but I give you the opportunity to make a bid. The time limits within the process that you were talking about earlier: I may be wrong about this but, as I understand it, these are to some degree within your gift, are they, to flex or change or advise could be different?
Dr Atkins: These are set down in guidelines, so, yes, they could be changed. I think setting the target - and it is something that I have said, it is not in guidance - of 90 per cent of all complaints within 30 working days is a very challenging target. It may be that when we look at the seriousness, that has to be flexed slightly in order to recognise different types of complaint.
Q34 Mr Havard: As I understand it, you have not set anything for 2010 as yet in relation to that or the revision of that?
Dr Atkins: I have put it on the Services. I have set something to get to 2010: you tell me how you are going to get there.
Q35 Mr Havard: On the question of speediness of the process and the timeliness does raise a question about whether or not there could be error and unfairness. This is a set of organisations differentially learning at different speeds about how to change. Is that why you are being careful about prescriptive time limits?
Dr Atkins: Yes. In the chapter at the end on timeliness, and I give the current record for the Services, I say that one of the things that I will be looking at is to see whether things could be done too speedily. If you have a complex case, and you will see that the average time for the Royal Navy at level 2 is 25 working days, that might be a sensible average time for a minor complaint; it would not be if it is a complaint about indirect discrimination or a very complex case of bullying.
Q36 Mr Holloway: On this bit about people coming directly to you, in your experience, do Commanding Officers feel that people have the ability to come direct to you? Do they feel that it undermines the Chain of Command and encourages whingeing? What do you say to people who point out that being in the military is not the same as working in Sainsbury's and therefore applying things from a civilian culture on to the military one perhaps is not in the best interests of the maintenance of our Armed Forces?
Dr Atkins: I have not found that Commanding Officers think that coming to me
is going behind their back. That might
have been a fear a few years ago. It is
not a fear that I found to be realised.
I have had discussions with people in more junior ranks about a
whingeing culture and I recognise that the military is different. If you need to be able to give an order and
everybody jumps to it, you are inevitably going to have a different
relationship than if you are working in Sainsbury's. It does not, however, mean that when somebody
makes a complaint that they are not treated serious, taken seriously. I think there is a difference between a
complaints culture and a whingeing culture and actually they have a moaning
culture at present and what they need is a complaints culture. I made that distinction passing across the
square at
Chairman: I would love to see these definitions written out somewhere.
Q37 Mr Jenkins: I might be jumping the gun here but I am trying to get clear in my own mind with regard to the function of your office. I am sure it will support you whole heartedly in this. They are there to support you but we are always going to get complaints in any organisation; the trick is to reduce the number of complaints by reducing the problems and reducing the inappropriate behaviour - inappropriate behaviour in those surroundings and in those circumstances; it might be appropriate somewhere else but it is inappropriate in that sense. What is the loop to have your office feed back into the Services to ensure they are taking appropriate action to reduce these cultural differences of inappropriate behaviour?
Dr Atkins: The target I set last year for 2010 was to reduce the gap between reports of bullying, harassment and discrimination that are in the various Service surveys and the numbers of complaints, because it was my expectation that, as you say, you have to know about the problems in order to take action to reduce them, and my concern was, and still remains, that people do not have the confidence to speak out and, therefore, the Services cannot act. By putting in this report the annual findings from those surveys and including in those surveys questions about my role and about fears of victimisation, I hope to be able to monitor that. The feedback loop, though, is that when it is decided that there has been bullying, harassment or discrimination, firstly, I go back to the Commanding Officer and say, "What are you doing about it?", but I meet the Deputy Chief of Defence Personnel every six weeks, I meet the Service Personnel Board, which he chairs, which has the Service Personnel Officer's Second Sea Lord, Adjutant General, Air Member Personnel, three times a year and I meet those gentlemen individually once a quarter. So I am holding them to account proactively in real-time as well as finding out what is happening, and I am also invited to sit as an observer on the Ministry of Defence Quality and Diversity Committee, so I also can see what is happening and give advice there.
Q38 Mr Jenkins: Can I just pursue this, Chairman? As we know, the leaving report of the Government on Armed Forces personnel is much more truthful than the in-Service reports, of course, and they have tabulated a catalogue of events that they felt would have been complaints if they had stopped in the Services. Do we have any chance of evaluating the reductions level in the future? How can we get this reduction, because these are the complaints that are not voiced, and when they are not voiced in the system, is there any way of reducing that level of complaint?
Dr Atkins: I am sorry; I am having difficulty hearing. Can you repeat that? I have not got the gist of the question.
Q39 Mr Jenkins: We get a lot of complaints tabulated by leaving Service personnel. How do we ensure that that is fed back into the system directly to alter the culture? I am looking for that loop. It is all right at the top end, but it is actually at the bottom end that we have got the problem and at the bottom end where the complaints are not registered or taken up?
Dr Atkins: Former Service personnel can come to me and they can make a complaint after they have left, and the families of those can also come to me, and there are some cases studies in here of that happening. The normal rule is that a complaint has got to be made three months after it occurs, and that applies to former personnel. There is an exception - if it is just and equitable - and what I determine is whether I think there are grounds for it to be just and equitable, not the Commanding Officer, and put it into the system; so that is one loop. People very often will tell others when they have left, and there can be formal support organisations or informal support organisations like Daniel's Trust - you have got the Royal British Legion, Combat Stress, a variety of people - and I am working with them so that I get information from them as well. I think when people have suffered and leave, a lot of people want to put it behind them but sometimes they find they cannot, and we have had a number of people who have written to us, it might be two or three years afterwards, and said, "I thought that I could walk away from this, but actually I cannot for peace of mind", and in those circumstances, even though it is long after the three months, I have referred it. To his credit, and it is not a case study, but one Commanding Officer, when I did that, the individual had not left the Service but he had left the particular unit and gone to a joint service, said, "I thought I could make this complaint, but I could not", but the Commanding Officer still investigated and raised the issues of concern, which were policy and practice issues, with the Service Headquarters. So I do play a role in that feedback loop, but it is not a complete answer.
Chairman: We have a very short amount of time left and I want you, Dai, please, to concentrate on those questions that are absolutely key.
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 proscribed 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 proscribed 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 an 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 per cent 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
Dr Atkins: We had very few from
theatre, and most of those have come through more recently. We have had some from
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
Dr Atkins: I do not know, but I will let
you know. I went to
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.