WEDNESDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2000

AIR VICE-MARSHAL B BURRIDGE, AIR VICE-MARSHAL H G MACKAY, COMMODORE M KERR, MAJOR GENERAL A DENARO and MAJOR GENERAL J C B SUTHERELL

  460. That may be true for younger people, but there may be people in the forces who have been there for some time. Are they getting any help and support?
  (Commodore Kerr) To be honest, if you were to look, certainly in the Navy, in the senior ranks' messes you would find there was still the residual minority of the older sort of person which is going away but it is still pretty rare. People reveal themselves. Did this person sign his letter?

  461. He did but he did not say he was in the forces.
  (Commodore Kerr) Quite often you do not know who these people are but if they reveal themselves by what they say or what they do, then yes, they are hauled out and they are rebriefed.
  (Major General Denaro) All of us have embraced equal opportunities.

  462. You make it sound like a disease.
  (Major General Denaro) In my view equal opportunities is just about civilised behaviour. When you explain it in those terms, everybody in the services nods wisely. I do not think one needs to exaggerate how much of a non-issue this is in general terms. If you ask me whether or not females should go into the Armoured Corps or the Infantry, then we could have a long discussion, but it is slightly outside—

  Chairman: I must tell you we would not have a discussion.

  463. The Equal Opportunities Commission said that for women in the forces it is an issue; it is true it is less so in the Navy.
  (Major General Denaro) They are absolutely integrated; we are not.

  464. It is still an issue for them. What about the formal procedures for dealing with this, the code of social conduct, and properly dealing with bullying and harassment? What sort of training is given for that?
  (Major General Denaro) There is a laid down number of periods on EO that every student must have and those are strictly adhered to. There is much less of an EO issue amongst the younger ones than there is amongst the more senior ones. At Sandhurst we have established together groups of EO advisers and the EO chain is tried and tested; happily not too often. On the three occasions it has been tested in my time each time it has been satisfactorily resolved by this chain. Speaking from my point of view, and always touching wood, it was right that we set up the system, because it needed to be set up and now that it is set up it is working well.
  (Major General Sutherell) To echo what was said there in a couple of areas, first of all at the younger level it is not an issue. Twenty% at Welbeck are women, 15% of my undergraduates are women and so it goes forward. In terms of the institutional attitude to it, we are absolutely committed to this business. I personally talk to all the people coming into Shrivenham, whether it is on the post-graduate or undergraduate course, and I make it extremely clear that we just do not tolerate this issue. If anybody is being got at, whether it is on grounds of their gender or orientation or their ethnic background, it is unacceptable and we will just not put up with it. My staff are quite clear on that. On the couple of occasions where things have come to light, they have been dealt with very rigorously. I have to say at the post-graduate level, where you are dealing with older people, again it is accepted as the proper way of behaving. This is the point General Denaro made. This is just treating people decently and in our context we are in an academic environment, we want to give people the opportunity to fulfil their potential whoever they are. Of course the variety of people there, because we have 50% of our people who are civilians anyway, means the whole atmosphere is very important. The other thing is that, though I do not have command responsibility for it on my site I do have the Equal Opportunities Training Centre which reports direct to the Ministry of Defence and I do see people coming through on those courses. It is mandatory now for everybody of colonel and above to do a course there as well as equal opportunities advisers. Talking to the people who run that course is quite interesting. They have identified the fact that there is a change. They have had people such as the one who wrote to you, by and large older ones, who have had great difficulty on courses. They are becoming few and far between because people are getting their mind round it. We are 100% committed to this. We would be idiots if we were not.

  465. Have you done any statistical analysis of examination performance of females? That is not a male chauvinist question I can assure you. The information previous witnesses gave us was quite startling, certainly about the Royal Navy and how women were passing exams.
  (Commodore Kerr) On the physical exams we have a slightly more appropriate standard for the women. For example, they carry 20lbs less in their knapsack and they have to run a little bit slower to pass the fitness test.

  466. That is probably illegal. The Equal Opportunities Commission have said that gender neutrality is their outstanding rule.
  (Commodore Kerr) We carry it as far as we possibly can. We do not analyse how the women do versus the men, we just take them all. We do not analyse how ethnic minorities do versus the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants or whatever the opposite is. We feel it is essential to make allowances. Women are physically different and it seems commonsensical to allow for that. It is not a huge difference.

  467. It would be interesting to prove the argument, that in terms of academic performance in military colleges women do exceedingly well. I should have thought somebody would have thought about it. If my colleague Mike Hancock were here he would put down a Parliamentary Question this evening to elicit that information. If you do have the information, it would be quite helpful.
  (Major General Sutherell) I have to say at Shrivenham we have not done a statistical analysis of it, but in broad terms the girls on the undergraduate course are very focused and I would have thought they were getting above average results compared with their cohort. In terms of the physical demands, we only do adventure training and that sort of thing and I would say I have some quite tough young ladies, two of whom did the London-Devizes canoe race and completed it whereas a couple of their male colleagues did not. They are doing well.

  Chairman: Thank you all very much, it was very interesting.