WEDNESDAY 1 DECEMBER 2004 (AFTERNOON)

MR DES JAMES, MRS DOREEN JAMES, MR JAMES COLLINSON, MRS YVONNE COLLINSON, MR GEOFF GRAY AND MRS DIANE GRAY

  Q1200  Chairman: Mr James, on every visit we make we have the Commanding Officer, and we are there for a whole day. The fact that we have done about twenty now is an indication that we are taking our self-imposed responsibilities very seriously. What we cannot do, and you know we cannot do, is just re-investigate any claims. We are not a court of law; we are not the FBI; we are a group of parliamentarians that is trying to make recommendations for any future families and young men and women joining the Armed Forces. I know that is disappointing. We know much of what is going on, but it is frankly not within our terms of reference.

  Mr Collinson: Excuse me for one moment. You are being invited to go along to certain barracks at a certain time. Like any other person or any other place, they know the days that you are arriving and what times you are arriving, so therefore that day is just a set-up, in my eyes. The commander knows that you are going to be there, and therefore he is going to—everything is going to be in place for you that day.

  Q1201  Mr Roy: Let me tell you that there is no-one on this earth who is setting me up to speak to anyone in the Armed Forces that they want me to speak to. There is no-one on this Committee who, when we go to visit any of the bases, is overshadowed by someone. The people I am most interested to speak to of course are the young men and women themselves. Under no circumstances when I or any of my colleagues sit down with them do we have anyone listening in to that conversation, nor do we allow them to pick the individuals that we speak to.

  Mr Collinson: I am glad to hear that.

  Mr Roy: Jim, please take my word that if I thought for one minute second that anyone was going to use our visit for their own purpose to make sure that I was going to come away with the wrong attitude, then they obviously do not know me and they do not know any of my colleagues.

  Chairman: Please accept our assurances.

  Mr Roy: Please be sure that when we go there we are allowed to ask the questions that we want to ask and not to hear the answers that they want to give. Please take that assurance.

  Q1202  Mr Cran: It is worth adding to what Mr Roy has said, and particularly in relation to what Mr Gray said, that we have made it absolutely clear when we have gone around training establishments that we do not wish to be accompanied by officers. Most of the time we are speaking directly to the recruits, so we are not getting a filtered view. I wanted to emphasise that, along with Mr Roy's remarks.

  Mrs James: I see here before me all gentlemen. How do you interview the female recruits? Do you think they would actually speak to you?

  Q1203  Chairman: We have a female Member of Parliament.

  Mrs James: You do have a female Member when you attend?

  Chairman: Yes, I promise you, but she cannot be here today.

  Q1204  Mr Hancock: Two of the young women who were at Deepcut came to see me following articles that were in the newspaper, before we even started this inquiry, and were part of the process of trying to get this inquiry off the ground in the first place with what they had to say, one of whom subsequently had her story publicised in a women's magazine, and the other one chose never to have any publicity because she went through a pretty harrowing experience. All of the recruits are prepared to speak. The formal request that you made Des, properly on behalf of all three, was that you wanted to see us examining the other side of your situation.

  Mr James: Not for any perverse reason. I simply think that if you have taken the trouble—and I appreciate that you have taken the trouble—to look at the duty of care issues that surrounded the deaths of our children, surely to anyone here it makes sense that you talk to the opposite side, because they will have an opinion of the duty in care in place.

  Chairman: Can I say this: if it was any other group talking to us and criticising us for our methodology, I would throw them out; but because it is you, I have sat back and listened to your criticism about our methodology. All of our material—virtually everything that is given to us we put on the Web. Geoff has been here for most of our meetings. Nobody has come with us on our visits, but I can assure you that we are very diligent. This is probably consuming more time, at a very important time in this parliament, when we have all sorts of issues to consider: the future of defence, ballistic missile defence, European security, future of NATO. This is a time when there are many very serious issues that this Committee should be addressing. We are taking half of our time or more in wondering and agonising, and being distressed about what happened to your kids. I would have hoped that that would reassure you that we are taking the future of young soldiers, sailors and airmen into our highest priority. We are turning down requests to do inquiries because we feel we have an obligation to your kids and the kids who have not been well treated in the Armed Forces. I can appreciate your exasperation if we are not kicking the Surrey Police or chasing after people you think we ought to be chasing after, but we have set ourselves very difficult terms of reference, which we are pursuing with great diligence. You have to wait, in a way, until you see our final report to see whether what I am saying is vindicated. We all have consciences. Many of my colleagues have kids. As I said this morning—and you were here this morning—people like yourselves loan your kids to the military, and it is imperative that they not only are seen to be treating them properly but that they are treating them properly. That is why people like yourselves will be reassured. Maybe we have not convinced you, but, frankly, I feel we are doing more than almost anybody could expect us to have done. We will have a 10-minute break.

  The Committee suspended from 4.32 pm to 4.39 pm

  Q1205  Mr Crausby: To pick up where I left off, many of us understand the question of turning up at an Army camp and what the business is—we are long enough in the tooth, some of us. Before I came to this place I spent 28 years as a shop steward, works convener, and full-time trade unionist, so I do not take on board everything that senior officers and the management say. The problem is how you resolve it otherwise. We could not just turn up at a camp and walk in; we have to do the best we can. We understand the issue and we take it on board that everything we see is not necessarily the way that it really is. The people that describe it to us see it that way, and I think Des is right when he says that most of the people in the British Army are good people, and that is my view. There are good people, but sometimes they are operating in a bad system. That is what we have got to deal with to enable these good people to have the ability in a good system to deliver what we expect them to deliver. The reality is that the British Army is amongst the most professional Armies in the world, and it turns out some of the best people in the world. That is obvious. I want to raise the question of the fine line between bullying and harassment and robust training. It does turn out very good people, and so it should, because some of these young people go straight into danger from Phase 2 training, and they clearly must be very well trained. That aspect, of sending people in so quickly, does concern me. That fine line between being too tough with people and ensuring that they are very well trained is a very difficult one, and I wondered if you had any thoughts on that. Do you first of all accept that it needs to be a tough, robust training regime?

  Mr Collinson: I am not against the British Army at all; if I was, I would not have let my laddie join it. It is when all of a sudden you are told that your son has died and the tag is there that it was suicide, and what I want to say as well is that James died on 23 March, and by 26 March the SIB and Surrey Police had finished their investigation, and they said there was no third-party involvement. That was how long the investigation into our son's death took originally, three days. It is only until we started this campaign for justice for these ones that have died at Deepcut and other barracks that we have then learnt of the wrongdoings that have been happening to a lot of the young children—and they are just children. Is it really necessary to have folk running in the middle of the night with gas masks on and beating up a certain individual? Is it necessary for a sergeant to come along and take them outside and use them as human dartboards? We have just learnt from this report of what has been happening, and it just didn't seem to me personally—I do not know if the others agree—that this has been going on over so many years, over 10 years, and yet they did not seem to be doing anything about it. Yes, we know you have got to be tough because you are going into a war zone and into situations where you have to trust the person next to you. You have got to be wise; but surely there is no need to cross that fine line and start having folk get beat up, or punished for no reason at all. That is all we are saying. It is quite a shocking find, to find out all these things that have gone at Deepcut. We were proud of our son, James, when he joined the Army. I felt six feet tall and had a big grin on my face when he passed out, on his passing-out parade; and then sadly, when he went to Deepcut—we hadn't heard of any problems. We thought—you know, he passed his driving test. He had just qualified for air dispatch, and we were told by his officer that he was a good soldier. Then, all of a sudden, what went wrong, that he was found dead that night? He was not meant to be on duty that night. He was doing it as a favour. He was happy and there was nothing wrong with him, but all of a sudden, in that short period of time, he died. It is from that time on that, through the campaign, we have learnt a lot of what was happening at Deepcut. There have been reviews done before, and yet nobody seems to have learnt any lessons and it still carries on. What we are trying to achieve at this stage is that there has got to be a better duty of care. One-off stuff today—80 recruits; you cannot get to know each person individually properly. You cannot see warning signs that maybe something has gone wrong because there are not enough people there supervising them. That is all we are asking, and that is what we want to try and find out. That is what we are trying to sort out.

  Q1206  Chairman: Geoff, you heard the robustness of the questions this morning. Can you think of a line between what would be legitimate pressure on recruits, shouting at them and toughening them, and moving beyond to something that is clearly criminal and unacceptable?

  Mr Gray: As has been said time and time again, there is a fine line between bullying and discipline. The British Army will not function without discipline, as Jim touched on there. You have got to be able to rely on the people beside you to do what they are being told. Instances that have come to mind over the last couple of days—sexual harassment, bullying, verbal abuse, racist abuse—there is no need for that in any kind of society, never mind the British Army. There is a need for restricting it in a tough regime, but we do not need to abuse people while doing that.

  Mrs Gray: It would never be tolerated in any organisation, so why let the British Army tolerate it? There was one instance I can recall: Geoff had to see a medical officer because he had had his teeth broken. He told me that he had been out drinking and he was rather drunk and fell down the stairs. I accepted that, but when Surrey Police did their second investigation they were told a different story, that somebody had got hold of Geoff and bashed his head against the bottom of his bed and broke his teeth. I do not know which story to believe. Was Geoff hiding something from me, or has somebody made up a story? I really do not know. Then there was a case where Geoff told me a few weeks before he died of a female soldier being raped by two men that were at the camp. He did not say what rank they were. He was home on leave that weekend and found out about it when he went back. I said, "what happened?" He said: "They just got thrown out and that was it." I said, "were the Police called; was anything done?" He said: "No." Then he told us of an instance where they had all been taken together somewhere and told that there had been a suicide. This was confirmed, when I phoned Surrey Police, and we asked if we could speak to somebody about the death of our son. They gave us a totally different name, and we said, "no, ours is Geoff Gray" and he said, "no, but your son is called . . ." and gave us a totally different number. I said: "No, our son is called Geoff Gray." This does fetch back to mind that this must have been what Geoff was telling us about. There has been another suicide before Geoff. So when the Police did their investigations, we asked: "Was there a suicide just before Geoff?" They said that apparently a boy had overdosed on some tablets, but everybody had been told it was a suicide—but maybe it wasn't; maybe the boy just had some wrong medication. That was kept very, very quiet.

  Q1207  Mr Havard: I would like to explore some of the things that you knew at the time that your children were in training, because we have had declarations made to us about what the system is like now, how it is improved and so on. Des, you said you actually went to the camp and were talking to them and saw the regime while the other two families were there at Deepcut.

  Mr James: June 2002.

  Q1208  Mr Havard: There is a balance between what is robust and people being brutalised in various ways, which is quite clearly not acceptable. We are told that there are processes in place for the recruits to try and defend themselves within that process, albeit they are being told to almost suppress their emotions and told to kill people while at the same time being told, "you as an individual need not be brutalised in the environment you are in, and you should be looking after your peers and you should be complaining." That is a very interesting balance that does not happen in any organisation, it seems to me. The processes in place have to cater for that, and perhaps have to be more robust than they might be in British Rail or something else and any other training environment. We are told that there are elaborate processes put in place for individuals to understand the welfare, how they can go about identifying individuals they can go to, both within the chain of command and outside it. When your children went into this, what was explained to you about what would be available to them in order to do these things?

  Mr Gray: As I said before, we had no contact with recruitment—nothing, nothing at all.

  Q1209  Mr Havard: Were any of you invited to go and visit the establishment?

  Mr Gray: No.

  Q1210  Mr Havard: Was there any form of induction for the parents as opposed to induction for the recruits? Nothing at all. The training unit commander has what is called a supervisory duty of care directive, which is revised and looked at annually; and part of that are the processes, Des, that you saw some of when you eventually visited Deepcut; and these are the processes that should be available to anyone in the establishment, particularly the recruits, should they feel they need to use that. Do you feel your children understood what was available to them?

  Mr James: I certainly do not think in 1995 we, or Cheryl in fact, understood what was available to them. We have spent an incredible amount of time in the last couple of years talking about lessons that have been learned—it is a wonderful phrase—but in effect this is about prevention and cure. We seem to be hanging everything on the reporting ability of bullying by the recruits, as opposed to the prevention of bullying by the perpetrators. I am not aware of any new initiative for instance that helps us to understand any improvements that have been made in terms of training or mentoring for officers or for young soldiers to take away the bullying. Everything we hear about is, "when you are bullied, all you have to do is this"; you can phone these people and talk to them; you can ring this number; you can have anonymity"—but it has already happened then. Forgive me if I am not aware of—

  Q1211  Mr Havard: I think you are hitting on a very important set of points, but I was trying to see what had been explained—and I asked of other people this morning. How were you, as the parents, armed up to be able to help your children understand and educate them to use the process, and what did they understand the process to be? Whether these processes work or do not work is the next question, and that is right, but it seems as though there is a description of processes that we were told were in place, have been improved and are now in place; but there is this question of how they are used and whether there is confidence in the fact that they work, which is the point that you are expressing. Quite clearly, these are relationships between processes and people, because whilst the processes have to be rigorous the people change, and particularly in these training establishments, because people literally go through them on a two-year cycle; so the process is important because it needs to be vigorous and rigorous enough to accommodate the fact that different people are coming through. Then there is the next thing about how people are chosen, and you raised this question: who is in charge of these and how well do they operate? We have been asking all sorts of questions about who is selected to go into training, how they themselves are trained, how they are monitored and inspected, which is the other side of the argument. It is not just about process, it is about people who manage the process and run it. I just wanted to know what was said to you and whether you were involved in that in some way. Clearly, the answer was that you were not involved in any form of process or understood that. Did they come back with credit card sized things with phone numbers and things on?

  Mrs Gray: That's another bone of contention we had. When Geoff died, he was carrying his mobile phone with him that night. The mobile phone was withheld from us until about a month after he died. All I asked for was a list of names and numbers so I could contact all of his friends, just to let them know that Geoff had died; and I was denied that. About a month after he died I was given the list. We still have people phoning up—"can I speak to Geoff please", but it was then that we had to tell them Geoff died. He did have his credit card returned, and it had been hole-punched.

  Q1212  Mr Havard: I was not referring to his actual personal credit card, but that is interesting and I have a whole series of questions about how well or badly the cases were investigated; but I was talking about information that people could carry with them so they have a credit-card sized piece of paper that reminds them of all the processes and who they could phone, so that if they are in some sort of despond, they would drop this in their pocket and they would know what to do.

  Mr Gray: Geoff had nothing like that.

  Chairman: That must have been a more recent reaction to events.

  Q1213  Mr Cran: Just following on from Mr Havard's question, I would like to be clear in my mind. I think I know the answers to these questions, but I need you to get them onto the record. Did Cheryl, James or Geoff use any welfare resource at all in your knowledge? Was there anything at hand other than the chain of command, because we know that was there prior to these changes that had taken place? In your knowledge, did they talk to you and say, "I have a problem and I am talking to somebody about it"?

  Mrs James: No, no mention.

  Mrs Gray: No.

  Q1214  Mr Cran: In your experience, nothing then existed other than the chain of command. Therefore, just again so we are clear about this, because the history and chronology of these things are important, I have heard very clearly, Mr James, what you have said. You have said: "Be careful about assessing the improvements that have come into place." I share your view, and we are being very sceptical indeed. We will be very careful in assessing it. None of us were born yesterday. But did, for instance, WRVS feature at Deepcut at that time?

  Mrs James: We would not know really. If Cheryl came home and she did not have any problems, what would be the point of us speaking about it?

  Q1215  Mr Cran: So her problems just came all of a sudden.

  Mr James: At Deepcut. She never came home—

  Q1216  Mr Cran: Of course I understand that.

  Mrs James: We did not see her for six weeks. As I say, she did not mention anything on the phone.

  Mr Collinson: Similarly with us. As far as we were concerned, James had no problems. We never heard him mention if he had like WRVS to go to or that.

  Mrs Collinson: It takes me back to what I said earlier. What is the soldier's interpretation of bullying? I mean, being kicked down a muddy embankment, to me, is bullying, but to James it was part of Army life.

  Mr Collinson: James came home one weekend and he had a gash on the bottom of his chin—I am just remembering when you are talking about that. I said: "What happened to you?" He was out on night exercise and seemingly the rifles—he had an inspection in the morning and it had got to be cleaned, and he says they were always bad for getting rust on them and that there was a spot of dust, and James laughed about it. He says, "Oh, I did not have my rifle clean and I was told to start running—you know, the sergeant ordered him to run. He was running out; it was barely light, and James had fallen into a ditch that he had just dug out the night before, and he got the sight of the rifle stuck in his chin, and he just pulled it out and carried out. He was running. He got back there and he was told to go and get first aid, and first aid is sticking a plaster on and getting back to it. That is what James accepted as what went on. As far as we were aware, did James see that as just being part of Army life?

  Q1217  Mr Cran: It does slightly amaze me—I do not know about my colleagues—that if a recruit is beginning to show signs of something being wrong, that a telephone was not lifted to any of you, because I would regard all of you as a resource to solve a problem perhaps. Is it a surprise to you?

  Mrs Gray: I think if Geoff had a problem he would have told us about it. Geoff phoned us every Wednesday and every Sunday religiously from leaving home, yet we were told he died the early hours of Monday morning. We had no phone call Sunday night.

  Q1218  Mr Cran: I have read the background. I just have one other question, which is simply this. Mr James has been very clear about telling us, and I accept the stricture to be careful about accepting all the stuff about the improvements that the Armed Services have made in terms of welfare provision. I entirely accept that. Do the rest of you have views about this? Have you been briefed properly about these changes, or are they things you have just picked up en passant?

  Mr Collinson: We have been sent documentation of all the changes that are going in place.

  Q1219  Mr Cran: Do you have any additional views? Your position is, if I may say so, tragic, but it is also quite unique. You are in a quite unique position to advise us about the sort of improvements that you would like to see to the welfare provision, and if you are not able to answer that now so be it, but if you do think about it and develop views, tell us.

  Mr James: We hear every day about years of research and analysis of history which leads to government proposals, except it seems in the case of Deepcut: there has been no judicial analysis of what happened, and all we have are the improvements. We seem to be rushing from the problem to the improvements, and we miss out the piece in the middle. With due respect to this Committee, who are operating continually this afternoon under restrictions themselves, I just feel quite strongly that you cannot operate in that way. History tells us that unless you analyse what has gone wrong, you cannot possibly know what the results are.

  Chairman: We will be coming on to a bundle of questions on inquiries.

  Mr Cran: Mr Gray, we do have your memorandum where you have indeed set out a great many things that you suggest we should look at.[1] All I mean is, Mr and Mrs Collinson and Mr and Mrs James, that if you have any similar suggestions to make, please let us have them.