WEDNESDAY 1 DECEMBER 2004 (AFTERNOON)

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

  Q1220  Mr Roy: On the point James brought up, it had already been brought up with me before, in relation to phone calls home, whether when a recruit phones home they will not want to tell you because they do not want to worry you, or they would be afraid that you would then call the Commanding Officer. Would you recognise that as a possible scenario, which has been put to me by one of my constituents before?

  Mr Gray: That is a possibility, that children do not want to worry the parents. I would not for one moment think that I knew everything that Geoff got up to; they do not tell you every single thing, so that is a strong possibility.

  Q1221  Mr Roy: That is all down to the action of accepting bullying, and it is very hard for that young person, especially if the mindset in the Army is to accept a form of bullying, because that young man from Fife told me in Harrogate that it is a man's Army and you have got to be able to handle it.

  Mrs Gray: Can I just mention that last night I received an e-mail from a serving sergeant from Catterick who is willing to come forward and give evidence that he was raped as a 16-year old young soldier going into the Army. He says he has heard enough from yesterday what had happened, and that there was not going to be a public inquiry because people do not come forward. He said: "It has urged me to come forward and speak out about what has happened to me." He is willing and I can pass his name and number on to anybody, to speak out about his experiences—not only his own experiences but things he has seen happen. He says, "do not for one minute think it has gone away; it is still happening today".

  Chairman: If we do decide to do that, we will write to you so that you can pass it on to us.

  Q1222  Mr Jones: On that point, if an individual has come forward, the first thing has got to be the Police because I would want them to investigate that thoroughly and ensure that those allegations are as strong as you say.

  Mrs Gray: That is what we thought about these reports that you received last time from Surrey Police. If they were not strong enough, then why did Surrey Police hand them over?

  Q1223  Mr Jones: No, because if you look at the way the media has used that report, it is a bit disingenuous in parts, and in parts they range from very serious allegations like rape, which I personally think, like Frank, should be investigated in all circumstances, down to some things in the report that were hearsay. In some of the press reporting, that got lost off, which was sad, to be honest. If there are serious issues, I would like to make sure that the proper authorities get them at the right time. I think the root cause of your dissatisfaction about what happened to your loved ones is the way in which those cases were investigated, which not only leaves you with unanswered questions today but raises questions about lack of investigation. In 2002 it was announced that the Prime Minister would go over to the civilian Police from the Army. What are your views about that, and do you welcome it? Do you think that even though that is the position clearly stated now, as we have been told on a number of occasions, in practice that solves the problem? What else could happen to avoid what clearly happened in your cases, where lack of proper investigation right at the start then led to a sequence of events which, to be honest, anything that anyone tells you now you are not going to believe—and I understand that, because if I were in your position I would feel exactly the same?

  Mr Gray: In 2001 Surrey Police said they did have primacy in the investigation.

  Mrs Gray: Primacy has always lain with the Police.

  Mr Collinson: Even in 1995 we were told that as well. It was like the grey factor between the Army, the MoD and the Police. We were not sure exactly who, but it seems that it was the Police that had primacy.

  Q1224  Mr Jones: It has been made now crystal clear.

  Mr Gray: Surrey Police unfortunately allowed SIB to investigate or not investigate Geoff's death; and even more unfortunate they believed what they said. Witnesses in Geoff's case had to go to the SIB months after Geoff died and ask to be interviewed. That is how bad it was. The main witness in the incident had left Deepcut and was down in Portsmouth and had to go to the Navy SIB and ask them to be interviewed about Geoff's death.

  Mrs Gray: Then Geoff was taken by two SIB officers for the post mortem and the SIB officers told the pathologist, "this is a suicide". Therefore the pathologist just gave a cursory look over Geoff and never noted anything down. He did not do a proper post mortem and therefore evidence that could have been taken or found then was not found.

  Mr Gray: There was no ballistic or forensic evidence taken. Geoff's uniform was incinerated the day after he died, and we were told it was for health and safety reasons—there was blood on the uniform. If this had been a civilian death, that would have been bagged up and used as evidence in whatever form that was taken. There were no photographs taken of Geoff's body because it was said that he had a normal post mortem. There are two forms of post mortem, a normal one and a special one. In Geoff's case he only had a normal post mortem because there was nothing out of the ordinary, so I questioned this and said: "He had two holes in his head. Was that not out of the ordinary?" My answer from Surrey Police to that was: "Well, when the pathologist is told it is a suicide, those two holes are no longer out of the ordinary."

  Mrs Gray: Going back to photographs, witnesses say there were hundreds and hundreds of photographs taken, yet it was not deemed a scene of crime; but there is only one photograph that exists. I would like to know what happened to all the other photographs. Nobody seems to know, but to me it is quite clearly what happened: all the other photographs would have shown other evidence. They had to be destroyed—along with the log sheets. The Army themselves admitted taking the log sheet out that night, the gun log sheet, and putting it into Geoff's file. Because it was not requested by the Police, because the Police did not investigate, the file was taken out a few days later and shredded. Now, why would you shred just that log sheet, when the Army keeps logs of logs of logs?

  Q1225  Mr Jones: The point being, it is quite clear there was no investigation.

  Mrs Gray: That is right, there was no investigation.

  Q1226  Mr Jones: Personally, having read all the detailed stuff I have on the four cases at Deepcut, they quite clearly made the decision these were suicides and that is it.

  Mrs Gray: That is right.

  Q1227  Mr Jones: Talking to friends of mine in the Police Force, you never do that; you do not assume that it is suicide until you establish what caused death, even if it is natural causes. That, as I say, is the root cause of the reason why, even if someone actually tried to convince you that your child was not killed and did not kill themselves, no-one is ever going to be able to convince you of that.

  Mrs Gray: That is right.

  Q1228  Mr Jones: Because of this woeful lack of investigation. We heard this morning from the Catterick families that they were let down by the Coroner Service as well. Your experience is not just the lack of Police investigation and the MoD, but the Coroner's Service to get some of the answers to questions that you quite rightly demand to hear.

  Mr Gray: Michael Burgess, the Coroner for Surrey, did the inquest on Geoff's case. It was a shambles, a complete shambles. Soldiers were allowed to shout out answers to witnesses. We were told we did not need legal representation so I turned up at the Coroner's court and was handed a bundle of papers that said—you know, "you had better read through those" and I have got 10 minutes to read through witness statements, and it is only then that you find out that Geoff had been shot twice. It is only then that I found out about the so-called search for his body. It is only then that you find out that there were witness statements—seen running away from where Geoff's body was eventually found. I had to stand in the Coroner's court and ask questions about my son's death.

  Mrs Gray: There were discrepancies as well between some of the officers who said they were woken at half past eleven and told it happened an hour previously. Nobody seems to know what time he actually died.

  Mr Gray: The problem with the Coroner is that it is still going on because now we have a situation where, in James's case, he has not had an inquest yet. Surrey Police have now passed all the information on to the Coroner. He will not give disclosure to the Collinson family or ourselves about the Surrey Police investigation. We are in a crazy situation where we have got to have each and every witness that gave a statement to allow Surrey Police to give permission to hand the witness statements over; so there are 800 witness statements that have got to be given permission.

  Chairman: I have been advised—

  Mr Jones: On the Collinson case.

  Chairman: We will not talk about the Coroner. Sorry. Please carry on.

  Q1229  Mr Jones: I am quite interested about the Coroner because I think the system has let you down on a number of occasions, but we can not refer to the Collinson case because that has not been heard yet.

  Mr Gray: We are pushing for disclosure as well. We need the Surrey Police report. It will not come across. We have got to have all these witness statements and they have got to give permission. What happens if Ron Laden or Nigel Barie Josling refuse to give us their witness statements? What happens then? On that point, Mr Chairman, could I formally ask that Ron Laden and Nigel Barie Josling be brought before this Committee?

  Mr Hancock: Hear, hear!

  Q1230  Chairman: We will have to consider.

  Mr Collinson: We have not had our inquest yet on James's death, but on the night that James passed away at Deepcut, as I say, all official letters say to us that he died at 9.50 and it was not until months down the line that we actually found out he died before 9.33 because the "man down" call went out at 9.33. What had happened is, when the "man down" call went out from 9.33, it seems that the Army took 20 minutes before they informed the civilian Police that they had an incident at the camp. Why did the Army need to take that 20 minutes before informing Surrey Police?

  Q1231  Mr Jones: That is the point that concerns me about the clarification that has been taking place, that the primacy quite clearly is clarified to be with the civilian Police, but, as you say, the control over when they are called and what happens needs tightening up as well. A lot could happen in that delay period, intentionally, and I have to say unintentionally in terms of the crime scene.

  Mr Collinson: That is one thing I can say in front of you at this moment is my concern at the time delay of informing Surrey Police. If you have an incident where a person is, all of a sudden, dead, surely the first one is not also "man down" but at the same time there should be a call out to Surrey Police, and yet they didn't. That is all I can say.

  Mr James: Whichever way we come at this, we always come back to this one question of accountability. If we talk about primacy, for instance, and whether Surrey Police were aware they had it or did not, or were not aware, we have been told, all of us, that they did have primacy at that time. Whether or not they adopted it was another thing. When my daughter was found in November 1995, one thing is very clear: she was the second death at the same camp in 19 weeks. Inbetween those two deaths there is now documented evidence, collected by the Army themselves, that there were no less than 10 other suicide attempts in that period. The one person—the one person who should have taken control of that situation, in my opinion, and insisted on primacy and closed the camp down and preserved the site, made sure that Surrey Police got hold of it—the one person must be, surely, the Commanding Officer?

  Mr Hancock: Hear, hear.

  Mr James: But the Commanding Officer did not give evidence to the inquest, did not talk to us, did not appear before the inquest, did not appear before the board of inquiry, did not give evidence to the board of inquiry, and now he is not going to appear before you either, allegedly.

  Q1232  Mr Jones: You could also argue that Surrey Police let you down.

  Mr James: Absolutely.

  Q1233  Mr Jones: Not insisting that they had primacy.

  Mr James: I would not question that, I agree. But at the end of the day there was one person who could have taken control and was, we believe, a professional leader—and leadership was required that day, I think.

  Mr Collinson: To us, Surrey Police have held their hands up and said they were wrong from the very first instance.

  Q1234  Mr Havard: There are clearly a whole lot of questions about the standards of behaviour of a whole series of organisations, whether the Army, the SIB, the Police, the Coroner Service and so on, but I am interested in what advice and information you had—and I suspect the answer is going to be "none"—that you were not given any advice. My colleague raised the question of having a liaison officer to advise, because we see you, Mr Gray, go to a Coroner's inquest unknowing, in the sense that I presume you had never been there before, and I presume you are not legally qualified and would not have had any experience; and there were opportunities available to you in that process that you knew nothing about at the time. I was wondering what advice you were given in order to be capable people in that process. I guess there was little or any liaison, or any explanation of what the processes would look like in terms of inquests and so on. Am I right in that, that there was no preparation for you in understanding the processes that would unfold?

  Mr James: The inquest was held within three weeks, 200 miles away from our home. We set out at four o'clock in the morning in a snowstorm, would you believe, fortunately with a neighbour who offered to take us. We arrived early, and if we had not arrived early we would have missed the entire—

  Q1235  Mr Havard: If we are looking for improvements to be made, presumably an obvious thing to say is that there should be an actor of some sort, provided by someone, who assists families in this circumstance to understand the processes that should be unfolding, and how to behave within them.

  Mr James: I am advised quite regularly that the Coroners are already aware of that process, so without going into personalities it went badly wrong, but I do not think there needs to be any change to legislation in order to put it right. That is the way it is explained to me.

  Q1236  Mr Havard: That is interesting, but do you think some sort of liaison process to help individuals understand the processes would be a good idea?

  Mr James: Absolutely.

  Mr Collinson: When James passed away, as I said, it was three days after James died that they closed the investigation. That was us, you know. Then it was a case of then having to organise his funeral. We still did not know why he died, and we still do not to this day.

  Q1237  Mr Havard: I understand that that process is not concluded yet.

  Mr Collinson: That is right, but at the same time, it was not until ourselves met up with the Grays, and we started putting public pressure on that the Surrey Police started their investigation on 29 April.

  Q1238  Mr Havard: So the only support you have had is peer support from the other families.

  Mr Collinson: From the first stage of the death, yes. It was not until we got the Surrey Police to start an investigation that we actually got appointed a family liaison officer.

  Mr Hancock: I am delighted the way things have gone, because I now think it makes it unavoidable for us not to have both Commanding Officers here. I think you have proved that this afternoon by the questioning that has gone on here alone; so I hope that that is a message that will go out, and so I am grateful.

  Chairman: I am sorry, we have not considered it. It might be obvious to you, Mike, but we have not considered it.

  Q1239  Mr Hancock: I think it would be hard not to now, Chairman, following the line of questioning we have just had. Geoff, there must have been a motive in your mind why this went the way it did. Why did you think they wanted to pre-judge Geoff's death so quickly on the very day he died, when they came to tell you, "not only did your son die, but he committed suicide"? Why was there, in your opinion, reflecting on what has gone on since, why you made that decision?

  Mr Gray: In Geoff's case there was a mixture of cock-up and cover-up. Surrey Police cocked up well and truly and did not investigate Geoff's death. The Army covered up by getting rid of evidence and not making it a crime scene, et cetera. It is very, very easy to put a tag of suicide on anybody, but, as we can see, it is very, very hard to get that tag taken off.