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Children

My Lords, as an ex-military man I am speaking in this debate only because, in paragraph 5.7 of the report to which my noble friend Lord Listowel is drawing your Lordships’ attention, it is recorded that reports by the House of Commons Defence Committee and the Adult Learning Inspectorate indicated that there have been deficiencies in the safeguarding arrangements for young people of 16-plus who are recruited into training in the Armed Forces. None of the recommendations, understandably, refers specifically to child protection; but as the report being debated implies that outside welfare inspections focusing on the safety, protection and welfare of young people under 18 in the Armed Forces would be a good thing, I felt someone should put the whole question of leadership, motivation and morale of young people in the forces in some sort of perspective. Of course, few of these people in their middle and late teens voluntarily entering the armed services would really wish to be thought of as children, nor should encouraging them in that belief be the job of the military training machine, which, recognising the risks and challenges of the profession of arms, should be trying to ““make men of them””—and I use the term, of course, in the broadest sense. But having said that, there is always the sanctity and importance of the individual, whatever the age; and the younger and more vulnerable they are, the more care, attention and understanding may be necessary in their management. First, let us look at the facts. The services, generally speaking, do not recruit young men and women before they are seventeen and a half. The major exception is the Army, which has two junior regiments, one at Harrogate for the technical arms and one at Bassingbourne. Those have been set up, quite properly, to encourage recruiting and give apprentice and leadership training with a longer-term aim, perhaps, of providing the senior artificers, warrant officers and sometimes officers of the future. As things stand at the moment, both those young soldiers regiments of about 400 each are subject to periodical inspections by the Adult Learning Inspectorate, as I believe are all units carrying out recruit training. I am sure that the Ministry of Defence accepts this completely, but personally I wonder how helpful and necessary those inspections are, as they are often conducted—as I suppose is natural—with greater emphasis on protecting the juvenile from any of life’s trials and tribulations than on the development of character and robustness, and perhaps with little regard to the military code and the stresses and strains likely to be faced in future. If the training machine is doing its job properly, which in most cases I believe it does, it should be building up in the young recruit of whatever age the confidence in the organisation and efficiency of the unit, and the discipline to develop the individual’s willpower and—most important of all—the individual’s self-respect and self-esteem, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, mentioned. All those are essential ingredients of a high morale, and they should allow these young people to face up to the future with confidence and a glad heart, to overcome whatever challenges lie ahead. In the services, it should be a question not of children mattering but of every individual soldier mattering. Two-way communication between leadership and led, about future intentions and justified grievances, is a very important factor in fostering high morale. Field Marshall Montgomery—Monty—and Nelson realised that only too well. That may need even more emphasis with the younger recruits, not least to tide them over the strangeness of being away from home for the first time. Love—platonic love—is also an essential ingredient in any leadership worthy of its name and should be there too; but it must be tough love, which tests, stimulates and inspires, and not one that simply wraps in cotton wool and makes life easy. Being kept fit, achieving things, getting satisfaction from that achievement and making a positive contribution to the group are all the stated aims in the ““every child matters”” programme; these days, you have to have a programme for everything. But these are part and parcel of building a high morale in which physical abuse or degradation of any sort should have no part whatever and indeed would be utterly counter-productive, although in a profession as potentially hazardous and risky as the Armed Forces any emphasis on keeping the individual recruit, even a minor, ““safe from injury”” must be compatible with rigorous, well organised and well supervised training with, of course, clear cut safety rules. For without some degree of risk in training, real or imagined, a true sense of achievement is bound to be limited. I say this having spent a large part of the earlier part of my life training young soldiers. If things have gone wrong in the past in a training establishment, as some events and reports seem, for whatever reason—shortage of staff, poor living conditions—to indicate, and young people have suffered, I submit that it is the leadership and the chain of command as a whole which had, I hope temporarily and locally, ““lost the plot”” about the best way of building high morale. The solution I suggest should lie not in resorting to inspections by an alien, albeit well-meaning, organisation more concerned with protecting than with motivating and inspiring, but in making sure that the chain of command brings the leadership in any and every training organisation right up to scratch with proper supervision by officers, warrant officers and senior NCOs who are enthusiastic about the job and are qualified to do it and who have a clear concept of the meaning of morale and the best way to achieve it. Get the training positive, well organised and progressive; get the leadership and supervision right; build up that confidence, discipline and self-respect, then results will ensure that every individual matters, the welfare of the young will be safeguarded and the watchful eye of a ““nanny knows best”” organisation would be quite superfluous. Those who cannot respond and react to that positive and committed form of leadership, and who are there only because of the over-zealousness of the recruiting staff, probably have no place in our wholly volunteer forces.