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Deepcut Barracks

My Lords, it is pretty daunting for the Army when something like the Deepcut story happens. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ashley of Stoke, for bringing the subject back to your Lordships’ House. I have seldom read a review or a report of such depth and undertaken with such care and thoroughness as that of Nicholas Blake. He really has tried to find out why there are four or five dead soldiers. Of course, the Deepcut situation over the four or five years was not a very happy one. People were hanging about waiting for trade training, there was a moving population, boredom, little or no stimulation from the authorities and a lack of sufficient junior officers and NCOs. I read somewhere that there were 500 personnel, two officers, three sergeants and four or five corporals. That is not the way to train people or to hold them and keep their enthusiasm while they are waiting to go elsewhere. The worse aspect I felt about that was the lack of trained instructors, officers and NCOs and the lack of supervision during off-duty time. Not much initiative was shown for continuing training. These chaps were soldiers; they were meant to be soldiers; they were half-trained, quarter-trained and some of them nearly trained. Even within the confines of the camp there are so many things that one could take forward in the way of training. Soldiers work at night. There was no sign of night training and no sign of physical fitness and keeping the chaps ready for their operations when they eventually got there. Frankly, there was a complete lack of leadership at times. That is very disturbing. I was also disturbed about how the shootings were investigated. There seems to have been a very weak effort as regards forensics and ballistics, fingerprinting and blood sampling—all the usual things. Documents apparently were lost, reports were lost and not recovered, and there was definitely muddle and tension between the various investigating agencies. I must say that at one stage I certainly felt a suspicion of a cover up. Perhaps I may speak as a very old soldier and quite out of date—we never let a man go on sentry duty until he was properly trained and had been either with an officer, an NCO or a trained soldier. For some of these chaps the only darkness they have seen is the semi-darkness of a disco. Out at night with a terrorist threat in varying degrees, particularly at the time of 9/11, it seems extraordinary to me that the teaching of how to be a sentry was just reading something by the orderly warrant officer every night and then a sergeant shoving chaps off in various directions. It is an art to be a good sentry and an alert sentry. That was lacking. After all, we depend on the Royal Logistic Corps for so much in the Army. The Army would not work without it and it requires an up-to-date, very with it, Royal Logistic Corps. I am worried about the way the parents were treated. I am particularly worried where an officer went off to tell a father and mother that their boy was dead and he did not tell the mother, who was all alone, but waited for the father to come in from work. I cannot understand why someone could not have got the father there first. There are ways of doing this. We have all had to go and tell a wife, a mother or a father that their boy was dead and there are ways to do that. I am unhappy by reading quite a bit in the review about that. I think that perhaps now—I do not disagree with the thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord Ashley of Stoke, said—this review does end the matter, but I do not see it bringing a great deal of comfort to the parents. It has taken too long. It has taken years to do something about four or five soldiers that could have been done in a much shorter time. I think that those concerned should not be very pleased with the way things have worked out. But I hope that in a little way this review brings some comfort. At least Mr Blake has tried to get to the bottom of everything. However, there is something missing. I cannot put my finger on it; other noble Lords may be able to do so. I just do not understand a number of things—where the bullets went and how they got there. I do not understand and I am horrified at the way the sentries were briefed and not trained. As I said to the Minister when we first raised this point, from top to bottom, where were the officers?