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Army Barracks (Deaths)

: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) on securing this timely debate. She has been hard-working and assiduous in these matters for several years. I can testify that she has been hard-working and diligent from the number of questions that she has put to me. The whole House owes her a debt for the work that she has done. I acknowledge the many contributions that have been made during this important and wide-ranging debate and shall do my best to respond to as many as I can. I extend my sincere condolences to the families who have mourned that untimely loss of loved ones. I am sure that the expressions made by colleagues this afternoon underpin that. As I have emphasised to the House on many occasions, we take seriously our responsibility to ensure the well-being and safety of all our personnel. Each and every death is a tragedy in its own right. We must ensure that we learn the lessons from those tragic cases and do everything we can to ensure that such incidents do not happen again. There are approximately 190,000 people in our armed forces. Almost 102,000 are regular and full-time reserve members of the Army. Last year, almost 8,000 recruits passed through training to join the field Army. The vast majority will go on to enjoy rewarding and challenging careers in our services. They will eventually leave the Army equipped with a range of skills and experiences often far beyond their expectations when they signed up. The Army is extraordinarily successful at taking young people from all walks of life and backgrounds and quickly turning them into soldiers, positive role models and good citizens. The high-quality training that those young men and women receive delivers outstanding results, from war fighting, through peace-support and counter-terrorist operations, to a range of roles supporting the UK civilian community. That training bears fruit time and again in theatres of operation throughout a turbulent world: Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and the Balkans are all recent examples. But we must not and cannot be complacent. Many comments in today's discussion have focused on the review conducted by Nicholas Blake QC, which considered the circumstances surrounding the deaths of four young soldiers at Deepcut. The report concluded that although the Army did not cause any of the deaths, there were worrying failures to identify and address sources of risk. Importantly, Mr. Blake concluded that there was no evidence to suggest that bullying caused the deaths of those reviewed. However, he raised some important questions about the nature of the training environment at that time. We take those findings seriously. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, who is, incidentally, in the Falkland Islands, made clear our response in his statement to the House on 29 March. We are committed to a process of continuous improvement. The Deepcut review will add momentum to our programme of change. We fully acknowledge the weaknesses that the report identified, and appreciate the urgency required in putting them right. Several hon. Members have raised the need for a public inquiry into the deaths at Deepcut. The Deepcut review concluded that on the basis of current evidence, a public inquiry is not necessary. We share that view and, given the extensive investigations that have taken place, agree with the conclusion that nothing would be gained from a public inquiry. Considering the Deepcut review as a whole, the important thing is to learn the lessons, to continue to move forward and to provide the best possible welfare support for our young trainees. Nicholas Blake's report raised the issue of a military complaints commissioner, and it has been referred to today. We have been considering for some time how we can best ensure that our personnel have the confidence to raise a grievance and the assurance that their grievance will be dealt with quickly, effectively and fairly. Our underlying aim is for a complaints system that is right for the way in which our armed forces operate. The system must be fair, transparent, effective and prompt. It must more than anything be a system in which all service personnel have complete confidence. I am sure that everyone present shares that view. To that end, in Committee on the Armed Forces Bill we proposed improvements to our complaints system. I have no doubt that we will return to them on Report and Third Reading later this month. We are considering in detail Mr. Blake's recommendations about the complaints process. His proposal to establish a commissioner of military complaints will be rightly and properly considered under the auspices of the Bill. If colleagues will forgive me, I do not want to go any further down that track, because we will come to it on Report and Third Reading. I turn to the matter of family attendance at boards of inquiry, which currently are not open to members of the public or press, or to family members unless they are called as witnesses. As I said in Committee, there are two main reasons why families are not usually allowed to attend service inquiries. The first is that we think that having members of the public and family members at inquiries could inhibit witnesses from giving full and frank evidence. The second is that boards of inquiry could convene and adjourn several times over a number of months, possibly in different parts of the world. Ultimately, our concern is that the attendance of families at inquiries might prevent boards of inquiry from achieving their primary aims, which are to learn lessons and prevent similar incidents. I reiterate a point that I made in Committee: a board of inquiry is not an inquest and cannot serve the same purpose as an inquest. Mr. Blake made specific recommendations concerning boards of inquiry, which we will examine carefully. I assure the House that we are considering in detail all the recommendations in the review, some of which are challenging and require significant consideration. As that work is ongoing, colleagues will understand that there is a limit to what I can say until we have carefully considered the review in its entirety. However, I am determined to see how Mr. Blake's recommendations can best be implemented without reducing the effectiveness of our necessarily robust and challenging military training environment. As soon as we are in a position to do so, we will publish in full our formal response to the Deepcut review.