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Deepcut Review

I thank the hon. Gentleman for some of his comments, but perhaps not all of them. On the question of Surrey police, we are talking about something that is a matter for the police. The fact that I have written to the chief constable to indicate what I think would be of benefit reflects a view that I have taken from the early stages—as my knowledge grew—that the reopening of the inquests would be desirable. It is not in my power to so direct. The Surrey police information may provide sufficient grounds to allow that to happen, but I do not know, because I have not seen it in detail. I cannot intrude in that matter other than to indicate my strong preference as to what should happen. I cannot direct on that matter. On the commissioner’s role, the hon. Gentleman had an early view of my statement and I have set out what the remit of the commissioner would be. I have been careful in the response—I do not want to say that this tops and bottoms it or ends it. We are fortunate that we have the Armed Forces Bill where this matter will be ventilated and can be discussed and examined. I would not want to close down on any reasonable suggestion. However, I do not want to put in place or encourage anything that seeks to undermine the important role of the chain of command. That is why we have said that the independent commissioner would have the right of reporting to the commanding officer, the right of follow up in terms of finding out what happened as a result of all that, and, importantly, the right of access to Ministers and to report annually to Parliament. If there was a pattern developing, or even a significant case, it would be down to that individual to draw the Minister’s attention to it if he felt that there was reluctance, unwillingness or blocking on the part of the commanding officer or the system itself. So, we have an insight into what is going on. That has not been there before. However, I will resist any attempt to undermine the independence of the commanding officer or their right to ensure that proper discipline is maintained in their unit. We have made a substantial move and, hopefully, it is to be welcomed and subject to further examination. Accommodation is a big issue; there is no question about that. That is why we have re-profiled a lot of our spending approaches to try to make sure that we can lift the quality of accommodation. We have a massive backlog to attend to. The moneys would not simply be available to anyone. We are not talking about a wish list, but about practicalities, given the hundreds of millions—if not billions—of pounds that would be required to improve that accommodation. We have a progressive programme to deal with all that. Although we can see the objectives of the recommendations, the delivery will take some time to achieve. That is what we have now set out to seek to achieve. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman takes the time to read our response to the recommendations—I accept that he has not had that opportunity. We set out the rationale. It is fairly long and I do not want to read it out in detail, other than to say this: we recognise that there is an issue and we are seeking to address it. We have best practice and very good training environments at Harrogate and Bassingbourn. We can see the quality that comes out of that type of training establishment, where there is a separation of the single young people, and the type of training that we can give them. Whether that can be matched across the whole of the training environment has to be judged in terms of what we are trying to train. We are talking about a soldier going into the front line. We have got to judge the quality and robustness of that training. I make a final point to the hon. Gentleman. Mr. Blake’s report referred to the unsolicited comment of a young trainee in which he said that he felt that he was being mollycoddled. Soldiers react to being mollycoddled because they might be in the front line tomorrow, so that is why a balance has to be struck.