---

Mr. John Braithwaite

The debate centres on a case involving my constituent, Mr. John Braithwaite, but it also raises some general issues about private security companies that provide services in Iraq. The company in this case is ArmorGroup. My concern is the absence of any effective regulatory regime for such companies. I shall start with the case of my constituent. John Braithwaite was a serving police officer with Thames Valley police when in early 2006 he responded to an advertisement, specifically aimed at police officers, offering vacancies to provide short training courses for Iraqi police recruits in southern Iraq. The advert said that the scheme augmented a UK Government-sponsored programme in Basra. It was placed by ArmorGroup and stated clearly that the contracts on offer varied in length. Mr. Braithwaite applied and was in due course offered by e-mail a posting for 12 months, although it was renewable. He assessed his future options, which included satisfying himself that he could take up to two years out from the police pension scheme and then rejoin it. On that basis, he accepted the offer, resigned from Thames Valley police and, after having the requisite immunisations and making other preparations, presented himself in London for deployment on 2 May 2006. Only at that point, after he had resigned from his employment and was ready to leave for Iraq, was Mr. Braithwaite allowed to see a copy of his contract. It became clear that he was being offered only a six-month contract. He questioned that but was given to understand that company practice had changed and that no 12-month contracts were now on offer, but that there was a good chance of renewal. No clear information was available about the client details, which contravened company policy, but Mr. Braithwaite was given to understand that the Japanese and Dutch Governments were partly funding the project. In those circumstances, he felt that he had little choice but to go ahead and fly to Iraq. He arrived at his final destination in Iraq after passing through three different staging posts and started work, but 24 days later he was handed his redundancy notice and flew home. He was subsequently told by ArmorGroup that his redundancy was a result of changes with the Japanese contract. Mr. Braithwaite was obviously extremely angry about his treatment by ArmorGroup. He had accepted an appointment to work in a conflict zone, using his considerable experience to help to train Iraqi police recruits. He had left a secure post with Thames Valley police expecting to be away for 12 months at least and possibly 24. Instead, he had been employed for only one month. He was relatively fortunate in that he was able to find employment again with Thames Valley police, but he was unemployed for three months, his career progression at Thames Valley police was set back by two years and he had to rejoin the pension scheme on less favourable terms than before, because its terms changed while he was away. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Braithwaite tried to take legal action against ArmorGroup over his redundancy on a number of grounds, including the fact that the redundancy decision, which affected others employed by ArmorGroup, seemed to be made arbitrarily and was not based on experience or other objective criteria. He then discovered that ArmorGroup is incorporated in Jersey, and so any application would have to be dealt with under Jersey law and through a Jersey employment tribunal. The tribunal rejected his application, because Jersey law does not apply to employment outside Jersey. Mr. Braithwaite then attempted to complain directly to ArmorGroup and to clarify why he had been employed on a six-month contract that was terminated so quickly. None of the information that he has received, none of that which I have received from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office through ministerial letters and written parliamentary questions and none of that which he has received from freedom of information requests to the FCO has made the situation any clearer—if anything, it has been made more opaque. It appears from those sources that ArmorGroup had a contract with the FCO for police mentors that started on 4 June 2004 and was due to expire in June 2007. The contract was initially for five months, and was reviewed and renewed five times—in November 2004, January 2005, September 2005, April 2006 and finally in October 2006. As of January 2007—this information was given in answer to a written parliamentary question—the contract specified 71 police mentors, although to ensure that there were 71 mentors on the ground at all times, extra personnel were employed up to a maximum of 91. In August 2005, the contract with the FCO was extended to include an additional 17 mentors. That extension was funded in full by the Dutch Government and lasted until February 2006. There had also been a contract funded by the Japanese Government, but that was for six months and ended on 18 May 2006. When the Minister responds, I would be grateful if he were to confirm whether the information I have summarised is correct and whether there were other related contracts involving ArmorGroup that I have not cited. To summarise, Mr. Braithwaite was employed by ArmorGroup for six months, on a renewable basis, on 2 May 2006, when the FCO contract had just been renewed and was due to run until June 2007, the Dutch contract had finished two months previously and the Japanese contract had only two weeks left. Given that ArmorGroup had already been making people redundant because of the end of the Dutch contract and approaching end date of the Japanese contract, it is difficult to understand its reasons for hiring Mr. Braithwaite and then terminating his employment so abruptly. My understanding of the way in which the main UK contract operates is that ArmorGroup contracts to ensure that the full complement of training posts is operative at all times. That means that it has to employ staff over and above the 71 mentors stipulated to provide cover, and the cost agreed with the FCO takes that into account. It is therefore most profitable for ArmorGroup to employ sufficient extra personnel to ensure that it can always meet its contractual requirements, but to keep the number of staff to a minimum in order to reduce costs and maximise profit. I can only surmise that Mr. Braithwaite was hired to fill a temporary gap in cover and that once that immediate problem was over he was made redundant. It appears that ArmorGroup, by taking on extra staff—including Mr. Braithwaite—and quickly making some redundant, is essentially transferring the risk inherent in such contract work to its employees while making fat profits for itself. It can do so because it is registered in Jersey, so overseas employees are given little or no employment protection. I have recently been contacted by another former employee of ArmorGroup in Iraq, who is not my constituent, and it appears that ArmorGroup’s hiring and firing policies are persistent and well known.