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Government must take urgent action over Deepcut recommendations

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With the new inquest verdict into the death of Cheryl James at Deepcut, ForcesWatch is calling on Ministers to implement important recommendations for young recruits made in 2005.

Cheryl James, who was 18, was found dead with a bullet wound in 1995 at the Princess Royal Barracks, Deepcut, Surrey. She was one of four young recruits to die in similar circumstances at the army barracks between 1995 and 2002.

All four were undertaking armed guard duty when they died and two were under the age of 18.

An initial inquest into the death of Private James recorded an open verdict. As the original investigation and inquest were judged to be highly inadequate, a second inquest was ordered by the High Court, and took place between February and April this year in Woking, after many years of campaigning by the family (2).

Coroner Brian Barker QC, will give his conclusions on Friday 3 June (3).

A recent report by ForcesWatch highlights how, 10 years after Parliament’s Defence Committee published its Duty of Care report, a number of its crucial recommendations have not been implemented by the Ministry of Defence (4) (5).

Unimplemented recommendations include:

  • A independent review of the age of recruitment, examining the potential of raising it to 18 in all three services.
… Read more

MoD increases targeting of 16-year-olds show figures released today

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Figures show that more 16 year olds were recruited in the last year than 17 year olds as the government admits that is intends to increase the number of children it recruits into the armed forces.

  • Recruitment of minors continues to fall, but 16 year olds now outnumber 17 year old recruits
  • More than one in five Army recruits too young to be deployed

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has released figures today showing that 1,790 minors were enlisted into the Army in the financial year to March 2016, accounting for 22 per cent (22.2%) of the army’s total enlisted intake for the same period (8,020 recruits).[1]

These figures are released in the same week as a coalition of children’s organisations from across the UK published a joint letter to the MoD urging it to raise the enlistment age,[2] and just two days after the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child challenged the UK government over its ongoing recruitment of children.[3]

Annual personnel figures published by the MoD today show that in the financial year to March 2016, minors accounted for 22 per cent (22.2%) of new recruits enlisted into the army, falling from 24 per cent (23.8%) in the previous year.

… Read more

Children’s rights groups call on MoD to stop recruiting children

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An open letter to the Ministry of Defence from national children’s organisations and rights groups calls on them to stop recruiting 16 and 17 year olds into the armed forces. The letter has been made public on the same day that the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child begins its periodic examination of the UK’s record on child rights. In 2008, the UN urged the UK to raise the enlistment age to 18.

The armed forces should stop recruiting children under the age of 18, according to an open letter to the Ministry of Defence from national children’s organisations and rights groups.

The children’s rights alliances for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are among the signatories of an open letter to the Ministry of Defence, calling for an immediate end to the recruitment of under-18s. The signatories, which also include the Children’s Commissioners for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, call on the MoD to raise the recruitment age in line with the recommendations of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. (The Children’s Commissioner for England has previously indicated her support for this issue). The letter points out that the UK is the only country in Europe to allow enlistment from age 16 – most countries worldwide now only allow adults from age 18 to join military forces, recognising that enlistment at younger ages is not appropriate in modern armed forces.… Read more

The British Army should stop recruiting 16-year-olds

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The army’s venerable tradition no longer makes financial sense, argue Rachel Taylor and David Gee

The ethical case for raising the armed forces’ recruitment age to 18 is well established, but less well known is an equally compelling practical reason for change: ever more 16 and 17-year-olds are opting to stay in school. At the same time, the dwindling number of minors that the army does manage to attract are becoming increasingly expensive to train and difficult to retain.

Most countries have realized that targeting 16-year-olds for recruitment is not an effective strategy for modern armed forces. Fewer than 20 other states in the world recruit at this age, none of them a major military power. The RAF and navy have effectively moved on. Of the 2,000 or so new recruits aged under 18 last year, more than four-fifths joined the army, particularly the infantry. The British Army is now the only institution doggedly committed to the youngest recruitment age in Europe.

When challenged on the ethics of enlisting recruits too young to play Call of Duty, the MoD has insisted that the army needs them to avoid manning shortfalls, but in fact the evidence points the other way. More than a third of the youngest recruits drop out of training; of the 1,820 minors who joined the army last year, only 1,167 would be expected to join the trained strength, given the elevated drop-out rate for the age group.… Read more

New Deal Needed on Military Visits to Scotland’s Schools

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The Scottish Government is being urged to investigate the way the armed forces operate in secondary schools and strike a “new deal” for children.

ForcesWatch – which scrutinises the military – and Quakers in Scotland, are today formally launching a petition at Holyrood calling for increased transparency and scrutiny of armed forces visits to schools.

The petition will be collecting signatures online from 16 February until 20 March 2016.

According to available data the military make a disproportionate number of visits to schools and colleges in Scotland, compared to England.

A 2014 ForcesWatch report highlighted how over four-fifths of state secondary schools were visited by the armed forces during a two year period. (1)

In some areas every school was visited, and some as many as 31 times over a two year period. About one third of the visits were explicitly about careers in the armed forces, while other visits will also have had a careers element.

ForcesWatch coordinator, Emma Sangster, said: “A new deal is badly needed on this issue as the number of visits that the armed forces make to schools has risen significantly over the past ten to twelve years.

“As our petition states there is ‘a lack of clarity regarding the nature of armed forces visits and who is responsible for overseeing them’.… Read more

After ‘cannon fodder’ outcry … Holyrood urged to investigate military visits to schools

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MSPs are being urged to hold an inquiry into the presence of the armed forces in Scotland’s schools after an outcry over plans to set up cadet units aimed at the poorest pupils.

Peace campaigners will this week lodge a public petition at Holyrood calling for a probe into the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force visiting schools with an eye to recruitment.

The move follows a Sunday Herald front page report last weekend in which Tory plans to create military cadet units in state schools in Scotland’s most deprived areas were attacked by a senior SNP source as an attempt to recruit vulnerable children as British Army ‘cannon fodder’.

Research suggests Scottish schools receive a disproportionately high level of military visits compared to other parts of the UK, yet only a third are overtly about careers, with the rest ostensibly related to education, team building and physical fitness.

The petitioners – the ForcesWatch group, which monitors military recruitment; and Quakers in Scotland – fear creeping militarism in schools is promoting the forces to children who have little understanding of the potential risks and consequences of signing up.

The Welsh Assembly last year held a similar inquiry in response to a petition calling for an outright ban of armed forces visits to schools.

… Read more

Holyrood should protect Scottish schools from creep of cadets

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ForcesWatch is calling on the Scottish government to resist attempts to introduce Cadet units into the country’s state secondary schools.

Cadets traditionally play no part in Scottish state schools but the Westminster government is planning to spend £50m on a Cadet Expansion Programme (CEP) to increase the number of units in the UK from 355 to 500 by the end of the decade – with ‘less affluent’ areas being prioritised.

Despite education being a devolved matter the Ministry of Defence has formally asked the Scottish government for help making up the numbers of school based cadets forces (1).

Scotland’s biggest teaching union, the EIS, has opposed the move, saying there would be a “fair degree of concern among the teaching profession.”

ForcesWatch coordinator, Emma Sangster said:

“Cadet forces in schools are being presented as an opportunity to gain ‘key life skills’ but this masks the well-documented fact that the military regards them as an important tool for recruiting into the armed forces (2).

“It’s interesting to note that it was Julian Brazier – the Minister responsible for military recruitment – who made the approach to Holyrood.

“Joining the military is not something to do lightly and schools should not be involved in, nor influence, young people in making such a life-changing decision.… Read more

Children have no place in the British army

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Mark Bostridge writes: Britain is the only country in Europe to recruit 16-year-olds into its armed forces. The cynical targeting of underprivileged youngsters must end

On the evening of 22 December 1915, a young British subaltern called Roland Leighton was mortally wounded as he went out ahead of his platoon to inspect the barbed wire in front of trenches at Hébuterne on the Western Front.

It was a moonlit night, with Germans only 100 yards away, and Leighton had no sooner reached the gap in the hedge on the concealed path leading to No Man’s Land than he was shot in the stomach by a sniper. He was given a huge dose of morphine and taken to the village of Louvencourt, 10 miles away, where he was operated on the next morning. His chances of survival were slim, and at 11pm he died peacefully. He was 20 years old.

A century on, Leighton is still remembered as the glittering public-school hero of Testament of Youth, the memoir written by the woman he might have married had he survived the war, Vera Brittain. In the book’s recent feature film adaptation, Leighton was portrayed by Kit Harington of Game of Thrones fame.… Read more

Army urged to stop using armed teenagers to guard barracks

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ForcesWatch report calls on UK military to stop recruiting minors altogether, as armed forces bill due for third reading

Britain’s military should stop using armed under-18s to guard soldiers’ barracks, a report into Ministry of Defence recruitment practices is set to say.

The release of the report later on Wednesday by the pressure group ForcesWatch, timed to coincide with the third reading of the armed forces bill in the House of Commons, calls on the UK to stop recruiting juveniles to the military altogether.

Britain is the only country in Europe, Nato and the UN permanent security council to recruit adolescents and is one of around 20 countries globally, including Iran and North Korea, that use under-18s in the military.

A group of Plaid Cymru and Green MPs have tabled a parliamentary amendment to the armed forces bill to raise the recruitment age to 18 but it is not expected to attract wide enough support to pass into law.

The MoD has not been able to deploy minors into combat since 2003, although a ministerial letter from earlier this year stated that seven 17-year-olds were mistakenly sent to war zones between 2007 and 2010 as part of active operations; four to Iraq and three to Afghanistan.… Read more

New report shows that important duty of care recommendations have not been implemented by the armed forces

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ForcesWatch calls for age of recruitment to rise to eighteen

Ahead of the House of Commons debate on the Armed Forces Bill on Wednesday 16 December, ForcesWatch has published a new report calling for a change in the law ending military recruitment under 18 years of age.

This report, highlights seven recommendations from the Defence Committee’s report Duty of Care: Third Report of Session 2004-05 which, ten years on, have not been partially or fully implemented, and around which substantial concerns about the welfare of young recruits remain.

An amendment to ensure that only those above 18 years of age are able to enlist in the armed forces will be debated in the House.

Britain is the only country in Europe and sole permanent member of the UN Security Council which enlists 16 and 17 years old into its armed forces.

This policy has been called into question by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and many other respected bodies, including Children’s Commissioners. A number of other bodies, including the Defence Committee have called for the policy to be reviewed.

The welfare of young recruits became a significant matter of concern for MPs after the deaths of four young soldiers at the military training barracks at Deepcut in Surrey.… Read more