Private Eye 1236-27

DEEPCUT INQUIRY
Secret Army
THE Army Board of Inquiry conducted two years ago into the deaths of Geoff Gray and James Collinson, two of the four young recruits who died of gunshot wounds at the Deepcut barracks, is at last ready to report. Armed forces minister Bob Ainsworth is due to make a statement in the Commons on Thursday.

The reports should have been published by Christmas 2007. But after a draft was circulated among the higher reaches of the army and the Ministry of Defence, there was an extraordinary delay. Eventually the board reconvened to allow Colonel Ron Laden, who took over command at Deepcut a few months before Geoff Gray's death, to comment upon it and make changes (see Eye 1225).

Eighteen months later and eight years after the deaths, the two families will finally get to read the reports. But they hold little hope of gaining any new insight into what happened to the youngsters in the army's care at the Surrey barracks: how 17-year-old Geoff Gray ended up with two gunshot wounds to the head, one above each eye, while on guard patrol in 2001; and how, six months later, James Collinson, also 17, died from a single shot.

Police and army investigations into their deaths, and into the earlier deaths of Cheryl James, 18, and 20-year-old Sean Benton, were a travesty. The most basic forensic procedures were ignored and crucial evidence lost.

In the case of Geoff Gray, for example, no fingerprints were ever taken from the weapon found near his body to show whether it was his or whether he had fired it; no bullets were recovered to verify if indeed the weapon found was the one that had been fired; and no explanation has been provided as to why the weapons log - which would have shown which soldier was allocated which gun on the night in question - was removed and shredded, or who removed it. Ballistics experts who gave evidence to the board into Geoff's and James's deaths were unable to say whether they were the result of suicide or murder.

Inquests returned open verdicts and the "Deepcut Review" conducted by Nicholas Blake QC in 2006, which was conducted in private and simply reviewed all the material gathered in the flawed police and army investigations and reviews, only served to raise more questions about the deaths in the eyes of the families - although Blake himself performed some wonderful leaps of logic to conclude that the deaths were, "on the balance of probabilities", suicides.

He did, however, conclude that the deaths took place in a training establishment that was out of control. Deepcut, with its culture of bullying and neglect, left raw young recruits vulnerable to both sexual predators and tormentors. It was understaffed and underfunded, sexual activity was rampant, hard drinking commonplace, and bullying and arbitrary punishment by sadistic NCOs went unchallenged.

Blake explained at length the litany of failures over the years at Deepcut that left the young recruits vulnerable, but he found no one to blame - not the ministers who pushed through changes and drastic spending cuts; nor the army chiefs in charge of training and recruitment; nor those at the barracks under whose watch things had run riot; nor those who failed to act on repeated reports and warnings.

In a special report, the Eye took apart the Blake review, highlighted a number of serious shortcomings and concluded that Blake singularly failed to get to the source of the stink that surrounds Deepcut and the deaths; that there was a negligent failure to address glaring problems at the base that lasted for years.

No one has been held accountable for the appalling treatment of young volunteers who sign up to serve their country, or for the failure to investigate properly the deaths of four young people. Indeed, the bulk of the evidence gathered over the years to this day remains secret. The inquiry reports are unlikely to change that, but they may yet provide further material in the families' fight for a proper public inquiry.
 

ARMY RECRUITMENT

CRAPITA NEEDS YOU!
ONCE the preserve of senior NCOs on the brink of retirement, the business of army recruitment is to be "outsourced" to a series of private civilian companies.

There's an "industry day" being held later this month and the army is confident of attracting expert bids from the likes of Serco, Manpower and, er, Crapita, all keen to outbid each other for the £lOOm contract. The fact that none of these companies knows anything about the British military does not seem to have worried the Ministry of Defence.

As any recruiting officer will tell you, many potential soldiers sign up because they can discuss what army life is like with an Old Salt who has been "in" and who knows the ropes. Of course they embellish their accounts with promises of weekends canoeing in Snowdonia and frolicking with their mates on R&R in Cyprus with a bevy of lovelies, but they also tell it like it is: the rainy days at Catterick, the horror bags, vile packed lunches comprised of frozen sandwiches, and the bulling of boots.

When recruitment was privati sed in Scotland,

in 200 I, recruits got a far rosier picture delivered to them by civvies who had absolutely no idea what service life was like. Recruitment figures increased, but for every 100 hopefuls who made it on to the parade square, 70 decided army life was not for them and never made it past phase I basic training.

The RAF regiment sergeant who, while watching a new batch of chavs shuffling past him at RAF Halton, announced: "See that? That's the fecking future! How I weep!" is in good company. The "hard sell" techniques used by civilian recruitment consultants do not produce good results.

But that won't bother the private recruitment companies, who know that even if they are unsuccessful they will still receive the cash owed to them by their legally binding contract with the MoD. And, as with other defence procurement contracts, any cost overruns will have to be picked up by the customer, the cashhstrapped British army.

'Squarebasher'

NHS pIc

ISTCs: A

C •. yiDg shaaa
ANOTHER crumbling New Lat-r initiative, independent sector tremwtM centres (lSTCs) for NHS operatiom. IIMIIeeI exposed as a shambolic waste of ~

ISTCs were supposed to provide low-a.-s: operations to an overstretched NHS. BllII: dlro m..ce long been suspected of creaming off the ~ lucrative ones under favourable contrllCl3 •.•• providing the quality to be found in the ~lIS.

A 2006 parliamentary report questiorled DcIr value for money and asked the Natiooa! ADdiiI:

Office to look into it. Several billions of paIIIIit ;X public money were at stake, but the audit !oio .• oddly shied away from the subject I.!espiIr àreportedly expressing some concern O\<:T lk ISTCs' performance and £IOOm+ procumIIlCIE costs 18 months ago.

Now academics Allyson •

Pollock (pictured) and Graham Kirkwood at Edinburgh University .

have obtained the contract for one .

ISTC under Scottish freedom of information laws (contracts in England remain confidential).

This shows that the NHS in Tayside paid 3IIl1SR:: run by Amicus Healthcare - a joint vemure cC private equity frrmApax and SouthAfrica's Netcare - for 90 percent of referrals even tiDIII!Ii: the centre only performed 32 percent ofthea. i'"k academics estimate that Tayside's overpa~~ could be dwarfed by those across England. ~ the NHS could have been stung by up to £9T" • ..operations not performed.

The £5bn ISTC programme was pusbed •••• by the Department of Health's commercial directorate, set up in 2003 by the then healIh secretary Alan Milburn, now earning £3Ok a ,.e:a from the private equity firm Bridgepoint that_ ISTCs through Alliance Medical. The <lirectcmIr was run by American Ken Anderson (since decamped to Swiss bank UBS's private healIh investments) and was exposed by the Eye two)e:85 ago as home to 220 consultants on an average £:!3lIIt a year, much channeled through tax-efficient senil::r companies. It has since been quietly disbanded without ever having faced the scrutiny it wartailied.

EFFICIENCY SAVINGS

p •. ize chuDlp
HEALTH minister Lord Darzi is dangling a financial carrot to encourage NHS staff to help the government find efficiencies and savings of £lSbn over the next three years. Rewards of up to £Sm each will go to those who most impress the panel of experts in Darzi's Den, which holds a total pot of £240m in prize money.

Darzi cites challenges such as combating the increasing burden of childhood obesity, or dementia in the elderly. But how about tackling the so-called "transaction costs" of healthcare. started by the introduction of an internal market b\. the Tories and accelerated by Labour's . privatisation agenda?

In the old NHS days, administrative costs were no more than 5 percent of its annual budget. By the mid-90s they accounted for 12 percent. With subsequent wholesale market-based measures sa:±. as payments by results, patient choice and self-governing foundation trusts, coupled with rlle costs of management consultants, private finaD.::::e initiatives, independent treatment centres ete. administrative costs have soared to 20 perren! eX the budget - about £20bn a year.

Reduce that and Darzi can make his sa'~ n one go. Or how about axing the most d~ computer project in British history, the :\1lS National Programme for IT - £12.7bn and ~.

Cheques please to Lord Gnome. -

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