My Lords, legally everyone has a commanding officer; someone somewhere is the commanding officer. The Minister said that commanding officers are given training. I agree that they are given a significant amount of training and that they have a significant amount of experience. The problem is that the powers of a commanding officer can be delegated to someone who has not had that training. Their commanding officer might be only a major and might be deployed to a desert island. That has happened to me. When I deployed on Operation TELIC, my commanding officer was the commanding officer of 1 UK Armoured Division and Signal Regiment.
I never met him; I did not know him from Adam. I would suggest that many soldiers do not know their commanding officers from Adam because they normally deal with their officer commanding.
The Committee needs to understand the difficulties faced by a junior serviceman. In these situations they are often making a complaint about someone who is their immediate superior, and perhaps even in their chain of command. They might rustle up the courage to make a complaint, but when they find themselves being interviewed by the company sergeant major, who they might in any case have an issue with for other reasons, they may quickly withdraw the allegation even though it is well founded. I have to say that I am not absolutely convinced by the Minister’s response and we shall need to return to this issue at a later stage.