Libya Training Report

Friday 9th January 2015 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Michael Fallon)]

On 11 June 2014, my predecessor informed the House, Official Report, column 49WS, that the UK had started training personnel from the Libyan General Purpose Force at Bassingbourn Camp as part of an international commitment with other G8 nations. I updated the House on 4 November 2014, Official Report, column 44WS, and confirmed that, in agreement with the Libyan Government, the training completion date was being brought forward and the recruits would return to Libya.

On 5 November 2014, the Prime Minister announced that, in response to allegations linking some of the Libyans undergoing training at Bassingbourn, he had asked for a report into the training programme by Christmas. I have today placed a copy of the report’s conclusions and recommendations in the Library of the House.

We accept all of the report’s conclusions and recommendations. The report highlights some of the significant challenges we faced delivering this training programme, and also highlights a number of areas in which my Department could have done better: we are looking at these very carefully.

The report raises the issue of communication with the local community. I regret the fact that my Department did not communicate effectively with the local MP and local authorities and community over the change to the walk out policy for the recruits. I have asked officials to implement the lessons we have learned from this so that we can apply them in future, while noting that no future GPF training will take place at Bassingbourn Camp.

The report also highlights the issue of maintaining discipline among the recruits. While it is clear that the breakdown in the political situation in Libya played a large role in the problems we encountered, there are things we could have done better. In particular, the report recommends that in future we consider “pre-training” the command element of any future cohort and carrying out basic training for the rest of the recruits in their own country, and I have instructed officials to take this forward, in the event we were to run further such training in the UK again.

Finally on discipline, the report asks whether, in the future, we could apply UK service discipline to training foreign troops in the UK: I have tasked officials to investigate this.

I also would like to commend the performance of the trainers from 3 SCOTS themselves who, despite the severe challenges they encountered, were able to deliver the training objectives for the majority of the trainees who remained in the programme until the end.

Finally, I would like to repeat that it is regrettable that there were disciplinary issues and how grateful we were for the support the Ministry of Defence received from the local community, the Cambridgeshire Constabulary and other Government Departments throughout the training programme.

[HCWS181]