Cadet Units in Schools

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, and thank him for obtaining this debate. I also congratulate him on his leadership of the CVQO, which I know is much appreciated.

I make no apologies for diverting slightly, but the noble Lord mentioned the youth justice system. Recently the Secretary of State for Justice announced that he wants to put education at the heart of the youth justice system. I therefore feel that there is a connection between the subject of this debate and what is wanted in the youth justice system. I will explain some of the things that have happened in the past which give me encouragement to speak like this. Before I do so, I join the salute to the noble Lord, Lord Astor, for all he has done, and say how welcome that letter was. I cannot believe that it resulted from anything other than a great deal of work on his behalf, so I thank him for that.

When I took over as Chief Inspector of Prisons in 1995, very soon afterwards the then Home Secretary told me that he wanted to impose what he called a “boot camp regime” based on what he had seen in America. He thought that the only place where he might find that was in the military prison at Colchester. I told him that that military prison was not a prison—it was the Military Corrective Training Centre and that it had two parts: one was a sort of resettlement prison, returning people to civilian life, and the other gave a second start to people who had made a bad start in their careers. They therefore did basic training again, which resulted in an 84% success rate. Indeed, the MCTC counts 11 regimental sergeant majors among its successes.

One of the very interesting facts about the population of the MCTC was that virtually none of the people who came through that programme had ever been in the cadets. Having been in a regiment which strongly supported the cadets and indeed welcomed people with cadet experience because they had had, as it were, a flying start to their regimental career, I was very interested in that. Therefore one of the things I hoped was that, as a result of the experience of sending young offenders to the MCTC—where they grew up amazingly and responded to military discipline in a way which was immediately recognised by their parents, quite apart from their instructors—perhaps a cadet force might be formed in a young offender institution. Indeed, one was started at Feltham. It has not taken off as well as it might, but I suspect that that is as much because of lack of encouragement rather than lack of opportunity.

Recently, there was the idea of setting up, for instance, a secure foundation, which is a local area responsibility in a one-hour radius by public transport for young offenders. Incidentally, all the local councils, in seeking what the place should do, all wished a cadet force to be part of the curriculum because of what it offered the young people. Therefore, my plea to the Minister is that he should contact his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice, commend to them that the military ethos in schools programme should be extended to young offender institutions, because it clearly works, and do all that he can to encourage this. You never know, out of the youth justice system we might rescue some people for the Armed Forces, quite apart from anything else, and nothing has a better track record of dealing with young people and building up their self-esteem than the cadet force.