The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
and be
treated like soldiers (including security)”. Enhancing the
military
environment
was “essential” for soldiers’ physical and psychological
recovery.
•
It was
iniquitous that soldiers being treated at the RCDM Selly Oak lost
their
entitlement
to the Operational Welfare Package (OWP) and some
other
allowances.
The OWP would provide much of the support (including TVs,
DVDs
and
telephone calls) that were currently being provided from “assorted
non-
public
funds” or paid for by the soldiers themselves.
65.
Lt Gen Viggers
identified a number of immediate actions, including:
•
informing
wounded personnel what the MOD was planning to do to create
a
military
environment;
•
starting to
create that military environment, by putting soldiers together in
one
area of a
ward; and
•
extending
the OWP to patients.
66.
On 23 August,
General Sir Timothy Granville-Chapman, Vice Chief of
Defence
Staff
(VCDS), reported that Mr Browne had given him a “very thorough
de-brief” on his
15 August
visit to RCDM Selly Oak.36
Key points
included:
•
Mr Browne
was “very seized” with the need for injured personnel to recover in
a
military
environment, and was clear that a “military ward solution” was
needed.
•
Mr Browne
was “very much behind” Lt Gen Viggers’ recommendation that
the
OWP should
be extended to injured personnel.
67.
The following
week, the MOD’s Service Personnel Board (SPB) considered
a
package of
financial and non-financial measures which aimed to replicate the
effects of
the OWP for
in-patients, whether at the RCDM or elsewhere.37
The SPB was
advised
that,
although the package was “work in progress”, Gen Granville-Chapman
was clear
that the
proposal “cannot bear the delay inherent in the usual staff
circulations”.
68.
The package,
which included the payment of Incidental Expenses to
in-patients
and an
extension to the Dangerously Ill Forwarding of Relatives (DILFOR)
scheme, was
agreed and
implemented by the end of September.38
69.
The extension
of the DILFOR scheme provided for two close family
members
to visit
the permanent residence of a hospitalised Service person, so that
they could
support the
family members there. The DILFOR scheme was extended again in
2008
36
Minute VCDS
to DCDS(Pers), 23 August 2006, ‘SoS Visit to Headley Court and
RCDM’.
37
Paper MOD,
31 August 2006, ‘Welfare Support for Service
In-Patients’.
38
Minute
Randall to Fleet-NLM DACOS PPA, 27 September 2006, ‘Extension of
DILFOR Travel
Arrangements
to the Families of Service Personnel who are Hospitalized’; Minute
Randall to Fleet-NLM
DACOS PPA,
27 September 2006, ‘Payment of Incidental Expenses to Service
Personnel who are
Hospitalized’.
50