Ben Jukes

SECRETARY OF STATE

oi MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
oie FLOOR 5, ZONE D, MAIN BUILDING
WHITEHALL LONDON SW1A 2HB
Ministry Telephone: 020 721 82111/2/3
of Defence Fax: 020 721 87140

E-mail: defencesecretary-group @mod.uk

Msn 4[2]2Iy 30 September 2017

Dear Mr Stanage,

Thank you for your letter dated 24 July 2017 which enclosed a Regulation 28:
Prevention of Future Deaths report following the death of Captain Ben Jukes in
December 2016.

| hope the attached information allays your concerns regarding the Army's
Compulsory Drugs Testing (CDT) policies.

The Values and Standards expected of individuals serving in the British Army and
Armed Forces as a whole are quite unequivocal in that drug misuse is not only
illegal; it poses a significant threat to operational effectiveness. The Armed Forces
are clear that drug misusers are a liability to themselves and to the wider Service
community and will not be tolerated,

Dine a fh
Mt oF at

THE RT HON SIR MICHAEL FALLON KCB

CORONER’S CONCERNS

1. “Whatever drug-testing regime may have been operated by the army during the five
year period failed to detect Captain Jukes’ regular use of heroin and cocaine. More
regular testing by the army in that period would have increased the likelihood of
detection.

2. Captain Jukes’ supply of heroin to homeless drug users in Manchester City centre
exacerbated an already high risk of death among that group. More regular testing by
the army in that period would have increased the likelihood of detection.

3. It appears that on at least one occasion (as set out above) Captain Jukes was
forewarned of a drug test.

4. Thus forewarned, Captain Jukes was easily able to evade the drug test which would
as near certainty have exposed him as a user of heroin and cocaine.

5. Unless drug testing is random and unannounced it will fail to detect illicit drug use
among servicemen and women. Failure to detect illicit drug use increases the
likelihood of further deaths as a result of the same”.

Captain Jukes — background

Capt Jukes was assigned to ISS Corsham on 5 September 2016 where he was initially employed
as SO3 Army in the Customer Services area of the Service Operations Directorate. At the time of
his death Capt Jukes was detached to a specialist project team, the Non Standard Service
Requests (NSSR) team, within ISS Corsham.

On 8 December 2016 Capt Jukes was found dead in his permanent home address, a flat in
Manchester, by his girlfriend. Capt Jukes was a weekly commuter to Corsham and lived in the
Corsham Mess during the week. At the time of his death Capt Jukes was employed as an !T
project manager in the NSSR team working on a number of small, complex projects which involved
the managing of requests that had gone to single Managed Service Providers (e.g. Atlas, Fujitsu
etc). The detachment to the NSSR team followed Capt Jukes’ application to Notice To Terminate /
Premature Voluntary Release and was agreed with his resettlement plan / successful transition
from the Service to Civilian life in mind and seen as assisting with an aspiration he had already
expressed to go into project management on leaving the Service. The detachment had had a
tangible effect for the team and had proved to be extremely useful for the understanding of,
visibility of, chasing down of single tower NSSRs, benefiting both the NSSR team (ISSR) and more
importantly the customer. It was proving to be an excellent detachment for both Capt Jukes and
the NSSR team.

Unfortunately, it is now known that Capt Jukes was a regular drug user who had successfully
managed to conceal his drug taking from the Army during his short service career. At what point
his habit began is unclear, but it is known that some civilian friends and family members had been
aware of his drug taking for some years prior to his death. From the Army’s investigations, there is
no known evidence of his misuse of drugs impacting upon his work, nor were there any indications
to his work colleagues, his military friends or to the chain of command that he was misusing drugs.

Army Drugs Misuse Strategy

The Values and Standards expected of individuals serving in the British Army are quite
unequivocal in that drug misuse is not only illegal; it poses a significant threat to operational
effectiveness. The Army is quite clear that drug misusers are a liability to themselves and to the
wider Service community: their judgement is impaired; their health damaged; and their

performance degraded. In short they can be neither trusted nor relied upon. The Army’s policy for
those who commit a drug offence is based on dismissal.

The Army's drug misuse strategy was revised in November 2016. It is based on three pillars:
prevention through education, deterrence through testing, and regulation. Education begins from
initial entry into military service, whether it be as an officer or a soldier. It is made quite clear
through education to all Service Personnel that the misuse of controlled drugs is incompatible with
military service. It is also made clear during this education that Service Personnel have a personal
responsibility to adhere to these values and standards

Compulsory Drugs Testing

Compulsory Drugs Testing (CDT) delivers the deterrence strand of the Army’s drugs misuse
strategy. The Army’s annual target for CDT testing is 87,500 tests and, in 2016, over 93,000 tests
were conducted. Given the Army’s strength of circa 82,000, this allows sufficient testing to enable
ail members of the Army to be tested annually. Indeed, the Army’s drug misuse strategy directs
that all Regular and Reserve units be tested annually. It is, however, acknowledged that this does
not guarantee that all personnel will be tested annually as an individual may be detached from their
unit at the time it is visited for testing or, as with Capt Jukes in 2016, may be posted from one unit
to another mid-year and may miss the testing at both units.

It is further acknowledged that CDT can only act as a deterrent — it cannot detect misuse at a time
after the traces of misuse have left the body and are no longer detectable. It is therefore
impracticable for the Army to test each soldier and officer frequently enough to ensure that all
drugs misuse is always detected. Nonetheless, the combined effect of education and deterrence
are assessed to have effect. The 2015/16 Crime Survey of England and Wales reports drug
misuse across society to be at 8.4% or 1 in 12. While any misuse in the Army is unacceptable and
strenuous efforts to reduce it continue, the level of misuse in the Army is reported at 0.7 — 0.9%.

In relation to Capt Jukes, he was tested as a result of random CDT visits to his unit on more than
one occasion in 2015 and was tested most recently in September 2015. On each occasion, his
tests produced a negative result.

Conduct of a Test

CDT visits are scheduled by the CDT team with unit notification usually made with as little as 24
hours’ notice. This period of notice will only be varied in exceptional circumstances, such as when
security clearances for Northern Ireland are required or where there is a specific intelligence led
need.

The initial notification of the visit will be made through the Adjutant, who is expected to notify the
Commanding Officer. Prior notification is necessary to enable this core element of the unit
command structure to plan the support required from the unit to facilitate the testing and to make
contingencies for the disruption of unit activity that will occur as a result of testing. It will also
enable the Adjutant to make an assessment of the number of personnel expected to be in barracks
and thus available for testing at the time of the scheduled CDT visit. In doing so, the Commanding
Officer and his immediate team will manage the information with the utmost discretion to avoid pre-
warning anyone not required to know in advance. In future, the need for absolute discretion will be
reiterated to units as part of their initial notification.

On the day, at the point at which the CDT is declared, individuals are paraded within the unit and
are randomly selected for testing by the CDT officer using a nominal roll provided by the unit. How
many are selected will depend on the CDT team’s plan for the particular visit. On some visits, the
CDT team will seek to test the whole unit. On others, the team may seek to test only a proportion
of the unit (eg 50 or 100 personnel). In the latter case, some and possibly a considerable number
of unit personnel will not be tested during a CDT visit. However, this flexibility allows the CDT team

to maximise the deterrent effect of testing by balancing how many they test in each visit with how
often they visit.

Relevant to Capt Jukes’ case, the Armed Forces Act 2006 places a number of restrictions on CDT

collections. Of these, one relates to the testing of an individual under medical care. Specifically, an

individual in the Medical Centre as a patient cannot be tested without the express permission of the
attending medical practitioner and the CDT officer cannot ask the individual to provide a sample for
testing.

Following the evidence iim! an investigation has been undertaken to identify how
Capt Jukes gained advance notice of a CDT. No corroborating evidence has been found that he
was forewarned and thus how this might have occurred. Nonetheless, the evidence provided
describes him receiving prior notice. This should not have happened given the protocols in place.
He was not a member of the Commanding Officer’s immediate command team and would not have
been informed as part of the prior notification or pre-planning conducted by the unit. As indicated
above, in future, the need for absolute discretion will be reiterated to units as part of their initial
notification.

Finally, the Armed Forces Act does not limit the number of CDT visits that can be made to a unit
for testing each year. Nor is there a constraint on how soon after a visit, a return visit can occur -
indeed it is not uncommon for the same unit to be visited on consecutive days. Every effort is
therefore taken to make testing unexpected and to maximise the deterrent effect arising from it. As
such, every effort is taken to minimise the chance that a test can be either predicted or, once
declared and an individual is then selected for testing, that it can be avoided.