Addressing the Club on Wednesday 10th February was General Sir Nicholas Carter, Chief of the General Staff. Cardiff Business Club was granted a special interview with our speaker ahead of his Club address. Here is a transcript of that interview.

1. On 10th
February Cardiff Business Club was granted a pre-
event interview with General Sir Nick Carter, Chief of the
General Staff. Here is a transcript of that interview.
Interview conducted by Paul MacKenzie-Cummins [CBC]
Responses from General Sir Nick Carter [CGS]
CBC: You faced significant and public criticism from US Colonel Harry Tunnell over
what he termed a “risk averse” strategy, which he argued put British service
personnel lives at risk. When faced with such an attack on your judgement and
reputation, what do you do to overcome it?
CGS: The important thing is to not give such criticism the credit it might otherwise
attract – treat it with the content it deserves.
The fact that I received a DSO and the fact that I took significant risks – even as a
Major General – on the battlefield gives me the reassurance that, frankly, I was doing
the right thing.
If you turn it into a story it will become a story and the fact of the matter is that if you
go back to Kandahar now, which I did last week, you’ll discover that they are worried
about their economy not about their security.
You will also discover that they out the red carpet out, and there is a reason for that.
You reassure yourself that people may criticise you but at the end of the day victory
has to be judged in the results, as Winston Churchill put it in 1897. So the important
thing is to just put it behind you and march forwards – if you are going to do these
sorts of jobs then you need to have a thick skin from time to time.
CBC: You have talked openly about wanting to “maximise talent” in the Army,
through greater diversity and inclusivity. What exactly di you mean by this and how
do you see this being achieved?
CGS: It’s a multi-faceted challenge. What I am trying to do is to acknowledge that
unless the Army broadens its recruiting base, so that it draws fro the whole of British

2. society, then it’s not going to be able to deal with the sorts of challenges and
perplexities that are going to come up in the future.
What I mean by that is there needs to be an absolute understanding that the
demography of our country has changed. The traditional recruiting grounds which
were white Caucasian aged between 16-25 have diminished by 20-25% in the last 10
years – and they are getting smaller.
It is also about women. It’s not good enough that we don’t draw talent from 51% of
the population in the numbers that we should do. Ultimately, it’s about maximising all
of that opportunity. But that means that we also have to change our culture, because
we have to be an inclusive organisation.
What I cannot tolerate as unacceptable behaviour that turns us into an organisation
that doesn’t value everybody. That’s why leadership is important and it is why we talk
about a multi-faceted approach.
It needs to be acknowledged that Deepcut was 20 years ago and the case of Private
Williams in 2006 - a lot has happened since then. Things have changed but you can
never afford to drop your guard. The expectations of the generation that we want to
join the Army are different and we need to respond to that, and be ahead of it.
That means being really clear about making the Army a very inclusive organisation
that values everybody. I want my people to have the chance to go out and have
attachments with organisations on the outside so that they can come back in –
adjusted to be able to deal with the outside world.
That requires us to take a more wholesome approach to the way in which we
manage our people and the way in which we give them a career structure that gives
them the opportunity to just that.
As CGS you need to be concerned with today’s conflict, but you are responsible for
this historic institution being positioned in the right place two or three CGS’s
downstream. It’s a super tanker and if I don’t make the call now to make sure that
we’ve got the right talent in 10 years time, I shall have left my successor’s successor
in a really bad place. That’s why it is really important to look over the horizon.
CBC: In a recent interview with The Telegraph you argued that legal claims made
against the military could effectively undermine Britain’s ability to fight future wars. In
what way do you mean?
CGS: It is really important that our soldiers are properly held to account, based upon
our values and standards so that we are able to retain the moral high ground when
we go on combat operations.
But equally it is important that we provide a legal framework in which they don’t feel
unfairly threatened. What we want them to do, and what they are extremely good at

3. doing, is seizing fleeting opportunities on the battlefield and taking risks to be able to
do just that. If we create an environment in which that can’t happen then we will be
the worse off for it.
CBC: Henry Worsely was a close friend of yours and we were sad to hear of his
passing recently. You have described him as having the core values that underpin
today’s Army. Do you feel that the Army is truly understood among the general public
and do you think that it needs role models à la the corporate sector?
The paradox we have right now is that the Army has never been more popular, we
recently polled a 90% approval rating – 91% in Wales. But equally we have never
been less well understood.
I believe this is because there is a lot of sympathy but not much empathy – partly
because not many people have served, but also because many people see us
through the prism of Ross Kemp and Afghanistan and they don’t necessarily
understand that the task of the Army is much broader than that. We have to spread
the word and convey that understanding so that you can create the environment in
which people want to join an organisation like the Army.