Looks like the MoD needs to sort out its service vehicle policy and do so rather quickly. This event and a few significant others have caused confusion and consternation. There are many service personnel who, by the nature of their role and duties, are required to be on-call at all times (except on leave) and must only be driving service vehicles due to the equipment carried or their role. It was understood that COs had broad powers to determine who fell into such categories and that these vehicles would inevitably be used for domestic travel, including things like taking kids to school, in order to meet the out-of-hours response times.
A number of VSOs are also required to respond out-of-hours and are issued with a vehicle and sometimes a dedicated driver. Some even require CPOs at all times when traveling in their area, including any domestic journeys involving their family. There has also been a well-established practice of using MoD vehicles for carriage of civilians and family members (medical, compassionate, repatriation et al) but these too have fallen foul of contradictory policy. Apparently the least helpful document is an AGAI that effectively prohibits vehicles from any domestic use or carriage of civilians. Further confusion exists as the AGAI is, by its name, an army document under army control. Some in the MoD think the AGAI applies equally to all 3 services and MoD civil servants; the RAF and the RN are unclear but some of their documents also point at the AGAI. Of course, with the increasing number of joint establishments the level of confusion increases.
Whilst we might smile of the thought of a VSO being punished for carrying his spouse in his vehicle as a formal +1 to whatever dinner, royal event, baby kissing, grin-and-grip et al, it is having an effect on the lowest ranks and their families - often at the worst of times. I have come across recent examples where family members have been kicked-out of service ambulances, or left abandoned during a repatriation of wounded, injured or sick. The army even directed that family members could not travel on service MT even when participating on a families course for the most seriously injured service personnel as part of their rolling-recovery programme. In that particular case a service charity had to step in and hire vehicles to move families around as a group.
Any remaining command flexibility in MT rules will have evaporated with this public sacking. The tension between the desire to reduce service family accommodation and encourage personnel to live out whilst maintaining an ever-increasing 'informal' out-of-hours commitments may have turned into a loud 'snap'. Moreover, even simple gestures of sending the CO's car to pick-up an injured serviceman's wife will be lost under the crunch of bureaucracy. Those that require weapons, crypto, controlled drugs etc when out-of-hours will face one set of orders that say 'service vehicle only' with another one that effectively says that the issued service vehicle has to stay at work.
I left the Service recently but joined at a time where the majority lived on base, when families could use the medical centre, service youth clubs had MT support, families could fly on MoD aircraft as indulgence passengers and the CO could do whatever he liked with his car and driver unless he was on formal leave. Now just moving civilian passengers across the pan at Brize on an MT coach for their flight to the Falklands has become a prohibited use of MT that the current CO can no longer ignore.
As a final point, whilst we all like to throw stones at VSOs anyone on the MoD system can view their diaries and see how crushing their diaries are by day and by night. Some of these will be the same VSOs dragged-in when a civilian airliner enters UK airspace and causes a big thinks bubble, or when a counter-terrorism response is needed. A CO can be recalled to his ship or command at any time; deprive them of a vehicle or a driver then the 'any time' bit has to be removed too. No doubt the PM will be returning from her constituency home this weekend by driving her own car back to Downing Street...