Compendium of Standards, Good Practices and Recommendations Box 7.6: Military unions and associations in the United Kingdom263 In the United Kingdom, service personnel are permitted to join military associations representing their collective interests. The state does not recognize any such association, in order not to “advantage or disadvantage any association”. The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence has established the Armed Forces Continuous Attitude Survey (AFCAS) and the Reserves Continuous Attitude Survey (ResCAS) to gather information on the views and experiences of regular and reserve Armed Forces personnel. The information from these surveys helps shape and evaluate policies for training, support and the terms and conditions of service. For more information on AFCAS, see Box 19.8 in Chapter 19. The Armed Forces Pay Review Body (AFPRB) is an independent body charged with providing annual recommendations to the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Defence on pay for Armed Forces’ personnel. It visits a wide range of military establishments in the United Kingdom and overseas each year, during which it holds meetings with groups of service personnel of all ranks and their spouses/partners, to inform its understanding of key issues affecting service personnel and defence. A separate body, the Senior Salaries Pay Review Body, fulfils a similar role that includes making recommendations on the pay of senior military officers. The chain-of-command approach has the disadvantage, however, of merging the distinct interests of the military as a whole and of individual members. Separate treatment and representation of these viewpoints may make for clearer and more structured decisionmaking. Moreover, the absence of direct representation of the interests of service personnel may lead to their indirect representation, including by groups representing veterans, retired members of the services or the families of active service personnel. In some states, these groups are little more than an unofficial method of representing the interests of serving members of the armed forces, and have a large (undeclared) membership. Alternatively, cultural groups that service personnel are permitted to participate in may assume the role prohibited to military associations. Vicarious or indirect representation of these kinds may, to some extent, fill the vacuum of direct representation, but they do so as a second-best option. The second approach is to provide non-autonomous arrangements. Here, the state provides the legal machinery for representing the interests of armed forces personnel, such as in bargaining over pay or negotiating changes to conditions of service. These arrangements may be formalized by a legal requirement that they be used before making any changes to service conditions or pay, for example. Such an arrangement existed in France, where the General Statute of the Military of 2005 prohibited members of the Armed Forces from joining professional associations. Instead, the Higher Military Council (Conseil Supérieur de la 263 United Kingdom response to the ODIHR-DCAF 2018 questionnaire, qus. 16 and 17. 119