Armed Forces Redundancies

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robathan]

I know that the right hon. Gentleman played a very honourable part in the last Government explaining to the then Prime Minister how he was trying to increase operational capacity without increasing spending, and I know that he pointed out to the last Prime Minister that there was not enough money for our operational requirements. On the Royal Air Force in particular, as the Prime Minister said in October, and as the Chief of the Air Staff has confirmed and explicitly stated in his article, we wish to see an uplift in real-terms defence spending from 2015. The Prime Minister has said that.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend outline the extent to which the rules on regular reserve liability will affect those being made redundant, and confirm that those who do have that liability will be kept close, up to date and informed, as they form a very valuable potential contingency in the event of a declining international situation?

[Mr Robathan]

I could not agree with my hon. Friend more. The regular reserve personnel do indeed play a very important role, and I will make sure that they are kept informed.

Armed Forces (Pensions and Benefits)

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Steve Rotheram]

I will answer that question personally rather than as a representative of my party. As I have said, I am not an expert on this issue. However, having spoken to some senior officers in my local Army garrison only last month, I believe that it will have a detrimental impact on recruitment and retention in the armed forces. It is also about the morale of our troops, and I will touch on that subject a little later.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this very important debate and I declare my interest as a service pensioner. He underscores the importance of pensions and is right to do so. Will he note that pensions were perhaps the first manifestation of the military covenant since the Romans granted a pension to people settled in Britain after about 20 years’ service, so they have a very long history?

[Steve Rotheram]

I will touch on the Government’s position on the military covenant and what was said in the House a few weeks ago a little later in my contribution.

Military employees accept that many of their personal life choices will be determined, and often restricted, by duty to the military. Premature death and injury are occupational hazards and have lifelong and life-changing consequences that impact on entire families. Typically, armed forces employees have shorter careers; they retire at an average age of 40, which is much earlier than their civilian counterparts. For obvious reasons, many military widows and widowers are younger than the non-military average and thus more likely to be left to raise children alone. Injured or disabled retirees are frequently unable to work on civvy street following their discharge. For veterans, the quality of post-service support—medical, remedial and professional—remains patchy to say the least. Show me any other civilian public servant subject to this particular package of terms and conditions, and I will buy into the Government’s logic.

There is another way in which armed forces pensions and benefits differ from other public sector pensions. Yes, they are occupational pensions, but, as the Forces Pension Society has pointed out, they are also essentially a form of compensation for the unavoidable early cessation of a career. It is important, therefore, to consider why people join the armed forces. Individual motivations vary, but they include a yearning for travel and adventure, a desire for a structured career, an eagerness to acquire skills in a particular field and a desire simply to serve our country. None the less, let us not forget that a disproportionate number of young military personnel—men in particular—come from disadvantaged backgrounds. As we know, significant numbers are drawn from the care system. Let us not pretend that they are in it for the money. High-ranking staff may eventually find themselves comfortably off, but the vast majority of military personnel merely eke out a bog-standard living. For that, they sacrifice a great deal, particularly in the way of family life. For that, they risk permanent injury or death in the course of their duties. The theory is that as a nation, we acknowledge and value that, and that we guarantee that forces’ employees and their families will be looked after in return. In that respect, joining the armed forces is an act of faith. To change the terms and conditions of service—to move the goal posts—is to undermine that faith.

All the evidence suggests that serving troops already feel betrayed, disillusioned and frustrated. In a Sunday newspaper a few weeks ago, a British soldier serving in Afghanistan said:

“The British Army has no voice at grass-roots level. We have no union. There will be no strikes. No riots. Certainly no fire extinguishers thrown off buildings. We are just an easy target”.

There is the rub. In recent months, we have seen students protest, public sector workers strike and various interest groups demonstrate and engage in direct action. I suspect, and I say this with no relish, that we will see more and more people take to the streets as the Government’s excessive austerity measures kick in. Military personnel cannot do that. In the absence of civilian workers’ rights, they are particularly vulnerable and impotent in the face of damaging policy changes and cuts. Small wonder that they feel so beleaguered.

In January, Vice-Admiral Sir Michael Moore said:

“I have never seen a government erode the morale of the Armed Forces so quickly”.

What a terrible and shameful indictment. The Tory-led coalition’s attitude towards the military is shaping up to be, at best, ambivalent and, at worst, perverse. Some would argue that blue-blooded conservatism has traditionally been a friend of the military. Sure enough, the Conservative election manifesto pledged to

“ensure that our armed forces, their families and veterans are properly taken care of.”

The commitment appears to have started and stopped with the rhetoric. The Prime Minister is never slow to spot a good PR opportunity and he is slick when it comes to lavishing praise on our troops. For all his new-found hawkish instincts, he and his slash-happy Government stooges seem hellbent on making military service as unattractive and insecure as possible. It is under-resourced, under-equipped and undervalued with little regard to meeting current and future military needs.

The defence budget has been slashed and major projects have been cancelled or abruptly abandoned, frequently at ridiculous cost to the taxpayer. Around 17,000 armed forces posts are to go over the next few years, 11,000 of which will go through redundancy. A range of other issues, including the unequal treatment of military widows, disadvantageous changes to income tax relief on pension contributions and the proposed cuts to educational allowances for armed forces families only compound matters by adding to the cumulative effect. Those changes all seem incredibly short-sighted and it is difficult to see how any of them will do anything other than damage recruitment and recruitment levels, which I have been told are already at crisis point.

It is equally difficult not to suspect that the pensions indexation switch is something more opportunistic and ideologically driven than a mere fiscal measure. There has been no suggestion on the part of the Government that they consider the current pension and benefit arrangements to be overly generous, so that leaves the deficit reduction agenda as the only possible explanation for the cuts. Let us examine that explanation, because the problem with it is that it does not explain or justify the decision to change the index link permanently. That decision will have long-term impacts that will be felt long after the economy has recovered.

By way of an aside, it was mentioned earlier that my colleagues and I are urging the Government to enshrine the military covenant in law, but we must not let that campaign blur our vision or distract from the specific issues that we are discussing today. Let us consider the dry and self-explanatory observation of the Forces Pension Society to the Armed Forces Bill Committee:

“We note the commonly aired reference to the Covenant but we do not see a coherent and comprehensive set of actions which would make the Covenant come alive; it avoids any mention of pensions.”

When all is said and done, the most powerful argument in favour of abandoning this callous indexation plan for the armed forces’ pensions and benefits is basic—it is a moral one. It is about doing the right thing by those who have done the right thing by us. In return for the immense courage, patriotism and self-sacrifice shown by UK armed service personnel and their dependants, we have an obligation to provide them with the highest levels of support and reward, during and after service. If that involves discriminating in their favour, so be it.

As I hope I have illustrated, to renege on the deal made when service personnel signed on the dotted line would be to betray an implicit trust. Those serving will feel let-down and bitter, and who can blame them? And potential recruits will think twice before giving so much for so little in return.

I purposely paint a bleak picture, but as yet none of these changes is a fait accompli. There is still time for the Government to see sense. My own party has a number of ideas about how the deficit reduction dilemma might be resolved without so brutally hurting armed forces’ employees. In our view, the ideal solution is entirely to decouple armed forces pension and benefit schemes from other such schemes in the public sector. However, we recognise that that is not a practicable or realistic option at the current time. The best way forward would be to make the indexation switch a temporary one that could be reversed in 2014-15, or at least once the Budget deficit has been pared down.

Others favour an alternative time limit measure, something along the lines of maintaining the current RPI link for the armed forces personnel or their widowed spouses until they turn 55, when the link would come into line with the rest of the public sector. Such measures, and variations on them, are all quite feasible but none of them is perfect, and they will not please all the people all the time. However, they represent carefully considered compromises, which the grown-up coalition Government profess to be big on, and they would go some way to alleviating the short to medium-term pain.

In addressing the Minister, I urge the Government to consider those measures carefully. I also remind the Government that this is a cross-cutting issue, which requires joined-up thinking. Defence, Treasury and Work and Pensions Ministers must all think again.

I have a final salutary point to make. Thomas Southerne was an Irish dramatist of the 17th century. In 1685, he served in the army of James II, which fought against the Monmouth rebellion. Southerne knew what it was to be a soldier. In later life, he reportedly said:

“Dost thou know the fate of soldiers? They are but ambition’s tools, to cut a way to her unlawful ends. And when they are worn, hacked, hewn with constant service, thrown aside, to rust in peace and rot in hospitals.”

I am sure that everyone will agree that the part about “unlawful ends” is open to debate, but some modern military adventures spring to mind on hearing that quote. Southerne’s bitter closing observations make uncomfortable reading. Do we want to entertain the notion that, 300 years on and at the dawn of the 21st century, we hold our armed forces in no better esteem?

[Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) on securing this important debate. As he mentioned, we have had a number of opportunities recently to debate these issues, including armed forces pensions and the military covenant. It is very important that we continue to debate them, because we have not yet received a satisfactory response from the Government Front-Bench team. Today we have a different Minister before us. Thus far, I have discussed these issues with the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan), who is the Minister with responsibility for veterans. I am hopeful that we might hear something from the Minister who is here today that pleases us.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton has already mentioned a quote from the Forces Pension Society, but it is one that merits repeating. The chairman of the society, Sir Michael Moore, recently said:

“I have never seen a Government erode the morale of the armed forces so quickly.”

That is quite a strong statement and the reasons for it stem from the wide-ranging promises made by the coalition partners to our service personnel, ahead of last year’s election and since coming into office. Their record of delivery has spectacularly failed to live up to their rhetoric.

In opposition, the Conservatives declared that the military covenant was “shattered” and they promised to rebuild it. Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats made clear pledges to our armed forces, such as improving service housing, setting minimum standards for family welfare and maximising rest and recuperation leave. In government, they have so far offered very little to address those issues. Indeed, it is worse than that, because the measures that we are seeing now will roll back the military covenant. Accommodation has been identified as an area in which to make savings; tours of duty will be reviewed and there has been no guarantee that they will not be lengthened; and the Government have confirmed that armed forces personnel will be cut by 11,000.

The Prime Minister could not have made a clearer pledge than the one that he made to sailors on the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal just last summer:

“Whether it’s the schools you send your children to, whether it’s the healthcare that you expect, whether it’s the fact there should be a decent military ward for anyone who gets injured...I want all these things refreshed and renewed and written down in a new military covenant that’s written into the law of the land.”

However, nine months later, the Government have failed to enshrine a military covenant in law, or at the very least propose doing so in the Armed Forces Bill, which is making its way through Parliament. Instead, they have already changed their policy, as outlined to all MPs in a recent letter from the Royal British Legion.

As far as the armed forces are concerned, the Government’s time in office has been marked by broken promises and empty rhetoric. However, it is more serious than that. The actions of the Government are undermining the unwritten contract between the nation and our services in honour of the brave work that they do. In the process, as Sir Michael Moore said, the Government

“erode the morale of the armed forces”.

There is no better example of that than the impact of the Government’s planned pensions changes on the armed forces. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton has outlined, the Government’s plans permanently to link public sector pension rises to CPI rather than to the usually higher measure of RPI will disproportionately affect members of the armed forces. I know that the Minister with responsibility for veterans does not accept that because he told me so in the Committee that considered the Armed Forces Bill, and I do not know whether the Minister for the Armed Forces will take a different approach today.

[Dr Murrison]

The hon. Lady puts forward an interesting case. Will she therefore commit any incoming Labour Government in 2015 to the measure that she appears to be articulating, namely, that the change will be temporary and, if so, how will that feature in the budget she intends to set? The armed forces will not be alone; others will say that they should be dealt with in a similar way.

[Gemma Doyle]

I think that the hon. Gentleman is aware that we proposed a much fairer, time-limited approach, and that would be a better way forward.

If the Minister will not listen to me, perhaps he will heed the concerns of the Forces Pension Society, which delivered a letter to No. 10 in December to explain to the Prime Minister the disproportionate impact of the pension changes on the armed forces. Many members of the armed forces leave the military by the time they are 40, or earlier perhaps, if they are injured, so their pensions start to pay out much earlier compared to those of other public sector workers, and the changes will result in their losing hundreds of thousands of pounds over their lifetimes. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton said, we are not talking about small amounts of money—these are very significant amounts. For example, a corporal who lost both legs in a bomb blast—a horrific and serious injury—would miss out on about £500,000 in pension and benefit-related payment, a figure that is very difficult to justify. War widows, who disproportionately rely on their pension schemes, will also lose out enormously. According to figures from the Forces Pension Society, a 34-year-old wife of a staff sergeant killed in Afghanistan would be almost £750,000 worse off. Again, that is very difficult to get one’s head around, and to justify.

There can be only two possible reasons for the changes. The Government might think that armed forces pensions are too generous, but I have not heard them saying that, so I can assume only that it must be about deficit reduction, which is indeed the argument that has been put forward. I am afraid, however, that that argument does not add up either because the impact of the change from RPI to CPI uprating will be felt long after the Government’s intention to pay down the deficit is achieved.

Support for UK Armed Forces and Veterans

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Donaldson]

I am open to being corrected on the statistics. Undoubtedly, a significant number of service personnel find themselves unable to cope, through mental illness as a result of trauma, and take their lives. The hon. Gentleman is right that the point is not about the numbers but about the need that must be addressed. We estimate that there are about 11,000 people with post-traumatic stress disorder in Northern Ireland as a result of the troubles, and the current system is incapable of coping with that. We are having major problems with former police officers feeling the impact of post-traumatic stress disorder several years later. It is important to ensure that they get support and are provided with the care they need—and the same goes for our armed forces personnel. I take the correction that the hon. Member for North Durham has offered. Perhaps I am guilty of repeating something that has been said wrongly in the past, but the point can still be made that significant numbers of people suffer from conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and mental illnesses that are directly linked to their service, and we need to prioritise that issue and ensure that those veterans are provided with the support they undoubtedly need.

That brings me to the military covenant. In the motion, we call on the Government to honour the commitments they have made publicly about the military covenant, and I seek the Secretary of State’s clarification on this point. Following the general election, the Prime Minister, on a visit to HMS Ark Royal, said:

“Whether it’s the schools you send your children to, whether it’s the healthcare that you expect, whether it’s the fact that there should be a decent military ward for anyone who gets injured. I want all these things refreshed and renewed and written down in a new military covenant that’s written into the law of the land.”

I know that there is some concern about what is meant by enshrining the military covenant in law. We welcome that commitment and I know that it is widely welcomed, particularly among the veteran community.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that what is actually important to the veteran community is what they get rather than having the military covenant written into law? Would he prefer to see a no-disadvantage model of the military covenant, in which veterans get the same level of service as the rest of the population, or a citizen-plus model of the sort that endures in the United States, under which people are given more to reflect their service? That is the important point that the veteran community would like discussed.

[Mr Donaldson]

I merely seek clarification of what is meant by enshrining this in law. Yesterday, in response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), the Prime Minister said:

“we are writing out the military covenant and properly referencing it in law.”—[Official Report, 2 March 2011; Vol. 524, c. 296.]

We are anxious to ascertain what is meant by “properly referencing” the military covenant in law and what the Prime Minister meant by “enshrining” it. I accept the point that the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire has made, but I draw his attention to a letter, which has been circulated to Members of Parliament, from the director general of the Royal British Legion to the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan), who is here. The letter expresses concern about what is meant by the commitment to enshrine the military covenant in law, so there are some in the veteran community, represented by the Royal British Legion, who want clarification. I seek that clarification this afternoon on behalf of my colleagues and I hope that the Secretary of State will shed some light on this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

I do welcome that announcement. As a commissioner of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, I think that it is very important that anybody who desecrates such monuments, whether or not they are Commonwealth War Graves Commission monuments, should be dealt with severely. The disgraceful scenes that we have seen of people desecrating war memorials are totally unacceptable and should be condemned.

[Dr Murrison]

In the “National Recognition of our Armed Forces” study, Lord Davies of Stamford, the former Member for Grantham and Stamford, stated that if those who wear the Queen’s uniform are insulted, that crime should be subject to special sentencing. Does the hon. Gentleman still hold to that?

[Mr Jones]

It is totally unacceptable for anyone to be disrespectful to anybody in uniform, whether they are a member of our armed forces or of any other service that works on our behalf, such as the police or fire services. If the hon. Gentleman wants to put forward that policy now that his party is in government, I am sure that it will be supported by Opposition Members.

Another aspect of health that we must refer to is mental health, and I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) in that area. In government, we made great strides with the mental health pilots and the medical assessment programme at St Thomas’s hospital under Ian Palmer, which was there to provide support to all veterans, including Gulf war veterans, who were mentioned by the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) who is no longer in his place. I support anything that improves mental health services. The Command Paper did that by allowing us to work with the health service to ensure that mainstream mental health services reflect the needs of veterans.

[Mr Jones]

I am surprised that the hon. Lady says that, because one of the mental health pilots was in the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust, which covers my constituency in Durham and hers. That pilot was specifically about ensuring that local services such as mental health nursing recognised the needs of veterans. I am not sure where the Government have got to in that work, but anything that can be done to roll it out should be done. I agree with her that services need to be local. If possible, people should not have to travel long distance to access them.

I know that the new veterans Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan), agrees that when we are debating mental health issues relating to veterans, we should not lose sight of the fact that although post-traumatic stress disorder is a personal tragedy for every individual who suffers from it and for their families, it affects a small proportion of the population—something like 4%. Other areas, such as depression and alcohol abuse, need the same concentration and support. We need to focus the media portrayal of this issue back on to those other areas, and not just label everything as PTSD.

The previous Government can also be proud of doubling the compensation paid to injured servicemen and women. No amount of monetary compensation can repay the sacrifice of the veterans with horrific wounds whom I have met. However, we helped by doubling the amount and by ensuring that, for the first time, such people received lump-sum payments. Before the Armed Forces (Pensions and Compensation) Act 2004, they did not get lump-sum payments, although if one read the newspapers of the time, one would have thought that they had always existed. I put on the record my thanks to Lord Boyce, who did a valuable job in fine-tuning the compensation scheme and bringing it up to date. I know that the Government are committed to implementing his recommendations.

Service charities are also important, as has been recognised by the Secretary of State and the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley. The Royal British Legion has been mentioned, as have the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association and the Army Benevolent Fund. Those organisations are not just about fundraising, but contain a vital network of unpaid volunteers who, week in, week out, go into veterans’ homes to support them. I thank those volunteers for the work that they do. Combat Stress does a vital job in ensuring that individuals who suffer from mental illness access the support that they require. We need to ensure that there is better co-ordination in the charities sector. That is happening through some of the initiatives that I implemented, and it is being followed through to ensure that there is no duplication. I stress from the Dispatch Box that what we need is not new service charities, but for existing charities to work closer together, which they are, to ensure that the support is there.

[Dr Murrison]

The hon. Gentleman is being very generous in allowing interventions. May I counsel caution? Many micro-charities are spontaneous and very British, if I may put it in that way. They reflect the public’s desire to do something immediately. Often, they are part of the grieving process. I therefore urge caution about laying into such small charities.

[Mr Jones]

I take that point on board, but the best thing to do would be to focus fundraising efforts on the existing charities. The Royal Navy is rationalising its smaller charities. That is not being done to denigrate their work, because some of them do key specific work, but it is important that there is better co-ordination between them.

Armed Forces (Redundancies)

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

Work will always be ongoing. As well as the basing review, we have the Army returning from Germany and reform of the procurement process, on which I last week set out some additional measures. This is an ongoing process and there will be second and third order changes as a result of the SDSR for some time to come. The Department requires huge downsizing—it has an inherited budgetary deficit of £38 billion—and we cannot expect to do that overnight. Had we done things more quickly, I would no doubt have been accused of rushing the base review as well.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

In the past when we have managed headcount through redundancies, we have also turned off the tap on recruitment and training, with disastrous long-standing consequences. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that we will continue to try to attract the highest-quality young people to our armed forces and to train them properly?

Military Covenant

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Murphy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The military covenant should not be whatever the Government of the day determine it to be. It should not be at the whim of Ministers to decide in a report what is and is not in the covenant. My hon. Friend makes a very important point.

The Government say that it is not necessary to detail the military covenant, in principle, in law, because they are already taking action. They mention the covenant in the report and it was mentioned in the Armed Forces Bill Committee. All those involved in the debate today—except, perhaps, for you, Mr Deputy Speaker, because you are free from involvement in these debates—will have received an e-mail from the Royal British Legion, which stated:

“As the nation’s guardian of the Military Covenant, we would be very grateful if you could urge the Government to honour the Prime Minister’s welcome commitment last June to enshrine the Military Covenant in law. We do not understand why the Government is now claiming that the commitment to produce an ‘Armed Forces Covenant Report’ is somehow the same thing as enshrining the Military Covenant in law. It is not the same thing at all.”

I urge hon. Members from both Government parties to listen to the legion’s voice and vote for the motion today.

The military covenant cannot be whatever Government Ministers of the day deign it to be. It should be defined in law so that it is removed from the cut and thrust of party politics. If the Secretary of State is true to his word, which I believe him to be, he should meaningfully define the covenant in law. What is needed is specific legislation to put the definition of the covenant on a legal footing. In the words of Chris Simpkins, the director general of the Royal British Legion:

“To suggest an annual covenant report would be as effective as a piece of legislation is nonsense and would be evidence of the Government doing a U-turn on their explicit promises.”

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman has been talking for 20 minutes about putting his definition of the military covenant into law. Is he going to give us any form of definition before he winds up his remarks?

[Mr Murphy]

I know the hon. Gentleman understands that it is not for me to give a legal definition of the military covenant at the Dispatch Box. It is for the Government to define the principles of it in a legal sense, along with the armed forces and their families in public consultation. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State’s Parliamentary Private Secretary is screaming at the top of his voice that there is no definition. If the Conservatives were in any way interested in the matter, we could arrive at a definition of the armed forces covenant on a cross-party basis, involving armed forces families across the entire nation. In truth, they have turned their back on their own manifesto, will not listen to the British Legion and refuse to act on the issue at all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Murphy]

The hon. Gentleman has vast experience in such matters and I do not doubt his commitment, but there is limited validity in him brandishing last year’s British Legion document when he does not accept what it says in its e-mail today—it makes it very clear that it is unhappy with the Government’s position and that it would like a legal definition of the military covenant. Of course we should work on a cross-party basis on this, and I would be happy to do so—

[Dr Murrison]

rose—

[Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

rose—

Armed Forces (Redundancies)

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

As I have already said, we will at all times do what is required to help those who are leaving the armed forces in every way we can. That will, of course, include following the procedures that are very clearly set out.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

An unintended consequence of the introduction of NMS—the new management strategy—into the armed forces 20-odd years ago was that too often officers may be encouraged to see themselves as managers rather than leaders. Will the Secretary of State satisfy himself that within the chain of command that he has inherited, the military covenant is being properly served, particularly in relation to the 38 electronically sacked warrant officers?

Afghanistan

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 14th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

I am grateful for that offer. I have often thought about how, through our development aid, we are willing to give advice on economics and bureaucracy but still seem to expect people who have never had experience of political life suddenly to be able to be politicians. I would have thought—if I may say so—that one thing we have plenty of in this country is ex-politicians. We should be trying to find a way of using our experience at all levels of government to assist with the skills level necessary for politics in Afghanistan to succeed. Why do we assume that people require professional assistance in every other walk of life, but that somehow people can learn instantly to become democratic politicians? There is room for improvement in that area.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

What confidence does my right hon. Friend have in the principal overland supply route from Karachi, particularly given the recent unwelcome attention of the Pakistani Taliban and on occasions—sadly—the attitude of Islamabad? Furthermore, what alternatives is ISAF planning to the north and the west on the extremely colourful map with which he has provided us?

[Dr Fox]

Sadly, being colour-blind, I cannot share in the enthusiasm on that last point. However, I say to my hon. Friend that we always have to consider the wider security picture to ensure that we can maintain our supply routes. As he correctly said, there have been problems recently with the southern supply route, and certainly the Americans are increasing their dependence on the northern route. Along with our ISAF partners, we will consider what changes we might have to make in the balance between those supply routes to ensure that we never compromise the essential links on which our armed forces in Afghanistan depend.

Armed Forces Bill

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Murphy]

The hon. Gentleman is usually very fair in these debates, and I think he will acknowledge that I have already welcomed six or seven of the measures in the Bill in my speech. There is nothing wrong with echoing the comments of Vice-Admiral Sir Michael Moore, chairman of the Forces Pension Society, who has criticised the Government. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does not want to criticise Vice-Admiral Sir Michael Moore.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his consensuality, which I, as a service pensioner, welcome. Will he not recognise in his remarks, which are becoming a little partisan, that this Government doubled the operational allowance within days of the general election? I assume that he welcomed that.

[Mr Murphy]

I think that the hon. Gentleman called me the Secretary of State; of course, I am the shadow Secretary of State, but I am sure that will be corrected by Hansard. There are measures that we welcome, some of which I have alluded to already; I shall discuss some of the others later and will give the hon. Gentleman the opportunity to intervene at that point if he wishes.

The Conservative manifesto pledged to ensure that our armed forces, their families and our veterans are properly taken care of, but the taskforce was tasked with finding

“innovative, low-cost policy ideas.”

It is difficult for any Government to find the right support for our armed forces on the cheap, without necessary and adequate funding. They have not yet responded to the work of the taskforce.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Murphy]

I have already welcomed the report and the fact that there will be an annual debate, but I do not welcome the fact that the production of the report will be in the hands of Ministers, rather than independent experts. It is an issue about which the Royal British Legion feels strongly.

[Dr Murrison]

The right hon. Gentleman has been generous in giving way. Can he define “independent”? I have attended a meeting of the external reference group and found it to be anything but. It is certainly made up, in part, of independent individuals, but also largely of officials, who can in no way be said to be independent of the Government.

[Mr Murphy]

I do not think Madam Deputy Speaker would welcome an attempt by me to provide the House with a definition of independence, but the fact that the three armed forces families federations are on the expert group gives it authority, independence, clarity and sincerity that, with the best will in the world, the most capable and sincere Minister cannot of himself provide. It is important that that work is continued.

My most serious concerns are about the proposals on armed forces pensions. The Government plan to link forces pension rises permanently to the consumer prices index, rather than to the retail prices index. That is a serious misjudgment and an indictment of the Government’s claim to want to strengthen the military covenant. We are in no doubt that in the current climate there is a need for restraint in public sector pay and pensions, but that year-on-year change will disproportionately affect members of the armed forces and their dependants, who rely on their pensions at earlier ages than almost anyone else.

The impact of the proposed changes will be devastating. A 27-year-old corporal who has lost both his legs in a bomb blast in Afghanistan will miss out on £500,000 in pension and benefit-related payments. War widows will also lose out enormously. The 34-year-old wife of a staff sergeant killed in Afghanistan would, over her lifetime, be almost £750,000 worse off.

There can be only two possible justifications for that policy. First, Ministers think it right to reduce year on year the support to forces personnel and their dependants, and support the policy presumably because they consider the current support to be unfairly generous. The Secretary of State did not support the policy on that basis today, nor I suspect will any Government Back Bencher.

The second possible reason for this heartless policy is deficit reduction, but that argument does not add up either. The impact of the measures will be felt long after the deficit has been paid down and the economy has returned to growth. I ask Ministers today to commit to rethink the policy or, in the absence of a full rethink, and if they believe that it is part of their deficit reduction plan, to consider a time-limited measure during the period of deficit reduction and spending restraint. That would be a fairer approach. There is no logical reason why the bravest British soldiers fighting in Afghanistan should see their pensions reduced for the rest of their lives, or why war widows, who have had the person most special to them taken away, deserve to have taken away from them the support on which they so depend.

When challenged on the issue in November, a Ministry of Defence spokesman said:

“It is not possible to treat the armed forces differently from other public servants.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Murrison]

rose—

[Mr Kevan Jones]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Llwyd]

The way in which Mr Fletcher went about the matter was to e-mail every member of the probation service who was connected with prisons and ask them how many people on their books had been in the services. That was how he came up with his figures, but even within the latest Government figures of 3.5% or 4%, we see that in Dartmoor, for example, the figure was 17.5% in 2007.

[Dr Murrison]

The Minister and the shadow Minister are right, but then so is the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd). He is probably about to cite the figures for violent and sexual offenders, which show that there appears to be a greater likelihood that people with a service background will fall into that category. However, we would expect people with a service background to be less represented than others in the prison population, would we not? They are selected because they do not have a criminal record when they join up, and they are members of a disciplined service. That needs to be borne in mind when considering the figures.

[Mr Llwyd]

I agree, and perhaps I should move away from the figures, because I cannot profess to know them precisely any more than anybody else can. All I am trying to say is that the problem is serious. The hon. Gentleman makes the valid point that we would expect people who have been in the armed services to be more disciplined, and in most cases they are. However, there are worrying examples of people who, for almost inexplicable reasons, commit violent offences.

I know of two cases intimately. The first is that of a person in a fish and chip queue in north Wales who felt that somebody behind him was invading his space. He reacted violently, because he had been trained to look after himself. Unfortunately, by the time he had finished the skirmish two or three minutes later, there was a person on the floor very badly injured and he went away for four years for grievous bodily harm.

The second case is that of a young lad from my constituency who returned home from Helmand on a Wednesday and borrowed his father’s car to go out on the Friday night. He drank far too much and had an accident, killing two passengers. It could be argued that he had been to hell and back in Helmand and felt that he could do such things with impunity. I am not running that young man down, and I am sad to see him where he is, but that is another example of which I am aware.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd). I particularly appreciate his remarks about clause 2 and health care. I am pleased to be able to say that the Government have accepted my report “Fighting Fit” on the mental health care of veterans. Part of it stated that we should indeed scrutinise people far more closely at the point when they depart from the services to ensure that we consider mental health. In my 18-year career as a medical officer in the Navy, we rarely did that. The matter was neglected, and I am therefore pleased that the Government have accepted the report and that the armed forces will now assess people when they leave and before they become veterans so that we can take timely action when necessary.

I declare my interests, which are in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. In addition, in connection with clause 27—an obscure provision, which I suspect is largely uncontroversial—I am a member of the naval medical compassionate fund. I call it a potential benefit because one has to be deceased for any benefit to be obtained from it. Although that is ultimately inevitable, I hope that it will not happen during my time in this place.

I pay tribute to those right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House who have done so much for the military covenant and in raising its profile. Over the past 10 years or so, public support for our armed forces has increased. That is in large part because of the profile of the armed forces and, although it may not be fashionable to say so, I think we in this place ought to take a certain amount of credit for promoting the interests of the men and women of our armed forces. Members on both sides of the House do that, so this is not a partisan matter at all.

However, I welcome this Bill as the next step in the process of ensuring that the military covenant is a key part of the way in which we deal with our armed forces, and not just now. It is very easy to do that now, as every night we see images on our television screens highlighting the plight of the men and women of our armed forces, and the excellent job they are doing and the professional manner in which they are doing it. The problem arises 10 or 15 years down the line when, God willing, we are living in a time when the armed forces are less high profile. In those circumstances, it will be very welcome to have an opportunity to assess, on an annual basis, how we are dealing with our servicemen and women, and, of course, with our veterans and service families.

[Bob Stewart]

One of the problems in respect of Help for Heroes is that we must deal not only with the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have problems that go all the way back to the second world war, and we must put in place resources to look after the people who were involved then. Speaking personally, I had about 35 soldiers wounded on 6 December 1982. Those people require to be looked after, and two of them were paraplegics. I simply want to endorse my hon. Friend’s point that we must look after all our veterans who have been hurt, not just the people who are now in the public eye from Afghanistan and Iraq and, perhaps, Kosovo and Bosnia. The issue goes back well beyond that, and let us also remember all those people who were hurt in Northern Ireland over many years.

[Dr Murrison]

My hon. Friend is, of course, absolutely right, and I think the Government have recognised that need. One of my report’s recommendations was that we should be more proactive in addressing our veteran population, and I am pleased that it has been accepted. Ministers recognise that we need to do more for veterans.

Having just been nice to my Front-Bench colleagues, perhaps I might say that I disagree with them in one respect. Clause 2 is entitled “Armed forces covenant report” and I take exception to the term “armed forces” in that context. May I gently suggest to my right hon. and hon. Friends that it would be more appropriate simply to use the term “military covenant”? I say that because I think that term has had a certain amount of purchase. It is now understood by the general public. It is in the public domain, and the media understand it, and I think they would be somewhat confused if we were now to make this rather semantic change of using the term “armed forces” instead. To argue against myself, the word “military” excludes naval of course, but I think that in the public’s mind “military” refers to the entirety of our armed forces. I do not want the value of the concept of the military covenant to be degraded in any way by a confusion over this title. That point might, perhaps, be considered in Committee, of which I hope very much my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster) is successful in becoming a member—I wish him the best of luck in his endeavours in that respect. As he says, it will be fascinating to serve on the Committee, and I hope to talk a little more about that shortly.

[Bob Russell]

May I help my hon. Friend by pointing out that the Royal British Legion, which, of course, encompasses all the armed forces, refers to this concept as the military covenant, so it is on his side?

[Dr Murrison]

I am very pleased. I am a member of the Warminster branch of the Royal British Legion and I rarely disagree with it. It has done a great job in its honour the covenant campaign. I am very pleased that it agrees with me, and I have no doubt that it will make representations to that effect.

The Government have been spot-on in the way they have approached the covenant in this Bill. I have given a great deal of thought to what we should be doing in respect of the military covenant. As my hon. Friend the Minister knows, we considered the matter at great length when in opposition, and the debate was always about the form in which it would find its way into legislation.

At one end of the spectrum, we could be fairly didactic in what we mean by the military covenant. We could make it a bean-feast for lawyers, but that is completely against the spirit of the military covenant. It derives from Harry Levinson’s work in the 1950s and ’60s, in which he identified something called a psychological contract: a contract that was moral and that was understood, but that was not actually laid down in any form of written covenant, promise or undertaking. It is absolutely right that we should do nothing that would destroy the military covenant as part of that type of covenant. A couple of Members have mentioned the fact that this is not simply a deal between Government and officials and the rank-and-file. It also involves the general public. If we were to start putting it in a didactic contractual form, that would degrade that particular element of the deal that we understand by the term “the military covenant”.

That seems to be the view of most commentators. At the Royal United Services Institute in June 2008, Christianne Tipping said:

“This debate must continue but it must not attempt to specify that which is incapable of specification—the psychological contract is more powerful than the legal one.”

I agree. It could be said that the military covenant is at the extreme end of the psychological contract spectrum, but it is, nevertheless, part of that deal, and it is important that we treat is as such.

I welcome the annual report. The shadow Secretary of State was a little parsimonious in his praise for it. It will certainly maintain the profile of this issue. The devil is in the detail of course, in that the nature of the annual report is crucial—what it contains, how it is presented, and how it is debated. It is important that we know what the items in the report will be. We know what some of them will be, but this issue goes much further than that, of course. We must also address issues such as kit, the way we deal with the bereaved, and coroners courts. As has been mentioned, they have caused a great deal of grief over the past few years, and it would be extraordinary if they were not dealt with as part of this annual report.

It is also important that we listen to the views of third parties. They will undoubtedly comment on this, and they are also very important in the implementation of the military covenant. Government must not do that alone. If they were to do so, they would completely ignore the general public and the voluntary sector, which are another element that must be party to the military covenant. It would therefore be interesting to know what involvement from third-sector partners is envisaged in this annual report.

It is also important that the report is dovetailed with any other relevant reports there might be, such as from the service complaints commissioner, the continuous attitude survey or the external reference group. We need to know, as well, the extent to which personal functional standards subsequent to the armed forces overarching personnel strategy have been satisfied, and we need to incorporate the views of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

While I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s comments about external scrutiny of the armed forces annual report, does he not agree that it is vital that the House itself scrutinises the work of the MOD? Does he also agree that every year after the report is published the Defence Committee should invite the Secretary of State to appear before it to face further scrutiny?

[Dr Murrison]

I believe the Secretary of State does so in any case, but that is, of course, a matter for the Chairman of the Defence Committee, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Chairman will be only too delighted to oblige.

It is important that we thrash out what we mean by the covenant and the deal we are prepared to strike in recognition of it. On the one hand, it might be a “no-disadvantage” covenant, by which I mean that people will not be disadvantaged by their military service. On the other hand, might it mean a “citizen-plus” covenant, in that people will get a bit extra in recognition of the fact that they are serving or have served, or are related to someone who is serving or has served, in the armed forces? It is important that we do that.

We could envisage the “no-disadvantage” covenant as being what we might aspire to at the moment, and the “citizen-plus” covenant as being the sort of model that applies in the United States. Certainly, the “no-disadvantage” covenant appears to be what people have in mind in things such as the service Command Paper. The term is used in that publication and also by Professor Hew Strachan in his recent report on the military covenant. Furthermore, of course, that covenant is a great deal more attainable, and we can take a closer view of what it actually means, if we use the benchmark of not disadvantaging people by virtue of their service. A “citizen-plus” covenant, however, is more difficult and invites calls of “Me too!”, in particular from other public servants who say that these days they are just as much on the front line. We could argue that point.

It is important that the annual report contains an outcome measure. We need to know what we are looking at in order to make an assessment of whether the Government have done what they should be doing in honouring the military covenant. What do success and failure look like? It is important that the document is subject to rigorous independent scrutiny, not least by the Defence Committee. The report will be subject to the media spotlight and the analysis of third parties, so it needs to be a comprehensive and detailed document, unless it is simply to become, in the fullness of time and potentially under another Administration, simply a tick-box exercise.

Over Christmas last year, my right hon. and hon. Friends were exercised by the air bridge between the UK and theatre. Perhaps that is a demonstration of a facet of the military covenant that could be covered in the annual report. I find to my great horror that similar problems arose this Christmas. It was a high-profile incident because it involved Katherine Jenkins and James Blunt and their failure to go to theatre to entertain the troops. Will the annual report cover theatre-specific elements of the disgruntlement of our armed forces? The Minister knows full well—we talked about this a great deal in opposition—that paramount in that list of disgruntlement tends to be things such as the air bridge and rest and recuperation.

Organisations such as the British Limbless Ex Service Men’s Association point out that people owe their allegiance to the nation, not to localities by and large, and that the covenant is a country covenant, not a county covenant. It is important, when considering elements of Professor Strachan’s report, which is excellent in almost all respects—particularly his important point about the community covenant—that we recognise that people owe their allegiance nationally and expect the covenant to be honoured nationally as well. It would be a pity if we entered into some sort of postcode lottery in how we regard our duties to the men and women of our armed forces. I represent a constituency in a military part of the country, and as a community we are fully apprised of our duties towards the men and women of our armed forces. Some parts of the country, however—perhaps because men and women of our armed forces are less prominent there—are less inclined that way, so it is important, given that this is a national covenant, that we view this nationally, not parochially.

It is also important to recognise that the covenant cuts both ways. It is a duty that the country and the Government owe to the military, but in turn the military owes a duty to the public and the Government, and it is important to assess—in my view, as part of this annual report—whether that duty is being satisfied in all respects. Everyone in this place admires our armed forces greatly—many of us have served in them—and I am second to nobody in my admiration for the men and women who serve this country so gallantly. However, there will be detractors and those who say, “It is all very well talking up the military covenant, but we also need to understand that the public have expectations of the men and women of our armed forces.” It is important to include in the report, therefore, if only to gainsay it, that we have to look at areas where the public have been let down, as well as at areas in which we have let down our armed forces. I put that down as a point for consideration in Committee.

I turn to later clauses of the Bill that broadly speaking provide for the discipline elements. Clause 6 deals with the performance of the Ministry of Defence police. I have always had cordial relations with the MOD police, who work closely with their county colleagues, but, in a similar manner to the comments by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North, one would have to ask all the time why we have a separate MOD police force. If we are going to consider in Committee the service police—our Front-Bench team made a generous offer to do so—perhaps we might also look at policing in the round within the MOD, which of course would include the MOD police. It is important that police forces benchmark their performance. The MOD police force is a particular force with a different profile; what it does is subtly different, and its arrest and conviction profiles are very different from those of county forces, and we have to ask all the time, particularly in an age when we are looking for efficiency savings, whether the current model is the correct one. I make no judgment on that, but it might be something that the Committee should look at and take a view on.

Clause 5 deals with the appointment of provost marshals and asserts that only provost officers should be provost marshals, which struck me as slightly odd. At a time when we are looking for ways of making heads of police forces lay people, it seems a little odd—it sits uncomfortably with it—to insist in the Bill that in all circumstances provost marshals should be provost officers.

I am always a little wary when it comes to extending anybody’s powers—in this context, the powers of service police—unless I am faced with a good reason. That must be our starting premise. However, I do not have a good reason for why we need to extend the powers of service police. Although I am perfectly willing to take Ministers’ words for it that it is necessary, we will have to tease out in Committee why we need to extend the powers in the way described.

Clauses 9 to 11 and compulsory testing have been discussed at length by the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd and in an authoritative fashion that I cannot match. However, I start to get concerned about compulsory testing, particularly when it involves health care professionals. This is an ethical minefield and something that no doubt will need to be explored in Committee.

[Bob Russell]

When the Armed Forces Bill Committee considered this point three or four years ago, we were advised—if my memory is correct—that the equivalent of two infantry battalions are discharged each year for testing positive. Under those circumstances, does the hon. Gentleman accept that the checking is an important requirement?

[Dr Murrison]

I think that the hon. Gentleman misunderstands me. If I develop my point, perhaps I can answer his concerns.

We have compulsory drug testing at the moment, and it has been found to be broadly successful. My concern is about further testing at the say-so of the command and because it suspects that there might be a safety-critical issue. If instances can be cited in which safety criticality might have been affected by compulsory drug testing, we have a good case for doing this, but that case has to be made before we extend those powers. I would make a small suggestion: if we are to take those powers, perhaps we might like to consider them after 12 months, using a sunset clause, to ensure that they are still necessary. If they are not, we could consider removing them.

It is not clear to me what the position of registered medical and nursing practitioners will be in all this. They operate within a disciplined service, and the rules can be quite challenging. However, looking at the Bill, I would say that were I in that position, I would be phoning up my defence society to ensure that I was not transgressing before co-operating with such a provision. I see that there is a get-out clause for medical practitioners. It all looks a bit woolly to me, but I suspect that it will be firmed up as the Bill proceeds.

The Bill will further separate service police from the command, yet service police remain servicemen and remain within that command structure; indeed, they can exercise command appropriate to their rank. I am a little concerned about these people, because they are potentially remarkably powerful individuals. We need to bear that in mind when considering this matter. Part of the military covenant is about ensuring that we do the best by the men and women who serve this country; they should not be disadvantaged. On the remarks made by the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, it is important that we have a system that does not impose a greater legal restriction on that population than on the general public. If our system did impose that, we would not be honouring our commitment under the military covenant, because service personnel would most certainly be disadvantaged.

I am concerned that there has been insufficient reflection on the possibility of combining our three sets of service police. As my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North said, there is potential mileage in combining the three. I sat through our consideration of a lot of the supplementary legislation to the Armed Forces Act 2006 and enjoyed it very much. However, it was clear to me that the systems of law were coming much closer together; indeed, one cannot get a cigarette paper between the three of them any more. Given those circumstances, the environment has changed and the case for combining those services into a tri-service provost service makes some sense.

I conclude by welcoming the Bill, which is a culmination of a huge amount of work. It sets the right balance between a covenant that is unspoken, moral and psychological, and addressing the more obvious needs of the men and women who serve our armed forces very well. I shall certainly be supporting the Bill.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is particularly appropriate that we are debating this Bill on the anniversary of the treaty of Versailles coming into operation in 1920 and the first meeting of the United Nations in London in 1946. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster). When I was a Minister, I tried to do business with him in as friendly a way as possible in relation to the armed forces and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. His comments about the reserve forces were absolutely right, because it is true to say that the operations that this nation have been involved in over the past 15 years could not have been conducted without the support of the reserve forces, many of whom have, I suspect, had to go into theatre far more often than they or their employers expected when they signed up. We therefore owe them “a debt of gratitude”; those words are often bandied around this Chamber, but he made a very fair point about the importance of the reserve forces. I know from my constituency that they are an important part of the contribution that is made.

The hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) was absolutely right to say that it would make more sense to stick with the term “military covenant”. I am often more pedantic than is good for my friendships—[Hon. Members: “Surely not”.] I thought that it was you heckling me, Mr Deputy Speaker, but as you have not had a drink yet, it probably was not. He is right to say that this phrase is now common currency and is used generally. I suppose that people who were being pedantic might say, “That merely applies to the Army”, but language changes and he is right to say that trying to reinvent a concept of an “armed forces covenant” is inappropriate. I hope that the Minister will respond accordingly when considering the way forward for this Bill.

I particularly wanted to speak in this debate because this country’s mining constituencies have produced many members of the armed forces. A large number of men and, increasingly in recent years, women have joined the Army, rather than the Navy or the Royal Air Force. When a survey was carried out in recent years of the preferred career of choice in mining constituencies or former mining constituencies, as mine must now be considered, the armed forces came out on top by far, followed by the police. I am sure that that is partly because of a tradition that there has been in many of these constituencies—there is a deep respect for the traditions of the armed forces, and people have wanted to follow in the footsteps of their fathers, grandfathers and so on—but it is also because of the economic circumstances.

At its height, a single industry in my constituency employed 130,000 men working underground, and when it disappeared and a large number of people were, in effect, left on the scrap heap politically, many of those young men felt that the only career open to them was one in the armed forces. They have managed to take a great deal of pride from such a career. They have been able to give to the armed forces and the armed forces have been able to give back. I was delighted that the Ministry of Defence decided to open a combined cadet force in Treorchy comprehensive school. In the main, cadet forces had previously been attached only to public schools—fee-paying schools—so it was a great delight to see a new one start in Treorchy a few years ago.

[Dr Murrison]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman entirely on that. What does he make of comments by the National Union of Teachers to the effect that it was wrong for the previous Government—and, presumably, now for this Government—to encourage the involvement of uniformed men and women in our armed forces in areas of deprivation, where there is high unemployment, because they may be preying on people there? I utterly refute that assertion and I hope that he does too.

[Chris Bryant]

When I have heard those accusations, as I have when political opponents in my constituency have attacked me ferociously on these issues, I have wholly deprecated them. If we examine the work that the armed forces do in schools, we find that it is not about preying on young people who, in some sense, might not have other opportunities in life. Often such work is about giving people the confidence in themselves to go on to do something that has nothing to do with the armed forces. It is about giving them a structure in life, and a sense of discipline and opportunity, which is of value to the wider community. I know that some teachers at Treorchy comprehensive were sceptical about the combined cadet force coming to the school, but since it has been in place they have been entirely supportive and have found it to be an entirely beneficial operation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

The issue of access is important. I hear the point that the hon. Gentleman makes and I shall ensure that securing access for all who may be eligible, including the most vulnerable, is at the forefront of our discussions about the implementation of this report.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend for his welcome for my report and for the help that he has given in its preparation. He shares my concern for people with mild traumatic brain injury and knows that a British combat soldier is likely to face exposure to between six and nine improvised explosive device explosions in the course of his career, with the consequent risk of mild traumatic brain injury. Does he agree that more needs to be done to determine the prevalence of mild traumatic brain injury in the British military and to prevent and mitigate its effects?

[Dr Fox]

Indeed. There is a great deal of interest in this particular element of scientific research on both sides of the Atlantic. I recently visited the veterans agency in the United States to ascertain what the updated information was. We will certainly want to consider all the evidence as it comes forward. It is an emerging science and we will get different types of information as we go through, but the art will be to try to ensure that we best titrate the treatments available to the information given to us scientifically at any one time so that we operate on the basis of evidence, not supposition.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nicholas Soames]

My hon. Friend is right. The problem is that there are overlaps at every level of decision taking in the Ministry of Defence. Two separate audiences are competing with each other. It is extraordinary that an institution that understands the ethos of command is so bad at doing it itself. Some of the most dreadful things were brought to me when I was a Minister. There might have been a terrible military cock-up and it would be taken away to be examined. The issue would come back six months later, but everyone would have had their fingers over it and Ministers would end up being told that it had been a great military triumph. It is true that no one is ever held accountable. The decision making is very lame and very long-winded.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

May I give a practical example to illustrate my hon. Friend’s point? I learned to my horror that the vice-chief of the defence staff had recruited a civilian medical adviser, to parallel the function of the three-star surgeon-general who is doing a very good job—and, of course, at great expense. Perhaps that provides an example of a post the could be cut.

[Nicholas Soames]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely vivid and important point. We can bet our bottom dollar that there would have been a frightfully good reason for doing it—it should have been blown out of the water on day one.

All this has created the mess we are in, with a £38 billion overspend. One of the most important jobs of the Secretary of State and the Administration is to build an agile strategic military headquarters and Department of State which are able to respond effectively to the rapidly changing environment of the 21st century. That does not exist in the Ministry of Defence at present, and it must be created, which will mean considerable decentralisation. The front-line commanders-in-chief need to be given the tools and the space that they need to do the job. As has been said, they need to be allowed to get on with it, and to stop being micro-managed by civil servants in Whitehall.

I am very pleased that the Secretary of State has engaged Lord Levene and a team of admirable and extremely experienced experts from the private sector to assist in this task, but if they are to drive the huge changes that are needed, senior officers and officials must recognise that what they have built has failed catastrophically, and must change. They must understand the need to transform. The senior military and officials need to own the change themselves, and they need to drive it forward. It will be a complete and fundamental change of culture, but it must be achieved.

Let me end by reading out a quotation that I have read out during almost every speech on defence that I have made in the House for years and years. It is a remarkable speech made by Lord Wavell, which the House should bear in mind as all these changes are being made, and as they think about the men and women at the sharp end—the people who end up having to deal with decisions, sometimes very bad decisions, made in the Ministry of Defence.

Lord Wavell said:

“in the last resort, the end of all military training, the settling of all policy, the ordering of all weaponry and all that goes into the makings of the armed forces is that the deciding factor in battle will always be this. That sooner or later, Private so-and-so will, of his own free will and in the face of great danger, uncertainty and chaos, have to advance to his front in the face of the enemy. If all that goes wrong, after all the training, the intensive preparation and the provision of equipment and expenditure, the system has failed.”

Despite everything, the system has not failed.

The House needs to remember, in the midst of the sometimes idiotic and petty political arguments that separate us in all parts of this House of Commons, that these young men and women are doing something really extraordinary, and doing it at great personal danger and risk to themselves. Ministers must never forget, in this great talk of strategy, this plethora of change and all that will go on at the top, with headquarters being got rid of and people being shuffled around, that they must be able to continue to deliver the really remarkable people who are able to do the job for which all this money is spent. That must be kept at all times in the forefront of the minds of the Secretary of State and the shadow Secretary of State.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ainsworth]

Well, the decision has been taken, and it has been repeatedly reiterated. It is not going to be reversed, so we can ponder it as much as we like, but our armed forces and others will have to plan within the parameters that have been set for them. All I would say to my hon. Friend is that if the reason she has advanced for the 2015 decision is correct, President Karzai would have been consulted before the announcement was made, but as the Defence Secretary was not consulted, I do not believe that President Karzai was consulted either. The person who was consulted was the Deputy Prime Minister, and that is what gives us the key insight into the motivation for this announcement.

[Dr Murrison]

I think the right hon. Gentleman is getting distracted over this consultation issue. The central question is whether the Afghan national army is going to be in a fit state in five years to guarantee the country internally and externally. Does he seriously think that if it is not ready in five years, it will ever be ready?

[Mr Ainsworth]

Plans are in place, and the argument the hon. Gentleman puts is part of the cover for the 2015 decision, but I know that, privately if not publicly, he has no doubts about the real reasons that decision was taken, and he knows that what I am saying is true. Many other people know it to be true, too.

On the strategic defence review, I do not deny the problems the Government were facing, although they are doing their very best to exaggerate the difficulties we left them. They keep on mentioning the figure of £38 billion, and if they persist in doing so eventually somebody will apply their common sense and realise that it is a bit of an exaggeration. There was overheating in the defence budget, but the only way we can get even close to £38 billion is by assuming a flat cash settlement for more than 10 years and no trimming of defence aspirations. That is not what the Government did and it is not what any alternative Government would do.

However, I do not blame the Government for exaggerating the difficulties they inherited because they did have some very difficult decisions to take. They faced an extremely acute financial situation and they had to try to conduct a strategic defence review with the Army in the field. I congratulate them on their efforts to do that, although I think they could have tried harder. They could have consulted more and therefore not rushed, and they need not have been totally dominated by the financial considerations, but they did their best in very difficult circumstances.

I also congratulate the Government on their decision to invest in cyber-security. That is a genuine area of weakness that needs to be addressed, but is the investment they are making in cyber-capability being counted towards our 2% NATO target for defence spending? What else are they putting into that in order to get to the 2% figure and thereby shield themselves from the fact that there are considerable defence cuts here that could—it depends on how we count this—take us below that target figure?

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[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Let me first declare my interest, which is set out in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr Havard), and I am really pleased that he has rejoined the Defence Select Committee, which, under the chairmanship of my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), has an extremely impressive membership. I know that the Committee will do a great job in holding the Government to account, which is indeed its function.

The first duty of the state is to defend national security and the national interest. Even in today’s defence debate, we have to admit that the chief threat to this country is not military at all, but economic. It is, of course, against that backdrop that we have had the strategic defence and security review.

I might be accused of being sycophantic, but I will say this nevertheless. I think that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has done a first-rate job in marrying our need to ensure that the country returns to an even keel economically with the ongoing need to ensure that we prepare for all foreseeable threats to the country, particularly in a world that is ever-changing.

Much has been said about aircraft carriers, which are close to my heart. I spent 18 years in the Navy, and developed a healthy respect for them during that time. During most of my career, the Harrier jump jet took off and landed on aircraft carriers. It must be said that they were rather short. I think we should bear in mind that, while STOVL—short take-off and vertical landing—has many virtues, its chief virtue is as an expedient for countries that have short aircraft carriers. I listened with interest to the remarks of the former Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), and noted his concern that we should be able to land on small plots of land. Nevertheless, the chief virtue of the aircraft carriers is connected with the fact that for several years—indeed, for decades—we had to make do with carriers that were smaller and more economical than we might have liked.

We are now to have two impressive aircraft carriers, which will be larger than the Charles de Gaulle. Their size will approach that of some of the largest ships in the American fleet that we admire so much. It is absolutely right for us to have craft that are fitted out to accommodate the naval forces of our two greatest allies, the United States and France, and I welcome the fitting of the “cats and traps”, which will provide us with that interoperability.

It strikes me as bizarre that the previous Government should have ignored the obvious desire and need for aircraft from those two nations to use our aircraft carriers, whether or not there is a formal arrangement with France to share one of them, and I am exceptionally pleased that we will now be able to do that. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary on the important work he has done, both in opposition and in government, to strengthen the links with France. It is quite wrong to say that that has happened since May. As one who was on the Defence Front Bench until recently, I know that it was a recurring theme throughout my three years there. We have a great deal in common with our neighbour, and it is not just about our willingness to pay for a defence umbrella under which others in Europe are content to shelter. Both countries, while slipping down the league table of global significance as others rise, have residual interests overseas, although France, of course, has rather more than the United Kingdom.

I congratulate the Government on resisting the temptation to close some of our remaining overseas assets. In particular, our removal from the sovereign base areas in Cyprus would have been most unwise, given the strategic situation. Akrotiri and Dhekelia offer a combination of barracks, training areas, an airfield and a seaport that is peerless, not to mention other assets in the Troodos mountains that are beyond the scope of the debate. Those of us who have had the pleasure of serving in Cyprus will attest to its importance, and to the totemic significance of any east-of-Nicosia moment that the Defence Secretary may have been forced at least to contemplate.

Inevitably, much has been said today about bombs and bullets, but I must confess that my interest is now, and has always been, in our military software, by which I mean the men and women of our armed forces. Tempting though it is for policy makers to become obsessed with equipment, not least when there are jobs and constituency interests to be considered, we must always bear in mind the greatest single factor: the bloke with the gun or, increasingly, the metal detector on the front line. I think that the SDSR has done that.

Importantly, the White Paper makes it clear that an armed forces covenant will be formalised, and I imagine that that codification will feature prominently in the Armed Forces Bill. The military covenant made its debut in April 2000 in a rather dusty Army publication, “Army Doctrine Publication Volume 5”—a snappy title! We can, however, find examples of such a covenant going back to ancient Greece. It was certainly considered in Roman Britain too, with the distribution of bits of land to those who had served in the Roman army, and it continued to the reign of Elizabeth I, who formally codified a system of pensions for those who had been disabled in action. Ironically, it rather fell apart during Cromwell’s military Protectorate, but it has been an unspoken theme of service throughout our history.

Whether or not the author of the military covenant knew it, it was at the extreme end of the spectrum of psychological contracts identified by Harry Levinson in 1962, following his study of the Midlands Utilities Company in the American midwest. The point about such contracts is that they are unspoken and unwritten. In an age of lawyers, that has a certain appeal. We are now considering codifying the military covenant and putting it in writing so that people will be able to rely on it as of right, and potentially, of course, in a court of law.

If we are rather reluctant to go down that route, we must consider the developments of the early 1990s. Many of us will recall NMS—the new management strategy—and the new managerialism introduced into the Ministry of Defence, and the impact that had on the relationship between leaders and led. Commanding officers morphed into budget holders and military units into cost centres. The relationship between commanding officers and those they commanded was subtly changed. In that context, it is right and proper that we should look at articulating the psychological contract of the military covenant in statute. I look forward to seeing the form in which it is introduced in the forthcoming armed forces Bill.

The insurgents in Afghanistan have proved capable of being flexible in their tactics. The Taliban lost, as they were bound to, in the head-to-head early conflict in Helmand and Kandahar. They then shifted to the use of IEDs, and that proved very successful, as all of us will know who have spent time in Birmingham and at Headley Court and who represent constituencies with a military element. The Taliban’s tactics are now changing once again. They are developing their own brand of Sharpe’s Rifles, chosen men who are rather less appealing even than the men of the South Essex.

It is worth bearing in mind the threat that still exists, and is likely to continue to exist, from IEDs. They are a mortal threat to our men and women and a bitter fact of life for the civilian population. I know that the Government have taken a real interest in this and that the Prime Minister has taken the trouble to familiarise himself with the workings of the Vallon metal detector that is currently used by our troops.

I am pleased to note that a contract has now been let to improve the collective counter-IED training of our troops, especially as it has been let to a firm in my constituency. We have a digital record of aptitude and performance in training, and it has been shown to be extremely variable. Will the Minister ensure that the value of that highly granular information is exploited further so as to allow us to assess post-deployment how effective the new training has been, and perhaps refine it further? Will the Minister also say what further personal protective equipment our troops are to have to reduce the toll taken by IEDs?

For servicemen with children there are few issues of greater concern than education, and that is rightly cited in the White Paper. The Department for Education has been consulting on a pupil premium for service children. There is no doubt that schools with substantial numbers of service children are at a distinct disadvantage because of the extra costs involved in their education. I would cite the New Close primary school and the Avenue school in Warminster as prime examples of that. If we are serious about the concept of “no disadvantage” from military service, we must ensure that the extra costs relating to service children are properly reflected in the funding formula.

I have an abiding interest in military health care, so I am very pleased to see a substantial reflection in the White Paper of the importance of doing more. I am particularly keen to see improvements in military mental health care, and I very much welcome the fact that that is cited specifically in the White Paper. However, it is important that we bear in mind that it is not just about combat stress and post-traumatic stress disorder, and that we need to look more widely at mental health issues, including those relating to service families and issues such as alcoholism and the overuse of alcohol, depression and so on.

It is important that we are far more proactive in dealing with combat stress, because most people, including the general public, would accept that of all those conditions the ones that the military has a direct hand in causing need to be addressed as a priority. Although, numerically, the incidence of PTSD—combat stress—might not be vast in the great scheme of things, men and women experience it by virtue of their exposure on the front line, so if we are serious about the military covenant, we must do our utmost to reduce the chances of it occurring in the first place and to manage it when it does. The key to that is being proactive and ensuring that we look for people with problems before they wait, often for many years, before seeking out medical attention. It is important to go where young men and women are if we want to find out whether they are having problems and to signpost services where they are available—and that means going online.

I very much welcome the extra mental health professionals whom the Government have announced they will recruit to improve mental health care for this community. I also welcome the prospect of a veterans’ information service, by which we will inform veterans, after they have left, of the services available to them, and not simply cut them free and let them go, as we have done in the past.

[Mr Havard]

I know of the hon. Gentleman’s particular interest in medical services and mental health. He will be aware that the British Medical Association has made suggestions on improving general practitioners’ understanding about the medical treatment of those who have served. Does he have a view about that?

[Dr Murrison]

Yes, I do. I commend the BMA for its efforts, as I do the Royal College of General Practitioners, which has recently put out a leaflet trying to apprise GPs of the problems that may be faced by patients who have served in the military. That is not an easy task. Most GPs are faced daily with a whole pile of stuff and will jettison most of it, so getting the message across to them is extremely difficult, given that a relatively small number of their patients will have served and may have a problem as a result of their service. That is not to say that we must not do what we can to raise the prominence of this issue.

In conclusion, may I say how much I welcome the emphasis in the White Paper on the military covenant? It is essential that we try to codify it in some way, and I look forward to it becoming a far more prominent part of the way in which we think about the service community and veterans in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Moon]

It worries me that our defence capability is up for sale. We are selling off some of our defence industry’s crown jewels, and selling on to potential enemies—we do not know where they will be—those capabilities at a time when we are in desperate need. I totally object to that, because anti-submarine warfare is not a relic of the cold war. If we are to protect our aircraft carriers when they are deployed in high-risk areas, who will provide the air cover? We recently lost track of a Russian submarine in the Atlantic for three weeks. We cannot rely on allies who are comparatively poorly resourced, or hope that they will buy the Nimrods, save us the money and provide us with the security.

The Nimrod’s civil use must be emphasised, too. Let us look at the history of its search and rescue capability. When the Fastnet yacht race was hit by storms in 1979, and when the Alexander Kielland oil rig overturned in the North sea, Nimrods provided vital cover. They also did so during the Piper Alpha disaster and, just recently, for the Athena fishing vessel, which needed the Nimrod’s capability because Sea King helicopters could spend only 20 minutes hovering above the vessel. We must remember that we have an international obligation to provide long-range search and rescue missions. We will not be able to adhere to the international convention on maritime search and rescue, which we signed in 1979, if we cancel the new Nimrod.

Let us also remember the use of maritime surveillance capabilities against drug smuggling, human trafficking and piracy. The new maritime patrol aircraft, of which the Nimrod was the mainstay, had the capacity to counter drug-running operations in the Caribbean, fight pirate activity in the gulf of Arabia and form a crucial part of maritime counter-terrorism operations.

It has been a long time since the Conservative Government needed to reinforce the Falkland Islands. I pay particular tribute to the speech made by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), who recognised the vulnerability of the Falkland Islands, particularly given the growing demand for energy. The UK’s claim to energy resources in the south Atlantic, which are being explored as we speak, must be safeguarded. The Nimrod provides the only capability that could deploy to the Falklands within 48 hours. It can provide early indicators and warnings for forces that follow. The Royal Navy would take three weeks to deploy there. That is 48 hours for a Nimrod, but three weeks for the Royal Navy.

The Nimrod MRA4 has not been cleared for overland operations, but it does have a tremendously sophisticated suite of new sensors that would make a good surveillance and support asset for land operations. I fail to see why our security and defence capability has been reduced by the removal of this asset. It has the capacity to provide maritime eyes and ears at long range—up to 4,000 miles. Where else do we have a 4,000-mile capability for intelligence? It can move very rapidly—within two hours—and with persistence it can fly for 12 hours without refuelling. No other asset has that capability.

[Dr Murrison]

The hon. Lady is making a compelling case, but will she say what elements of the defence programme she would scratch, given our unfunded liabilities, to make good the spending commitment that she is apparently making?

[Mrs Moon]

That is not a matter for me. As a member of the Defence Committee, my objective is to look at what the Government propose and ask whether they are providing the best defence and security for the UK. Removing this platform is not in the best interests of Britain’s defence and security. I defy any Member to contradict me—and the Secretary of State for Defence, who said exactly that in his letter to the Prime Minister.

I acknowledge that the procurement history of the Nimrod MRA4 has been difficult. But past problems bear no relation to the decision not to bring it to service. The Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff), made it clear that the decision to cancel the project was based on the future support costs of the aircraft—not the past spend, but the future costs. Considering what we have spent on research and development, the capability that we have put in place and the versatility of the aircraft, saving the modest future running costs is short-sighted.

If we really cannot find the pocket money that we need for those running costs, why do we not at least consider mothballing rather than selling off? Let us mothball, so that when the Treasury wakes up to the enormous capabilities that we would have, it can bring the Nimrod back into operational service. In the meantime, we must make sure that we do not lose the skills of the Nimrod aviators; there must be ongoing training and skills development to make sure that the capability is retained.

The Under-Secretary also said that the Ministry of Defence had

“sought to mitigate the gap in capability”

produced by the early retirement of the Nimrod MR2, through the use of a range of other assets:

“Type 23 Frigates, Merlin Anti Submarine Warfare helicopters and Hercules C-130 aircraft, and by relying, where appropriate, on assistance from allies and partners.”—[Official Report, 28 October 2010; Vol. 517, c. 451W.]

This was meant to be a short-term solution while the new Nimrods were developed, and we now need to know what longer-term plan will be put in place. How long are we going to rely on a patchwork of aircraft to fill the gap left by the Nimrod?

The decision not to cancel the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent has demonstrated a belief in the need for us to maintain a constant and secure independent nuclear deterrent, yet we cannot provide the reconnaissance to ensure the safety of those submarines and of our nuclear deterrent.

We are going to get rid of the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers as well, it seems, and we are cancelling the aircraft that would defend the carriers. It does not make sense. We have talked about asymmetrical warfare and the threat to our nation from individuals and groups rather than nation states, yet we are going to reduce our capability to protect national infrastructure and essential offshore assets, particularly our energy capabilities.

The Secretary of State concluded his letter to the Prime Minister by saying:

“Cuts, there will have to be. Coherence, we cannot do without”.

Not bringing the Nimrod into service does not represent a coherent approach to the defence of our country. I hope that the Treasury will listen and that the Ministry of Defence will yet again argue for this piece of equipment so vital for our defence and security.