Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Lord Judd

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I hope that the Minister will take seriously the arguments that have been put forward this afternoon. With the tremendous demands that we make on our armed services and the way in which they discharge their responsibilities, our responsibility is redoubled to make absolutely certain that whatever the good intention of the new legislation—the proposals are impressive in many respects—it is not allowed to become a formality in which the real application of its spirit becomes minimalist rather than maximised. We need to be clear that effective muscle is in place.

It is a long time since I had the privilege of being a Minister at the Ministry of Defence. In those days we had Ministers responsible for the services and I had responsibility for the Navy. I can remember clearly that issues were raised about the welfare of personnel in the Navy even back then in the early 1970s. The Seebohm report was produced by the distinguished man of that name, who wanted to put in place effective arrangements to ensure that there was proper provision for the welfare of naval personnel. In those days it was regarded as a very hostile concept. There was a lot of defensive reaction within the service for which I was responsible because it was felt that it was undermining the responsibility of leadership in the services. There were well informed and courageous officers at that time who were saying quite the reverse and that the responsibility of leadership is to make sure that things happen and are well done. If we know that we do not have professional insights or experience that is relevant to proper provision, we have a responsibility as leaders to ensure that it is available. The report prevailed.

I make that point because it seems that our attitude has come on by leaps and bounds, and I can do nothing but welcome how those with a great deal of highly relevant and recent senior service experience are seeing all this as part of discharging our responsibilities to the personnel who serve us so well.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I wish briefly to add a comment to Amendment 11, which is in the names of my noble friends Lord Kakkar and Lord Patel. We have a changing system of healthcare delivery for those coming back from active service, with an increasing number now being looked after in primary care and in hospitals nearer their own homes wherever those are. It is important that we monitor the quality of care. In meeting service personnel who have been severely injured, I have been struck that one of the problems that they are now hitting relates to limb fitting and rehabilitation services that go along with that. That is from the perspective of the recipients, and maybe we need to think of more cost-effective ways of meeting the very specific needs of those who have become multiple amputees through an incident on the battlefield, for example.

There is another aspect to this, however. If we do not collate this information we will not get the information on the best way to deal with the trauma when it occurs in the battlefield. The way that trauma is inflicted on our troops is changing very rapidly as enemies use different methods and different types of improvised devices to cause injury. The speed of response of our services and medical services at the front line, and indeed the other members of the forces who are with them at the time, makes the difference between survival and death.

Survival figures from battlefield trauma are a credit to those medical services. They are astounding and I have had the privilege of having discussions with some of the medics who have been in the front line doing the trauma. They also need the information, however, in the longer term of whatever they do out in the field. There are very clear clinical indications for the management of trauma on the battlefield, wherever it happens, to make sure we save more lives and that we maximise the chance of recovery. All those lessons spill over into civilian life as well, where there are multiple accidents, explosions and other forms of trauma. The way that our ordinary civilian paramedical services deal with trauma is often based on lessons learned in the battlefield.

I commend Amendment 11, which might seem as if it sits a little outside the others in this group but actually will have some very important long-term implications. It is an opportunity lost if we do not collect the data.