Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

Given that the office of the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) is on the same corridor as mine, I think it would be wise for me to share the time with him, in the interest of long-term relationships.

It was an honour to be asked to be a trustee of the new scheme, and I am happy to serve on the trust, together with the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray). There have been many tributes to Sir Neil Thorne today, and as I was sitting here I thought that as a former MP he will know that we all merely leave footprints on the sand of life and the waves wash them off. With some people, however, it takes longer before the prints are erased, and with Sir Neil I think it will take a pretty long time before what he has achieved so far, and what he will continue to achieve as life president of the scheme, is erased, and he should be proud of that. I do not think that the British are very good at saying, “I think I’ve done well,” but if anyone is allowed to say it, Sir Neil is.

The scheme is significant, but I want to make another point that has not come up so far. My first contact with the forces was a difficult one. I was the Health Minister who closed down the military hospitals, and I was not terribly popular at the time. One of the arguments used was, “You just don’t understand the forces,” which was valid, but the reason for the closures was that the royal colleges were saying that it was no longer possible to carry out the medical training in the way it needed to be done, and the NHS needed to make a contribution. Some 14 years on, the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine is in my constituency, and we are in the reverse position of the NHS having to learn from the medical services provided there. That interaction is important.

I then served on the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs for eight years, and on the Select Committee on Defence, but visits as part of the scheme have a very different flavour from the ones we do for Select Committee or ministerial work—the relationships are different. They key thing about the scheme—I was with the Navy—is that it affords the enormous and rare luxury of suddenly being able to spend four or five days thinking about only one subject. It also provides contact with people from the captain to the cooks on board, who really say what they think, and even though they are not our voters we feel that we had better listen to them and take note. It is the nature of that exchange that is so important.

I want to make brief reference to sponsorship and transparency. In the modern world, such a scheme must be absolutely transparent. Just like my fellow member of the Defence Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr Havard), I do not think anyone has ever tried to say, “This is what we think you should be doing. This is a kind of sponsorship”—that might, of course, be just be a reflection of how insignificant we really are. This is a terrible admission: up until the point of the discussions on the scheme I had no idea that it was not just the Ministry of Defence that was picking the bill up. I had absolutely no idea that sponsorship was involved. I think that that was one of those rare occasions when ignorance is a sign of success.

It was right and proper to put the scheme on this new footing, and I am grateful to the Minister for helping to set that up. As a trustee, I will have much more involvement, so I ought to leave most of the time left to my fellow MP, the hon. Member for New Forest East.

I thank Mr Speaker and the Lord Speaker, as well as the parliamentary authorities, for realising that the scheme is one like any other, and for accommodating and facilitating it: the scheme is an extension of parliamentary activity in a different framework. The knowledge gained is fundamental. We should remember that Parliament came about because of the defence of the realm and how taxes were raised for it. We have forgotten that in many ways, but we should be brought back to remembering our primary function.

We should not just see the forces when they come back as injured soldiers—a real danger is that there is a public relationship with our armed forces only when they become victims—but be proud of what they do, understanding what they do and what a difficult job they have juggling politicians and the real world. The scheme facilitates, and I firmly believe will continue to facilitate, that learning.