Armed Forces Pay

Debate between Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton and Conor McGinn

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) should not keep hollering from a sedentary position in evident disapproval of the stance taken by the Minister. Apart from anything else—he is chuckling about it—it is marginally discourteous to his hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), who had requested an intervention and had it granted, before it was ripped away from him by the hon. Gentleman’s unseemly behaviour.

[Conor McGinn]

Talking about the figures, I was very concerned to read in the London Times this morning that the Government are considering scrapping the £29 deployment allowance that applies to soldiers on the frontline in Iraq. The Minister is an agreeable chap, and I would like to give him an opportunity to deny that categorically at the Dispatch Box.

[Mark Lancaster]

I am a very agreeable chap, but this is yet more speculation from The Times. No decision at all has been made to scrap the operational allowance. Every year since the operational allowance was introduced 12 years ago, there has been a review of where it should and should not apply. Soldiers have not been told that they will not receive it when they go to Iraq. I am deeply proud that this Government have doubled the operational allowance from £14 to £29. Finally—to get the last word, for the time being at least, with the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones)—none of those figures takes into account the substantial rise in the personal tax allowance introduced while this Government have been in power.

--- Later in debate ---

[Conor McGinn]

The hon. Lady makes an important and interesting point. We have certainly tried hard in my constituency and the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens more widely to implement the armed forces covenant, but there have been issues with its implementation in Northern Ireland. I am sure we would all wish to see those issues resolved and its full implementation in Northern Ireland, as in the rest of the UK.

Despite the Government’s target in the strategic defence and security review to have 82,000 full-time fully trained troops, as of April this year there were just 78,000 soldiers in the Army. By any measure, that is an abject failure on the Government’s watch, and it was rightly identified as a key problem by the former commander of Joint Forces Command, General Sir Richard Barrons. The recent report by the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) confirmed that the Regular Army needs to recruit 10,000 people a year to maintain its strength, but managed to attract only 7,000 entrants last year.

Worryingly, alongside all that, the figures show that the numbers leaving the part-time Army Reserve, which we were told would be increased to meet the decline in numbers in the Regular Army, increased by 20% between 1 June 2016 and 1 June 2017. At about the same time, in the most recent financial year the reserve intake fell by 18%. The Government do not seem to have a strategy to turn these falling numbers around. In fact, their only solution so far has been to sack another 120 members of the armed forces personnel who serve as recruiters and replace them with civilians from Capita. I say gently to the Minister—as I said earlier, he is an agreeable chap—that he has a bit of a cheek on him to criticise our plans for recruitment and what we would do with the budget when he is taking money out of the pockets of armed forces personnel and giving it to a private company.

[Mark Lancaster]

rose—

[Conor McGinn]

I suppose I had better give way.

[Mark Lancaster]

Of course people join the armed forces and people leave—that is the nature of any job and the nature of the armed forces—but to be absolutely clear, over the past three years the numbers in the reserves has increased, not decreased.

[Conor McGinn]

I do not wish to contravene the rules of the House by getting into a debate with the Minister, but I am not sure that he can express particular confidence that the target of 30,000 reserve recruits will be met. The Government started to publish the figures only after pressure from the Opposition several years ago. We will continue to monitor progress on that in particular, because although, like the hon. Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) said earlier, I am not a mathematician, I know that if we need to recruit 10,000 and we are attracting only 7,000 to the Regular Army, and we have not met the quota that we defined to meet national security needs through recruitment to the reserves, it is not going to add up. It is not going to add up for the armed forces, and it is not going to add for the British public.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton and Conor McGinn

Monday 18th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Commando Joe’s works in more than 500 schools across the country, placing veterans in classrooms to share skills and experiences with young people. Despite robust evidence of the success of its work, its Government funding is due to end in March this year, placing the organisation in jeopardy. Will the Secretary of State take representations on that and look at what can be done to allow this hugely important work to continue?

[Mark Lancaster]

I would be delighted to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss that matter and to see whether we can pursue it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton and Conor McGinn

Monday 8th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lancaster]

All those who join as junior ranks receive key skills training and complete professional apprenticeships. All personnel can access routes to higher and further education, are provided with some financial assistance and are given time to study. All personnel leaving the armed forces—about 20,000 a year—are entitled to resettlement provision to help their transition into future careers.

I am sure that my hon. Friend is rightly proud that Oxfordshire has led the way in delivering on our community covenant by being the first local authority to change its schools admissions policy to make it easier for the children of service families to secure school places by using base addresses before their postings. I know that she has played a key role in driving that forward, and I thank her for it.

[Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)]

I am sure that the Minister agrees that support for our veterans is fundamental to the armed forces covenant. There are 500,000 veterans in the north-west of England, many of them in my constituency, but not one penny of the £40 million veterans accommodation fund went to any organisation in the north-west. Will he ensure that funding for veterans organisations is fairly distributed across the country, and that there are mechanisms in place to do so?

[Mark Lancaster]

Yes, of course. The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that over the past three years, some £150 million of LIBOR funding has been used for the military covenant. I am determined that that should be spread equally across the country, and I will look into the matter that he has raised.