Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton and Mark Francois

Monday 13th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lancaster]

I think that there is an acceptance across the House of just how important the covenant is, and I am delighted that every local authority in Great Britain and four in Northern Ireland—has now signed it. Last year, we sent out a survey to try to establish best practice, and we are now moving on to the next stage, in which we will look carefully at those local authorities and other organisations that are not doing what they said they would do, and encourage them to remedy that. Ultimately we could revoke the agreement with them, but I would like to think that we would never get to that stage.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Will the Minister say a bit more about the corporate covenant—the business element of the covenant through which many companies make contributions to help service families and personnel? There has been quite a lot of success in that area.

[Mark Lancaster]

There has. As my right hon. Friend knows, we have now combined the community covenant and the corporate covenant into the armed forces covenant. I hope that some 1,500 businesses will have signed the covenant by later this week, and that is a testament to British business. It also illustrates the fact that this is a two-way deal, in that the skill sets that we give to our armed forces personnel will ultimately help our businesses as well.