Armed Forces: Personnel

Lord Lyell Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Lyell]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and to other noble Lords, for speaking now. I did not expect to arrive in time to ask the Minister my very brief question. The noble Baroness, Lady Dean, will know of the excellent work that our committee tried to do, I think four years ago, when we went to Colchester. I was detailed to take account of services family accommodation, and what was said to me then was quite chilling, although things seem to have improved considerably.

The Minister does not have to answer this point tonight; he can write to me. In paragraph 4.13, which begins,

“In its evidence, the Ministry told us that”

something was going on, the penultimate line on the page is:

“However, we received a rather more mixed impression on our visits”.

I will not say that that is necessarily what happened when your Lordships’ committee went down to Colchester. The report found that 42 per cent of respondents were satisfied with the quality of maintenance and repairs. I ask the Minister and indeed the rest of the Committee to glance at table A6.4 on page 76, labelled “2011 Armed Forces Continuous Attitude Survey results”. It is encouraging that 57 per cent of respondents declared that they were satisfied with the overall standard of service accommodation, and the figure for satisfaction with value for money was 65 per cent. So, in spite of the fact that a majority was not entirely happy with one aspect of value for money and service, the results were encouraging I hope that my noble friend will be able to give us further encouragement on the issue. I apologise and thank the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, for his forbearance.