Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Robathan and John Redwood(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Robathan
My hon. Friend speaks from his own personal experience, and he is absolutely right that early service leavers are often those who have the greatest difficulty. I would like to thank him again for his “Fighting Fit” report on the mental health needs of ex-servicemen, and indeed for his recent work on prosthetics. In fact, everyone—even someone who has served for a very brief period—gets some resettlement advice. Inevitably, those who have served for a brief period have less need to adjust, if I may put it that way, because their service has been so short.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Will the Minister look again at ideas put forward by me and others in the past to allow service personnel to buy a property while still serving in the armed forces, or to build housing equity before they leave, in order to avoid the problem of homelessness?
Mr Robathan
My right hon. Friend raises an excellent point. There are schemes that we are taking forward to ensure that people can get priority in some ways. For instance, my right hon. Friend may not know that until recently—in fact, this is still the case—a BFPO address may not count as a proper address for creditworthiness; we are taking steps to change that.
Armed Forces Redundancies
Debate between Lord Robathan and John Redwood(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Will the Minister remind the House how many uniformed armed services personnel will need to leave the service over the next two years under the current plans, and will he tell us why this cannot be done by means of natural wastage rather than redundancies?
Mr Robathan
As far as possible, it is being done by means of natural wastage, and indeed by reducing recruiting, but, as my right hon. Friend will understand, we must continue to recruit because otherwise there will be an imbalance in the armed forces. The number that we are looking at, off the top of my head—in fact I have it here, if my right hon. Friend will wait one second—is 11,000.