Armed Forces Bill

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I can appreciate the real sense of pride that the Minister has in introducing this Bill. I was the Minister who took the last Armed Forces Bill through all its stages in the Commons and, having had the opportunity to carry out that task, I share his sense of privilege. I certainly welcome the Government’s first tentative steps to codify the Armed Forces covenant, but they are, in truth, very small steps. Taken as a whole, the proposals are pretty thin and cover just three main headings: healthcare, education and housing. After all the rhetoric we have had from Ministers from the Prime Minister down, I am sure I am not alone in being a little disappointed that there is not much more meat on this particular bone. However, it is a start and that is to be welcomed.

We place an enormous responsibility on the shoulders of our service men and women. We ask them to operate in circumstances that are often difficult, unpredictable and dangerous. We ask them to perform tasks that have no parallel whatever in the civilian world. When they join the Armed Forces, they are not joining an organisation like Barclays bank or Tesco. They are joining an organisation where they may have to put their life on the line, and sometimes they make that ultimate sacrifice. Let me say at this point how much it is appreciated that the Minister pays tribute to those who have lost their lives in the service of our country when he comes to this House and that he also never fails to mention those who have suffered wounds and are being treated as a result of incidents in the conflicts in which our forces are engaged.

I welcome Clause 2 which makes clear that each year the Secretary of State for Defence will prepare and present a report to Parliament on the operation of the covenant. But I am somewhat disappointed that, having listed the three specific areas on which he must report—healthcare, education and housing—it seems that anything else to be reported is a matter for him. Clause 2(2)(b) makes it clear that if he is minded not to report on anything else, that is quite acceptable. I am further concerned to know what powers he will have to examine and report on healthcare, education and housing for former service men and women. How is this to be achieved? Will he have powers to instruct the Secretaries of State responsible for health, education and housing to do this work on his behalf? Can the Minister shed some light on this when he replies? I feel sure that we need more than an annual report to Parliament. I join other noble Lords in paying tribute to the Minister for arranging the briefings that we have had in recent days, but I believe we need an annual independent audit of the operation of the covenant. The noble Lord, Lord Selkirk of Douglas, alluded to this point. As a former member of the Public Accounts Committee in the other place, noble Lords will be expecting me to recommend the National Audit Office as the obvious choice for such an audit. It is independent of Government and Parliament and it has an international reputation. But I think it would be a good idea at the outset to start measuring how successful we are at delivering the objectives in the covenant and that would be better done independently. Such a report could be laid before Parliament by the Secretary of State at the same time as he presents his annual report.

I would like to see this Bill used as a vehicle to do more for Britain’s 5.5 million veterans and their families. It is not too late to do that. I had the privilege of being the Veterans Minister and I had the considerable ambition to make the Veterans Agency as well known to the British public as, say, the BBC. My ambition was for the Veterans Agency to be the first point of contact for every service man and woman who returned to civilian life and needed help. Before the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, phoned me up and said he was awarding me the DCM—Don’t Come Monday—and I ceased to be a Minister, one of the last things I was able to do was launch an advertising campaign promoting the work of the Veterans Agency in the north-east of England. I planned that as a pilot, hoping to run it out across the country. I do not know quite what happened to it but it was never launched nationally. I had two objectives in this campaign: first, to raise public awareness of the Veterans Agency, and secondly and more importantly, to raise awareness among ex-service men and women who often do not know where to turn if they have a problem when they have left the services. I am sure I am not alone and that many noble Lords have met these men and women who have served our country well but sometimes feel they are forgotten when they have left the Armed Forces. I look forward to the day when we will do more for the gallant men and women who have risked their lives for Britain. For me, that day will come when we have a separate veterans department dedicated to the interests of veterans and their families. When I was Minister for Veterans, I had a simple mission statement. It was:

“We will value our veterans, their widows and their families, and we will do everything in our power to demonstrate that”.

Why do we need a veterans department? Yes, I was the Veterans Minister, but I was also responsible for the Met Office—I was its legal owner; all the good weather was my doing and the bad weather was my predecessor’s fault. I was also the Minister responsible for the Hydrographic Office, mapping the oceans of the world. I was responsible for Defence Medical Services and the Defence Estates—1 per cent of the landmass of Britain, worth £15 billion. I was the Minister responsible for the MoD Police, reserves, cadets, training, recruitment and retention, pay, pensions, the three services’ families associations, service accommodation, service family accommodation, links with service charities, war graves, low-flying aircraft, service children's health and education, including boarding schools, and the Far East Prisoners of War compensation scheme. With such a range of responsibilities, I would quite often sign up to 300 letters a day. Our veterans deserve a Minister whose only duty and responsibility is to them and to their families. I look forward to the day when Britain has such a Minister.

I have one final point on how we treat our veterans. Thirty-five thousand British veterans fought in the Malaysia campaign of 1955 to 1966. They were awarded the Pingat Jasa Malaysia Medal by the Malaysian Government. The Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals, which advises Her Majesty the Queen on these matters, said that the men should be able to accept this medal but not to wear it. That is a shameful way to treat these brave men, and it is an insult to the king and people of Malaysia. We should ask ourselves, after the conflicts in which we have been involved in recent years, how many Muslim countries want to honour British servicemen. Here is an opportunity to embrace their respect and affection for British servicemen. I hope that this Bill may be an opportunity for us in this House to express our anger at how the veterans of the Malaysia campaign were treated and perhaps to find ways to try to right this wrong. I look forward to exploring this further in Committee with other noble Lords to see whether we can do something a little better and show our veterans that they are not forgotten. We value them; we appreciate them. It should be more than words; there has to be action to demonstrate that.