Remembrance and Veterans

Debate between Al Carns and Calvin Bailey

Monday 28th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Veterans and People (Al Carns)]

It is indeed 360 years since the formation of the Royal Marines and they are still going strong. I will refuse to take advice from the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) on face cream but it was a privilege to take the salute just the other day from both the Commandant General Royal Marines and the Commandant of the US Marine Corps, which demonstrates the strong ties across the pond with the US between those Marine units.

I am grateful to Members for their thoughtful reflections on remembrance and the contributions of veterans to this country. We have heard moving contributions from Members reflecting on their personal experience of service, and as I am sure they would testify there is an unspoken oath of allegiance between service personnel. Indeed, it knows no bounds; it is the glue that holds the forces together, and that oath has always extended to the fallen on the battlefield and beyond. For serving personnel and veterans, remembrance is an enduring reflection of that oath, and on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day I will remember the individuals who have gone before us but also those I have stood next to who have been killed or wounded—after five tours of Afghanistan, one of Northern Ireland, and multiple of the Arabian gulf, eastern Europe and Africa, there have been many.

Importantly, we must remember those who will never see that smile again or see them laugh or hold them close once more. It is a time for them, and those that did not come home to see their children, their partners, or indeed their loved ones or their friends. It is our duty to remember them all.

But remembrance is not only about fallen comrades and veterans; it is a rare moment when the nation comes together, from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. And it is a reminder to everyone in every generation across the whole country that the freedoms we all enjoy—the freedoms of speech, of equality, of quality of life—were all hard fought for and hard-won. Freedom is not free, and it is something in the fractious world we live in today that individually or collectively we should not take for granted.

Those freedoms are forged from the sacrifice of the young men and women of the Army, Navy and our Air Force who stepped forward when the country needed them: the sacrifices of the few who are still owed so much by the many; the sacrifices on the high seas, in the air, on the beaches and the landing grounds and in the fields, and in the streets from world war one to Operation Overlord, where they secured a beachhead in Normandy that would free a continent from Nazi tyranny and usher in the rules-based international system; and the sacrifices of 80,000 British service personnel who fought in the forgotten war on the Korean peninsula to uphold the rights and freedoms enshrined in that rules-based international system. All are memorialised in stones outside the MOD, of which one says,

“A distant obligation honourably discharged.”

There were the sacrifices in the south Atlantic, on the open water, in the skies and on the windswept heaths, for the right of the Falkland Islanders to choose their own sovereign future. And the sacrifices of service personnel in desert fatigues who liberated Kuwait and fought in Iraq, and those in the operational areas whom I served alongside in the long troubles of Northern Ireland, the middle east, Africa, Afghanistan and eastern Europe who sacrificed so much to uphold the right to self-determination and give freedom and democracy a chance to take root. And the sacrifices we cannot talk about because we do not comment on certain issues.

It is thanks to all those who have served and sacrificed and whom we honour on Remembrance Day that we can sit here, as democratically elected MPs, and debate the future of this wonderful country. Few, if any, outside the armed forces sign a contract that puts their life on the line and those who have served or continue to serve often pay the price for that service, through the long-term mental or physical scars, the impact on families and on their children, or through the painful memories or indeed the longing for the camaraderie and service they left behind. It is my opinion that those who serve through one way or another serve until the day they die. That is why this Government of service are committed to standing with members of our armed forces and their families long after they leave the services.

[Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Syd Little was part of the team which delivered life-saving supplies to Mount Sinjar on 9 August 2014, in the operation now known as Operation Shader. Flight Sergeant Little lost his life this weekend to cancer. Does my hon. and gallant Friend agree that service people face some of their greatest challenges on their exit from service and that the veterans strategy is essential to ensuring that those challenges are not equal to those they faced while serving?