Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Burghart Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. As the Secretary of State said, one of the advantages of having an armed force is that personnel provide such important skill sets while serving, but they can all be translated back into civilian street. It is important that we make people and society in general aware of the skill sets that are available—grip, tenacity, leadership and determination—and we must also make sure we translate military qualifications into civilian ones, to give personnel the best opportunity in life.

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

10. What steps her Department is taking to improve mental health provision for service personnel.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Tobias Ellwood)]

We can be proud of the changes we have introduced through the armed forces mental health and wellbeing strategy—which I inherited when I came into this job from my predecessor as Armed Forces Minister. Of all the things we have been involved in, we can be particularly proud of changing the stigma associated with mental health issues in the armed forces, getting more people to talk about it and moving it towards parity with physical injury. There is still much work to do, but we are heading in the right direction.

[Alex Burghart]

I thank the Minister for that response and congratulate the Government on what they are doing. Will the Minister set out what steps his Department is taking to achieve that parity of esteem, which is so important to serving personnel?

[Mr Ellwood]

The challenge we faced was that people were reluctant to come forward. They thought that if they put their hand up and said there was something wrong with their mind, that would somehow impact on their ability to be promoted or hold them back in some way. They would keep their problems to themselves, which would then incubate and eventually they would have to quit the very thing they loved: the armed forces. We have changed that with our focus on promoting better resilience, prevention to stop these things happening, and earlier detection and treatment. From putting that all together we are seeing far better results with people staying in the armed forces and not being hindered or affected by mental health issues.