Armed Forces Personnel

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Dai Havard

Thursday 10th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I start by declaring my interest as a service pensioner and a current member of the reserve forces.

It is a great pleasure to follow four current and past members of the Defence Committee. I wish to develop a point that the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr Havard) made in his extremely considered contribution, which is about the universality of the military covenant. I share his concern that we may forget that it is not a local covenant, or an English, Scottish, Northern Irish or Welsh one, but a UK covenant. In preparing my report “Fighting Fit”, on veterans’ mental health, and more recently a report on military amputees, I have been extremely aware of the need to ensure that the complexity of the devolved arrangement is worked through. I have been buoyed up by the understanding of that necessity among officials and Ministers throughout the UK. There is a strong understanding that we must ensure that the covenant is applied throughout the UK and in equal part. From my experience of preparing that work, I am confident that it will.

[Mr Havard]

I recognise what the hon. Gentleman says and congratulate him on behalf of all hon. Members on his work on both those matters. I hope he is correct that a consistent approach will be maintained over time. My concern is that the process needs to endure not just for the next five years or the next comprehensive spending review period, but for a long time into the future.

[Dr Murrison]

I entirely agree.

Last week, with a number of hon. Members, I rattled a tin for the Royal British Legion in Westminster tube station. That is always an enjoyable occasion and it is particularly pleasurable to importune colleagues as they come through the barriers, and to fix one’s gimlet eyes on precisely what goes into the tin—indeed, it restores one’s faith in politicians. Perhaps I should not name names, but without exception, they were all extremely generous. Such occasions are well appreciated in the House and I recommend that all hon. Members participate in future.

Like many right hon. and hon. Members, I shall pay my tribute this weekend—in my case at the war memorials in Trowbridge and Warminster. In each of the 10 years that I have been the local MP, I have noticed an increase in the number of people who wish to pay their respects. I was asked this morning on my local radio, which my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) knows well, why we should wear a poppy. One point made earlier was that there is an imperative pressure to wear one. The truth is that it is an individual choice—nobody should feel obliged to wear any badge or mark of commemoration. However, purely anecdotally, it seems that more and more people are choosing to wear a poppy, and they are sometimes people whom we would not necessarily expect to do so. They do so not out of a sense of militarism, nationalism or patriotism, but out of a sense that we need to mark the sacrifice and contribution of people who have fought in conflicts. We might or might not agree with those conflicts, but nevertheless, those who fought in them have shown the best of us in their soldierly conduct. That is why people choose to wear a poppy and to be so generous to the poppy appeal and the Royal British Legion.

I look forward to the armed forces covenant interim report later this year. I welcome very much the evolution of the external reference group into the covenant reference group, and particularly Ministers’ insistence that it should be independent. The evolution of the Armed Forces Act 2011 was interesting—as has been said, the Royal British Legion certainly made a big contribution to it. I do not entirely share the perspective of the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), but nevertheless, the Royal British Legion’s contribution was an important one. I look forward to seeing both the interim report and the covenant reference group’s response—its independence is extremely important.

I welcome Professor Hew Strachan’s work and the report of his independent taskforce, which was published in December last year. I hope we have an opportunity to discuss progress on the points in the interim report that have been accepted by the Government when it is debated later this year.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Dai Havard

Thursday 4th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Let me first declare my interest, which is set out in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr Havard), and I am really pleased that he has rejoined the Defence Select Committee, which, under the chairmanship of my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), has an extremely impressive membership. I know that the Committee will do a great job in holding the Government to account, which is indeed its function.

The first duty of the state is to defend national security and the national interest. Even in today’s defence debate, we have to admit that the chief threat to this country is not military at all, but economic. It is, of course, against that backdrop that we have had the strategic defence and security review.

I might be accused of being sycophantic, but I will say this nevertheless. I think that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has done a first-rate job in marrying our need to ensure that the country returns to an even keel economically with the ongoing need to ensure that we prepare for all foreseeable threats to the country, particularly in a world that is ever-changing.

Much has been said about aircraft carriers, which are close to my heart. I spent 18 years in the Navy, and developed a healthy respect for them during that time. During most of my career, the Harrier jump jet took off and landed on aircraft carriers. It must be said that they were rather short. I think we should bear in mind that, while STOVL—short take-off and vertical landing—has many virtues, its chief virtue is as an expedient for countries that have short aircraft carriers. I listened with interest to the remarks of the former Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), and noted his concern that we should be able to land on small plots of land. Nevertheless, the chief virtue of the aircraft carriers is connected with the fact that for several years—indeed, for decades—we had to make do with carriers that were smaller and more economical than we might have liked.

We are now to have two impressive aircraft carriers, which will be larger than the Charles de Gaulle. Their size will approach that of some of the largest ships in the American fleet that we admire so much. It is absolutely right for us to have craft that are fitted out to accommodate the naval forces of our two greatest allies, the United States and France, and I welcome the fitting of the “cats and traps”, which will provide us with that interoperability.

It strikes me as bizarre that the previous Government should have ignored the obvious desire and need for aircraft from those two nations to use our aircraft carriers, whether or not there is a formal arrangement with France to share one of them, and I am exceptionally pleased that we will now be able to do that. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary on the important work he has done, both in opposition and in government, to strengthen the links with France. It is quite wrong to say that that has happened since May. As one who was on the Defence Front Bench until recently, I know that it was a recurring theme throughout my three years there. We have a great deal in common with our neighbour, and it is not just about our willingness to pay for a defence umbrella under which others in Europe are content to shelter. Both countries, while slipping down the league table of global significance as others rise, have residual interests overseas, although France, of course, has rather more than the United Kingdom.

I congratulate the Government on resisting the temptation to close some of our remaining overseas assets. In particular, our removal from the sovereign base areas in Cyprus would have been most unwise, given the strategic situation. Akrotiri and Dhekelia offer a combination of barracks, training areas, an airfield and a seaport that is peerless, not to mention other assets in the Troodos mountains that are beyond the scope of the debate. Those of us who have had the pleasure of serving in Cyprus will attest to its importance, and to the totemic significance of any east-of-Nicosia moment that the Defence Secretary may have been forced at least to contemplate.

Inevitably, much has been said today about bombs and bullets, but I must confess that my interest is now, and has always been, in our military software, by which I mean the men and women of our armed forces. Tempting though it is for policy makers to become obsessed with equipment, not least when there are jobs and constituency interests to be considered, we must always bear in mind the greatest single factor: the bloke with the gun or, increasingly, the metal detector on the front line. I think that the SDSR has done that.

Importantly, the White Paper makes it clear that an armed forces covenant will be formalised, and I imagine that that codification will feature prominently in the Armed Forces Bill. The military covenant made its debut in April 2000 in a rather dusty Army publication, “Army Doctrine Publication Volume 5”—a snappy title! We can, however, find examples of such a covenant going back to ancient Greece. It was certainly considered in Roman Britain too, with the distribution of bits of land to those who had served in the Roman army, and it continued to the reign of Elizabeth I, who formally codified a system of pensions for those who had been disabled in action. Ironically, it rather fell apart during Cromwell’s military Protectorate, but it has been an unspoken theme of service throughout our history.

Whether or not the author of the military covenant knew it, it was at the extreme end of the spectrum of psychological contracts identified by Harry Levinson in 1962, following his study of the Midlands Utilities Company in the American midwest. The point about such contracts is that they are unspoken and unwritten. In an age of lawyers, that has a certain appeal. We are now considering codifying the military covenant and putting it in writing so that people will be able to rely on it as of right, and potentially, of course, in a court of law.

If we are rather reluctant to go down that route, we must consider the developments of the early 1990s. Many of us will recall NMS—the new management strategy—and the new managerialism introduced into the Ministry of Defence, and the impact that had on the relationship between leaders and led. Commanding officers morphed into budget holders and military units into cost centres. The relationship between commanding officers and those they commanded was subtly changed. In that context, it is right and proper that we should look at articulating the psychological contract of the military covenant in statute. I look forward to seeing the form in which it is introduced in the forthcoming armed forces Bill.

The insurgents in Afghanistan have proved capable of being flexible in their tactics. The Taliban lost, as they were bound to, in the head-to-head early conflict in Helmand and Kandahar. They then shifted to the use of IEDs, and that proved very successful, as all of us will know who have spent time in Birmingham and at Headley Court and who represent constituencies with a military element. The Taliban’s tactics are now changing once again. They are developing their own brand of Sharpe’s Rifles, chosen men who are rather less appealing even than the men of the South Essex.

It is worth bearing in mind the threat that still exists, and is likely to continue to exist, from IEDs. They are a mortal threat to our men and women and a bitter fact of life for the civilian population. I know that the Government have taken a real interest in this and that the Prime Minister has taken the trouble to familiarise himself with the workings of the Vallon metal detector that is currently used by our troops.

I am pleased to note that a contract has now been let to improve the collective counter-IED training of our troops, especially as it has been let to a firm in my constituency. We have a digital record of aptitude and performance in training, and it has been shown to be extremely variable. Will the Minister ensure that the value of that highly granular information is exploited further so as to allow us to assess post-deployment how effective the new training has been, and perhaps refine it further? Will the Minister also say what further personal protective equipment our troops are to have to reduce the toll taken by IEDs?

For servicemen with children there are few issues of greater concern than education, and that is rightly cited in the White Paper. The Department for Education has been consulting on a pupil premium for service children. There is no doubt that schools with substantial numbers of service children are at a distinct disadvantage because of the extra costs involved in their education. I would cite the New Close primary school and the Avenue school in Warminster as prime examples of that. If we are serious about the concept of “no disadvantage” from military service, we must ensure that the extra costs relating to service children are properly reflected in the funding formula.

I have an abiding interest in military health care, so I am very pleased to see a substantial reflection in the White Paper of the importance of doing more. I am particularly keen to see improvements in military mental health care, and I very much welcome the fact that that is cited specifically in the White Paper. However, it is important that we bear in mind that it is not just about combat stress and post-traumatic stress disorder, and that we need to look more widely at mental health issues, including those relating to service families and issues such as alcoholism and the overuse of alcohol, depression and so on.

It is important that we are far more proactive in dealing with combat stress, because most people, including the general public, would accept that of all those conditions the ones that the military has a direct hand in causing need to be addressed as a priority. Although, numerically, the incidence of PTSD—combat stress—might not be vast in the great scheme of things, men and women experience it by virtue of their exposure on the front line, so if we are serious about the military covenant, we must do our utmost to reduce the chances of it occurring in the first place and to manage it when it does. The key to that is being proactive and ensuring that we look for people with problems before they wait, often for many years, before seeking out medical attention. It is important to go where young men and women are if we want to find out whether they are having problems and to signpost services where they are available—and that means going online.

I very much welcome the extra mental health professionals whom the Government have announced they will recruit to improve mental health care for this community. I also welcome the prospect of a veterans’ information service, by which we will inform veterans, after they have left, of the services available to them, and not simply cut them free and let them go, as we have done in the past.

[Mr Havard]

I know of the hon. Gentleman’s particular interest in medical services and mental health. He will be aware that the British Medical Association has made suggestions on improving general practitioners’ understanding about the medical treatment of those who have served. Does he have a view about that?

[Dr Murrison]

Yes, I do. I commend the BMA for its efforts, as I do the Royal College of General Practitioners, which has recently put out a leaflet trying to apprise GPs of the problems that may be faced by patients who have served in the military. That is not an easy task. Most GPs are faced daily with a whole pile of stuff and will jettison most of it, so getting the message across to them is extremely difficult, given that a relatively small number of their patients will have served and may have a problem as a result of their service. That is not to say that we must not do what we can to raise the prominence of this issue.

In conclusion, may I say how much I welcome the emphasis in the White Paper on the military covenant? It is essential that we try to codify it in some way, and I look forward to it becoming a far more prominent part of the way in which we think about the service community and veterans in the future.