Armed Forces Bill

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 8th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Anderson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. In the next two minutes, the House will be able to hear what I went through and how the armed forces covenant would have helped me.

The SAS said to my regiment, “Give him to us. We’ll rehabilitate him.” I spent 10 months being rehabilitated by the SAS. I then returned to my unit, the Royal Green Jackets, and went straight on to the streets of the troubles in Northern Ireland. My foot was still part-paralysed, full of shrapnel and did not function, but I could walk, run and carry out the duties of an infantry soldier—very painfully, but I could do it.

What was getting worse was my head; as my physical aspects were recovering, my mental health was really impacted. In the evenings, I used to relive the time that I got shot and would wake up screaming, covered in sweat. It was hard, but I realised that alcohol subdued the pain and I could escape it for a short period of time. Violence was also a way of releasing the anger that I had inside me. I was on a slippery slope. I enjoyed and often excelled on different operational tours. I was fearless, because I did not care if I died. By that time, I did not enjoy life and I found ways to get through each day. When back in camp, I was always in trouble because I was always drinking and fighting. Despite all this going on and everybody telling me I had a problem, nobody gave me any support or help.

I needed to change. I was now married with a child, so I left the Army, and continued to work in security and defence in different conflict zones around the world. My foot got worse, and the shrapnel started working its way out, so I went to the MOD and said, “Can you help me?” It told me, “You are not our problem any more.” In the end, I raised the money myself to pay for private treatment to have an operation, or I would have had to walk with a walking stick for the rest of my life. If the Army took this approach to my foot, there was no way it was interested in my mental health. I did not even know where to look. I could not show love to my wife or my children. It was not only my foot that did not feel anything; for everything, I was in a darkest pit, more than most people can imagine.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is speaking incredibly movingly about his experience in the Army and as a veteran. Does he not agree that there must be care for those in service, but also as veterans, for as long as it is necessary to help those who have served their country?

[Stuart Anderson]

I thank my hon. Friend. I really appreciate everything that is being done, but we have to keep doing more and more, and that is why I am really championing this.

From that pit, my marriage broke down. We separated, and life for me was hell on earth. How did I ever get to this stage? This battle went on in my mind, and for 15 years I fought that battle. I would spend the evening drinking a litre of vodka, in a garage with the light off, trying to get rid of the pain. This was night after night, and in the end I realised, of the country I had fought for, that I had been abandoned by that country and by the people who sent me to those conflicts. I knew how to fight and I was good at it, but I was tired. There was nothing left in me. I went at that stage to take my life, but I could not do it, because I did not want my children to grow up, as I did, without a father. I had to face the reality that I had to live, and I hated the idea of it.

It was in this pit of despair, after many years of fighting that battle, that I found faith in God, and for the first time I had some hope. My wife and I started again, renewed our vows and sought help. For many years, we walked through a recovery of and reconciliation with what was a horrible life. I learned to love my wife, I love my children, and every day I made progress. I thank everybody who stood alongside me during this process. My life could have ended many times. Now I live life to the full, and I really appreciate it.

I want to use that experience to help the people who are going through what I did. When I delivered something similar in my maiden speech, somebody stopped committing suicide in the middle of the night because they had seen what I had said on Facebook, and we need to reach these people. I would never want anybody to go through what we did. We have truly been on a journey from death to life, but it is from this experience that I know this Bill will make changes to people’s lives. Some will say it does not go far enough and some will say it goes too far, but it is a massive positive step, and I also welcome the campaign the Minister has had to bring this Bill to the House.

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[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be able to speak on this Bill, and I would like to start by congratulating the Minister for Defence People and Veterans, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer). He has been assiduous in helping my constituents—veterans and those who are currently serving—with mental health issues and with housing issues, and I thank him for everything that he has done. Today should be a moment for us all to reflect on the hard work that he has put in to the Bill, and into the armed forces covenant to get it where it is. He should rightly be proud.

I am proud to have in my constituency the Britannia Royal Naval College, and I cannot talk enough about it. Last year, I was proud to attend the passing-out parade as ratings and officers were, for the first time ever, able to graduate as they went off into the Royal Navy. I thought then, as I think now, about the future that they will have in the armed forces and what they will have when they retire, become veterans and serve in other occupations, and about what we must do to support those who so bravely put their lives on the line to protect our borders and to push our interests overseas. I hope that today is an opportunity for us to reflect on the fact that we are matching action with words, that we are delivering on our promise to our armed forces and that this will be the start of the many promising steps that we can deliver to those who serve our country.

This is a historic moment, as the Minister has already said, and I welcome the fact that the Bill updates the Armed Forces Act 2006 and that it provides an update to the service justice system, ensuring a fair and effective route to justice. However, I would specifically like to pay attention to the armed forces covenant, which, as I have already said, has been championed so well by the Minister. It is covered in clause 8. We are doing this not just because we have a duty to those servicemen and not just because a focus group tells us to be patriotic, but because this is the right thing for us to do. I come from a military family. My uncle served in the Welsh Guards, and my father was a Green Jacket for his entire career, so I understand what it is like to be in a military family: the requirement to move at the last minute, the onerous stresses of the job that go with it, and the impact that they can place on a family. As such, the fact that this Bill focuses and delivers on the defence transition services that help people move from the military into the private sector, provides flexibility for reservists, and recognises the need to support our veterans and servicemen through education, healthcare and employment are all steps that we should rightly be proud of.

However, we must also recognise that this is a job that will never be finished. It will always require this House, and Members from across this House, to work together to find ways in which we can improve housing and address the mental health issues that are so likely to arise from conflict and crises. These are all welcome steps, but what we must learn for now is that we must improve access to mental health care. With a rural constituency, I know how hard it often is for veterans to access mental health services, so it is particularly welcome to see that the Government’s HeadFIT scheme, launched in April last year, has had such a positive impact, and that 800 GP practices are now recognised as veteran-friendly. I hope that is something we are going to see delivered again and again and improved upon, and that the Minister will come back to the House to provide an update on the progress of these steps.

This is not just about our determination to create the best armed forces in the world; it is about providing support that lasts from when a person joins the service, through their service, and during their careers afterwards. We have that duty. I welcome the steps that the Minister has taken through this Bill, and I welcome this Bill overall.

International Aid: Treasury Update

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

Programme motion
Tuesday 13th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

Let me make this point, and the Prime Minister can intervene if he wants. On the former point, the Office for Budget Responsibility does not predict public debt falling as a percentage of GDP until 2024 or 2025 at the earliest. If the Prime Minister wants to intervene, I am ready. That would mean returning to 0.7% will not happen in any year in this Parliament. I am clear about that. Does anyone want to intervene? That is the OBR’s prediction.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for allowing me to intervene. Perhaps he can help in ascertaining when those targets would have been met in the past 20 years.

[Keir Starmer]

Well, that is a very good point. I think it is once in 20 years. However, there are two points here and, if there is a contrary argument, the Prime Minister can make it. On the first point, the OBR does not predict a fall in debt as a percentage of GDP until 2024 to 2025. Therefore, anybody voting tonight who is pretending to themselves that the cut is temporary and will be changed in a year or two is not looking at the facts. If anybody wants to say they have better statistics and the OBR has got it completely wrong, please do so—that includes the Prime Minister.

On the second point, the OBR does not forecast a current surplus for its entire forecast period. In fact, there is no expected timeline for that criterion to be met at all. What the Chancellor is setting out is not a temporary cut in overseas aid; it is an indefinite cut. Let me remind the House that only, I think, five times in the past 30 years has a current budget surplus been run—four of them, I might add, were under a Labour Government and one under the Conservatives—so the chances of those criteria being met under a Conservative Chancellor are remote at best. All the more so, because the statement creates an artificial £4.3 billion fiscal penalty for any Chancellor who seeks to rebalance the Budget. So this is an indefinite cut—it is not going to be reversed next year or the year after—and, however much the Prime Minister shakes his head, there is no contrary argument.

This is not just about economic necessity; a political choice is being made. Not only is it against our national interest but it further erodes trust in our politics. That brings me to my third point: trust. There is now a central divide in British politics and across the world between those who value truth, integrity and honesty and those who bask in breaking them. We were all elected on manifestos that committed to the 0.7% target. I am proud to have stood on that commitment and I know that many hon. Members across the House are as well.

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[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. Friend is looking in the crystal ball, but I have read in the book: in the past 20 years, this would have happened on just one occasion. So a vote for the Government tonight is a vote to end our 0.7 commitment.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend, but does it say something when every economic and political commentator has said that this new mechanism will not see the 0.7% return in the way that it should and that this is a cop-out of the highest order?

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I said, this is a trap for the unwary and a tribute to the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s silver tongue. So I shall certainly be voting against this motion and against the Government today. I shall do so with absolute conviction and profound disappointment. This is only the third time since I was elected in 1987 that I have voted against the Government, and on one of those occasions I was in the company of the Prime Minister in the Lobby. It is never easy to rebel and I thank those who have stood with us to support our manifesto. We should not be breaking our promise in this way. We should certainly not be seeking to balance the books on the backs of the poorest people in the world. I am incredibly proud to have been a member of a Conservative Administration who declined to do that even with the austerity that we faced.

For goodness sake, this is 1% of the borrowing that the Chancellor rightly made last year to shore up our country from covid. It is a tiny figure and it is the only cut that he has announced. That will have an enormous impact on our role in the world and, above all, on the huge number of people who will be severely damaged, maimed, blinded, as often happens, or indeed who will die as a result of the cuts. I remind the House that the cuts include a 25% cut to girls’ education, which is a top priority of our Prime Minister and this Administration. For neglected tropical diseases—thank goodness, the philanthropists have stepped in for one year only to protect the British taxpayers’ investment—we have cut aid by 90%. In Yemen, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, we have cut it by 60%, which is literally the equivalent of taking food away from starving people. This is what we are doing to the world’s poorest. This is how we are trashing our international reputation. We are the only country in the G7 that is cutting in the middle of a pandemic. Everyone else is increasing. This is a decision that we do not need to make. Since we started this campaign, there has been a 9% increase in support across our country for the Government’s policies. It is, to coin a phrase, worse than a crime; it is a mistake.

May I say, finally, in humble respect to my own party, that some of us have seen this movie before? It took us 23 years—until 2015—to achieve an overall majority by wiping out the Liberal Democrat seats, and to achieve it we secured the support of decent, internationalist, pro-development spending people, who saw from our time of austerity that we would stand by this promise. The former Brexit Secretary—my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis)—and I visited Chesham and Amersham. May I say that our much-loved former colleague, Cheryl Gillan, would have been voting with us on this issue tonight? Anyone who thinks that this issue is not affecting our party’s reputation is living in cloud cuckoo land. Chesham and Amersham has the biggest Christian Aid group in the country.

There is an unpleasant odour wafting out from under my party’s front door. This is not who we are. This is not what global Britain is. I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to vote against this motion.

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[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I am delighted to be called, and I pay enormous tribute to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is sitting on the Front Bench today. The Chancellor demonstrated during his career before reaching this place that we can do well by doing good. In working for the Children’s Investment Fund Management, he proved that finance and capitalism can support the world’s poorest and change lives, but he will also recognise that even an impressive fund such as that is built on a stable platform created by Governments and guaranteed by organisations, international bodies and others. I am very sorry but for that reason I will not be able to support him today, because that platform is so important. That confidence and ability to rely on a stable platform for the future is essential. Instead of that continuity and that guarantee of an enduring future, we are sadly going back towards the yo-yo policy. That is not just bad because of the variability; it is bad because it costs more and delivers less. Frankly, it is inefficient, it is an error and it undermines our capability.

Nobody in this House is more passionate about global Britain or Britain’s place in the world than me. Nobody believes more that we should have a place at every table and a voice in every room. But we need to know that we are no longer buying that with gunboats; we are buying it with the aid and the effectiveness that we bring.

[Anthony Mangnall]

My hon. and gallant Friend is making an impressive speech. He talks about global Britain; the point of global Britain is diplomacy, trade, aid and defence. Those four things are interconnected with one another: if we reduce one, that has an impact on all. That will be detrimental to everything from the integrated review to our outside approach.

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is completely correct. Of course, the reality is that we are not living in a vacuum—we are not taking these decisions with nobody watching. Our friends are watching and our rivals are watching. As we make this decision, as we change our policy on Afghanistan, and as we buy different seats at various UN tables through our diplomacy in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and South America, we know that we are changing the rules by which we live. We are literally changing the standards of our modern world through how we buy support, develop allies and partner around the world.

As Members have said, this debate is of course about the world’s poorest, but it is not just about the world’s poorest. Fundamentally, it is about Britain and how we protect ourselves. How do we shape this world? How do we get the standards that make sure that British businesses succeed, British finance shapes the world and British rules are those that the world lives by? We do that by making sure that we win the votes at the UN by making sure that we have the voices around the table—the voices of the Foreign Ministers of countries around the world. We can do it; I know that because we have done it. For 20 years we have won debates, shaped arguments and defended our position. We have done it by doing well and by doing good—exactly as the Chancellor demonstrated in his pre-political career.

I can understand why the Government might say that these targets—these ambitions—are too high and that they wish to set a different spending limit, but that is not the argument they are making. The argument that the Government are making is the Augustinian argument: “Lord, make me chaste—but not just yet.” If you wish to be holy, choose sanctity; if you wish not to be, be frank with what you are choosing.

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[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

I thank the Government for being courteous in having the Prime Minister present and the Chancellor respond to this debate. They have been courteous in holding a vote at long last, but I am afraid that is where my thanks end.

As we have heard in the course of this debate, the 0.7% target was not only a manifesto commitment made by every political party in this place but a commitment to the world’s poorest. It was a commitment to join in force with other nations around the world. Many Members have said, “We didn’t do anything—no other country followed us” but Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Luxembourg all now fulfil the 0.7% target, France is set to hit the 0.7% target next year, and the United States of America has uplifted its spending by $16 billion. We say that we did not have influence; I beg to differ.

Today’s debate is really about the fight for parliamentary engagement. In 2015, this House voted for the International Development Act, which enshrined the right to make sure that we did not make short-term decisions and that when the years were good the spending went up and when the years were bad the spending went down. That is something we should have kept in mind before we made today’s decision. Instead, we have been offered a mirage. What looks like a compromise is something that will never be reached. Despite the arbiters of the OBR, the spending decisions on the issue will still be made by the Treasury. This announcement comes before a spending review, so we do not know how much is going to be spent on social care, health or education. We do not know what the Government’s financial commitments will be in the years to come. We are therefore being led down the garden path, and by that I am appalled. Just as with Gordon Brown’s checklist to join the euro, we will never meet these targets.

The Government’s proposal is a short-termist approach. Like many Members, I have seen the value of what we spend in foreign aid, whether that is on women’s education, AIDS programmes, deradicalisation or climate change. I believe passionately that the UK leads by example in those policy areas, so I will not apologise for voting against the Government tonight. I will not apologise for the fact that I will be standing up on behalf of the NGOs and experts who are based in the UK but operate around the world and who lead by example and help other organisations to follow suit. For that, I offer no apology, but I remind Members of this House that we make an extraordinary impact in the world and to shirk from it for a short-term decision is something that we should all be appalled by.