Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th November 2017 Public Bill Committees

The amendment refers to the implications of the new working practices for the future of housing contracts, but I also want to mention current issues with housing. CarillionAmey won multimillion-pound contracts for maintaining about 50,000 housing units because it was the lowest bidder. We have heard complaint after complaint about the response time to repair and maintenance requests, and about the quality of repair and maintenance received.

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend and the Minister know, I pay close attention to this issue. The complaints are not necessarily about response times, but about where the key performance indicators have been set and how they do not meet the needs of our armed forces. CarillionAmey is meeting its KPIs. It will turn up within 24 hours, but it takes eight days to fix the boiler, and I think that is more of a problem. I can empathise with that, given how cold it is in here today.

[Gerald Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She has highlighted one of the many concerns that we have around the work of the contracts, or the way that the contract is not working for families in our armed forces.

Last year’s National Audit Office report on service family accommodation was damning of Carillion’s performance:

“The performance of CarillionAmey has been totally unacceptable”.

Although I welcome the action that has been taken, the Government had the option to terminate the contract, yet they did not, which leaves me with some concerns about how seriously the matter is being taken. I appreciate that there have been some improvements, but reports have shown that continued dissatisfaction with the delivery of the contract is still widespread. For those in service family accommodation, satisfaction with the quality of maintenance/repair and with response to requests for maintenance/repair fell to just 28%, which is very alarming indeed.

Of course, this is all in the context of many personnel seeing increased costs for their accommodation and ongoing pay restraint. The pay review body commented on that in its latest report:

“A key consideration in people accepting the increases in charges being seen…will be a clear improvement in both the overall quality of the housing stock and the effective delivery of maintenance services.”

I would like to hear whether the Department has any specific plans to take action to improve performance and at what point we might see that happen.

Recruitment and retention issues are at the heart of the Bill, and housing is a crucial factor in that. I hope the Minister can give me some assurance and answer my questions about how the new working practices will impact on housing allocation, what the latest progress with the future accommodation model is and how the Government will deal with housing contracts if marked improvements are not shown.

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[Ruth Smeeth]

May I suggest that as the Minister is looking at those proposals, he bears it in mind that to move from where we are now to a regional model is of huge concern to the families?

[Mr Ellwood]

I know that the hon. Lady has spent a lot of time looking at these issues, and I am grateful for her input. She has done well to finesse those concerns into the Bill. She knows that that is a separate but very important subject. I hear what she says.

CarillionAmey was mentioned. That concerned the previous Secretary of State, and the company was called in to ensure that improvements were made to meet the KPIs. The contract comes up for renewal in 2020. That does not stop us making sure we provide the best accommodation we can for our armed forces personnel. We should recognise that what people choose and expect today is very different from 15 or 20 years ago, when a room this size would have been full of 20 beds. Now people expect individual accommodation, wireless networks and decent cooking facilities, and that is what we are providing, not least as we build new premises and new accommodation, with the returning of our armed forces from Germany.

The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney seeks to place an obligation on the MOD to commission an independent report evaluating the impact of new forms of flexible working on armed forces housing contracts. The Government have already provided assurances during the passage of the Bill that regular service personnel, when taking part-time work, will retain those entitlements currently available to full-time regulars. There will be no change there. Providing our people with service accommodation is pivotal for their work. We must ensure that their families have that guarantee and that support, particularly if circumstances change and they need to be called back at short notice.

Regular service personnel who successfully apply to undertake the new forms of flexible working following the introduction of these measures will be entitled to service accommodation commensurate with their personnel status category and other qualifying criteria, in the same way as their full-time colleagues. Individuals will take up these new arrangements for a defined period only and will retain an enduring liability for mobility. They will still be subject to the same moves associated with new assignments as others in the regular armed forces.