Armed Forces Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I will focus my speech on Clause 8 on the covenant. I support the comments made by the noble Lords, Lord Astor and Lord Browne. The creation of the covenant is a serious and enduring undertaking by Ministers and Parliament on behalf of the people of our nation, who understand the sacrifice that we are asking of those serving and their families when they undertake the obligations of protecting our nation and our interests in the world. It is vital because it also recognises that those sacrifices continue beyond the time that they serve, understanding that many of our veterans and their families also face barriers to living what the rest of us would regard as a normal life.

As health spokesperson for my party from these Benches, I will particularly raise the difficult and sensitive subject of the practicalities of delivering the covenant for access to health services, especially but not only mental health. Over recent weeks, I have talked to family and friends who are current or former service personnel deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. The recent shocking events in Afghanistan have brought back the most difficult memories and experiences for many of those who made sacrifices for us and, they believe, for the Afghan people. For some, their PTSD has been retriggered; for others, there is a sense of helplessness about whether their deployments and the sacrifice of friends’ lives and health over the past 20 years were worth it.

Our service personnel, being ever practical, always just accept the order to “fill their boots”—service speak for “Go ahead and carry on with the task”—and they do. Here, I give a special shout out to the Sandhurst Sisterhood, which has worked tirelessly using and finding contacts to help senior Afghan women at high risk from the Taliban to get to safety. I mention it because much of the recent publicity has focused on our servicemen and far too often we forget that women were deployed to Afghanistan too. They suffered injury, physical and mental, and some did not come home at all.

The long-term mental health difficulties that many service personnel face are intended to be covered by the covenant, with responsibilities for our clinical commissioning groups, GPs and secondary hospital sector. The Minister, in her usual gracious way, helpfully explained the new duty in this Bill for housing, education and health, but the reality is that this new duty is only to “have due regard”, and without any similar duty for central government it is unlikely to be able to be delivered. It does not put a duty on those public services to actually provide the help that is needed. No duty and, as important, inadequate funding from central government mean that, too often, for individual current or former service men and women the covenant is not being fulfilled.

Combat Stress has said that it has had a doubling in calls to its 24/7 helpline from veterans struggling with their mental health. Its specialist clinics are hearing veterans say, “When we went there, we fought a war. Friends died, we struggled, we got blown up, and now they’ve given the country away.” One veteran, Dean, has attended 13 military funerals since he left the Army in 2008, including eight killed in Afghanistan; the others have subsequently taken their own lives. Dean said:

“it just feels as though it was all for nothing.”

Combat Stress is partnering with the NHS on Op COURAGE, but it struggles to support more than 1,600 veterans with severe complex needs a year. Some 75% of Combat Stress’s funding is from voluntary donations, and it believes that there are at least double the veterans needing this key expert service. We know that NHS mental health services are very stretched with extremely long waiting lists at the moment, so the capacity of local services to provide support is limited without guaranteed extra funding.

This last month has reminded all of us of the long- term problems that too many service men and women face. After Afghanistan moves out of the headlines, the covenant’s specialist health services commitment will probably be needed for the rest of our veterans’ lives. It must be a statutory duty, properly funded, including covering central government, to ensure it is not just lip service. I ask the Minister: what costings have been made for the help support needed under the covenant? Will the Government provide that funding?

Finally, in the debate on Afghanistan in August in your Lordships’ House, I said that the Armed Forces covenant needed to be extended to those who served alongside our troops in Afghanistan. The interpreters and members of the Afghanistan army who have been given the right to resettle here under ARAP stood and fought alongside our troops and faced exactly the same dangers. This group should also be able to access the services under the covenant in the same way.

The covenant is a key part of the duty of care that we owe our service men and women. They have and do fill their boots without question. It is time that Ministers, Parliament and our nation filled our boots to deliver a covenant that really works for the men and women who keep us and our world safe.