Veterans Strategy

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Burnett. As he said, for many years we had neighbouring constituencies in God’s own county of Devon, where the armed services are well represented.

I congratulate my noble friend Lord Attlee on the way in which he introduced this debate. I agreed with just about everything that he said—not for the first time, I am sure. He flagged up to my noble friend the Minister that, because of the diversity and breadth of the strategy, there was a need to keep a focus on the actuality and detail of how it will impact on individual lives. I totally agree with that point.

I should perhaps declare an interest as chair of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments—a committee to which all senior members of the armed services go for advice when they move from military service to civilian life.

I want to focus on two things, the first being that transition from military service to civilian life. It seems that there are quite a lot of positive things out there, and not just those mentioned in the strategy. Some of the briefings that we received prior to this debate were very encouraging. For example, we have had a briefing from the Federation of Small Businesses, an organisation that I know very well from the years when I did a proper job before entering politics. The federation’s research found that 15% of its members were service leavers, full time and reservist, 15% currently employ service leavers, and 7% have employed, or do employ, reservists. That is extremely encouraging. Starting and running a small business sounds attractive but it is not easy. If you are in a civilian occupation where you can gradually grow a business, that is fine, but the prospect of coming out of military service and becoming self-employed or starting to employ other people in a small business is quite challenging. People need support, training and advice well in advance if they are to make a success of running a small business.

One of the things about transition and the strategy is that I hope we can build as much as possible into those years before somebody leaves military service in order for that training and groundwork—those building blocks—to be put in place. Obviously, it applies not just to those who want to run their own businesses but to those going into other occupations. The more we can do to set the groundwork, rather than just giving a few courses and a bit of briefing at the end, the better—that was the past. I hope we can build on the strategy and what is going on now, so that jobs last and people are successful and feel that they have made that transition for their benefit and that of society as a whole as they take their place in civilian life.

Mental health has been raised by several people in this debate, and nobody could be more able to understand our concerns on this subject than my noble friend Lord Howe, who, for many years, was an exemplary Health Minister. He will understand this subject very well. What I will say probably applies not just to people in the military but to the whole mental health debate per se. He will be familiar with me flagging up some of my concerns on this subject. I hear a lot about parity of esteem and more money going into mental health. All that is to be warmly welcomed from the Government. In practice, mental health is so complex that we really have to start addressing the needs of the individual, rather than treating it as if it applies to a group of people who all have the same problems, challenges and symptoms. That point was raised very well earlier.

I cannot stress how important it is that there is early intervention with mental health. This is not easy. When somebody’s mental health starts to deteriorate, it can be symptomatic of things that are temporary or not too much of a problem—things that people will cope with. It can be a recurring pattern where nothing really gets much worse. But equally, when mental health deteriorates it can go into a downward spiral. The lower the person goes down that spiral, the more difficult it is to pull them up and to identify appropriate support and treatment. The impact of mental health problems, not just on the individual but on their immediate family, cannot be overstated.

As a child, growing up in the post-war years in the 1940s and 1950s, I experienced first hand what post-traumatic stress from the Second World War meant to close members of my family. It is like a tentacle that goes out into the family. People are affected and change their own behaviours when they live with somebody with serious mental health problems. Very often, if they are suffering from post-traumatic stress, it does not present for a very long time, until long after the traumatic event that may have triggered it. In military service, people do not only experience trauma on a scale that most of us will never see in our lifetimes; just witnessing something, whether it has happened to them or to other people around them, can cause serious mental health problems later on.

It is still a problem that getting first appointments and seeing the right people, right across the whole spectrum of mental health care, is so difficult both for former servicepeople and for the civilian population. The noble Lord, Lord Burnett, mentioned that three of us here were MPs in Devon. I remember people whose marriages were breaking up coming to my surgery in Devon to seek my help and advice. Heaven knows why they came to an MP, but when you are an MP, you deal with it all. I used to try to put them in contact with professional counselling and advice services, but the answer would come back, “There is a six-month wait”. If your marriage is breaking up and you have to wait six months, it will usually be done and dusted by then. So it is with mental health. If you have long waits, things will happen: families fall apart; people get into debt; people’s health goes into a downward spiral.

There is one thing I am really keen on, and I hope my noble friend will bear it in mind when looking at the mental health side of the consultation document for the strategy. Apart from the professional help and support given to people who present with post-traumatic stress or any other serious mental health problem, it would be useful for a buddy system to be put in place, which could be done at quite a low cost. Talking therapies have been proved to be invaluable for people with mental health problems. They will still need professional advice from psychiatrists, psychologists and others, but to have a named person as a buddy, even on a voluntary basis, can be invaluable. Sometimes it is even more important to be able to talk to somebody outside the family and away from your circle: talking to somebody just a few steps away from the emotion that goes with it can be invaluable.

My noble friend will know that cancer patients are now given a named person—often a nurse or a volunteer from one of the charities—who will be their buddy throughout their cancer journey. I hope my noble friend will consider looking at a buddy service for those with serious mental health problems, so that they too can have that type of support. It will aid their recovery and aid them in coming forward. That people are reluctant to come forward is another problem. There is a kick-back from the professionals, who say that if the person is not willing to be treated—you get this with mental health problems and with alcohol and drug misuse—then nothing can be done until they are willing. I understand that problem, but I hope my noble friend will feel that the buddy system might help.

I conclude with one further point. I want to support the words of my noble friend Lord Robathan. Like him, I was a signatory to the letter to the Prime Minister last month, in which we again asked her to prevent the legal persecution of veterans, for all the reasons my noble friend set out from his personal experience of serving in the Armed Forces. Nothing could be more damaging to a veteran’s mental health than to have to sit for a long time, waiting to be called to give evidence in a case such as he outlined. I hope we will be able to deal with that as quickly as possible.