Office for Veterans’ Affairs

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his kind words about the work of officials; he is a great campaigner on these matters. He is absolutely right to signal the importance of work on mental health. The existing services we have established— the Transition Intervention and Liaison Service and the Complex Treatment Service—benefit from over £10 million of investment per year and have collectively received over 10,000 referrals. However, we want to do more, and the forthcoming veterans mental health high intensity service will see even more investment, providing crisis care, therapeutic in-patient support and help with co-ordinating care. We are currently recruiting for this service. I will certainly talk to Mr Mercer about a meeting with my noble friend and we will see what we can arrange.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, when does the Minister envisage a full service returning to the Veterans UK helpline, which is offering only limited information to veterans over the phone at the moment? I tested it myself yesterday. Also, when do the Government plan to revisit their totally unsatisfactory policy on war widows’ pensions as a result of the letter from the Secretary of State for Defence to the chair of the War Widows’ Association on June 29? As a vice-president of the WWA, I know that war widows cannot wait much longer.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness asked two extremely important questions. Government services for veterans have continued throughout Covid, but she is right that there have been changes to ensure safety and social distancing. For a period during the peak of the pandemic, the helpline was closed as it could not operate effectively, but support continued to be offered through email, digital means and a call-back service. I am advised that matters are now returning to normal. I will certainly pursue that in light of what the noble Baroness has said. On war widows, for whom she is a consistent advocate and I praise her for that, we are now exploring the full financial and legal implications of the options in making the move she is seeking so that the Defence Secretary can decide how to proceed. I assure her that work is continuing at pace in the Ministry of Defence and across government.