Armed Forces Covenant

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the right reverend Prelate for the debate today and his excellent introduction. As a member of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme, I am privileged to observe the work of our outstanding Armed Forces at first hand. We have a duty of care to those who serve and give so much, and to their families, and the Armed Forces covenant is an important national contract to address that.

Time is short and there are three issues that I want to raise. First, to be effective, the covenant needs to be widely recognised and understood, yet almost half of service personnel actually know nothing about the covenant, when they should be benefiting from its impact.

Does the covenant or its delivery need amending? I have heard that there is a perception by some on the ground that the covenant is tokenistic. Although it contains noble principles, does not the lack of penalties for failing to fulfil them make it toothless? I know that there are concerns about how effectively local authorities and companies that sign up to the covenant are delivering, so I ask my noble friend whether the covenant’s effectiveness has been studied and whether there has been any audit of delivery.

Lastly, do the Government do enough for military families? It is difficult to live on one salary today, and many wives are highly trained. However, regular moves mean that it is very difficult for them to continue in employment. The moves also impact on children, who have to either change school frequently or be sent to boarding school. As we have heard, housing is an issue. Fifty-nine per cent of respondents to the 2015 AFCAS survey felt that their family life was disadvantaged through their service, and it is far the biggest factor influencing decisions to leave the forces, at a time when we need to retain the best.

To conclude, the covenant is to be welcomed, but does it have proper accountability and could it be more effective to help both our serving personnel and their families?

Armed Forces Bill

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating my noble friend Lady Pidding on her excellent maiden speech. I look forward to hearing the other maiden speeches from the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, and my noble friend Lord Shinkwin shortly.

Not having a military background, it is with a sense of humility that I contribute to the debate. I welcome the Bill, which recognises the integral role that our Armed Forces play in British life and the extraordinary service that they give to this country. The first duty of any Government is the defence of the realm. At a time of unpredictable threats and dangerous levels of instability the Bill needs to ensure that we maintain our world-class Armed Forces for the long-term security of our country. It is impossible for those of us who have never served our country to fully understand the sacrifice that those in the military make. It is therefore imperative that the Bill also seeks to ensure the well-being of these brave men and women.

As we have already heard, warfare has changed drastically in recent years. It is no longer fought on battlefields but in communities, with terrorism and cyberwarfare now posing significant threats. Asymmetric warfare and counterinsurgency require new and different approaches. Intelligence and cyber play an ever more important part. Highly trained rapid reaction forces that can deploy at very short notice are essential, with Special Forces performing a critical role.

The 2010 strategic defence and security review imposed a programme of significant cuts. This led to feelings of insecurity in parts of our forces, and, I understand, some haemorrhaging of high-quality people. Good leadership is paramount to the military, and attracting and retaining the best is of extreme importance. Are we managing to retain those high-quality warrant officers, captains and brigadiers, the middle-ranking officers who will become tomorrow’s senior leadership? New types of warfare need people with new and different skills to ensure that operations are not impacted. Do we have enough critical specialists? Are some areas suffering diminution of numbers, or having challenges recruiting sufficient specialists? If so, how is this being addressed?

Our Armed Forces covenant is an important national contract to address duty of care to our Armed Forces and their families, with a duty to report on the covenant being a centrepiece of the Armed Forces Act 2011. However, I have heard that there is a perception by some on the ground that the covenant is somewhat tokenistic.

As I have previously asked with concern in your Lordships’ House, while the covenant contains very noble principles, does the lack of penalties for failure to fulfil it make it somewhat toothless? In particular, I know there are concerns about how effectively local authorities are delivering on their responsibilities through community covenant partnerships. This includes affording members of the Armed Forces priority with housing needs and helping them integrate back into local life post-discharge. Has there been any audit of the delivery of the covenant by local authorities?

Of significant concern is that last year’s Armed Forces continuous attitude survey, known as AFCAS, found that almost half of service personnel actually know nothing about the covenant. Surely, a fundamental element of the covenant should be that personnel feel it is impacting upon their lives. If this is clearly failing, should we not seek to amend it or its delivery?

Being in the military is a vocation often lasting many years; therefore we also have a duty of care to the families, considering the toll on their lives while their fathers, mothers, husbands and wives are serving. Have we, as a nation, done enough to ensure that our duty of care is being delivered? It is concerning that 59% of respondents to last year’s AFCAS felt that their family life was disadvantaged through their service. This is by far the largest area of perceived disadvantage and goes hand in hand with the finding that the impact of service on personal and family life is by far the biggest factor influencing decisions to leave the Forces. So it is important that families are considered and listened to and that housing is of good quality and properly maintained. Living in housing that is damp, with peeling paint and malfunctioning plumbing, is unacceptable in this day and age.

The standards of healthcare we commit to our service personnel is one of the key pillars of the Armed Forces covenant. There has been much concern in recent years, as we have heard, about mental health. The proportion of service personnel who suffer mental health problems is broadly similar to that of the general population, slightly higher amongst those in combat roles. The concepts of being a soldier at war and seeking support for psychological distress are somewhat at odds with each other. In some cases, this prevents those who need help the most from seeking it, leaving them to suffer in silence. The fact is that they endure unique conditions and excessive levels of risk that the rest of us cannot understand. Of particular concern are reservists who return to normal life after deployment and may feel very isolated and unsupported.

It is every bit as important that personnel continue to receive support when they cease serving and become veterans. The onset of post-traumatic stress disorder is often delayed for many years. The charity Combat Stress still reports an average of 13 years between service discharge and veterans seeking help. While it is reassuring that a key goal of the military covenant is that veterans,

“should be able to access mental health professionals who have an understanding of Armed Forces culture”,

how does this happen? NHS doctors may be unable to relate to the effects of combat roles.

Combat Stress receives around 2,500 new referrals every year, resulting in approximately 6,000 veterans being treated by the charity at any one time. Last year the number of veterans seeking its help increased by 28%. I was recently told by Combat Stress that the majority of veterans under its care self-refer; thus it would appear that many veterans are put off from using NHS services to address their problems, instead turning to the voluntary sector.

It is encouraging that the stigma surrounding military mental health has decreased substantially in recent years, meaning that those younger veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming forward for treatment much sooner. I appreciate that the Government have already recognised this issue. By embedding the Armed Forces covenant into the new NHS constitution in England last year, members of the Armed Forces community will, in principle, receive the same standard of, and access to, healthcare as all other British citizens. However, more needs to be done, particularly for older veterans and reservists.

Our military personnel make great sacrifices to serve their country and put themselves in the way of danger. Above all, it is paramount that they feel valued. Do we really do this? Do we thank them enough and acknowledge what they have given when they leave? We have outstanding men and women serving. We need to ensure that they are recognised for all that they do. These are the people who will keep this country safe and we owe them a huge debt.

The Role and Capabilities of the UK Armed Forces, in the Light of Global and Domestic Threats to Stability and Security

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

I, too, add my thanks to my noble friend for initiating this debate. It is with some trepidation that I take part in it, because many noble and gallant Lords in this House have spent their whole careers in the Armed Forces and many have much more experience in military matters than I will ever have. However, during the past year I, too, have had the pleasure of being a member of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme, which enables non-military parliamentarians to learn about defence. Through this, I have made a number of visits to the Army at home and abroad, meeting serving personnel from senior officers to new reservist recruits.

We all recognise how dangerous and increasingly unstable the world is. Global interconnectivity means that today’s conflicts can endanger us all, as jihadists call for attacks on London and other western cities. The numbers of displaced people fleeing conflict in the Middle East are higher than at any time since World War II, with hundreds of thousands trying to come to Europe as a result. Delivering security is thus of paramount importance and I am sure we all welcome this Government’s commitment to defence spending. Consideration needs to be given to how and where conflict will emerge in the future, such as the risk of cyberattacks. This is all set against a backdrop of a growing world population where there may not be sufficient food, water and other resources for all.

Our Armed Forces are outstanding and have, in recent years, done exceptional work in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, lessons from Iraq and Libya have taught us that simply removing a hostile regime does not lessen the threat; worse risks may emerge from a chaotic void. Military intervention alone cannot deliver post-conflict stability, and DfID and NGOs need to come in alongside to assist with institutional reconstruction and establishing a rule of law. We may well also need help from the military to deal with the challenge of our domestic threats, and to work with police and security services.

I have been impressed to learn how our Armed Forces contribute to building relationships for the UK across the world. The world-class training delivered by Sandhurst and the Defence Academy at Shrivenham draws students from many countries, building lasting relationships. As we have heard, the British Army is engaged in activities around the world. In 2014, I believe that troops were deployed to over 300 tasks in around 50 countries. Last December, in my capacity as a member of the steering board of the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, I visited the Gurkhas in Mali, where they were training the Malian army, and watched them deliver a training session on human rights. Delivering military training to enable countries to deal with their own domestic insecurity is an extremely valuable contribution to world security.

I have spoken before in your Lordships’ House about the disproportionate impact of war on women, and how their participation is crucial in building peace and helping to create post-conflict stability. So it is particularly important that our military are trained to engage with women as well as men in conflict zones. This can be extremely challenging, especially where rape and sexual violence are used as weapons of war. In May, I visited Erbil and met some of our military who are training the Peshmerga. As well as delivering military training, they are also training on protection of civilians and on dealing with victims of sexual violence. This is ground-breaking work, which I hope will be rolled out more widely in training for the British Army and in other overseas training missions.

I know that there is concern about whether we will reach the target of 30,000 army reservists by 2018, and I wonder if there has been sufficient recognition of the challenges of being a reservist and how onerous trying to reconcile this role alongside family and work can be. Are the Government looking innovatively at what more can be done with regard to attracting and better supporting reservists, especially post-deployment, as well as to incentivise employers and companies to release employees, particularly from small and medium-sized enterprises, to encourage greater numbers to sign up?

First-class Armed Forces mean first-class leadership, and that means attracting and retaining the best. I suspect that the military will never be able to offer the same salaries as industry and the City, but it can offer other things. Being in the forces is a way of life as well as a job, and this impacts greatly on families. Unhappy families create pressure to leave. It must be very hard being a wife in the macho environment of the forces, having to move with the children over 20 times to accommodate your husband’s career choice, or being left looking after small children while your husband is away on a dangerous deployment. Modern families’ lifestyles must be properly considered and facilitated: the wife who has her own career, and the returning children who wish to live at home post-school and university. As more women enter the forces, consideration needs to be given to male partners, as well as to accommodating couples who are both in the forces.

Above all, we have a duty of care to all those who serve in our Armed Forces. My noble friend Lady Fookes raised the issue of the military covenant. Has there been any study of how effective that actually is? Although it says the right things, does having no penalties if it is ignored not make it somewhat toothless? Is there more that we can do to support the families of those killed in action, for whom life will never be the same again? We must provide the best care and welfare for those who are wounded, especially those who suffer life-changing injuries. We need to ensure that they can access the best care and facilities, wherever that may be, and receive support for the rest of their lives. This includes the invisible mental wounds too. Access to psychological help outside the chain of command is important, as is good support once they leave and are back in the community.

Much has been written about PTSD and the fact that it can occur years after operations. Many service charities provide support for this, and more must be done to signpost the help that they can give. However, there are also many myths about the levels of PTSD. Research by the King’s College military research unit has shown that the rate of PTSD in service men and women who have been deployed is 4%. This is equivalent to the rate seen in the general population, although the rate rises to 7% for those who are in a combat role. Inaccurate impressions can damage the military in terms of not only recruitment but their employability when they leave the forces.

Many of the service personnel I have talked to have said that they are trained to do a job and want to do it. There are concerns that the public have lost their appetite for our forces being deployed in combat situations, due to what are perceived as ill-considered judgments over the past few years. If we are to ask our young men and women to put themselves in the way of danger that they are trained and willing to face, it places an especially heavy burden of responsibility on leaders, both political and military, to ensure that the full implications of decisions are properly assessed.

Visiting our Armed Forces is a humbling experience. At times we ask them to do some very difficult and dangerous things. I pay tribute to them for their professionalism, courage and dedication. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude. As Winston Churchill is sometimes thought to have said, we sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.