Armed Forces Covenant

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

Legality has to be a foregone conclusion in this House if we are to take our appropriate place in the international family of civilised nations. As to the Government’s duty in sending our armed forces into combat, I would say that they have two clear duties: one is to ensure that we maximise the chance of success of their mission; the second is ensuring the minimum risk to them in carrying out that mission. Both those duties imply that the armed forces must be properly equipped for any task that any Government ever send them to carry out.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

I particularly welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement about three cycles of IVF for the injured when they come back. He will know that that is virtually the first thing that the young men who return to the Queen Elizabeth hospital from Afghanistan will ask about. He also mentioned prosthetics. When it comes to rehabilitating soldiers, we are doing things with them—and doing them better—that are not yet happening in the NHS. What work is the Secretary of State doing to ensure that what we learn from the treatment of our veterans can be translated back to the NHS and the wider population?

[Dr Fox]

The hon. Lady makes two valuable points. As regards the first, on IVF, it is bad enough that we often deny mobility and life chances to individuals, but to deny them the chance of producing another generation is worse, particularly when it is something that we can avoid. We should avoid it, and doing so sends out an important signal about the pastoral care that we are willing to give to our armed forces. Today’s announcement is a key one, which I think will be welcomed across the whole country.

On the hon. Lady’s second point, I think many of us will celebrate the fact that the care we give our armed forces is so much better than others might receive in the NHS that parity is being demanded. That is not a bad position for a country to be in, in terms of the care it gives to service people. The work we are undertaking with the Department of Health will set out to see what lessons the NHS can learn from the treatment of those who have been injured in military action and I believe that that is a very proud moment for the country.