Support for UK Armed Forces and Veterans

Bob Russell Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

I beg to move,

That this House recognises the valiant service and sacrifice given by the members of UK armed forces in the defence and security of the UK; notes concerns about the current level of support provided to veterans and the families of service personnel; and calls on the Government adequately to fund aftercare services for veterans, including those who have physical disabilities or mental illness, to provide the best support to the families of those who have died as a result of their service, and to honour in full its commitments in relation to the Military Covenant.

My colleagues and I welcome this opportunity to debate a subject that is very dear to our hearts and, I know, to many Members on both sides of the House. I hope the tone of the debate will allow us to engage with the issues, as we do not see this as a party political matter at all. Rather, it presents the House with an opportunity to demonstrate that it wants to do all it can to ensure that the men and women who serve our country in our armed forces are provided with the support and care they need, when they need it.

I want to begin by paying tribute to our armed forces, including those currently serving in Afghanistan and other theatres of conflict. DUP Members are very proud of our armed forces and of the contribution that our men and women from Northern Ireland make to them. I recently went to Afghanistan, where I had the privilege of meeting some of the service personnel in Helmand, including members of the 1st Battalion the Irish Guards, which is based at Camp Bastion and is working with the Afghan national army, and the 1st Battalion the Royal Irish Regiment, which is supported by the 2nd Battalion, the reserve battalion, in doing excellent work on the front line by driving back the Taliban. They bring their experience of Northern Ireland, and their wider experience, to that task.

The reserves play an important role. As part of the review of the reserves, I had the opportunity at the weekend to visit a number of units in Northern Ireland, including the Royal Naval Reserve unit in my constituency at HMS Hibernia, based in Thiepval barracks, and the 2nd Battalion the Royal Irish Regiment and other Territorial Army units.

Northern Ireland has a very small proportion of the UK population, yet it currently provides 20% of reserve forces deployed on operations, and has done so consistently in recent years. That is a remarkable testament to the work of the reserve forces in Northern Ireland, and I pay particular tribute to the Reserve Forces and Cadets Association, which plays a very important role in developing our reserve forces. That 20% statistic demonstrates the commitment to our armed forces in our region of the United Kingdom.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

The last time I visited Afghanistan, I was struck by the number of reservists from the medical profession serving there who came from Northern Ireland. Will the right hon. Gentleman comment on that, and will he also join me in thanking employers who make it possible for their work force to be reservists?

[Mr Donaldson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I know he takes a very keen interest in our armed forces, especially in those in his Colchester constituency. He is absolutely right about the role of the reserves from the medical profession. As a result of the troubles, members of the medical profession from Northern Ireland have over the years gained expertise in dealing with casualties in conflict situations, and especially in the consequences of explosive devices. One thinks of the medical staff at the Royal Victoria hospital, Belfast city hospital and other medical establishments in Northern Ireland. Encouragingly, as well as working in the medical profession, some of those people give up their time in the reserves, not only at weekends to provide training for other reservists, but to go to places such as Afghanistan to provide their expertise to help those who are, sadly, injured, many of them seriously. The first time I visited Camp Bastion I met some of the medical reservists working at its excellent hospital facility. They are treating not only service personnel but Afghan civilians injured by improvised explosive devices and gunshot wounds. I commend, as the hon. Gentleman did, the work of our reservists from the medical profession, who give their time and commitment, and are worthy of continuing support. I know that the review of the reserves will touch on this area and I am sure that the Secretary of State will wish to examine that aspect carefully.

On behalf of my colleagues, may I also pay tribute to all the members of the armed forces who have served over the years in Northern Ireland? We recognise the huge sacrifice that was made by the armed forces in seeking to protect the entire community in Northern Ireland from terrorism—the cost was very high indeed. One thinks of atrocities such as the Narrow Water bomb at Warrenpoint, and the Droppin’ Well bomb. I know that the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) is very familiar with the latter atrocity as he was the commanding officer at the time and lost some of his soldiers in it. Indeed, he told me rather movingly, as we served together on the Defence Committee, about how one of the young women killed in that explosion died in his arms as he sought to comfort her in her final moments. We do not forget that sacrifice and we do well to honour those who did so much to help bring the relative degree of peace that we enjoy in Northern Ireland today. But for their commitment, their service and their sacrifice, the people of Northern Ireland would not be enjoying the progress that has been made, and that should never be forgotten.

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[Mr Donaldson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that comment and I accept the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire’s point that what we want in the end is delivery. We want to ensure that armed forces personnel, veterans and their families are provided with the care and support they need, but as there is already debate out there about what is meant by enshrining the military covenant in law, or by referencing it in law, we would like some clarity so we can put the issue to bed and get on with the job of writing the covenant and delivering the commitments that have been given by the Government to those who require that help and support.

[Bob Russell]

I hope I can help the right hon. Gentleman. I served on the Select Committee that considered the Armed Forces Bill and there was certainly some debate, which continues, on exactly what is meant by the terminology “armed forces covenant” and “enshrined in law”. The Royal British Legion has got this right. The Government have now enshrined it in the Bill and there is discussion about what that actually means. That is what this is all about.

[Mr Donaldson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point and I look forward to hearing what the Secretary of State has to say on behalf of the Government.

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[Dr Fox]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. The armed forces represent the whole United Kingdom, and it would be a dereliction of duty if we did not ensure that the same service were available throughout the United Kingdom. It is therefore incumbent on the devolved Administrations to work with the Government to ensure that those mechanisms are put in place. My colleagues and I will certainly take opportunities to talk to the devolved Governments, as we do, and on that issue we will want to be as close to uniformity as possible, given of course their freedoms to put different mechanisms in place. He makes a very good point, however, and I shall ensure that I reinforce it when I next meet the devolved bodies.

As I said, we are about to launch formally the new 24-hour veterans mental health helpline, which will be operated by the Rethink charity on behalf of Combat Stress and funded by the Department of Health. We believe that it will help to tackle one of the most difficult aspects of mental health care by creating an environment where those who fear that they are suffering from mental problems can get in touch with someone who understands not only the problems themselves, but the stigma that some veterans still feel is attached to coming forward. This goes back to the point that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made. We have to ensure that there are services, and that those who need them are willing and able to access them, because that is what ultimately determines the outcome. Such initiatives show how we are working effectively with other agencies—whether Government or charities—to provide the services that people need.

The role of service personnel families is not always so visible, but it too is crucial to our defence effort. Service families bear a lot of the pressure. From the five years that I worked as a doctor with service families, I know the pressure that they can be under, and it is often invisible to those outside the armed forces. They share the burden of frequent moves, sometimes at short notice, with disruption to careers and to children’s education. They often share the experience of service accommodation, and when their loved one is away on operational service, sometimes in dangerous circumstances, they in particular deserve our understanding and support, given their vital role in ensuring that our operations are a success.

[Bob Russell]

Families not only need our understanding and support, but decent houses in which to live. Does the Secretary of State agree that the quality of some family housing is not acceptable, and that it is one area in which the Government have to find the money? If we are to send soldiers to put their lives on the line in Afghanistan, the least we can do is ensure that their families back home have decent accommodation.

[Dr Fox]

My hon. Friend makes a useful point, which I shall come to in a moment.

The wide range of welfare support for families is being expanded. As set out in the defence and security review, the Ministry of Defence is starting work on developing options for a new employment model. Its aim is to provide an overall package, including career structure, pay, allowances and accommodation policies, that offers greater domestic stability, helping spouses to pursue their own careers and supporting children’s education, while still allowing for mobility when it is essential to defence requirements.

We would dearly like to do more, for example on improving service family accommodation, which my hon. Friend mentions and we know to be one of the greatest concerns to service families. About £61.6 million has been allocated in the current financial year for the upgrade of, and the improvement programmes for, service accommodation. That will include upgrading some 800 service family homes to the top standard, with a further 4,000 properties benefiting from other improvements such as new kitchens, bathrooms, double glazing and so on.

It would be dishonest of me, however, if I were not to say that we must recognise that we cannot go as far or as fast as we would like to, given the economic situation that we have inherited, but we can and will do what we can, when we can.

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[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

May I begin by associating myself and my party with the remarks of the Secretary of State about Liam Tasker? The work that he was doing was vital not only in securing and supporting his colleagues and comrades but in bringing peace to Afghanistan. We should think today of his bravery and the sacrifice that he has made, and also think of his family and his comrades who have been left behind.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson) on securing this debate. As the Secretary of State said, when I was at the Ministry of Defence, I had the honour of visiting Northern Ireland on a number of occasions. I concur with his view about the contribution that people from Northern Ireland make—not only servicemen and women but their families— in supporting our armed forces and making the valiant contribution that they are making today in Afghanistan.

Our commitment to the men and women of our armed forces is non-negotiable. As Veterans Minister, I was always very proud of the support that the British people gave to our servicemen and women and their families, recognising their courage, skill and dedication. We must do our best not only to honour them when they make the ultimate sacrifice but to support them while they are in service and throughout life.

I should like briefly to touch on what the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley said about the previous Government’s commitment to this issue and the contribution that we made to supporting not only our servicemen and women but their families. The Command Paper to which he rightly referred was a groundbreaking piece of work initiated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) when he was Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence. For the first time, it looked across Government and got different Departments working together. The Command Paper had two fundamental principles: first, to recognise and end the disadvantages created by military-style life—for example, where being moved meant losing one’s place on waiting or housing lists—and secondly, to recognise that at all times it is right and necessary to provide special treatment, whether in removing disadvantage or in recognising the sacrifice made by those who have been seriously injured in the service of their country.

That piece of work was a landmark document. It did not just gather dust; it was implemented through working across Government and, for the first time, getting other Government Departments thinking about veterans and servicemen and women and their families when they were developing policies. I hope that it has left a good foundation for the coalition Government to build on. I put on record my thanks to the Royal British Legion for its campaign and the work that it continues to do not only in highlighting our debt to our servicemen and women and their families but in ensuring that all politicians recognise that debt.

When we published the Command Paper, we were criticised in certain quarters for trying to ensure that we honoured the covenant. Unlike some Conservative politicians who were happy to take pot shots at us when we were in government, I never believed that the covenant was broken; rather, it was something that we were able to build on through the Command Paper. We did much to be proud of, in which I was directly involved, in improving the lot of servicemen and women and veterans.

The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) mentioned service accommodation. When I was a Minister, he was always knocking on my door to advocate and lobby for improved accommodation in Colchester. We made some great strides in improving accommodation, although that was made very difficult by the decision taken in 1996 by the previous Conservative Government to sell off Army housing to a Japanese bank.

[Bob Russell]

The hon. Gentleman is right to refer the House to the disgraceful privatisation involving Annington Homes. Does he agree that every pound of public money that is spent on improving the housing stock increases the value of that property to Annington Homes?

[Mr Jones]

It is on the record that that was a lousy deal for taxpayers, our servicemen and women, and their families. The important point is that we invested in new housing. In some cases, it was difficult to negotiate around the Annington Homes deal because of how it was structured.

The new single living accommodation that has been put in place through SLAM—the single living accommodation modernisation project—is some of the best anywhere in the world in terms of quality. The millions of pounds that we spent to improve service accommodation were recognised in 2009 by the National Audit Office, which stated that 90% of service families’ accommodation were in the top two of four standards for condition and met the Government’s decent homes standard. I accept that there is still accommodation that is not acceptable, and that sometimes the way in which service families were treated was wrong. Sometimes they were treated as though they were in the Army as well. On occasions, we did not get that right and did not recognise that the families should be looked at as customers, rather than as simply part of their partner’s employment conditions.

Health care is another area that the previous Government can be proud of. The new Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham has dedicated military wards, and we put money into Headley Court to provide first-rate and world-beating rehabilitation for those who are severely injured in the service of their country. One of the things that I am most proud of from my time as a Minister is the Army recovery capability project, and I am pleased that the Government are following through on that. We owe a debt to the severely injured. We must not forget them when the headlines go away, but must have a long-term commitment to them.

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[Mr Jones]

I totally agree. The danger with the system outlined in the Bill is that the Secretary of State will produce a report without any independent input. As I said in Committee, I do not question for one minute the Secretary of State’s integrity or his intention to ensure that everything that should be in the report is in it, but a future Secretary of State could decide that certain matters should not be. That is a missed opportunity, and I hope that when the Bill goes to the other place it will be amended to ensure that the covenant is enshrined in law.

[Bob Russell]

It is.

[Mr Jones]

The hon. Gentleman chunters on about that, and I know he is doing his best to support the Conservatives now—I believe he is known locally as Tory Bob these days. I found it remarkable that he was the only member of the Public Bill Committee who was doing the Government’s heavy lifting. It is important that we enshrine the covenant in law, and if the Government reconsider the matter they will certainly have our support.

The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley mentioned Gurkha pensions. As Members know, I have form on that matter. I wish to dispel some of the myths that continue to be portrayed in the newspapers and media about the equalisation of pensions. A Gurkha can retire after 15 years of service, so in some cases they retire on a full pension at about 35 years of age, or even younger. If pensions were equalised, most Gurkhas would not gain anything at all, because their UK counterparts cannot access their pension until they are 60. Backdating would mean their getting not just equalised pensions but actually better terms and conditions than other servicemen and women in some cases. Before 1975, service people got no pension whatever unless they had 22 years’ service. It is important that the facts are examined in detail.

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[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

It is a great honour to represent the garrison town of Colchester. Some 3,500 troops from 16 Air Assault Brigade are currently deployed in Afghanistan. Yesterday, as the urgent question on armed forces redundancies was being debated in this Chamber, a military funeral was taking place at St Peter’s church in Colchester for Lance Corporal Kyle Marshall of 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment. He was 23 and engaged to be married on his return from Helmand province. We are very proud in Colchester of what we term our Colcestrians in khaki. There was civic representation both at the church and outside the town hall, as the centre of Colchester came to a halt. As the cortège stopped outside the town hall, there was a moment of silence and appreciation.

We are talking about today’s Army, and about those who will return and be tomorrow’s veterans. However, I would like briefly to share with the House a reference to Monty’s driver at El Alamein, Jim Fraser, a holder of the military medal and resident of Colchester, now in his 90s. An article on him appeared in the East Anglian Daily Times only last Saturday, saying:

“Jim Fraser was recognised for his courage in helping a seriously-wounded officer, and many times cheated death himself out in the deserts of Africa.”

He then became Monty’s driver. Indeed, Jim’s proud claim is that he was the man who persuaded Monty to wear the black beret. So we have veterans stretching right from the second world war to the present day. Jim joined the Army aged 17, on 5 November 1937 in what was then the Royal Tank Corps, and served for 22 years. He still makes it to Remembrance day in Colchester—he now has to be ferried in a world war two vehicle, which he quite enjoys—appearing with all his medals quite rightly displayed.

I served on the Armed Forces Bill Committee. The best thing that I can say is that there is a misunderstanding of emphasis. Everybody is agreed on what is required from the armed forces covenant, as it has been described. My view is that the covenant is best served by not being prescriptive or writing everything down, because events evolve. The way that we have presented the covenant is the best way. We should pay tribute to the Royal British Legion for putting the issue on the agenda and keeping it there. I am pretty confident that no Government or Secretary of State would dare come to the House with the annual report on the military covenant and try to hide something or gloss over it, because Members of Parliament in all parts of the House representing military constituencies would seize on anything untoward.

However, there are issues on which we need to keep pressing, one of which, as has been mentioned, is pensions. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson) on moving the motion and his party on tabling it for today’s Opposition day debate. It is important that we keep mentioning our brave military personnel, who, as the Secretary of State pointed out, are all volunteers. I want to pay tribute not only to the Royal British Legion, but to the network of other military charities, big and small, which is a strength, not a weakness. When each regiment, battalion, naval unit or whatever has its own charity or welfare organisation, that gives them personal pride, while the big players such as the Royal British Legion can, in a way, provide an umbrella. Alongside them, we have the Soldiers Charity—the Army Benevolent Fund, as was—the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association and Help for Heroes, as well as others that are more specialist in nature, such as Veterans Aid, Combat Stress and the War Widows Association.

I should like to pause to reflect on war widows, because it was only when I was approached by a young war widow in my constituency whose husband had been killed on deployment in the summer of 2008 that I realised that war widows had no specific documentation to explain that they were war widows. To that young lady, that was important. We all imagine war widows to be old people, but they are not. There are lots of young war widows. We have only to look at the festival of remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall to realise that. If she needs to approach a local government agency, for example, she has no documentary proof of her status other than a pension document, which I am told does not describe precisely what the pension payment is for. This is a small point, but I hope that the Government will be able to address it, so that today’s young war widows can have something to confirm that they are indeed war widows. I also understand that, under the new scheme, the new war widows pay tax on their pension. That is one area of pensions that should be completely excluded from any form of taxation.

I am sure that members of the Armed Forces Bill Committee will agree when I tell the House how impressed we were by the representatives of the service families associations from each of the three main services. The independence of each association and their ability to work collectively together were incredible.

I shall conclude by mentioning Army family housing and education. I would like someone to write down and send me an explanation of precisely how the pupil premium will be allocated to children of serving members of Her Majesty’s armed forces. Not every such child attends the local Army, Navy or RAF school. I have three schools in my constituency in which the majority of children have a mother, father or both serving in the armed forces, and that explanation needs to be spelled out.

The sale of Army housing to Annington Homes in 1995 was an utter disgrace, but we are where we are. Because of changing circumstances, almost half an estate of Army housing in Colchester will have been sold off since that date. The most recent lot has gone to a housing association. I welcome that in so far as those houses are going to be made available to people on the local waiting list. However, a small fortune is being spent on upgrading and modernising them, while, on the other side of the road, substandard family houses are being occupied by military families whose husbands and fathers are currently serving in Helmand province. Those families will be living in lower quality housing than the modernised social housing opposite. If the Government can find money for social housing, they should be able to find money for the housing of Army personnel as well.