Armed Forces Covenant

Bob Russell Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

I have a sister who is a doctor and a sister who is a lawyer. My father used to say we had the best of both worlds—the licence to steal and the licence to kill—but I have never taken such caricatures as necessarily being the honest truth. I will not be tempted down the road where my hon. Friend tries to tempt me, except to say that in striking a balance in the legislation, we have sought to minimise the risk of the kind of behaviour that he mentions, while trying to ensure that we honour our responsibilities and give a sound legal basis to the covenant that we are putting forward.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

The coalition Government can take pride in the fact that in our first year we have introduced legislation to enshrine in law the armed forces covenant. I pay tribute to the Royal British Legion for what it has done. I am delighted that the Secretary of State has told us that in Cabinet there is cross-departmental support. With that in mind, will he give me an assurance that the need for funding to improve and modernise the family accommodation of our brave service personnel will be put on the agenda?

[Dr Fox]

I am grateful to acknowledge the long-running support that my hon. Friend has given on these matters. He will be extremely pleased today that we have managed to achieve what we have. With regard to the speed at which we can make some of the improvements to accommodation, we are limited by budgetary constraints. We will want to go as quickly as we can. We fully recognise, as we have set out, what our responsibilities are. We also have, as I hate to point out, a wider responsibility to be fiscally conservative, to bring our budget back within affordability and to restore the nation’s economy to health, because that gives us the ability in the longer term to make the investments that we all want to see.