Armed Forces Bill

Bob Russell Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Gemma Doyle]

Thank you for that clarification, Mr Gale. I will speak to amendments 16 and 17 and to new clauses 13, 14 and 17. As the Committee knows, the vast majority of debate and discussion on the Bill has been about clause 2 and specifically about the military covenant and how best to ensure that it is honoured. Our concern all along has been to ensure that the Government achieve what they have said they want to achieve by enshrining the covenant in law. At the heart of this debate is the overriding principle that no one should be disadvantaged because of their military service. Indeed, many service families have told me that they do not want special treatment—just fair treatment. I welcome the Government’s amendments as a step in the right direction on the military covenant, but the path to get them to this point has been far from graceful. It has been both tortuous and frustrating to watch Ministers deny what was in black and white on paper in front of them, but however they got here I am certainly glad that they have progressed.

We spent many hours debating the covenant in the Select Committee, with the Government arguing both that the unamended Bill enshrined the covenant in law and that it was not necessary to do so. I am not sure whether they have changed their minds on either or both of those points, but I welcome the change of heart none the less and I am pleased to confirm that we support the amendments in the name of the Minister for the Armed Forces although they are not as strong as we had hoped. They enshrine in law the principles of reporting to Parliament, but they are still a step away from fully enshrining the covenant in law. I suspect that Ministers have once again been thwarted by lawyers and civil servants.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that what we have before us is a vast improvement on the situation a year ago?

[Gemma Doyle]

The amendments tabled today are a vast improvement on the Bill as it stood. If the hon. Gentleman agrees with that, I wonder why he did not support my amendments in the Select Committee that would have achieved that. Instead, he voted down any proposals to strengthen the covenant or the Bill.

New clause 17 would fully enshrine—

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[Gemma Doyle]

My right hon. Friend highlights the reason to have such ombudsmen. It is essential that there should be a system of accountability as a last resort, should all reasonable means fail. This is not about creating justiciable rights, but a system of accountability is needed if the covenant is to mean anything. Principles must be enforceable if they are to be anything more than words on a piece of paper.

We will support the amendments in the name of the Secretary of State, but we are still somewhat disappointed as we believe that the Bill could go further, specifically on the military covenant. Our amendments would strengthen those provisions and the Bill. I would very much have liked to press all our amendments, but in particular we will press amendment 16 and new clause 17.

[Bob Russell]

I congratulate the coalition Government on bringing forward the armed forces covenant. I served throughout the Committee—

[Mr Robathan]

Very well.

[Bob Russell]

I am grateful. Thank you.

I would like to confine my remarks on this string of amendments to the narrow subject of housing and matters relating to the welfare of Army families. However, I hope that before we finish this evening the Minister will be able to assure the Committee that not a single penny will be cut from the wages of a single member of the Parachute Regiment or 16 Air Assault Brigade more widely.

The last Government can take a lot of credit for things that they did. I hope that what happened previously, under the Veterans Minister and so on, will be built upon by the coalition Government. However, when it comes to the accommodation of the families of our military personnel, successive Governments have failed. The last Conservative and Labour Governments failed. When it comes to single people’s accommodation, Merville barracks in Colchester is the best to be found anywhere in the country, but that only sharpens the contrast with the unacceptable housing for married families. Either Colchester garrison is unique or the accommodation there is typical of that which our military families are required to live in. What makes it worse, is that former Army housing in my constituency has rightly been modernised to a high standard through the Department for Communities and Local Government, while on the other side of the road Army families, looking out on these modern buildings, occupy what an Army wife described in a letter to the Essex County Standard on Friday as the worst in the country.

That unnamed soldier’s wife says:

“I have been married to a soldier for 20 years and lived throughout in services accommodation.

The married quarters in Colchester are the worst I have ever had to live in, and the system in place to rectify faults is laughable.

The direct line puts you through to a call centre in Liverpool, to talk to someone who has no idea of the conditions you live in or the stresses you endure while your husband’s away. They will then expect you to take a day off work so a tradesman can turn up, and it’s then a lottery as to the standard of the repair.”

The letter goes on at great length to describe the woeful inadequacies of the Defence Housing Executive. The soldier’s wife says:

“We’ve given up complaining to the Defence Housing Executive, as all we get are curt replies, from staff who seemingly have never served or been married to a serving member. It is apparent they have never seen inside the properties.”

There is a critical suggestion that perhaps things have got worse since the Defence Housing Executive took over.

We are talking here of the families of soldiers who only last week marched through the centre of Colchester in a welcome home parade and the next day had a thanksgiving and memorial service at Bury St. Edmunds cathedral. Yet we expect their families to live in accommodation that this soldier’s wife described as the worst in the country. If the Government can rightly find money to modernise former Army housing to accommodate civilians, the same Government should be able to find the money to modernise housing fit for the heroes who have just returned from Helmand province.

Allied to that, the armed forces covenant refers to education. I look at education in the broader sense—not just the education of serving military personnel but the education of the children of military personnel. Once the former Army houses are occupied by civilian families, the adjoining schools, the Montgomery infant and junior schools—that gives a clue to the military ethos—will be full up. There will not be room at the Army schools for the children of Army personnel. If anything, the armed forces covenant should look at the families of military personnel as well as the serving personnel.

[Dr Murrison]

Will the hon. Gentleman give the Government credit for including service children in the pupil premium, which will benefit his constituents as it has done mine?

[Bob Russell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and am delighted to endorse that point. The pupil premium has been a great asset to all children of military personnel and has certainly been a great bonus for those in the five schools in my constituency that have a large proportion of service children—as much as 80% in one case. Military families also require peace of mind, and I greatly regret the fact that the previous Government dramatically reduced the number of Ministry of Defence police officers, from 30 to three in my constituency. I heard over the weekend that, regrettably, up to 1,000 MOD police officers are to lose their jobs.

[Gemma Doyle]

I sympathise entirely with the hon. Gentleman’s concerns. Does he think that it would have been appropriate for the Minister to attend the Defence Police Federation’s annual conference on Monday? I was there, but instead of looking at him I had to look at an empty chair that the Defence Police Federation had set out for him.

[Bob Russell]

I have no knowledge of that, but the hon. Lady has made the point and there will no doubt be a response.

[Mr Robathan]

Indeed there will be if I may intervene. Has the hon. Lady visited the headquarters of the MOD police in Suffolk?

[The Temporary Chair (Mr Roger Gale)]

Order. The Minister cannot question the hon. Lady because she does not have the Floor.

[Bob Russell]

This is a serious issue. To the best of my knowledge, the MOD police are an integral part of the wider military family. However, over the past 10 years the previous Government were determined, as I regret the coalition Government now appear to be, to reduce MOD police numbers to the point where I suspect at some future stage we will be told that they no longer have a purpose and can be done away with. All I can say is that where there were once 30 MOD police officers serving an exclusive Army estate in excess of 2,000 dwellings, there are now just three such officers. The expectation that Essex constabulary can suddenly conjure 27 police officers to fill that breach will not be met.

We now have a situation in which we have Army families and civilian families and the demarcation between policing is not clear. The lifestyle of civilians is not always compatible with the military ethos of the service families. I am trying to choose my words carefully. All I am saying is that the presence of MOD police officers brought a security and comfort to military families which has been lost at the same time as the ethos of a 100% Army estate has been dramatically reduced. I put it to the Minister that the Government need to look carefully at their proposals to reduce dramatically the number of MOD police officers. It will have little effect in Colchester because 27 police officers have already been got rid of and, with only three left, we do not have much further to go.

I welcome the armed forces covenant, previously known as the military covenant, and congratulate the Royal British Legion on all it has done. We should all be grateful to the legion. My only regret is that some people appear to be trying to turn it into a party political football.

[Mr Robathan]

I will respond initially to some of the points raised by the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell). I do not want to mislead him, but I am pretty sure that the pay will continue for all members of the Parachute Regiment who are able to parachute, and certainly for those in parachuting jobs, so we are not scrapping parachute pay. I think that I am the only Member in the Chamber who has received pay for jumping out of aircraft, and it was very welcome at the time.

[Bob Russell]

May I just point out that the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and I got not a single penny when we were thrown out at 13,000 feet?

[Mr Robathan]

Well, the hon. Gentlemen obviously got parachutes, which might not be my intention for one or two other people.

I take on board the hon. Gentleman’s serious concerns about housing, which is an ongoing problem that we wish to improve. We inherited a bad situation, but I do not question the good faith of the previous Administration because it is a difficult matter—[Interruption.] Well, I do not think that we can be blamed for the state of housing 14 years ago.

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[Thomas Docherty]

New clause 1 stands in my name and those of several colleagues. It is a pleasure, once again, Dr McCrea, to serve under your chairmanship. I very much enjoyed serving on the Finance Bill under your leadership, and I hope that you will keep me in order as we go through this evening’s proceedings.

New clause 1 should be relatively non-contentious. We have seen, in the last strategic defence and security review, an unprecedented attack on our defence of the realm capabilities: we have seen, as the Secretary of State himself admits, a Treasury and financially driven round of armed forces restructuring; we are seeing the British Army reduced significantly; we have already seen the closure of RAF Kinloss, as well as the loss of our Nimrod capability, which, as the First Sea Lord admitted to the Defence Committee, has placed our maritime surveillance capabilities at a severe disadvantage; and we are also bringing home the British Army from the Rhine.

Each Government, over the past 40 or 50 years, have reconfigured our armed forces structure to best suit the challenges as they have seen them, but never before have we seen one so radical and based not on the nation’s defence needs, but on the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s needs. For that reason, there is great concern in communities up and down the country that decisions are being made not by the Ministry of Defence, but by the Treasury, and that therefore those decisions are not being made because they are the correct defence decisions but because they are the most expedient or financially convenient for the Treasury and in order to save money.

I have great respect for the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan) and his ministerial colleagues, and I know that they are fighting valiantly to persuade the Chancellor that he is plain wrong, but we cannot assume—because we have not seen any letters yet from the Secretary of State to his counterparts—that he will be successful in persuading the Treasury to provide additional money. If the MOD team are unsuccessful, next month there will be some extremely bad news for a number of communities throughout the United Kingdom.

[Bob Russell]

Will the hon. Gentleman explain what a Labour Government would be doing differently, because I have heard nothing from Opposition Front Benchers to indicate that they would be doing anything different.