First World War Commemoration

Debate between Bob Russell and Andrew Murrison

Thursday 7th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. Perhaps that is something that we could usefully raise with the German Government, with whom we are of course in contact on these matters, as he would expect. There are Germans interred in the churchyard of Sutton Veny in my constituency, and their resting places are instantly recognisable by the nature of their markers. That is a positive suggestion, and I think that matter could reasonably be addressed with Germany.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dr Murrison]

I am going to make some progress, because I am conscious that a lot of right hon. and hon. Members would like to take part in the debate.

It is worth pointing out that the centenary courts controversy. None of us should be under any illusion about that. Indeed, we should welcome it. Opinion is already stretched between those who hold that the war was a futile wasteful tragedy and those who believe it was entirely necessary, notwithstanding the cost, and even that victory was as important in 1918 as it was in 1945. I believe that most of our countrymen going to war in 1914 did so with a firm sense of “doing the right thing”. Anyone familiar with the doctrines of St Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine would have said—and I agree—that our countrymen were marching or sailing to a just war. I know my own grandfather felt that way.

Even as Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey was observing lamps going out across Europe that would not be re-lit in his time, the bulk of Britain’s political class, under a Liberal Prime Minister, were confident that resisting a militaristic aggressor in the way proposed satisfied the moral preconditions laid out for a just war. I doubt whether those who stood here in 1914 deserve their reputation as the willing consigners of other men’s sons to hideous death. People should read Hansard for 3 August 1914 and touch those politicians’ agony; they should compare the quality of that pre-conflict debate to ours on Syria in August this year; and they should count off the shields around this Chamber and the names of Members of this House and their sons inscribed in Westminster Hall.

Few of our predecessors in the long expectant summer of 1914 foresaw the consequences or the terrible cost, but finally, after military victory, came political failure—a lesson for all of us who have the privilege and responsibility of sitting here.

I am grateful to the many Members on both sides of the House who have contributed to our preparations and continue to do so. I hope we have set a framework for a fitting centenary—commemoratively, educationally and culturally—that will, with the most profound respect, mark the seminal moment in our modern history for the benefit of all parts of the community, and particularly for the custodians of the legacy: our young people.

Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Bob Russell and Andrew Murrison

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[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?

Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Bob Russell and Andrew Murrison

Monday 10th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

My hon. Friend is, of course, absolutely right, and I think the Government have recognised that need. One of my report’s recommendations was that we should be more proactive in addressing our veteran population, and I am pleased that it has been accepted. Ministers recognise that we need to do more for veterans.

Having just been nice to my Front-Bench colleagues, perhaps I might say that I disagree with them in one respect. Clause 2 is entitled “Armed forces covenant report” and I take exception to the term “armed forces” in that context. May I gently suggest to my right hon. and hon. Friends that it would be more appropriate simply to use the term “military covenant”? I say that because I think that term has had a certain amount of purchase. It is now understood by the general public. It is in the public domain, and the media understand it, and I think they would be somewhat confused if we were now to make this rather semantic change of using the term “armed forces” instead. To argue against myself, the word “military” excludes naval of course, but I think that in the public’s mind “military” refers to the entirety of our armed forces. I do not want the value of the concept of the military covenant to be degraded in any way by a confusion over this title. That point might, perhaps, be considered in Committee, of which I hope very much my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster) is successful in becoming a member—I wish him the best of luck in his endeavours in that respect. As he says, it will be fascinating to serve on the Committee, and I hope to talk a little more about that shortly.

[Bob Russell]

May I help my hon. Friend by pointing out that the Royal British Legion, which, of course, encompasses all the armed forces, refers to this concept as the military covenant, so it is on his side?

[Dr Murrison]

I am very pleased. I am a member of the Warminster branch of the Royal British Legion and I rarely disagree with it. It has done a great job in its honour the covenant campaign. I am very pleased that it agrees with me, and I have no doubt that it will make representations to that effect.

The Government have been spot-on in the way they have approached the covenant in this Bill. I have given a great deal of thought to what we should be doing in respect of the military covenant. As my hon. Friend the Minister knows, we considered the matter at great length when in opposition, and the debate was always about the form in which it would find its way into legislation.

At one end of the spectrum, we could be fairly didactic in what we mean by the military covenant. We could make it a bean-feast for lawyers, but that is completely against the spirit of the military covenant. It derives from Harry Levinson’s work in the 1950s and ’60s, in which he identified something called a psychological contract: a contract that was moral and that was understood, but that was not actually laid down in any form of written covenant, promise or undertaking. It is absolutely right that we should do nothing that would destroy the military covenant as part of that type of covenant. A couple of Members have mentioned the fact that this is not simply a deal between Government and officials and the rank-and-file. It also involves the general public. If we were to start putting it in a didactic contractual form, that would degrade that particular element of the deal that we understand by the term “the military covenant”.

That seems to be the view of most commentators. At the Royal United Services Institute in June 2008, Christianne Tipping said:

“This debate must continue but it must not attempt to specify that which is incapable of specification—the psychological contract is more powerful than the legal one.”

I agree. It could be said that the military covenant is at the extreme end of the psychological contract spectrum, but it is, nevertheless, part of that deal, and it is important that we treat is as such.

I welcome the annual report. The shadow Secretary of State was a little parsimonious in his praise for it. It will certainly maintain the profile of this issue. The devil is in the detail of course, in that the nature of the annual report is crucial—what it contains, how it is presented, and how it is debated. It is important that we know what the items in the report will be. We know what some of them will be, but this issue goes much further than that, of course. We must also address issues such as kit, the way we deal with the bereaved, and coroners courts. As has been mentioned, they have caused a great deal of grief over the past few years, and it would be extraordinary if they were not dealt with as part of this annual report.

It is also important that we listen to the views of third parties. They will undoubtedly comment on this, and they are also very important in the implementation of the military covenant. Government must not do that alone. If they were to do so, they would completely ignore the general public and the voluntary sector, which are another element that must be party to the military covenant. It would therefore be interesting to know what involvement from third-sector partners is envisaged in this annual report.

It is also important that the report is dovetailed with any other relevant reports there might be, such as from the service complaints commissioner, the continuous attitude survey or the external reference group. We need to know, as well, the extent to which personal functional standards subsequent to the armed forces overarching personnel strategy have been satisfied, and we need to incorporate the views of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body.

[Dr Murrison]

I believe the Secretary of State does so in any case, but that is, of course, a matter for the Chairman of the Defence Committee, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Chairman will be only too delighted to oblige.

It is important that we thrash out what we mean by the covenant and the deal we are prepared to strike in recognition of it. On the one hand, it might be a “no-disadvantage” covenant, by which I mean that people will not be disadvantaged by their military service. On the other hand, might it mean a “citizen-plus” covenant, in that people will get a bit extra in recognition of the fact that they are serving or have served, or are related to someone who is serving or has served, in the armed forces? It is important that we do that.

We could envisage the “no-disadvantage” covenant as being what we might aspire to at the moment, and the “citizen-plus” covenant as being the sort of model that applies in the United States. Certainly, the “no-disadvantage” covenant appears to be what people have in mind in things such as the service Command Paper. The term is used in that publication and also by Professor Hew Strachan in his recent report on the military covenant. Furthermore, of course, that covenant is a great deal more attainable, and we can take a closer view of what it actually means, if we use the benchmark of not disadvantaging people by virtue of their service. A “citizen-plus” covenant, however, is more difficult and invites calls of “Me too!”, in particular from other public servants who say that these days they are just as much on the front line. We could argue that point.

It is important that the annual report contains an outcome measure. We need to know what we are looking at in order to make an assessment of whether the Government have done what they should be doing in honouring the military covenant. What do success and failure look like? It is important that the document is subject to rigorous independent scrutiny, not least by the Defence Committee. The report will be subject to the media spotlight and the analysis of third parties, so it needs to be a comprehensive and detailed document, unless it is simply to become, in the fullness of time and potentially under another Administration, simply a tick-box exercise.

Over Christmas last year, my right hon. and hon. Friends were exercised by the air bridge between the UK and theatre. Perhaps that is a demonstration of a facet of the military covenant that could be covered in the annual report. I find to my great horror that similar problems arose this Christmas. It was a high-profile incident because it involved Katherine Jenkins and James Blunt and their failure to go to theatre to entertain the troops. Will the annual report cover theatre-specific elements of the disgruntlement of our armed forces? The Minister knows full well—we talked about this a great deal in opposition—that paramount in that list of disgruntlement tends to be things such as the air bridge and rest and recuperation.

Organisations such as the British Limbless Ex Service Men’s Association point out that people owe their allegiance to the nation, not to localities by and large, and that the covenant is a country covenant, not a county covenant. It is important, when considering elements of Professor Strachan’s report, which is excellent in almost all respects—particularly his important point about the community covenant—that we recognise that people owe their allegiance nationally and expect the covenant to be honoured nationally as well. It would be a pity if we entered into some sort of postcode lottery in how we regard our duties to the men and women of our armed forces. I represent a constituency in a military part of the country, and as a community we are fully apprised of our duties towards the men and women of our armed forces. Some parts of the country, however—perhaps because men and women of our armed forces are less prominent there—are less inclined that way, so it is important, given that this is a national covenant, that we view this nationally, not parochially.

It is also important to recognise that the covenant cuts both ways. It is a duty that the country and the Government owe to the military, but in turn the military owes a duty to the public and the Government, and it is important to assess—in my view, as part of this annual report—whether that duty is being satisfied in all respects. Everyone in this place admires our armed forces greatly—many of us have served in them—and I am second to nobody in my admiration for the men and women who serve this country so gallantly. However, there will be detractors and those who say, “It is all very well talking up the military covenant, but we also need to understand that the public have expectations of the men and women of our armed forces.” It is important to include in the report, therefore, if only to gainsay it, that we have to look at areas where the public have been let down, as well as at areas in which we have let down our armed forces. I put that down as a point for consideration in Committee.

I turn to later clauses of the Bill that broadly speaking provide for the discipline elements. Clause 6 deals with the performance of the Ministry of Defence police. I have always had cordial relations with the MOD police, who work closely with their county colleagues, but, in a similar manner to the comments by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North, one would have to ask all the time why we have a separate MOD police force. If we are going to consider in Committee the service police—our Front-Bench team made a generous offer to do so—perhaps we might also look at policing in the round within the MOD, which of course would include the MOD police. It is important that police forces benchmark their performance. The MOD police force is a particular force with a different profile; what it does is subtly different, and its arrest and conviction profiles are very different from those of county forces, and we have to ask all the time, particularly in an age when we are looking for efficiency savings, whether the current model is the correct one. I make no judgment on that, but it might be something that the Committee should look at and take a view on.

Clause 5 deals with the appointment of provost marshals and asserts that only provost officers should be provost marshals, which struck me as slightly odd. At a time when we are looking for ways of making heads of police forces lay people, it seems a little odd—it sits uncomfortably with it—to insist in the Bill that in all circumstances provost marshals should be provost officers.

I am always a little wary when it comes to extending anybody’s powers—in this context, the powers of service police—unless I am faced with a good reason. That must be our starting premise. However, I do not have a good reason for why we need to extend the powers of service police. Although I am perfectly willing to take Ministers’ words for it that it is necessary, we will have to tease out in Committee why we need to extend the powers in the way described.

Clauses 9 to 11 and compulsory testing have been discussed at length by the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd and in an authoritative fashion that I cannot match. However, I start to get concerned about compulsory testing, particularly when it involves health care professionals. This is an ethical minefield and something that no doubt will need to be explored in Committee.

[Bob Russell]

When the Armed Forces Bill Committee considered this point three or four years ago, we were advised—if my memory is correct—that the equivalent of two infantry battalions are discharged each year for testing positive. Under those circumstances, does the hon. Gentleman accept that the checking is an important requirement?

[Dr Murrison]

I think that the hon. Gentleman misunderstands me. If I develop my point, perhaps I can answer his concerns.

We have compulsory drug testing at the moment, and it has been found to be broadly successful. My concern is about further testing at the say-so of the command and because it suspects that there might be a safety-critical issue. If instances can be cited in which safety criticality might have been affected by compulsory drug testing, we have a good case for doing this, but that case has to be made before we extend those powers. I would make a small suggestion: if we are to take those powers, perhaps we might like to consider them after 12 months, using a sunset clause, to ensure that they are still necessary. If they are not, we could consider removing them.

It is not clear to me what the position of registered medical and nursing practitioners will be in all this. They operate within a disciplined service, and the rules can be quite challenging. However, looking at the Bill, I would say that were I in that position, I would be phoning up my defence society to ensure that I was not transgressing before co-operating with such a provision. I see that there is a get-out clause for medical practitioners. It all looks a bit woolly to me, but I suspect that it will be firmed up as the Bill proceeds.

The Bill will further separate service police from the command, yet service police remain servicemen and remain within that command structure; indeed, they can exercise command appropriate to their rank. I am a little concerned about these people, because they are potentially remarkably powerful individuals. We need to bear that in mind when considering this matter. Part of the military covenant is about ensuring that we do the best by the men and women who serve this country; they should not be disadvantaged. On the remarks made by the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, it is important that we have a system that does not impose a greater legal restriction on that population than on the general public. If our system did impose that, we would not be honouring our commitment under the military covenant, because service personnel would most certainly be disadvantaged.

I am concerned that there has been insufficient reflection on the possibility of combining our three sets of service police. As my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North said, there is potential mileage in combining the three. I sat through our consideration of a lot of the supplementary legislation to the Armed Forces Act 2006 and enjoyed it very much. However, it was clear to me that the systems of law were coming much closer together; indeed, one cannot get a cigarette paper between the three of them any more. Given those circumstances, the environment has changed and the case for combining those services into a tri-service provost service makes some sense.

I conclude by welcoming the Bill, which is a culmination of a huge amount of work. It sets the right balance between a covenant that is unspoken, moral and psychological, and addressing the more obvious needs of the men and women who serve our armed forces very well. I shall certainly be supporting the Bill.