Military Covenant

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Crausby]

I will get to that point.

We do not expect our forces to join a trade union or allow them to go on strike, so they are entitled to be treated differently. My dad lay in that French field for two days before he was found, but he was eventually flown back to the UK and put back together. When he recovered, he voted Labour, and he never missed the opportunity to vote Labour in every election until the day he died. I make that point simply because this is not a party political issue. Many of his comrades returned to vote Conservative, and Liberal, and other weird things, as was their entitlement, and some did not bother to vote at all. So it is shameful to turn the matter of the covenant into a point-scoring party political issue, as the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) did.

We all know that we are in difficult circumstances, but I do not know what my dad would say about cutting soldiers’ allowances at the same time as Barclays pay their investment bankers 20% more—not to mention making Afghan veterans redundant by e-mail, which is even worse than when John Major made Bosnian front-line veterans redundant by post. I suppose that the MOD has at least come up to date.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Crausby]

For the last time.

[Bob Stewart]

John Major did not do that. I told Bosnian soldiers that they were made redundant personally by waking them up in the morning and telling them as they woke up, and then I gave them the paper. That was rotten.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I will be as quick as I can. I love the idea of a military covenant. Of course our armed forces are a special case. They are a martial profession: people who join them do not do so to join a nursery school; they know they are going to take risks and they know they may lose their lives. As we know, they are in a unique profession, so we have to deal with them uniquely. That is why we must look after them. I repeat: we must look after them.

The military covenant is a work in progress. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer), who is no longer in his place, and others who say that it is the idea of the covenant that counts rather than law. We feel strongly that the tri-service military covenant being looked at now, as work in progress, could get better. I feel that the military covenant comprises three crucial aspects, which I will quickly run through.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

What the Defence Secretary said this afternoon, which was also said in recent proceedings on the Armed Forces Bill, is that a document called “the armed forces covenant” is being worked on now and will be produced later this spring. If that is the case, and the Prime Minister is clear that the covenant should be written into law, why is it not part of the Armed Forces Bill? When an amendment was proposed last week to enshrine the covenant in law, why did the hon. Gentleman’s party vote against it?

[Bob Stewart]

The answer is I do not know, but I will continue and I will be quick.

What is crucial to whatever we call the military covenant is how we respect our soldiers when they are killed. As a boy, I remember watching my father’s battalion come back. He was the only officer who had not been killed and I remember watching the bodies come off the back of an aircraft at RAF Khormaksar in Aden. We have come a long way since then, and we must respect people properly. Secondly, the families must be looked after properly. When someone dies in the service of our country, we have a duty as a Government to look after those families for the rest of their lives. And my third point is that we have a duty to look after those who are hurt badly for the rest of their lives, too.

I am happy that the military covenant is going to be part of the Armed Forces Bill. I like the idea of having a report every year. I commend the idea of the Queen’s regulations. When I was serving, they were my bible when it came to dealing with my soldiers and how I should behave. Perhaps the tri-service military covenant will in due course become part of the Queen’s regulations.

Members on both sides of the House must try to do whatever we can in these parlous economic times to look after our soldiers so that we will remember them.