Armed Forces Personnel

Dai Havard Excerpts

Thursday 10th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dai Havard (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), my colleague on the Defence Committee, and his comments about the poppy.

The debate today is about armed forces personnel, so I shall talk about them and not necessarily about Parliament. It is interesting to find out who the people who currently serve are. Over a number of years, through the armed forces parliamentary scheme, I have had the opportunity to engage with our forces in theatre and out of theatre. One finds that a fantastic variety of people make up our armed forces. They have a fantastic array of skills, some of which we bothered to give them and some of which they come along with in the first place.

I remember being in Kabul doing some canvassing for the presidential elections. I was masquerading as a soldier at the time and it was not for any particular candidate; it was about the process of presidential elections. I said, “Come on, boys. We had better go over here. We’ll go to the caff and have a word.” They said, “You’re good at this, aren’t you?” I said, “Well, one thing I ought to be reasonably good at is canvassing. You do the soldiering, I’ll do the canvassing.” We were walking up the street when all of a sudden the Fijian flanker I had been given to look after me started to chat to the locals. I said to him, “How come you speak the local language?” He said, “I’m Fijian. I went to school with people who speak Urdu, and I can get along with these people.” I asked, “You’re not an interpreter, then?” “No,” he said. “I just get on and do it.”

The Gurkhas seem to have some Babel fish in their ear. Wherever one goes with them, they are always in some way or another able to communicate with the local people. When I was in the Balkans, there were Chileans and people from the area with a Gurkha in the middle. For some reason or another, he was able to make those people understand one another in some fashion. In the Balkans, as the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) will know, the Welsh also serve. Our communications fell down. The only reason we could speak to one another was that there were two Welsh boys with mobile phones and they could speak Welsh to one another, just like the wind talkers did for the Americans in south-east Asia.

There is a fantastic array of skills among our armed forces, but we have to equip them as well. They come with these skills by default and we use them, but we must not abuse them. One of the things that is missing from the debate is how we enable them to do the things we want them to do. I was in Iraq and the place was jumping, as it usually was when we went to Iraq. I was talking to an American, who said to me, “See, the difference is that we train warriors. They go forward—blitzkrieg—they can fight anything in front of them, but you train soldiers. Once the fighting is done, they take their helmet off, put the beret on and start to engage with people. They are multi-skilled, so it’s different. I don’t know what you do, but you train different people.”

That does not come about by accident. We must equip our armed forces and enable them. If, as the Minister said, we need to understand them, then we need to engage with them. I would recommend any Member to use the facilities of the armed forces parliamentary scheme to get under the wire and go and live in a tent or a ditch with those people for two or three days. Very often it will be, “And another thing—” so the Member will soon find out who they are.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I slept in a tent with my hon. Friend in Iraq when I served on the Defence Committee. Does he recognise that whenever we went anywhere, we always seemed to meet someone who was from Merthyr Tydfil?

[Mr Havard]

The “Taffia” is at work. That is true. At the local field hospital at Camp Bastion when we visited, Andy Morris, who is now Major Morris, was there as a paramedic. These are the people who jump in the back of helicopters and bring people out. He is a reservist, not a regular. There is a real debate to be had about what the balance of forces is going to be. The report by the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) is seminal. A decision will have to be made about the balance between regulars and reserves. We do not want to cheapen their capacity or their labour. We need to maintain and improve that quality. We must not make the mistake of using it as a way of cheapening the price, rather than improving the value.

The moral component is important. We heard reference earlier to war memorials. We all have the problem. I would like to find the bandit who nicked the bayonet off the Aberfan war memorial. We probably know who he is and where he lives, and we will get it back, but that is not the point. It is about respect. Tomorrow I will be in Rhymney comprehensive school, laying a wreath at the school at its memorial with the children. I will be visiting the cadets and the reserves at Maindy. We must engage with the people.

I do not have a big poppy. Perhaps the size of the poppy is important; I do not know. I have a 90th anniversary badge, given to me by the British Legion in Dowlais. There is a whole community involved. The social and economic impact that the Ministry of Defence has in all our communities is huge. We need to recognise that in deploying the resources that we have, because we also ask people to deploy.

Let me say a little about some of the things that we are discussing on the Defence Committee and the changes that are being made. Reference has been made to how it is possible to divide communities, as well as bringing them together. We can say that armed forces personnel have special interests, and therefore should have special services. By doing the right thing, we can inadvertently do something else and create divisions. Be careful that there is not a problem with consistency, rather than uniformity, in the application of these services across the United Kingdom. The right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) mentioned that earlier, and the same applies to Wales. The National Assembly for Wales yesterday published a document about what it will do to improve services for veterans.

The organisation of the health service will be different, because it is very problematic, as is housing and the rest of it. There is a variable geography and the operational delivery of services varies between Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England, but the Ministry of Defence must understand that the covenant is a UK document that will apply to service personnel wherever they are in the UK. If it does not have some consistency of application, it will get it wrong. That is a real problem it needs to grapple with, and I hope that we can help.

The Defence Committee—perhaps I am giving away secrets—plans to produce a report on housing in the same way as we produced reports on veterans and casualties. As my friend the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire said, the Committee’s work is to bring those matters to Parliament, because it is a servant of the House and our work should be debated here. Frankly, it is a disgrace that the House has not had a proper debate on the matter in more than 12 months. However well meaning Front Benchers have been in today’s debate, they have their political knockabout and absorb the time and the way the debate is conducted is not in the hands of Back Benchers. I know that the Backbench Business Committee has become some sort of petitions committee by default, but I appeal to it to provide time for the House to debate the work the Committee has been doing and allow Back Benchers to say what they want to say beyond the direct control of the Executive, rather than by any other process.

I would like to say one more thing about understanding people. We deploy the armed forces, so we need to protect them. One of the current debates about respect relates to people’s respect for how they are deployed and what we send them to do. The armed forces are sometimes uncertain about their legal and moral status, and if we are not careful, that will cause difficulties for the operational capacity to do things on the ground. It is known in the trade to those of us who discuss these things as the “lawfare-warfare” debate; is it legal, but is it also morally defensible? If we want respect and legitimisation, we must not only enable and provide for those people, but give them and the community on whose behalf they work some certainty that they are being properly deployed to do things that they feel comfortable being deployed to do.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

The morality of war is very well set out in the Geneva convention. As long as our officers and soldiers put the convention at the front of all their actions, they will not go far wrong.

[Mr Havard]

I agree that the Geneva convention sets out an important architecture, but let me give an example to illustrate my point. We were once running an internment camp—not a detention facility—in Iraq because that is what was required. That was legitimate and part of the UN mandate. It was legitimised, but it had to be reviewed from time to time and the authority to run it had to be agreed with the new Iraqi Government following an exchange of letters and all the things that go with UN activities. Otherwise, our military personnel, from Colchester and elsewhere, who were running the camp, which was not anything like Guantanamo Bay, needed to know that they were secure in what they were doing. They now serve alongside others, more often than not in coalition.

The Americans are not signatories to the International Criminal Court, but the United Kingdom is. Often there are people on the ground in a foreign place with some sort of architecture of legitimacy between the Government who have asked them to go, or the United Nations, and individually they may well find that domestic and international law are different from one another. That issue needs to be considered. At the moment we put in place mechanisms that we believe protect our individuals who are on the ground, but they are citizens serving abroad. There is a relationship between international and domestic law that we need to be very careful about, and the subject will need debate, because I see operational service personnel second-guessing their decisions. Rather than doing what they would normally do, they send it back up just to make sure. The window of opportunity is gone.

I could give a practical example of that relating to the current problem of piracy in the Gulf, but I am not allowed to. The person concerned did not do wrong; they did right in order to protect themselves. What we must have in place is a decision-making process that enables us to take all those things into account with the speed that they need to be taken into account so that the decision-making process does not disadvantage the individual when they do the job that they are required to do, not later after some gang of lawyers have assessed whether it is right or wrong. We must celebrate all those who have served, all those who do serve, and all those who will serve, but we must be careful how we make organisational changes to do the things we wish to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I start by declaring my interest as a service pensioner and a current member of the reserve forces.

It is a great pleasure to follow four current and past members of the Defence Committee. I wish to develop a point that the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr Havard) made in his extremely considered contribution, which is about the universality of the military covenant. I share his concern that we may forget that it is not a local covenant, or an English, Scottish, Northern Irish or Welsh one, but a UK covenant. In preparing my report “Fighting Fit”, on veterans’ mental health, and more recently a report on military amputees, I have been extremely aware of the need to ensure that the complexity of the devolved arrangement is worked through. I have been buoyed up by the understanding of that necessity among officials and Ministers throughout the UK. There is a strong understanding that we must ensure that the covenant is applied throughout the UK and in equal part. From my experience of preparing that work, I am confident that it will.

[Mr Havard]

I recognise what the hon. Gentleman says and congratulate him on behalf of all hon. Members on his work on both those matters. I hope he is correct that a consistent approach will be maintained over time. My concern is that the process needs to endure not just for the next five years or the next comprehensive spending review period, but for a long time into the future.

[Dr Murrison]

I entirely agree.

Last week, with a number of hon. Members, I rattled a tin for the Royal British Legion in Westminster tube station. That is always an enjoyable occasion and it is particularly pleasurable to importune colleagues as they come through the barriers, and to fix one’s gimlet eyes on precisely what goes into the tin—indeed, it restores one’s faith in politicians. Perhaps I should not name names, but without exception, they were all extremely generous. Such occasions are well appreciated in the House and I recommend that all hon. Members participate in future.

Like many right hon. and hon. Members, I shall pay my tribute this weekend—in my case at the war memorials in Trowbridge and Warminster. In each of the 10 years that I have been the local MP, I have noticed an increase in the number of people who wish to pay their respects. I was asked this morning on my local radio, which my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) knows well, why we should wear a poppy. One point made earlier was that there is an imperative pressure to wear one. The truth is that it is an individual choice—nobody should feel obliged to wear any badge or mark of commemoration. However, purely anecdotally, it seems that more and more people are choosing to wear a poppy, and they are sometimes people whom we would not necessarily expect to do so. They do so not out of a sense of militarism, nationalism or patriotism, but out of a sense that we need to mark the sacrifice and contribution of people who have fought in conflicts. We might or might not agree with those conflicts, but nevertheless, those who fought in them have shown the best of us in their soldierly conduct. That is why people choose to wear a poppy and to be so generous to the poppy appeal and the Royal British Legion.

I look forward to the armed forces covenant interim report later this year. I welcome very much the evolution of the external reference group into the covenant reference group, and particularly Ministers’ insistence that it should be independent. The evolution of the Armed Forces Act 2011 was interesting—as has been said, the Royal British Legion certainly made a big contribution to it. I do not entirely share the perspective of the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), but nevertheless, the Royal British Legion’s contribution was an important one. I look forward to seeing both the interim report and the covenant reference group’s response—its independence is extremely important.

I welcome Professor Hew Strachan’s work and the report of his independent taskforce, which was published in December last year. I hope we have an opportunity to discuss progress on the points in the interim report that have been accepted by the Government when it is debated later this year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank those Members who were responsible for securing this debate and, in particular, the Prime Minister.

It appears to me that more poppies have been worn this year than in previous years, and I find that heartening. That is certainly not down to “The X Factor” and the sparkly bright poppies that are worn by those who appear on television, but more young people are wearing poppies and it does my heart good to see that. Reference was made earlier to the Royal British Legion and there being, perhaps, an age barrier. It might have been the case that young people did not respond very much to past conflicts such as the first and second world wars and Aden, but the young people of today clearly do relate to the Royal British Legion. Those who are serving in Afghanistan and have served in Iraq recently are of their age group.

I can only imagine how good it must be for those who have family members serving, or those who have served themselves, to see younger and older people alike wearing the poppy with pride. That is a show of support for the services, and it signals that at this time of year the nation remembers those who have served their country and those who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

I recently had the privilege of attending a coffee morning in a local town hall to raise funds for the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association. That event is held annually and it is a practical expression of support for the troops. By holding it, the people of Ards and Strangford have contributed more than £10,000. Everyone who entered the hall and donated, and had their coffee or tea and sticky bun—they were all home-made, I understand—did so for the same reason: to show support and express thanks to the troops. The window of the local wool shop in Newtownards carries an advertisement telling people that the store will contribute free wool to knit hats for our serving troops, and that it will send them out to them, too. Hundreds have already been knitted and sent out. In all our local shopping centres there are dedicated Royal British Legion personnel standing at poppy stalls. I see that the vast majority of people in the town are supportive of our troops, and I now have an opportunity to speak for them in Parliament.

The latest figures show that Army recruitment is up across the board in Northern Ireland. That is noteworthy. In these times of economic uncertainty, people are having to look outside their normal comfort zone to find work, and it appears that the Army is filling a gap. There has been a rise in recruitment everywhere but particularly in what would have been nationalist areas. That speaks volumes about how members of the younger generation see themselves today.

When Newtownards celebrated the homecoming of the Irish Guards recently, one soldier remarked that the troops had been told that they could not parade through the streets of Belfast. They were bemused by that as many would have been returning to their home town. I was told that religion was not an issue between the troops, and I knew that would be the case anyway. When people put on the British uniform and serve in the British Army, they are our brothers—or sisters—full stop.

As these soldiers marched, there was a real buzz about the town, with thousands of people lining the streets to say thanks and to cheer on those who are out there fighting for Queen and country. For many of those involved it was a homecoming as they come from Ards. The Ards and the Strangford area has the largest Irish Guards association in the whole of Northern Ireland and, indeed, the United Kingdom. One’s heart could not fail to be touched by the mothers who were crying and smiling at the same time. It is not impossible to do that, as I very clearly witnessed. Among the familiar faces that we all saw, I also met some young men who had been injured on the battlefields in Afghanistan. Despite Northern Ireland having a population of only 1.8 million, 20% of all serving personnel—soldiers and those in the Air Force or the Royal Navy—hail from my own beautiful Northern Ireland. We have every right to be proud.

The service at St Mark’s before the parade was poignant and touching, as we sat with the soldiers and heard them pray for each other. They also prayed for the Afghans that they had met. The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr Havard) mentioned the special qualities of the British soldier and they are just that. The British soldier does his job in uniform and he very clearly does his job afterwards as well.

[Mr Havard]

In January I had the privilege of meeting members of the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Regiment in Nad Ali, where I witnessed them starting the new initiative of local policing. The reason they could do that was because of the very qualities that the hon. Gentleman talks about. They could speak to the local people about their agricultural development in a way that they could relate to, and they were doing fantastic work in terms of not only security, but of building consent for a new Afghanistan.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. He gave me his card and he said, “You can speak in English or in Welsh.” As an Ulster Scot, I choose English. I was not sure about the other bit, because I would probably have got it wrong.

The number of people lining the street from St Mark’s through the town was incredible, and the streets were glowing with pride as crisp Union flags flew from every shop and every house, and were in the hands of many of the people who were there. There was a sense of pride and honour, which permeated through gender, age and religious barriers. All were united when they considered our troops and what they had done, and thanked them for it. That raises the question that we have the opportunity to speak about today: how can this House be more supportive?

As we come to Remembrance Sunday, we have a timely reminder of the sacrifices that allow us to stand in this Chamber and debate any topic—we are here because of what has happened before. My childhood favourite, Winston Churchill, stood in this House debating the merits of war and the need for war in eloquent fashion on numerous occasions, as the history books show. I do not do that today; today, I stand for our troops and say, “Recruit them, train them, equip them, feed them, speak with them, help them and support them.” For me, and I believe for everyone in this House, “We will remember them” is not a phrase but a promise.

We have had the opportunity to go to Afghanistan on a number of occasions through the armed forces parliamentary scheme, of which the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney is a member, as indeed are other Members here today. The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell), the Secretary of State for Scotland and Lord Maginnis were part of the group that went out there in March. Our troops need help on the battlefield, and we were much impressed by Camp Bastion and the medical facilities that were available. People there say, “If you ever get injured, make sure it is in Afghanistan and close to Camp Bastion, because you would not get the same medical help if you were involved in a traffic accident back home.” That is what we were seeing. On that occasion, two helicopters arrived—this was not planned, it was just the way things happened—with some American casualties and we witnessed at first hand the injured being taken into the medical centre and saw clearly the good work that is being done. I commend the staff for that.

The shadow Minister said that wherever we go in the world there will always be a soldier from Merthyr Tydfil. Wherever we go in the world there will always be a soldier from Strangford too. I say that because when I was in Afghanistan I had the opportunity to meet a young lady in the military police whose father I had helped with a planning application and whose mother I had helped with other issues. I also met a sergeant-major in the Irish Guards, who was from outside my constituency but whose uncle and aunt were personal friends of mine. I also had a seat at the Royal Irish barbecue there—for the record, it was a dry barbecue in Afghanistan, as there is no drink there. It was the first time that I can recall being with an Irish regiment at a barbecue where it was all water and lemonade. I sat across the table from a young guy who said, “Jim, it’s nice to see you here. I voted for you.” A guy in Afghanistan is able to tell me that he voted for me. I said, “That’s the reason I’m your MP—because you voted for me.” The service personnel asked me as a parliamentarian, and I believe they have asked every Member of Parliament, to be their spokesperson in the House, and I want to speak for them.

I also had the chance to be on a five-day exercise with the 1st Mercian Regiment in Catterick in north Yorkshire, which gave me the opportunity to speak to the troops and hear what they wanted. They are looking for security of their pensions and for continuity of service. They want the uncertainty of where they are posted to be sorted out quickly. They are looking for their housing issues to be resolved, for confirmation of their jobs and training, and for contact with their family. The Minister spoke earlier about wi-fi and the phone system. We witnessed that clearly in Afghanistan. The voice down the phone was their wife, their mum, their dad or their family and friends, and we noticed how important that was for the troops. We also witnessed the fact that they need a great deal of support.

The troops mentioned an issue which I hope the Minister will address in his closing remarks. They told us that they get 14 days leave, and sometimes on their way home they may find that they have to spend two days sitting in Cyprus, for example. That is two days lost out of their 14 days.