Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme

Dai Havard Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure, Mr Walker, to serve under your chairmanship. Members of the Panel of Chairs do not often serve under one another’s chairmanship. I was not expecting to be called so early, but I want to echo some of what has already been said, particularly about Sir Neil Thorne, his wife Sheila and the dog—I have forgotten its name, so I must apologise to Sir Neil. They have been a feature of my life for more than the last decade while I have been involved in the armed forces parliamentary scheme.

Becoming a Member of the House of Commons is a bizarre experience because it involves setting up a small business and accommodating the magical mystery tour that is the legislative process. We are given the key to a locker and a sack of mail, and told to get on with it. We wonder why we are here, what we are trying to do, and what our responsibilities are. We have obvious responsibilities to our constituents and, on a broader front, to the state as well, which is important. Reference has been made to defence of the realm and that looms large in our thinking, especially for those who, like me, were elected in June 2001 when people said we did not have a real job to do and everything was fine with devolution in Wales, so we could sit back and have a long holiday. However, something happened that September that changed the world and defined it for the immediate future and probably the next 50 years.

Telling people how they can help to resolve the problems, and committing them to armed conflict, has become a big issue that one must participate in. We can step back and decide to find out something about it if we do not understand it and want to understand it better. The one thing that helps with that is the armed forces parliamentary scheme, to which I pay tribute because it has done a lot for people. In my experience, it provides an insight into what people are really being asked to do and who must do the job from day to day.

When one puts on desert boots, finds that they melt and are not fit for purpose, and discusses what should be available, one gets some understanding of the matter. When living in a tent for a few days with the boys and girls, sharing the communal showers and other excitements such as dodging spiders and the real snakes, as well as the two-legged ones, one begins to understand exactly what pressures the armed forces experience as ordinary individuals in one’s own community or another hon. Member’s constituency. They take on a burden and provide a value for their community that people cannot understand until they participate with them and get an idea of what it means to be in dislocated places and to suffer some of their day-to-day experiences. I thank not just Sir Neil and those who have dealt with the scheme at a higher level, but those who have supported it throughout.

I now have friends in the military whom I would never have had before—I have had life experiences with them over the years—and I also know people in the Ministry of Defence and civil servants. All those various people are not immediately seen—and we are a pain to them. We are a burden. When we rock up to these things, we are not exactly helpful, because they have enough to do anyway. However, they put themselves out to accommodate us, so that we can begin to understand some of their experiences. We are educated in the process in the proper sense.

I make no apologies for the fact that the scheme is political, but it is not, in any shape or form, party political. It is said to be non-political, and in that sense it is non-political, but at another level it is highly political, because it gives us a political education and also helps others to understand the political process. Sometimes when we go along to such things we have to sing for our supper. All of a sudden, a major is giving us 200 troops, saying, “Go on, there they are. Tell them why they are here. You have a go, because I have been trying to explain it to them—you have a go.” It is educative in that sense, but people also understand us, because they can quiz us. We are a resource. If we participate, we have to make ourselves available as a resource, because it is not a one-way street. We should be not only drawing from the process but contributing to it, because that is what makes it worth while.

It is educative, and any education is of no value unless it is slightly subversive. The scheme is good, therefore, because we experience people at different levels who say, “They are a pain and now, maybe they know a bit too much. They are going to places, finding out things and coming back with”—what were described earlier as—“pesky, awkward questions.” Some people have a slightly ambivalent view of the scheme, but that is all about the friction that makes for the value of the process. It will be interesting to hear about other people’s experiences. What we find is that the military themselves are only too happy to help. Others, who perhaps do not fully understand the scheme, think that we will be doing something that we will not be. It has been useful to find that people from the Ministry are involved in the scheme, and people from the staff of the House of Commons. It is useful that people who are writing papers about defence can participate. The current Serjeant at Arms was a member of it. The scheme offers things not only to Members of Parliament, and it seems to me that that has been its value during its time.

On this business about sponsorship, and all the rest of it, over this period of time I have also become a member of the Select Committee on Defence, so I bump up against this stuff all the time in different ways. No one has ever asked me for anything in relation to the scheme—ever. That includes people from the Ministry and from any of the sponsors that have been involved. Perhaps they think, “Well, we won’t ask him anyway”, but I have never been approached for anything. All I have seen is them give their support through the proper administration—through Sir Neil and the scheme. I have never experienced anything other than that. Equally, I am pleased that we are making all that more transparent and more obvious, and that more people and more sponsors are getting involved. There is a huge benefit to them, both in our ability to understand and in their ability to get the advantage of having an educated electorate in the House of Commons, when it comes to making decisions on defence matters in future.

Let me say something about the future. People will want to make all sorts of comments about their individual experiences. Having played rugby, I think of the old saying, “What goes on tour stays on tour.” There are some things that people will want to know about, but I will not tell them, because they are particular experiences. I say that because if we get involved with a body like the military, stuff happens. With such experiences, we have to be accommodating.

We begin to understand things immediately. When I first started on the scheme, I went to the training college and spent a week doing basic training. It was fantastic—very, very interesting. I came away with a little card that all soldiers were given at that time—I was doing it with the Army. The card was about what they were trained to do. It was about their loyalty and their sacrifice, about them putting themselves in a particular position, and therefore about how the Government should support them. I have it in my wallet, but I am not allowed to use visual aids in the Chamber.

When we came to discuss the covenant, it was interesting. We have been discussing it, in my experience, right the way through the scheme, and that discussion has taken on a particular form. Out of such things, we begin to have a better understanding of why we are discussing codifying some things better, politically, than we were doing in the first place.

That discussion is just one experience. There have been other, more exciting experiences, such as dropping into the Borneo jungle and being cooked a snake curry by Gurkhas who tried to sell it as chicken. I could talk about all sorts of little experiences such as that, but what we get out of the scheme is an understanding that it is about people. It is about high politics, but it is also about people. They are what makes it work.

I have been lucky enough that in the past year, I have been at the Royal College of Defence Studies. Sir Neil would probably chide me because I took a bit too long to do the course, but it is very interesting. I now have friends in various militaries across the world. Some are now commanding militaries in countries that are potentially, and actually, in conflict with one another. I now know some of the commanders of the business that is going on. Knowing each other gives a different context to trying to understand how one can incentivise a change. If someone has an idea of how the Chinese think, and they are sitting next to a Chinese general on one side, a Pakistani general on the other, a German and an awkward Norwegian, and having a debate, it becomes very interesting. We are able to have tea with people who normally, in another context, we would never get together.

More generally, I would argue that investment in that defence diplomacy is something we all ought to understand and do more of. The armed forces parliamentary scheme gives us that, sometimes by accident. We participate with the military, and they are in coalitions all the time. They are in the context of the places in which they work. All of a sudden, we can be somewhere or another, and someone announces, “There are some Chilean soldiers”, and we have to deal with them. One thinks, “Chile? What do I know about Chile?” It is an education in that respect, and, again, if someone goes through the scheme in all of its different manifestations, it provides a breadth of experience that could not be bought anywhere else. It is a life experience, but more importantly, it is an education in the ability to understand not only immediate political questions but the context in which they operate.

In future, there will be a debate about whether uniforms should be worn. Perhaps others will raise that issue today. I think it is really important to wear them—I made a point earlier about boots melting. It allows us to begin to understand what other people are doing, and we should not abandon that idea. Sometimes we should mix in, because otherwise, people say, “Which one shall we shoot?” “The one without the uniform on”. That is not terribly helpful, because it means we are not part of the group. People say, “What you on, sir?”, “What are you doing, sir?”, “Who’s he?”, “Is that the armed forces pension scheme, sir?” I say, “I’m on the armed forces parliamentary scheme —what are you on?”—They ask because I am ancient, I suppose. We can then have a debate, because in a sense we are not different; we are just another dimension of them. Therefore, we can discuss things with them in a different way.

We also begin to understand which way is up. It is interesting to watch Members of Parliament learn how to iron—it is like basic training for some of them—how to put a beret on and all the rest of it. That is good entertainment, but it is more than that, because we can understand some of the things that we are giving people, how they work, and what it is all about. It is also about their ethos and what they invest in all that. We can begin to understand why that is important to them.

I finish by saying that we are having a debate about changing the mixture of regulars and reserves. One thing that is interesting to me about the scheme is that we would do 22 days before, but we are now talking about 15 days. A decade ago, people would say, “You are just signing up like the regulars”. The scheme provides another way of beginning to understand better what we are asking people to do—to dislocate themselves from their community for short periods of time. For those who have not done it before, it gives a limited insight into what that might mean and what we might be asking people to do.

The people who enter the scheme must make a commitment, but I would urge any Member of Parliament to join up and do it, because it is not just about defence. It is about the whole context of the political process and the decision-making process. The ability to see the strategic view is what hon. Members will get from the scheme and what will be of value to them.