Dan Byles
Main Page: Dan Byles (Conservative - North Warwickshire)Department Debates - View all Dan Byles's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(13 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)
I am a little confused. Was the shadow Secretary of State not a member of the Government who went to court to fight to reduce compensation payments to wounded British soldiers returning from Afghanistan? His litany of righteous indignation does not sit well with that, so will he take this opportunity to apologise on behalf of the previous Government for that disgraceful action?
Mr Murphy
I cannot help the fact that the hon. Gentleman is confused; that is for him to resolve. The point is that, as part of the Boyce review, we are committed to increasing some of those payments. He calls it righteous indignation, and I do not know whether that is his attempt to justify the policy that his Government are implementing, but I do not think that it is righteous indignation to say that, if someone at this very moment serving in Afghanistan finds themselves in harm’s way, their wife, at home with their children, should reasonably expect decent support.
Mark Lancaster
I do not, because the real test will be in the implementation. I have confidence that the Government will implement and uphold their end of the bargain, so I am afraid that I cannot agree with the hon. Gentleman. However, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating and only time will tell. Perhaps we can consider the matter again in one of our annual debates on the military covenant.
I was going to give one example of where soldiers are perhaps right to be slightly cynical. I fully supported the previous Government’s introduction of the operational allowance in October 2006. That was a good move, and it introduced a tax-free allowance of £2,240. However, it is worth remembering—I wish to make it clear that I think that this was more by cock-up than conspiracy—that at the same time the Government also cut the long-service separation allowance, meaning that a soldier on a six-month tour in Afghanistan lost £2,341. The Government gave with one hand and took away with the other, within the space of a month. When such moves happen, one can see why any soldier is entitled to be cynical of any Government. It is therefore very important that we see, over time, how the military covenant is improved.
As I said from the Opposition Benches shortly after I got back from my operational tour in Afghanistan, there has been a major improvement in personal kit over the past few years. I felt that when I was mobilised in 2006, the standard of personal kit that I was given then was far better than the kit I was given when I was mobilised in 1999 or 2001—so, once again, credit to the previous Government for that improvement, which I should like to continue under this Government in future years.
My other general point about the military covenant concerns rest and recuperation. I had personal experience of the problems of R and R on coming back from Afghanistan in 2006. Although I do not want to go into the details of the matter again—it was the subject of debate in this House for some time—I would like some reassurance from the Minister that the problems with the air bridge have been addressed. Clearly, we will always have trouble when we have to rely on airframes that are very old, but I have heard reports that unfortunately the problems experienced in 2006 are beginning to happen again. There have been calls for us to guarantee the two-week R and R period for soldiers in the middle of an operational tour. I do not support that for simple operational reasons. If a soldier were to lose a day at the beginning of his leave, a guarantee that he could come back from it a day later would make the whole manning plot for the commanding officer in theatre almost impossible. However, I would support a guarantee that if any R and R days are lost during an operational tour, they should be added to the post-tour leave. That is perfectly reasonable.
I was slightly disappointed that neither Front Bencher chose to mention the reserve forces. That is an oversight that I should like to correct, especially given that some 15% of soldiers mobilised on operations are from the reserve forces. Members of the reserve forces face some very specific problems when they are mobilised. Any mobilisation process starts at the reserves training and mobilisation centre in Chilwell. If I am lucky enough to be selected to serve on the Bill Committee, I would like to suggest that we visit that facility, which plays a very valuable role. Having been through it on three occasions, I must say that the standard of service that it provides in preparing reservists for mobilisation has improved significantly over recent years.
However, there can be major problems when a reservist returns home. Because, in general, they are mobilised as individual replacements, they lack the support that a regular soldier, sailor or airman has in coming back with a formed unit. I can give an example of a very unfortunate case from my own unit when a colour sergeant came back from mobilised service in Afghanistan. Because we are a specialist unit that does not meet for drill nights, there is no regular contact every Tuesday night where we can monitor colleagues who have recently returned, and we did not see much of him until one weekend when he was clearly not well. The effects of service in Afghanistan had clearly had a significant impact on him. I regret to say that that ended up with an incident in which he attempted to shoot a colleague with a weapon that he had brought back from Afghanistan, and he is now in prison. It was an awful incident. One wonders whether the same thing would have happened had that individual been serving with a regular unit and received the same levels of support that a regular soldier would have had.
Dan Byles
I entirely endorse my hon. Friend’s concern about soldiers who come back not as part of formed units. Does he agree that that points to a wider issue with the military covenant, whereby it is not simply a covenant between the Government and our armed forces but between the nation and our armed forces? Although there is talk of putting the Government’s side of this bargain into law, the issue is also about an attitude in our nation as a whole. For example, many of our public sector bodies have policies whereby members of staff can have up to 14 days off work to be a school governor or to undertake trade union activity, yet many of those organisations, particularly NHS trusts, do not give similar time off to members of the reserve forces.
Mark Lancaster
That is a very valuable point. I was fortunate in that before I entered this House I worked for a family fireworks company, so I had no problem getting time off—certainly for six months of the year, anyway. My experience is that many employers are very good about allowing members of the reserve forces extra time off. However, the issue is certainly something that we should consider, perhaps when we debate this matter annually.
Hon. Members have already referred to welfare for the families of regular forces—that is very important, and we should and must do more—but the families of reservists have particular problems because they tend not to live on a specific base. For any one specialist TA unit, those families can be spread across the land. We must do more to try to ensure that they have access to the same kinds of facilities as families of regular servicemen so that they get the support that they, too, vitally need.
I want to deal with one more matter—the military police, as covered in clauses 3 to 6. People say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I have to confess that for a period of 18 months I was the second-in-command of 253 Provost Company Royal Military Police (Volunteers), based in Balham, south London. Given what I am about to say, I am not sure that the RMP’s Provost Marshal will be very pleased that I had that experience. As I suggested to the Secretary of State earlier, the time has perhaps come when we should be thinking the unthinkable, and I encourage him to have a single police service for the armed forces. The three military police services already train together as a single organisation, going through one training school. The whole point of the 2006 Act was to harmonise much of military law. I see distinct advantages to this at a time when we are attempting to try to find savings within the Ministry of Defence, as having a single police service would save the costs involved in two Provost Marshal posts and all their connected staffs. The remaining Provost Marshal would then answer to the Chief of the Defence Staff instead of to the individual service chiefs, and he could be appointed by competition rather than by simple rotation.
In reality, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy have had little exposure to complex investigations into operational deaths because of the nature of operational service, which tends to be Army-based. Combining the special investigation branches would not only make savings on manpower, which is vital in terms of meeting the harmony guidelines of the Royal Military Police, who are particularly affected and overstretched, but encourage the maintenance of high standards through mutual understanding and experience. Currently, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary inspects the Royal Military Police but does not inspect the other two branches of the armed forces, and that situation might be improved by bringing the three branches together. I was invited by the Secretary of State to table amendments in Committee if I am selected to sit on it and. I think that we should explore this angle. It will be interesting to see what the cultural differences to which the Secretary of State referred are in reality.
I am delighted to support the Bill this evening and will vote for it if there is a Division. I look forward to the Committee stage.
Mr Llwyd
Absolutely right, and that is part and parcel of bringing people back into the civilian mainstream. There is no doubt that such training is useful, and we know that it often works.
Clause 2 provides a commitment for a report to be placed before Parliament each year, which will deal with health care, education and housing. That is a welcome step, because the regulation of those services is a prerequisite for improving them. Surely, however, we need to do better than that. The Bill specifies that the responsibility for laying the report should lie with the Secretary of State. I wish no offence to him, and I trust that he will take none if I say that he has many other responsibilities already bestowed on him, which mean that laying the report will not be his highest priority. However, I hope that I am wrong.
I believe, as I mentioned earlier, that we should consider appointing a Minister for veterans’ welfare with a cross-cutting responsibility, who could perhaps be situated in the Cabinet Office, because there are many facets to the problem. The report specified in clause 2 should go into far greater depth about how a background of military service might affect people in obtaining personal services. To education, housing and health care should be added welfare benefits, employment benefits and advice, reskilling, budgetary advice, debt management—SSAFA Forces Help and the Royal British Legion say that 60% of their cases concern debt management—alcohol and drug treatment and relationship skills. All personnel should have access to advice from voluntary organisations on all those issues, regardless of length of service, some months before leaving the forces. At present, when leaving the forces, the feeling among many veterans seems to be, “When you’re discharged, you’re on your own.” Regardless of whether that is the case, we need to intensify personnel’s awareness of the support that is available for those who need it. Back-up advice in person and by telephone should also be made available for the first six months following discharge.
I have briefly mentioned the prevalence of mental health problems among veterans. Due to time constraints, I cannot dedicate as much time to it as I should like. No compulsory mental health assessment is currently undergone before leaving the forces. I hope that that practice will soon change. There is a tremendous discrepancy between the way in which US and UK forces deal with the matter. Nobody can realistically plead for a veterans agency in the UK on the same scale as that in the States. The US has had to come to terms with the fall-out from the Vietnam war and other conflicts, and it set up such facilities in more benign financial times. However, when I took evidence with the Howard League in the US, senior veterans affairs Ministers told us that there was a presumption that 33% of returnees from conflict would suffer from either post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury.
That figure is not accepted by anyone in the UK forces. The proportion is not even a tenth of that figure, according to the evidence that we have received from people in similar positions in the UK. There must be a problem somewhere because there is a huge discrepancy. Somebody said that PTSD could take up to 14 years to develop. Yes, it could: it could take 14 minutes or 14 years. We must tackle the problem, because we may be considering the tip of a painful iceberg, and the consequences could be long drawn out.
Experts therefore demand making psychological assessment mandatory for all those leaving the forces, alongside a more general resettlement assessment and advice scheme. I hope that, if I am appointed to serve on the Select Committee, I can advocate making available more tailored support to veterans in the criminal justice system. I am a firm believer in all being equal before the law, but veterans’ specific needs, and the way in which some initiatives might prevent reoffending in that community, must be recognised. Veterans’ support officers should be appointed in every prison and probation service to ensure the streamlining of those initiatives. That has already started to happen. Statutory funding should be allocated to them as well as to veterans’ support groups, which can provide unparalleled support in communities. Such groups normally have the benefit of comprising mainly veterans, who have an unmatched ability to relate to the experiences of other veterans.
I am fast running out of time, but it remains for me to say that we must wake up to the alarming way in which personnel come to rely on alcohol and sometimes other substances as a defence mechanism. Perhaps it is perfectly understandable, but the so-called self-medication route is a huge misnomer. I have evidence to show that, regrettably, at some stages of Army life, alcohol is treated as a catalyst for unwinding. I am sure that many hon. Members have heard about the decompression in Cyprus, which comprises a weekend or week of drunkenness and brawling. It can be no coincidence that so many veterans leave active service displaying a dependence on alcohol. I need hardly say how quickly such a dependence, if left untreated, can feed into other habits, violent behaviour and crime. Henceforth, therefore, counselling on substance abuse must play a vital part in decompression and reintroducing personnel to civvy street.
If we are to retain any hope of fewer veterans running into problems after leaving the forces, we must address some aspects of Army life, such as alcohol consumption as a means of coping with stress and adversity. Clauses 9 to 11 will intensify the regulation of personnel in that field and perhaps awaken them to the dangers of over-reliance on that drug. That is a welcome step in the right direction.
Dan Byles
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that a common thread running through his speech is the problem of tracking and identifying veterans, whether by the police, the probation service or GPs? For example, many mental health issues arise because GPs do not necessarily know that someone is a veteran 10 years after that person has left the forces. [Interruption.] I am married to a GP, and I can assure the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) that the system might work at the top, but it does not by the time things get to the bottom. [Interruption.] The point that I intended to make before the sedentary interruptions from the Opposition Front Bench is that we in this place can help because there is a lot of support out there for veterans. How many hon. Members say to someone who is homeless or has other problems and comes to their surgery, “Are you a veteran? If so, I can direct you to more places”?
Mr Llwyd
Such work is being done by, for example, Kent police, to which I referred earlier, and probation services here and there. Very good work is undertaken in some prisons. That work is done by people who have an interest in assisting veterans, and we need to roll out good practice throughout the UK.
It is wrong for anyone to hint that I am disparaging the services when I refer to alcohol or drugs. I am trying to consider matters realistically, not to insult members of the armed forces, for heaven’s sake.
Dan Byles
Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that when soldiers return to the UK after perhaps two years, their children should move schools, and that when, two years later, they are posted overseas again or to a different part of the country, their children should return to boarding school? That does not make sense.
Thomas Docherty
I shall clear that up before giving way to the Minister: if the argument for spending £110 million a year on public schools is based on soldiers being posted for six months to Afghanistan before returning to Britain, it is not an acceptable use of public money.
Thomas Docherty
I seek further clarification, because the hon. Gentleman has made an interesting point. The purpose of the continuity of education allowance is to help those personnel who are serving overseas, but he has said that it applies to personnel who serve in different parts of the United Kingdom. He has mentioned Rosyth, and we have some excellent schools in West Fife. There would be no problem with the children of personnel getting into some of our excellent schools, and I am happy to recommend some of them to him.
Dan Byles
I will put the matter in context for the hon. Gentleman. In my nine years of service, I was posted to Colchester, Kosovo, Catterick, London, Bosnia and Tidworth—six locations in nine years. People do not know whether they will be posted overseas. The posting order sometimes gives them as little as a month’s notice of where their next posting might be—if they are lucky, they might get two or three months’ notice. The issue is about not only being posted overseas, but about having a completely disjointed lifestyle.
Thomas Docherty
It is strange that Conservative Members are unwilling to draw a comparison with the private sector. In my eight years in the private sector, I lived in a number of locations. I know many people who work in the private sector—and, indeed, in the public sector—who have to move home every two or three years. It is regrettable that as a result of some of the decisions that have been made, that trend will increase. It is unusual to hear Conservative Members say that moving home and uprooting one’s family is not part and parcel of a modern career path. I accept the point about interrupting the education of those pupils who currently receive the continuity of education allowance. That is why we need to consider phasing out the scheme, so that no child who is currently in receipt of it is adversely affected.
I want to move on to an issue that I am disappointed has not made it into the Bill, and I hope that the Secretary of State and the Minister will reflect on this point in the days before the Select Committee begins its deliberations. The issue concerns ensuring proper scrutiny and a proper process for base closures. Labour Members and many Government Members, including the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), have long held the view that the correct order of decision making on military matters begins with determining our national security threats and foreign policy objectives. We should then determine the defence postures needed to meet those objectives and threats, and then make decisions on the basing, equipment and personnel levels required to meet them. After that, we should decide how best to structure the funding.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell), as is his wont, added considerably to what has been a long and interesting debate so far this evening, predominantly on clause 2 and the military covenant. By reference to Colchester, the hon. Gentleman made a useful contribution to the debate.
Although the rest of the Bill is extremely important and our armed services would not exist without it, there are others much better qualified than I who will no doubt address the other parts of the Bill later in the debate and in Committee. Therefore I, too, will focus most of my attention on the military covenant.
It is a rather frightening and humbling experience in this place to follow speakers who know so much more about the subject than oneself. In particular, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) and his colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster), both of whom know more about the military covenant than most other Members in the Chamber today will ever find out. I pay tribute to their contributions.
I will not seek to equal that or compete with it. I shall focus on the concept of the covenant, why it is there, what it does, and in particular, what the Bill does to strengthen it. The covenant has, of course, existed for many years. I speak from two personal areas of experience. The first is as chairman of the all-party group on the armed forces. Several of my co-chairmen and vice-chairmen are present in the Chamber this evening. It is a humbling experience to see each of the brigades returning from Afghanistan marching through Carriage Gates, arriving at the east door of Westminster Hall and going down to the Terrace for a reception.
At the most recent event, when 4 Mechanised Brigade arrived, I was particularly struck by one soldier wearing his combat kit cut off where his boxer shorts would be. It was only afterwards that I discovered the reason. He was marching in the column. He was not a casualty. The reason for that rather unusual form of military dress was that the third degree burns to his legs were so severe that he was unable to take even the light cotton of desert combats against the skin. None the less, he was determined to march in with the rest of them. I pay tribute to such people. Very few of those in the Chamber tonight could compete with that level of true heroism.
I say the same thing about many of the people whom I meet week by week and day by day in the high street of Wootton Bassett. Large numbers of the regiments and the fallen soldiers’ families come to our events in Wootton Bassett, which are held twice a week. The heroism that they show and the bravery and pride that the families show about their close relative who has been killed in Afghanistan is a humbling experience.
With that as background, we have to think about what we as a nation and as a Parliament are doing with regard to our armed services. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire asked whether the military covenant was about improving the lot of soldiers by comparison with other citizens, or whether it was about removing the disadvantage suffered by soldiers. If somebody has to serve under the most appalling privations, as they do in Afghanistan and elsewhere; if somebody has to close the Queen’s enemy, risk being killed by them or, even worse, have to kill them, not something that any of us would want to do; if somebody has to risk the most appalling injuries, to which some of those whom we have seen visit Parliament over the years stand tribute; and if somebody has to suffer as our soldiers suffer, we as a nation owe them more than we owe other public servants.
Of course, public servants such as firemen and all sorts of people do useful things, but, when we require a person by his job to do the things that we require our soldiers to do, we owe them more than we owe any other public servant. So, with the military covenant, we ought to seek not just to resolve the disadvantages that our soldiers face, but to add to the covenant the idea of improved citizenship, as I think my hon. Friend called it.
A number of us in the Chamber have been out to Afghanistan, and I was there not so long ago with the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell). When one says to soldiers and, come to that, sailors and airmen, “What sort of things are you worried about? What are your problems here on the very front line? Are you worried about the kit?”, the answer by and large is, “No, we are not. The kit that we are issued with now is second to none in the world.” When one asks, “Are you worried about the Taliban, being shot at, being deployed, being hungry, being cold or the desert conditions?”, one finds that they are not concerned about that at all. Those of us who come to this place and say that somehow or other our soldiers are worried about that sort of thing are wrong. When one meets someone on the very front line and asks, “What is it you are most worried about in your service career?”, they say, “I am worried about the family back at home, the housing, my pay and conditions and what I am going to do after I have left the Army.” They are not worried about the ordinary, run-of-the-mill occupation of being a soldier, because they signed up. They recognise the dangers of being shot at, killed, serving in awful conditions and all those things. What they do not recognise are the appalling consequences for their marriages, families and lives after they have left the services.
Earlier in the debate, there was a rather sterile, academic and statistical discussion of whether a disproportionate number of soldiers find themselves imprisoned or suffer from drug or drink abuse after they have left the services. Those people do suffer after they come back, however, and it is thanks to us sending them there—our decision in this place. We decide to send them to Afghanistan. They face all those privations, they come back and many experience prison or mental, drug or alcohol problems thereafter, and we have to bear responsibility for that and put it right.
The military covenant aspect of the Bill is in some ways the most important part, although all the legislation has much to recommend it. With that as a background, it is important that we first thank and congratulate the Government on their commitment to recognise the military covenant and to put it into law. Secondly, we should very much recognise that they have taken some steps to do so, and that in the Bill we have clause 2, because in the military covenant’s long history it has never once been recognised in law.
Without being difficult, however, I have a couple of questions for the Government on which Ministers might choose to brood before they come to reply. First, I have some difficulties with the constitutional aspect of taking something that should be a ministerial or political duty and trying to put it into law. Law is something for which there is a sanction if it is not adhered to, so I wonder what would happen if some subsequent Government—I am sure not this one—20 years from now failed to fulfil the covenant. What would be the sanction against the Secretary of State? Would he come before the House and get ticked off? Would he go to prison, pay a fine or lose his job? What would be the sanction inherent in the Secretary of State failing to perform under clause 2? The same applies to a number of Bills that we passed before the general election on climate change and child poverty. They are not capable of sanction, and I slightly wonder whether there is a constitutional difficulty with putting the covenant in the Bill as it has been. In other words, should it not be a matter about which Ministers are overwhelmingly concerned, whether or not it is written into law? If they were not, they would lose power at a subsequent general election, so there is quite an interesting constitutional conundrum in the Bill.
Mr Gray
My hon. Friend makes an interesting and important point—exactly what I was driving at. Who decides whether the provisions of the clause have been achieved in years to come?
That leads to me to the second part of my question. My party’s manifesto went to great lengths to say how important the covenant was and how we as a party in government would put it into law. We talked about a broad spectrum of things in the run-up to the general election, but before us we have a relatively modest clause, simply saying that the Secretary of State will bring forward a report once a year. He will draft it and say what is in it, although it will be about education, housing and health care and in such other fields as the Secretary of State may determine. So, he will sit down, write a little essay about all the things that he has done to achieve the military covenant and bring it before the House.
We do not know from the Bill whether there will be an oral statement, thereby allowing hon. Members to question him, a written statement or a statement to the Defence Committee, thereby enabling us to scrutinise it carefully. What form will the statement take, and what powers will the House have to hold the Secretary of State’s feet to the fire? Is it possible to imagine a situation in which he comes to the House and in his report says, “I am extremely sorry. This year we have broken the military covenant in a great many ways and done terribly the wrong thing by our armed forces”? Of course not. The Secretary of State will come along every year with his statement and say, “Look what marvellous things we have done with regard to the covenant,” and hope not to be too carefully cross-examined over it.
Given how strongly I feel about the importance of the military covenant, and given that I feel we owe it to our soldiers, sailors and airmen, whom we ask to do such awful things that we ourselves would never consider doing, I slightly question—I do not mean to be disloyal—whether the clause achieves what the coalition Government set out to achieve. Is it actually a rather sad little clause? Could it be strengthened? When the Minister responds to the debate, I would like to know in particular how the Government see it operating. Will it be a mechanism by which this House holds the Government to account? Will it enable us to hold the Minister’s feet to the fire and say, “Secretary of State, you’re not living up to the military covenant. You’ve broken it”? Or is it just going to be a little PR exercise, enabling successive Secretaries of State to say, “Haven’t we done well by way of the military covenant?” If it is, it will be not worth the paper it is written on.