Veteran Suicide

Debate between Dan Jarvis and Emma Little Pengelly

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) on securing this timely debate. He made an excellent speech, and has done the House a great service in bringing this matter to our attention.

I am conscious that time is short, so I will be brief. I was reflecting earlier on the fact that it has been some time since I last wore uniform and was on operations. Over the period since, there have been many times when I have remembered with absolute clarity the faces of fallen friends. Regimental reunions, Remembrance Sunday and anniversaries all give pause for thought and cause to remember. In addition to those occasions, there are the unexpected triggers: a turn of phrase, an accent or someone’s gait when they are walking down the street. They can all prompt the memory of a comrade who is no longer with us.

That is the cost of combat and, to an extent, it is to be expected. However, what I did not expect is the roll call of new additions to that list of faces. It seems now that not a week goes by without the sad news of another veteran’s death—all too often, tragically, as a result of suicide. It is not because we are currently on major combat operations; we are not. It is because the impacts of the operations that we were on have lived longer in the memory, feelings and mental health of those who served than any of us could have expected.

[Emma Little Pengelly (Belfast South) (DUP)]

On the length of time that it can take for trauma to manifest itself, we in Northern Ireland have had a number of useful research reports, some of which were authored by David Bolton, indicating that post-traumatic stress disorder, including among veterans, has sometimes not manifested itself for 10, 20 or even 30 years after active service. It would be useful for the Ministry of Defence to take those reports into account, and to learn from that experience in Northern Ireland.

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention. She raises an important point. The truth is that veterans who suffer from PTSD often report the trauma that they experienced serving our country many years after. It seems to me, and I think that the public would completely agree, that as a country and a society we have a lifelong commitment to those people who stepped forward and served our country. We all understand the cost of that service, and we have a responsibility to look out for, and look after, those people for all their lives outside the armed forces.

I will end by reflecting on the fact that this Friday there will be a memorial service for a great comrade of mine—someone I served alongside in my regiment—who took his own life just a few weeks ago. The terrible problem of veteran suicide has never felt more real to me than it does right now. The fact that we, frankly, do not really understand the problem, or even its scale, has never concerned me more than it does today. My ask of the Government, and of the Minister, who I know takes these matters seriously, is a simple one: please give this issue the attention that it deserves, help us all to understand it better, and let us work together to address it.