Remembrance, UK Armed Forces and Society

Elliot Colburn Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and speak in such an important debate. I begin by thanking the armed services community in Carshalton and Wallington. We often speak in this place about the importance of and the debt of gratitude we owe to our armed forces as we honour the bravery and sacrifice of those men and women who fought for the peace and freedoms we enjoy today. I want to look at one of the areas where we can begin to repay that debt of gratitude: mental health support.

In doing so, I want to remember a very special man, my grandfather, Derek Haighton, who sadly is no longer with us and did not live to see me elected to this place. My grandad Derek was devoted to Queen and country and keen to sign up as a member of the armed forces. I will never forget the story used to tell my brothers and I when we were younger of the day he signed up to the Army. On arrival at the recruitment centre, he was asked a number of personal questions and, all of a sudden, told to take a walk, have a think about what he had said and come back. He did so. He thought about the question he had been answering when he was interrupted and asked to leave—it was about his age, and he was too young. Like so many others during that time, he went back and made himself a bit older so that he could join and serve the country that he loved. Indeed, he did so during the Korean War.

On leaving the Army, soon after the Korean war, my grandad Derek served out the rest of his working life in the Metropolitan police, but he never lost his passion for the armed forces. To his dying day, he spent his free time researching and taking part in anything to do with his favourite regiment, the historic Rifle Brigade. He always had stories to tell about the armed forces, but it was not until I was older that I realised that he rarely, if ever, spoke about his own time in the Army. Later, my mum explained why. My grandfather, like so many others—those of us who have never served can scarcely imagine this—experienced true horrors and saw such horrific scenes that he lived with the mental scars for the rest of his life. Of course, in those days there was little, if any, mental health support for our veterans.

That is why I am so proud that the Government stand firm by the armed forces covenant, because it states that priority treatment should be given to veterans. I am proud, as someone who used to work in the national health service, that in 2015 the NHS updated its constitution to ensure that it reflected that responsibility. Indeed, NHS expenditure on veterans’ mental health has nearly doubled in the last four years alone. In December 2018, NHS England announced an extra £10 million for a dedicated crisis service for veterans. That extra funding was also to enable the roll-out of the first ever veteran-friendly GP surgeries and hospitals. I welcome that, in the 2020 spring Budget, the Government announced a further £10 million for the armed forces covenant fund trust to support projects that support veterans’ mental health. We can never really express in words the debt of gratitude that we owe our veterans and people like my grandad Derek, but we can make up for it in the actions that we take and in making sure that we are there for them.