Veterans UK

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the support and services provided by Veterans UK.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Ms McVey. I apologise in advance if the hay fever bomb that has followed me throughout London this week disrupts my speech. Please be kind to me.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to lead this debate. I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to all those who have served our country, both past and present, as we spend this week commemorating the armed forces. We, as parliamentarians, have been aware of our obligations to look after and provide for veterans since Elizabethan times. In 1593, our predecessors passed the Act for the Necessary Relief of Soldiers and Mariners, which ordered parishes to make special provisions to help the sick and wounded veterans in their communities. That Act, now over 400 years old, forms the cornerstone of what we now call the armed forces covenant.

The covenant states that, to compensate veterans for their sacrifice,

“British soldiers must always be able to expect fair treatment, to be valued and respected as individuals, and that they…will be sustained and rewarded by commensurate terms and conditions of service.”

I was a councillor in Sheffield when the city council was among the first signatories to the armed forces covenant. I am proud that we enshrined the covenant in our working practices, placing a legal duty on ourselves to encourage integration from service life into civilian life. The covenant is a promise to the approximately 2 million veterans in this country and the 15,000 soldiers who join their ranks every year. Their service can have a profound and wide-ranging effect on them for the rest of their lives. We have an obligation to ensure that those who have served our country receive the best possible treatment, care and opportunities when they return.

There are thousands of voluntary signatories to the covenant, and the Armed Forces Act 2021 requires certain public bodies to pay due regard to the principles of the covenant when carrying out their functions, but—shockingly—Ministers have resisted efforts to apply the covenant to their own Government. Perhaps that is because they know that if the Government were to be bound by the covenant, they would fail to meet their statutory obligations.

The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs wrote:

“our veterans need to be able to access support that is human, sensitive and that works for them”,

but a significant number of our returning veterans have found the transition from serving soldier to civilian distressing, and that has actively hindered their interactions with Veterans UK. The all-party parliamentary group on veterans has done excellent research on this matter, for which I commend it. The results of its survey on veterans’ experiences with Veterans UK were released several months ago. It received responses from 1,000 veterans: over 75% of respondents to the survey rated their overall experience with Veterans UK as either poor or very poor, and nearly 85% believed that the consideration given to their mental and physical health was poor or very poor.

Those findings are damning, but even more harrowing are the comments left by some of the respondents. One wrote:

“the process had broken me mentally to the point where my choice was walk away or commit suicide.”

Another said:

“My dealings with this organisation would lead me to believe it is set up to cause deliberate harm to veterans—it is a disgrace.”

Even a single soldier who, after years of dedicated service to their country, has been left feeling that desperate and despondent is one too many, but the depth and breadth of the respondents’ issues with Veterans UK led me to fear that the problems with this body are systematic.

I am pleased that, following the report from the APPG on veterans, the Government announced a review of the role and scope of welfare provision for veterans by the Ministry of Defence in its entirety. The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs has himself admitted that

“for too long veterans services have suffered from under-investment, and been over-reliant on paper records and outdated tech.”

None the less, the Government must not allow this review to overshadow other reports into veterans’ affairs. The armed forces compensation scheme, also administered by Veterans UK, compensates those who have suffered injury, illness or death during UK armed forces service, and undergoes a review every five years to ensure that the scheme is fit for purpose. The headline findings of that review were published in January, with the independent reviewer finding that the current process is

“overly burdensome and even distressing for the claimant due to unreasonable timeframes and a lack of transparency.”

The indifference and, in some cases, outright hostility to the plight of our veterans was highlighted by The Telegraph last year in a report that injured soldiers had been “laughed at” and “belittled” by officials involved in awarding payouts from the medical compensation scheme. Some soldiers highlighted that unqualified medical advisers were challenging their surgeons’ professional assessments, resulting in armed forces personnel being undercompensated for their injuries. Compensation money is a lifeline for many of our veterans wounded in service.

Millions of people are grappling with the ongoing cost of living crisis and extortionate waiting times for medical services, but these issues may have a disproportionate impact on veterans. Analysis of Government figures this week shows that 50% more veterans than last year are relying on universal credit. That is a damning indictment of the Government’s support for veterans. Staggeringly, the number of active personnel claiming universal credit has also risen by more than 50%. Not only are our serving troops forced to rely on benefits to get by, but they are also often subjected to substandard housing plagued by mould and damp. There are even reports that some soldiers are unable to afford the subsidised food in their mess halls, and that a food bank on an RAF base that was established to support local communities is instead being used by service personnel who are struggling to get by. It is little wonder that after 13 years of Conservative rule, in which our forces have been underfunded and underappreciated, satisfaction with service life has plummeted from 60% in 2010 to just 42% today.

I have spoken about the difficulties that soldiers face in claiming compensation for their injuries, but surely they have quick and easy access to the medical evaluations and treatment that they may need. The armed forces covenant and veterans annual report states that:

“Looking after the health needs of Service personnel…especially where military service has caused or exacerbated those needs—is one of the first priorities of the Government when it comes to the wellbeing of the Armed Forces community.”

But on multiple key metrics, this Government are failing. Waiting times for treatment through the transition, intervention and liaison service are up by a week since last year, and waits for appointments in the complex treatment service are missing the Government’s target of 10 working days by more than an entire working week.

Shockingly, the list of systemic failures faced by our veterans continues. Thousands of them were robbed of their career, their pension and their dignity as they were dismissed from the force and, in some cases, tarnished with criminal records. Their crime? Being a member of the LGBT community. Early last year the Government commissioned a report to investigate that historical wrongdoing and accepted in the terms of reference that the policy was wrong. The least the Prime Minister could do is offer a formal apology. Sadly, none has been forthcoming.

The LGBT veterans independent review has reported its findings and recommendations to the Government. As Pride Month draws to an end, I call on the Government to release the report as a matter of urgency, and to implement Lord Etherton’s recommendations so that our LGBT veterans are compensated properly for their service and for the trauma inflicted on them by their own country.

Lastly, it would be remiss of me not to mention that the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs promised that every veteran would receive an ID card by the end of 2023. These cards are meant to ensure that ex-servicemen and women have quicker access to the health, housing and charity services that they need. We should all support this scheme. However, of the 13,000 recorded veterans in Sheffield, only 218 have received their identity card. The Minister pledged several months ago that he would shave off his eyebrows if every veteran had not received their card by the end of 2023. I hope that he can get to grips with the roll-out in record time for the sake of our veterans, but I fear that, at the current rate of progress, he will be wearing a striking new look after the Christmas recess.

[The Minister for Defence People, Veterans and Service Families (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

Wrong Minister!

[Gill Furniss]

Sorry, wrong Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gill Furniss]

Thank you, Ms McVey, for taking the time to chair the debate; it is much appreciated. Everyone who has taken part in the debate has been very mindful of the issues. I thank them all, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) and the hon. Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond). All the contributions have been very even-handed, and it has been a great debate.

I thank the Minister for his response. No one doubts his personal passion for veterans’ affairs. I know from my past interactions with him how seriously he takes any issues that are brought up with him, which is very welcome. I feel that I have to put on record that I did get the wrong Minister earlier. However, I noticed that this Minister said that the report was to be rolled out at the end of the year, so there is a chance that the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), may well look a little different in January. Let us hope that the report is rolled out before then.

I commend the bravery and courage of all who serve and have served in the armed forces. They risk their lives to keep all of us safe, and I know that we are all extremely grateful for that. The best way to thank them during Armed Forces Week is for the Government to do right by our troops, whether that is ensuring that serving soldiers are not forced to live in substandard housing, and to rely on benefits and food banks to get by, or righting the historic wrongs committed to our LGBT veterans and nuclear test veterans. We can all agree that we need to do more to ensure that all our veterans can access the compensation and healthcare that they need and that they are treated with the respect and dignity that they deserve.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the support and services provided by Veterans UK.