Veterans (Support and Rehabilitation)

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

Order. I understand from the body language of the hon. Gentleman and the Minister that neither objects to other brief speeches being made.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I reiterate my earlier comments about the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti).

It is true that organisations such as SSAFA and the Royal British Legion do great work, and that the military covenant has been a big help through its recognition of the debt we all owe to our veterans; the role of local authorities has also been critical for development work on the ground. I want to talk about some of the work being done by smaller groups, in particular a group I am involved with in the north-east called Forward Assist. That was set up by a former marine, and a colleague of mine before I came to this place. All he had ever wanted to do with his life was to join the Royal Marines. After 18 months of training, he ripped his shoulder and despite two years of medical treatment was unable to carry on in his service. He left what had been his dream job, and fell into a downward spiral of drink and drugs. Thankfully, he was rescued by a counsellor who got him back on the straight and narrow and he was able to go back to university and learn a new trade. Now, in his later life and after working for a long time in child care and in the probation service, he has decided to set up a charity to take care of veterans. He was seeing young men coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and going through what he had gone through 30 years before, and he felt that something had to be done.

Some of these guys had been kicked out of the service for various reasons. They had gone into low-level crime or got involved with drink and drugs. They had terribly low self-esteem and were guilt-ridden because they felt they had let their families, themselves and the nation down. Many of their problems are mental health related, which is natural when someone has been in the services. They will not admit that they have mental health problems because it is a big issue for anyone, but for those coming out of the services it is a huge issue.

The role that Forward Assist plays in dealing with these people across Tyneside is about telling them, “You are not a failure. We want to help you get back into the normal way of living and get used to living in a world that is completely different from what you have experienced.” A lot of these people have been in the services for 20 years and the world today is very different from what it was in the 1990s and 1980s. Through a variety of interests, Forward Assist is working with people in the north-east. For example, in the north-east the National Trust have been very supportive, as have local councils, and big and small businesses have been tremendous. They have got involved in a huge raft of work, which has enabled these people to feel now that they can contribute to society again.

I want to mention three small things that are very important to these gentlemen. Veterans have been enrolled on cookery courses and some have obtained qualifications to enable them to cook for the public. They go round community centres and cook for elderly people and community groups, so they feel that they are giving something back. Similarly, some get angling qualifications. A community centre in the town I live in took 16 people with learning difficulties to a local fishing lake and is teaching them the skills of fishing. It is absolutely brilliant stuff. When fishing, those people can release and speak openly about what they are going through and it is very therapeutic for them to work with the people who are taking care of them. People have also taken sports qualifications. Some are working with Sunderland and Everton football clubs to develop community sports on the ground. That is happening only because of the work that people have done and the huge support they have given to veterans.

One reason why I wanted to speak is that a gentleman called Tony Wright, who won a Winston Churchill travelling scholarship three years ago, spent his time in the United States looking at how they look after their veterans, and as a result we set up a twinning link between Arkansas, Texas and Tyneside. There was already a sister city relationship between Little Rock in Arkansas and Tyneside, and out of that we have developed other work. I had the privilege of going there in December two years ago and I have been there during the recess in the last few years. Some of the things we learned from them are really important.

In no way would I ever denigrate the national health service. What happens in this country is that if someone has a problem, we point them to the national health service. Everyone has problems, but veterans have greater problems. One thing the American Veterans Health Administration has learned is that the issues involve more than health problems. It has learned through the terrible experience of men who came back from Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, which was horrendous. They were treated like pariahs in America and were seen as failures, with people spitting on them and calling them all sorts of names such as “traitor”. People who had been in the forces were treated like dirt; people who were opposed to the war were treating them like dirt. It was not the fault of those guys that things went the way they did; it was the fault of our counterparts in various US Administrations over the years.

Thankfully, the light came on in the States, and as a result of that and some huge commitments by their Government, they now have the Veterans Health Administration, which works much better, possibly than anywhere else in the world. It is well resourced and provides a wrap-around service. When someone leaves the services they are provided with a mobile phone and are regularly contacted during the first year to see how they are doing. That might seem a simple thing, but it is vital for some of these people. Their education, housing, work and health needs are looked after.

We had the privilege of sitting in with a psychiatrist who was linked by CCTV to a gentleman who was 200 miles north in Arkansas. Because of benefit cuts, he could not afford to drive to meet the psychiatrist, but the Veterans Health Association had paid for the link. The gentleman knew we were there and to me it was one of the best things I have seen in my life. The guy was 65 years old and it was 40 years since he had left the services. He had worked in a mortuary in Vietnam. He had survived the trauma of that with a lot of black humour—people doing inappropriate things with body parts.

The veteran told the psychiatrist that 40 years later he was lying in bed trying to sleep, but could not. After 25 years of drug addiction he had managed to kick the habit because a judge had said, “If you come back here again, you are going to jail for life.” He had been clean for seven years and had got his dream job working in a golf club, but he said, “I am terribly fatigued because I go to bed at night and I can’t sleep, so I am going to work in the morning and I can’t concentrate, and I am terrified I am going to lose my job.” The psychiatrist said, “Look, we are going to bring you down to the hospital, monitor your sleeping patterns and monitor your medication, and make sure you can do what you want to do.” The veteran, who was a simple, old-fashioned working bloke, was delighted. That is the sort of thing we could learn from the people over there.

Another lesson from America involved the criminal justice system. The hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke—my hon. Friend—referred to people who have been in prison. One thing they are doing in the States that is really innovative, is to stop them going to prison in the first place. People who have been involved in low-level crime must, first and foremost, admit their guilt. A system was set up that was developed from drugs courts. Someone goes in front of a judge in a veterans treatment court, where every one of the staff and the officials has been in the services. Their motto is that no one will fail.

The experience of the court in Buffalo, which was the first veterans treatment court, was that of 300 people who went through the system there, not one went back to crime. It worked for the benefit of the individual and society. It was economic and there was low crime. I am not saying it is foolproof because nothing is foolproof, but we should look at that seriously in this House. My party is committed to that, on the back of the experience that we brought back from over there. There will be serious discussions. I know, from discussions that we have had in the main Chamber of the House of Commons, that as part of the review that was mentioned earlier, the Government are looking at that example as a way of developing support for veterans.

When we raised the matter in our local area, I went on the radio and was assailed by someone who said, “Hang on. If someone has committed a crime we should bang them up. Why should we treat them differently from a window cleaner, a bricklayer or whatever? Why should veterans be a special case?” Well, we are a special case because of what we do.

We ask these people to go round the world and be prepared to kill for us and be prepared to die for us. We ask them to do abnormal things. If someone starts shooting at us, we do not run towards them, we run away from them, but those in the services are not allowed to run away from them. We ask them to kill people and if they do not kill people they end up in jail, whereas if anyone else kills someone they end up in jail. So veterans are a special case and we owe them the best possible support we can give them. I hope that in future discussions —I hope they will be cross-party because we should all be able to agree on this—we can learn the lessons not just of what people have experienced over the last few years, and work closely with the Americans.

During our discussions with the Veterans Health Administration in America, someone said that they are seeing a tsunami of health-related issues coming at them as a result of what people have gone through, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. People were exposed to the pressures over there for 24 hours a day, which we have not seen in the past—those who served in Northern Ireland and so on. During the second world war and so on, the pressures were not there every waking moment of their lives, but for the men and women I am talking about they have been and we must give them the best support we can.

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

I call Jim Shannon and gently remind him to leave sufficient time for the Minister to reply.

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[Anna Soubry]

I am very grateful. I would very much enjoy having a conversation with the hon. Gentleman to discuss the matter further. I pay tribute to the work that he does and the knowledge that he has brought to this debate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke asked specifically about veterans’ accommodation. There is £40 million of LIBOR funding for that. Nine out of the 16 projects that have been successful have been announced; a further seven will be announced next month by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

There are schemes to support veterans involved in the criminal justice system. I was really interested in the argument advanced by the hon. Member for Blaydon. I have always been resistant to the idea of veterans courts, but he has begun to convince me. Certainly I am going to keep an open mind on it; he has persuaded me to keep my mind open to it. The danger, I am told, is that many of those who have served say, “Why should we be seen as something different or special? We do not need our own court.” My hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke addressed that argument. My experience in the Crown court was that when a judge knew that someone was serving or had served, they took that heavily into consideration before deciding whether to pass a custodial sentence, because they recognised the sacrifice and the duty that the individual had performed by serving in one of our armed services.

In the time that remains, I want to deal with the some of the points that have been raised. In particular, I want to talk about mental health, which always comes up, and I know that it concerns so many people in this place and outside it. I give full credit to the charity Forward Assist, which the hon. Member for Blaydon has mentioned and of which, I believe, he is a patron. He brings to the debate insight and understanding. I think that the charity is a good example of how we should deliver on the covenant, namely through local delivery by a good local charity that knows the people who need help and knows how to go and find them. Knowing how to find such people is one of the big problems.

I have confidence, and I hope I am not overstating it, in where we are now. We have heard from the hon. Member for Strangford about Cyprus. We know that in respect of people who were involved in Afghanistan in the theatre of war, our armed forces have really woken up to mental health. As a society, we have woken up to mental health, and much of the stigma has been removed from it. In our armed forces, the rather macho attitude of “We do not talk about these things. Be a man and get on with it,” has given way to a much healthier attitude to mental health. It is seen much more as part of general health. People look after their weight, and they look after their head at the same time. Looking after their mental health is part of being fit for service. We are building resilience and we are encouraging people to talk about mental health. As the hon. Gentleman has identified, people go to Cyprus from Afghanistan, where they go through a period of decompression. They are encouraged to be open and to talk.

It is hugely significant that our former Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Peter Wall, chose to become president of Combat Stress when he retired, even though he had many charities to choose from. That shows that people are no longer afraid, and no longer feel that it is some sort of slight, to talk about mental health. People recognise how important it is that we get it right, and a lot of good work has been done. I am concerned about people—they are mainly men—who served in previous combats, such as Iraq, the Falklands and Northern Ireland, who did not have many of those facilities and do not come from that generation of service. I fear that they have slipped through the net. They may end up in trouble or in a bad place, and they may feel that there is nobody to support or help them.

That is where the fabulous local charities come into play, because they have the ability to scoop up such people at a local level and get them into the right place. In my constituency, there is a fabulous local charity called Forces in the Community, which is looking at schemes with the local police. If the police pick up someone who is drunk, misbehaving, or engaged in low-level crime and they discover that that person is a veteran, they do not go through the normal process of giving the individual a caution. Instead, they look sensibly and intelligently at doing things differently by, for example, placing the individual with an organisation such as Forces in the Community. If, for example, someone has a problem with drugs or drink, if they are homeless or if their marriage is falling to pieces, they are put together with local organisations that can help them. In such a way, we can deliver what we should be delivering for all our veterans.

The hon. Member for Strangford mentioned vaccinations in Iraq, and I will take that issue away and deal with it. Mr Bayley, I think I have enough time to talk quickly about the career transition partnership—

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

Two minutes.

[Anna Soubry]

Two minutes. My hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke asked about the partnership, which offers transition and employment support for up to two years pre-discharge and two years post-discharge. From 1 October next year, the career transition partnership contract will include all service leavers. I hope that that is good news.

I fear that there are all sorts of other questions that I should have answered and matters that I should have dealt with, but I am running out of time. I thank all who have contributed to this debate. As I have said, it could easily have taken up 90 minutes, and probably more, and we should have such a debate. I have certainly learned a lot, and if I have missed anything, I will write to my hon. Friends and cover those points in better detail than I have done.

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[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

I, too, have learned a lot. It has been a privilege to listen to the debate.

Question put and agreed to.