Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Lord Robathan

Monday 16th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

8. What steps his Department is taking to improve the employment opportunities of veterans.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

Prior to leaving, all service personnel are entitled to some form of resettlement assistance consisting of time, money and training, according to their length of service. Those who have served for six years or more, and all those medically discharged, regardless of how long they served for, are entitled to the full resettlement programme, which includes a three-day career transition workshop, the use of a career consultant, a job-finding service, and retraining time and a retraining grant. Those who have served for four years or more are entitled to employment support in the form of a bespoke job-finding service and career interview.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

May I invite the Minister to borrow or even steal an excellent idea from the Labour Front-Bench team—the Labour veterans interview programme, where leading companies guarantee veterans interviews for appropriate vacancies—and include that as part of the official resettlement programme? Will he support the calls to roll that programme out through Jobcentre Plus, as it would be a great boon for our armed services?

[Mr Robathan]

Having previously extolled the merits of a career in the armed forces, may I recommend to all employers the merits of employing ex-service personnel, who, in general, bring with them a better work ethic and better values, and often better skills, than people from outside the armed forces? So I think that we would agree on that matter. We welcome the guaranteed interview scheme and would welcome all assistance.

Military Covenant

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Lord Robathan

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Far from blogs, I also quoted Chris Simpkins of the Royal British Legion, who said:

“The British public has shown it sees”

the role of coroner

“as vital in ensuring bereaved Service families can have confidence in the investigations of their loved ones’ deaths. We believe it is fundamental to the inquest process and to the fulfilment of the Military Covenant”.

The Minister should not respond to the blogs but to the Royal British Legion.

[Mr Robathan]

I will come to that if I have time at the end.

My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) might qualify as almost gallant in her role in the Royal Naval Reserve. I am grateful to her for what she said. She is absolutely right that this Government believe in action, not words—not spin, but results.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) made three swift points that seemed pretty reasonable. I would love to respond and wonder if she could write to me about them.

I now turn to the Front-Bench contribution by the right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy). I expect that he now regrets having called this debate, because he has not come out of it with any credit. Like the hon. Member for Ogmore, he quoted at length the Royal British Legion. I have here the Royal British Legion’s initial comments on the proposed armed forces covenant, dated 21 January—not four weeks ago—in which it says that it broadly welcomes the proposals. I am afraid that one can quote selectively at any stage, and Labour Members are doing so.

I am afraid that the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) regurgitated the arguments that we have heard in the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill, and they had no more resonance. The Committee has made three visits—to the Nottingham reserves centre, to Colchester and to Headley Court—and I am disappointed that of the six Labour Members on the Committee, who make so much fuss about these things, three did not come on any of those visits.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Lord Robathan

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robathan]

There was a story in the News of the World which was not entirely correct. [Interruption.] It was not entirely correct. A great deal of money was raised from the sale of Chelsea barracks but that was some four years ago when I do not recall our being in power. Having checked on this we have discovered that although the money is not ring-fenced, because we do not believe it should be, we have spent the vast majority of it and we will spend well in excess of that amount. As a matter of interest, on Thursday I was fortuitously at Bulford, where I started the work on a new married quarters estate that will provide 260 state-of-the-art houses for our deserving personnel.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

19. What effects the redundancies in the armed forces announced in the strategic defence and security review will have on standing commitments.