Military Covenant

James Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Murphy]

The clause contains the words “armed forces covenant report”. The hon. Gentleman discussed these points in Committee, and I will expand on them a little later.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving give way, because I am keen to interrupt him at the beginning of his interesting speech. We are grateful for his support for our proposal to bring the military covenant into law. If he casts his mind back over the past 13 years, can he remember any occasion on which Labour either put a proposal to do that in its manifesto or committed itself in any way, shape or form to putting any kind of military covenant into law?

Armed Forces (Redundancies)

James Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

At all times we will endeavour to find alternative positions where available. I should say that with reductions of some 5,000 being made across the whole of the RAF, that will be relatively difficult to accommodate, but we shall try to do it wherever we can.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The whole House will be grateful to the Secretary of State for being so straightforward in coming here to apologise for what is, without any question, a most disgraceful episode in our country’s history. Will he do two things? First, will he lay out precisely how he intends to make sure that this does not happen again? Secondly, the public will be asking for something for which they should be asking—a few hides to be flayed.

[Dr Fox]

A proper administrative inquiry by the Army is under way, and it will report in the usual way. It would be inappropriate to, in effect, try members of the armed forces on the Floor of the House of Commons.

Afghanistan

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 14th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

The right hon. Gentleman makes several important points. There are few things that would give me more pleasure than trying to persuade my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to have a debate on Afghanistan. It is very important that Members get more time than is available when simply responding to a quarterly statement. I think many hon. Members would wish to take time to explore in more detail some of the more nuanced issues than is possible in the response to a statement.

If I am not able to get the full assessments published and placed in the Library, I will certainly ensure that summaries are available. On the issue of deteriorating security, we need to be careful about how we measure that. If we are getting a larger Afghan national security force and ISAF taking on the insurgency in more places and challenging them for ground in more places, we are likely to get a rise in the level of violence, but that level is not a good measure of the security situation. It is better to find a way to measure the safety of the population and ensure that we have a balanced view of what security means.

I take on board the right hon. Gentleman’s point that we need to make more progress in regional co-operation and involving the regional leaders, but I may be able to provide one moment of optimism. At the Munich security conference just two weeks ago, more than at any time previously I felt a growing awareness of the need to see Afghanistan in its regional context, given the complexities surrounding it. That is something that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and I want to push forward as quickly as we can. I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the regional aspect is key to the long-term sustainability and viability of the Afghan state.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The whole House will have been saddened by the death of the two young soldiers in Camp Bastion this morning. The return of their bodies to the UK will mean a total of three repatriation ceremonies in a fortnight through RAF Lyneham and Wootton Bassett. Is the Secretary of State yet ready to tell us or make a statement about what will happen to repatriation ceremonies as we move towards the closure of RAF Lyneham? I know that the statement is imminent: when will it be ready?

[Dr Fox]

I am not able to give those details today, although my hon. Friend is correct to say that we will do so shortly. I am sure that the House would agree that it is not so much where we honour our war dead, but how we do so. Wherever those ceremonies take place, it is essential that those who have made sacrifices are treated with all due respect and honour.

The Army and RAF Lyneham

James Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to have this debate, and to sit under your able chairmanship, Mr Betts. I am sure that the debate will be orderly and sensible with you looking after it.

I am here to talk about an extraordinarily important event for the people of North Wiltshire. The influence of RAF Lyneham in the community is extremely great, and the proposed closure of the RAF element of the base would, if nothing else were to be done about it, have a devastating effect. I thank my hon. Friends who have attended, particularly those from the county of Wiltshire—my hon. Friends the Members for Salisbury (John Glen) and for Chippenham (Duncan Hames). I also offer apologies from my hon. Friends the Members for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) and for Devizes (Claire Perry), both of whom would have been here but unfortunately had to be elsewhere. We have, I think, unanimous support from Wiltshire Members, but I also see other hon. Friends with an interest in Wiltshire and am glad that they have taken the trouble to be here this morning.

I shall start by doing something one should never do, which is to disobey the Prime Minister. This time last week, Councillor Mary Champion, the mayor of Wootton Bassett, her deputy, Councillor Heaphy and Johnathan Bourne, the town clerk, had the great honour of being invited to No. 10 Downing street to see the Prime Minister, so that the Prime Minister could thank them and the people of Wootton Bassett for the efforts that they make in paying tribute to our fallen heroes as they come back down through Wootton Bassett high street. One of the things that the Prime Minister said to the mayor at that very pleasant meeting was, “Whatever you do, please don’t let James start banging on about Lyneham. He’s always banging on about Lyneham.” I am sorry to have to say to the Prime Minister that I intend to continue to bang on about Lyneham as long as I possibly can, to the boredom of all who will listen, until we find a satisfactory solution, to avoid the potential catastrophe that would occur for my constituency if Lyneham were to be closed and nothing else were to be done. The issue is a huge one and I have taken a keen interest in it, and campaigned long and hard on it, over five or six years. It is about 12 months ago that we had a debate in this Chamber to discuss whether it was right that the RAF should leave the base. I am afraid I intend to keep up that effort until we come up with the right solution.

Before I move on to the substance of the matter, it is perhaps right, as we face the beginning of the end of repatriation ceremonies through Wootton Bassett, to pay tribute to the people of Wootton Bassett and surrounding areas. The Royal British Legion in Malmesbury, Chippenham, Calne and other parts come into the town, often once or twice in a week, in all weathers without fail, to bow their heads for two seconds in tribute to the coffins of the fallen that come back through the town. I think, looking back to the first of those occasions, that I was the only person there. It was after the tragic downing of flight XV179, the Hercules that was brought down in Iraq. I and the TV crews saw the 10 coffins coming through the high street. I said to the crews, “Turn off your cameras and we will go and pay our respects on the pavement.” Ever since then, the people of Wootton Bassett have turned out in great numbers week by week. They do not want any thanks for it. They do it just because that is their civic duty and because they support the armed services, but none the less they stand proxy for the grief of the nation and it is right that we, here, should pay tribute to them. As we see the beginning of the end of those ceremonies, I hope that whichever place takes over the sad repatriation duties, whether that will be RAF Brize Norton or somewhere else, it will find some similar way of marking the occasion when the bodies are brought back to the nation.

This week there was a photograph in The Daily Telegraph of one of the last “Fat Albert” C-130s being carried by road past the iconic pillared town hall of Wootton Bassett. Seeing the end of RAF Lyneham coming down through the high street brought home a message to us all.

We in Wiltshire will say a sad farewell to the RAF. The nearby Yatesbury base still has the first world war officers’ mess and hangars of the RAF, which was founded there roughly 100 years ago. Ever since then the RAF has had a home in Wiltshire. Sadly, when it leaves Lyneham later this year a long and distinguished link with the RAF will end.

Many people in the area are retired from the RAF. We thank the RAF for what it has done and say goodbye with great sadness. We have fought long and hard against the suggestion that the Hercules fleet should be moved to Brize Norton. I continue to believe that that is the wrong decision, but sadly it was taken too long ago to be reversed and we have now come to accept the reality that the RAF will leave. The last flights will be in August and September, and the base will be finally vacated by December 2012. We regret that and think that it is a wrong decision but have come to accept it as a fait accompli; there is nothing else we can do about it. So we say a sad farewell to the RAF and look forward to what will happen in the future.

I am concerned about the possibility that nothing will happen in the future, which is something that we have seen elsewhere; my own Government foolishly closed RAF Wroughton nearby and left it vacant for many years. Vandals moved in and the value declined, and the economy was damaged as a result. The same happened only 15 or 20 years ago when the Army left Corsham. Again, it was left vacant for a long time, the economy went down and the result was catastrophic.

Whatever happens to RAF Lyneham when the RAF leaves, we must re-use the site swiftly and cleanly. We must not allow Defence Estates to sit on it, or the vandals to move in. We must find a quick and speedy solution. After all, the local economy depends to a significant degree on the base. Something like 3,400 jobs are directly or indirectly dependent on it, according to a recent survey by Wiltshire council. About £90 million within the local economy comes from Lyneham. If the site were to be left vacant and nothing were to happen there it would be a disaster for the local economy. I am glad to say that two or three commercial interests are taking a keen interest in the site. I am working closely with them and will be keen to encourage them in every possible way and try to find other uses for the site. There are difficulties with that, but there are some commercial possibilities for the site, and I welcome that.

By far the strongest sense of what one might call local unanimity is on the point that when the RAF leaves later this year we would like the Army to return to the site. We were therefore much encouraged by what the Prime Minister had to say during his statement on the strategic defence and security review. He told the House that there would be

“changes in the way in which some RAF bases are used, but some are likely to be required by the Army as forces return from Germany. We owe it to communities up and down the country who have supported our armed forces for many years to engage with them before final decisions are taken.”—[Official Report, 19 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 798.]

Well, there is no community, up and down the land, that has supported our armed forces more than that of Lyneham, Wootton Bassett, Calne and the surrounding area. I hope that the vacated RAF Lyneham base will be one of the most attractive for the Army returning from Germany.

We believe that Lyneham, unlike one or two of the other bases around Britain that are similarly making bids for the Army, has some unique selling propositions. First, we have an immensely strong military connection. Half the British Army is in Wiltshire. Wiltshire is a military place. It is an agricultural place. It is a place of market towns and villages, a place of high-tech industries —we must not forget that—but it is predominantly, overwhelmingly, agricultural and military. The whole ethos of the place is military. Many of the people are ex-military and the people in the area support the military. I suspect that things would be quite different in some other bases where local people would, frankly, breathe a sigh of relief as they said goodbye to the military presence in their constituency. The people of North Wiltshire would very much welcome the Army.

The dossier that I presented to the Minister this morning included letters from Wiltshire council, Lyneham parish council, Wootton Bassett parish council, the chamber of commerce and a number of other people, all of whom are saying that they would like the Army to come to Lyneham. As nothing in this world is unanimous, I will no doubt be hearing from some people who do not agree with me. None the less, the overwhelming feeling in North Wiltshire is that we would like the Army to come to Lyneham. There is also a strong benefit of such a move for the Ministry of Defence itself.

Our first unique selling proposition is that we strongly support the military. As to who we would like to see coming in, I have a number of possible answers. The Prime Minister has announced that some 15,000 soldiers are returning from Germany, the details of which I will come back to in a second or two. We believe that a flexible brigade could fit into Lyneham. The base may be slightly too small, but there could be room for a multi-role brigade. Failing that, there are a number of smaller units located around the area. One thinks of Colerne in which the Signal Regiment is based. Nearby Hullavington houses one of the two Royal Logistics Corps Regiments in the area, the other one being in South Cerney. There are a number of other similar small units dotted around the area that could usefully be co-located at Lyneham, thereby saving a lot of money.

It has also been said that the university air squadrons, which are dotted around the place, could reuse the hardstanding at Lyneham. The base, therefore, could either house a multi-role brigade or be used for co-location. Someone else mentioned the Anglo-French rapid reaction corps. I know that the people of North Wiltshire would very much welcome French service personnel if indeed they were to form part of the rapid reaction corps. The fact that we have the RAF infrastructure on the base means that we can deploy people rapidly. There are thousands of square feet of hardstanding, hangars and an air traffic control building, which would be useful assets in the rapid deployment of forces, whether they be the Anglo-French rapid reaction corps, special forces or others.

Lyneham has a number of significant assets that could be offered to the Army. Without delaying the House too much, let me quickly run through them. Lyneham is a 1,359 acre site, which is much bigger than any other RAF or Army base. It is fully equipped and will be vacant by 2012 at the latest. The last flights are scheduled for August or September this year. However, if the Army wanted to move into the base sooner, I dare say that the RAF could hasten its exit.

Lyneham’s main asset is its location. It is 20 miles at most from Salisbury plain—just a few minutes’ flying time. It is close to all sorts of other training assets and to the M4, so Wales is not far away. There is a large number of training bases across the county, and the site is close to London, Berkshire and elsewhere. Therefore, it is ideally located for training.

Some other parts of the RAF are being located elsewhere. It would be wrong of me to mention any bases in particular. However, I must say that last night, I attended the Adjournment debate secured by the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell). I support what he had to say, and he said it very well. None the less, Leuchars would be quite different in terms of training areas, as would Lossiemouth. Lyneham, on the other hand, is at the heart of the military and offers real training space.

Although I am not privy to the MOD’s sometimes arcane accounting procedures—one chap understood them, but he died some years ago—we all know, I think, that when the Army comes back in very large numbers from Germany, the MOD will not have vast sums of money to spend on it. Among other things, the Army will need substantial accommodation and training facilities for its military personnel.

At its peak, Lyneham housed 3,500 RAF personnel and their families. There is a married quarters estate of 610 houses for other ranks and 155 houses for officers, which will largely be vacated by 2014 at the latest, although I understand that a number are already occupied by soldiers from the 9 Supply Regiment Royal Logistics Corps.

There are 20 barrack blocks with 892 good-quality rooms. One block has multi-occupancy-rooms—two-man bedrooms—and four blocks have en-suite rooms, which is quite unusual. The sergeants’ mess has 210 rooms and the officers’ mess 135. Taking all the accommodation together, there are more than 2,000 bed spaces available, and they are available today, or as soon as the RAF leaves. The Army could literally march in as the RAF flies out.

The other ranks’ dining room has capacity for 1,000 people. There is a large Navy, Army and Air Force Institute building, a Spar shop and every kind of sports facility—fitness suites, sports hall, tennis courts, squash courts, trim trail, four rugby and football pitches, a cricket square and a bowling alley. There is just about everything that one could possibly want by way of sporting facilities. Moreover, there is ample space for building a new barrack block or other facilities if they were needed.

The whole site is secure. The fence has recently been redone. There is some 14 km of fence around the site. Inside the wire, there are training facilities that include a lecture theatre and conference room, a training centre with three classrooms, various small classrooms, a 25-metre rifle range, a respirator testing chamber and a four-lane dismounted combat trainer, all of which would be useful for an incoming Army unit. The camp has several headquarters buildings, an unlimited supply of office space—the RAF seems to need a large number of offices, but the Army needs rather fewer. The site has a total of 12 hangars, with 52,000 square metres of internal storage space. It has about 50 hectares of runways and parking areas, which could presumably be used as hardstanding for all sorts of things. For example, there could be helicopter or fixed-wing rapid deployments from the base. The extensive runways would also be useful.

The site has vast military transport facilities. I am told that it has an 81,000 litre diesel and 27,000 litre petrol kerbside facility, an air traffic control building, fire services, explosives stores and so on. There are also first-class, recently rebuilt medical and dental centres. The infrastructure is all there. Although some parts of it may be a little tired, the MOD has, none the less, recently spent £5 million on upgrading the base. As I understand it, the standards required by the Army are slightly lower than those required by the RAF. Although the RAF may think some of the facilities are a little tired, I suspect that the Army would say, “This is significantly better than some of the places that we have found elsewhere.”

I appreciate that the standard of accommodation in Germany is very high, as it should be, so if we are bringing soldiers back, we will have to offer them equivalent accommodation. In short, after a bit of rebuilding and tidying up, the site could be a most worthwhile base at a minimum cost to the MOD. If the MOD were to take over a less well supplied base, the cost would be considerable. There are, of course, many examples of RAF bases being reused by the Army across England. In my own constituency, RAF Hullavington is now home to the 9 Supply Regiment Royal Logistics Corps and Bassingbourn and Abingdon are both good examples of reusing RAF sites for the Army.

In addition to the military infrastructure that is readily available to the Army, there is good local infrastructure. Although Lyneham is predominantly a military village, the schools, roads, and shops are all in place. The Army could move in tomorrow and it would find that the civilian infrastructure was available. I was recently at a meeting with the head of the local primary school, who was very concerned that the RAF was leaving the area. The school is first class and was recently reopened by Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall. It could be available for use by the Army tomorrow. Very few places in the area could offer that kind of facility.

It seems that we in Lyneham are offering just what the Army needs. There is an additional, if not slightly negative, reason why the MOD should consider Lyneham’s facilities. There could be problems with regard to the base if the Army were not to use it. It appears that there is a Crichel Down problem. I think that some 60 owners are laying some claim to the base and it could take some time—potentially, although not necessarily—for the Crichel Down thing to go through. However, that issue certainly needs further examination. Furthermore, if the base were to be handed over to civilian use there would doubtless have to be a significant level of decontamination, which would obviously have to be done to remove explosives, oil and other materials from the site. If that were to happen and the site were left vacant for a time, there would be all the costs of maintaining the site during the period that it was vacant, so there would be a significant cost to the Treasury of not doing something with the site swiftly.

So, from the point of the view of the Army, RAF Lyneham is highly attractive and from the point of view of the MOD, RAF Lyneham is a useful solution to a problem that it has. The MOD has been instructed to bring 15,000 soldiers in total back from Germany and it is currently considering what to do with them. The use of the site is also a useful solution from the point of view of the local area, which will face economic catastrophe if the Army does not use the site or if there is no alternative commercial use for it. Actually, marching the Army in as the RAF flies out some time later this year—I suppose that now it would have to happen next year—seems to be an extremely neat solution to a variety of problems. We have what the Army needs; the Army needs us; the Treasury needs Lyneham, and the local area needs the Army and would welcome the Army, as local people have made very clear. Also, I think that the nation owes a little bit to RAF Lyneham and Wootton Bassett for all that they have done in recent years.

So I hope that the Minister will listen carefully to the debate this morning. I am glad that we have such a large number of people here supporting our efforts. I do not imagine that the Minister will do anything other than listen carefully and nod wisely. I am not asking him to answer my requests straight away. However, I hope that he will listen carefully to what I have said; that he and his officials will read the dossier that I have given them; and that we have at least been able to add some knowledge to the consideration that I know is currently going on among large numbers of people at the MOD. I believe that Lyneham would be ideal for the Army and I also believe that the Army needs Lyneham.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

Thank you for calling me, Mr Betts. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today.

First, I want to congratulate the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) on securing this excellent debate and on the way in which he has made his case so eloquently. He and I have attended a number of debates in the past few months, which were secured by the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) and, as he has mentioned, the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell).

What is very clear is the deeply held affection that communities up and down the United Kingdom have for their military bases, which has been demonstrated by their Members of Parliament. I am sure that we all pay tribute to the community around RAF Lyneham for the way in which it, as the hon. Member for North Wiltshire has said, has conducted itself and supported our gallant and fallen service personnel on their return from overseas.

I simply wish to make a few observations to the Minister to tease out some answers, as the hon. Gentleman has already tried to do. The Minister will obviously be aware that a large number of troops are due to return from overseas in the next few years. Obviously, he will also be aware that when the Chief of the Defence Staff appeared before the Select Committee on Defence, of which I am a member, he introduced a note of caution about the timetabling for the return of the troops from Germany.

It will probably not surprise you, Mr Betts, or indeed the Chamber, that two issues in particular concerned the CDS, and it is fair to say that those concerns were shared by the Defence Committee—I say that as I look at the hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), who is also a member of that Committee. The first was the issue of the troops’ families. As the hon. Member for North Wiltshire has already said, it is not simply a case of bringing home 15,000 servicemen and women, because their families will obviously need to be accommodated. I remind the Minister that, according to his own Department’s figures, accommodation for some 25,000 personnel within the defence estate of the United Kingdom is considered to be not of the highest standard, and my understanding is that there are currently no plans to upgrade that accommodation.

The second issue that concerned the CDS, as he pointed out when he appeared before the Defence Committee, is how we will educate the children of the returning service personnel. I do not wish to repeat the argument that the hon. Member for North Wiltshire and I had during consideration of the Armed Forces Bill about how to educate those children, but there is a very real issue about the schooling that we need to provide for all the children of returning personnel.

[Mr Gray]

It is worth paying tribute to the first-class Wootton Bassett comprehensive school, which is two or three miles down the road from Lyneham. At the moment, of course, its pupils are 30% to 40% RAF, so we would have primary and secondary school places immediately available in the surrounding area, if necessary.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that clarification. I hope that the Minister will be able to go slightly further and give a guarantee that, as part of the assessment that I am sure he is making, there will be a proper assessment of the current capacity for education of returning service personnel’s children and, if necessary, a guarantee that additional funds will be provided to any of the military bases—or rather, the local authorities in whose areas the military bases are located—that are chosen to house returning personnel, to ensure that we do not have a surplus of demand over capacity and so that no local authority is left with challenges as a result. I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point that the schools in his local area already have that capacity, but I nevertheless hope that the Minister will carry out a proper assessment of this issue.

Regarding the accommodation of service personnel and their families, I would be grateful if the Minister were to tell the Chamber whether the MOD is confident that all accommodation at RAF Lyneham is of the highest standard. If it is not, can he say what the timetable is for bringing it up to a suitable standard?

As the hon. Member for North Wiltshire will recall, we touched on the final issue that I want to raise with the Minister today in last night’s Adjournment debate. I have a long-standing concern that the MOD has perhaps not always carried out its decision making in a duly transparent way and has not sought to ensure that the communities affected by its decisions are the first to know about them. I hope that the Minister can give a guarantee today that not only will the process for any decision making on the return of troops and their stationing within the UK be conducted in a clear manner and that he will share the details of that process with the House and the Defence Committee, but that he will do everything within his power to ensure that the communities affected by those decisions are the first to know about them, then the House and lastly the media, rather than what has unfortunately happened in the past, where the media have found out about decisions before the communities affected by them.

I want to end by again congratulating the hon. Member for North Wiltshire on securing this debate and on his powerful words.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), who has campaigned assiduously for Lyneham and for investment in his constituency. I was born in Chippenham and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen), I grew up in north Wiltshire. I therefore feel that I should make a brief contribution to support my hon. Friend and say that the key factor about RAF Lyneham is how much support it has had from local communities.

Lyneham, with its Hercules fleet, generates a lot of noise but precious few complaints. I lived in the area during the Falklands war, when lots of Chinook helicopters were ferrying supplies at all times of the day. Local people show great support for the RAF, and the RAF has been a good neighbour. Indeed, some of the biggest arguments that I have seen at local parish councils concern whose turn it is to go to the open day at Lyneham and perhaps get a trip in an aircraft. People value the connection with Lyneham, which is an important point for the future.

[Mr Gray]

I thank my hon. Friend for being here to speak in support of this debate. He is absolutely right. In my 14 years as a Member of Parliament for Lyneham, I do not remember a single letter of complaint from any constituent. There was one exception when a clay pigeon shoot was being held too near the wire—we had it moved—but with regard to military activity, I cannot remember a single complaint.

[Mr Syms]

That certainly reinforces my point that north Wiltshire and the military have had a close relationship. As my hon. Friend has said, Lyneham is a tremendous asset, given its sporting facilities and existing housing. I do not know what condition it is in—the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) made a good point about the state of the defence estate; we must ensure that our armed service personnel have good-quality homes—but it is a material factor.

Lyneham is not only a good base for deploying units from Germany on military grounds, because we should pay attention to what is good for armed service personnel’s families. There are homes near the base, but there are also a wide range of homes in the community for those who wish to buy. It is an RAF tradition for people to live in all the communities around the base including not only Swindon, but Chippenham, Calne, Wootton Bassett and Malmesbury—a lot of personnel have become part of local communities. North Wiltshire is an incredibly good place to live. It is conveniently located for the training grounds on Salisbury plain and in south Wales. I consider it a no-brainer to use Lyneham for a good military purpose.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames) made the good point that, with the RAF going, a swift decision is sensible, so that we can make use of this tremendous asset and locate the military somewhere that they can train and base their families, with good-quality schools and education and a supportive community. That would be a good decision for the MOD, serving personnel and their families and the people of north Wiltshire, who have done a lot to support the military and will continue to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I am grateful, Mr Betts, for the opportunity to speak in this debate. May I join the tributes to my neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray)? For many years, he has done his level best to maintain the presence of the Royal Air Force at Lyneham. Indeed, prior to the election, I had several conversations with him about his work, and I was struck in particular by the report that he and others prepared before the election. It outlined the very basis on which he secured today’s debate, and it argued that civilian use of the Lyneham airfields was not appropriate, that the clean-up costs for the area would be considerable and that logic therefore dictated that military use of some kind—that is, the Army—was appropriate. I support that wholeheartedly.

[Mr Gray]

I am sorry for interrupting my hon. Friend’s fine speech, but I want to correct him on one small point. I am absolutely committed to keeping the RAF at Lyneham and, after that, totally committed to getting the Army on to the site, but if there is to be no military use for it, I believe that we could use it for other civilian, commercial and industrial uses. I would certainly work with industry to try to make that possible and would not rule out commercial use.

[Mr Buckland]

Forgive me, but I was talking about the site’s lack of suitability for use as a civilian airport. In fact, my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames) also made that point. It would be incorrect to say that Lyneham has an unlimited range of options, and it is important that we reinforce that point. I support my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire, however, in saying that, if we cannot retain military use for the area, we clearly need an action plan for commercial use, so that we can generate much-needed jobs.

The communities of North Wiltshire and of Wiltshire in general have always supported the presence of the Royal Air Force in their county. Moreover, it would be wrong of me not to pay tribute to the residents of Swindon, who play such an important part not only in supporting the work of RAF Lyneham, but in playing host to many personnel—both current and former—who work at the base but who live in my constituency or that of North Swindon. Some of the former personnel serve on Swindon council and are great friends of mine. They have years of experience in the RAF and feel strongly that, if Lyneham cannot be retained for use by the Royal Air Force, it should be retained in some military capacity.

I pay tribute to the community of Wootton Bassett for playing host to the repatriation ceremonies. Anybody who has been to a ceremony will know exactly what my hon. Friend is talking about. It is a unique atmosphere in which the residents of the town, without too much fuss, take a few minutes from their busy lives to give time and space to pay homage to those returning from Afghanistan, whose families are given time to mourn their loss. Indeed, my hon. Friend and I had the pleasure and the honour of attending the Royal British Legion’s field of remembrance in November, which was hosted by His Royal Highness Prince Harry. The event took place at Lydiard park in my constituency, but it was designed to acknowledge the contribution of Wootton Bassett and of the communities of North Wiltshire and Swindon to the repatriation ceremonies. At the end of those ceremonies, many motor vehicles containing my constituents returned to Swindon having played their part in supporting the town of Wootton Bassett.

I am grateful that my hon. Friend has referred to RAF Wroughton. It was an air base in my constituency, but it is now home to a large collection of Science museum artefacts that cannot be stored in London. The fact that they are now stored in the hangars of RAF Wroughton is an innovative use of the site. My hon. Friend is right to say, however, that far too much time was lost after the closure of the base to determine what would happen. Time brings deterioration and uncertainty, and it causes many problems in relation to sites as large as Wroughton—Lyneham is, of course, a very large site indeed.

It is right to pay tribute in passing to the former Princess Alexandra hospital, which served not only the RAF, but all military personnel so well until its sad, unfortunate and, I would say, wrong closure in 1996. Perhaps those who took that decision did not foresee the huge demands now placed upon the medical service by those who return from the theatre of war who are scarred not only physically, but psychologically by their experiences. As the MP and the candidate for South Swindon, it has been wonderful over the past few years to meet so many people who have shared their experiences of the theatre of war with me. They have educated me in some of the difficult issues faced by former and current service personnel.

[Mr Gray]

My hon. Friend is speaking extremely well on the subject. He is quite right about RAF Wroughton. As someone who was a special adviser to the Conservative Government who closed RAF Wroughton, we should put our hands up and say, “That was wrong—we shouldn’t have done it.” It was a first-class place and a very useful facility, and I wish that we had it today. I fear that the decision in relation to RAF Lyneham may be rather similar and that, if we let it go and do not put the Army there, we will look back in 10 years and say, “What a damned silly decision that was.”

[Mr Buckland]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend and I share his views entirely. Some important points have been made, particularly by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), about accommodation. It would be wrong to say that RAF Lyneham, although it is in a semi-rural setting, is not near large centres of population. As my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) has said, many service personnel who work in Lyneham live in Swindon, which as you will know, Mr Betts, is a large town with a large population. We have for many years happily paid host to service personnel and their families. Having met many of them over the years, I know that they are happy and content to live in a community that welcomes them and that readily acknowledges the contribution of the armed services in the local area.

I do not, therefore, think that accommodation is at all the problem. In fact, I cannot identify a problem that would be an obstacle to the Army locating to Lyneham. As many other colleagues have said, Lyneham’s proximity to the M4 and its generally central location in southern England make it an ideal location for large numbers of Army personnel. Frankly, I cannot think of a better place to relocate returning personnel from Germany. I do not think that there are any obstacles to bringing our personnel back to Lyneham.

I also point out that leisure facilities in Swindon are enjoyed by service personnel. We have all sorts of facilities—cinemas, sports venues, an ice rink, swimming pools, leisure centres—and plenty for the families of service personnel to enjoy. Indeed, the facilities are currently being enjoyed by service personnel, who, as I have said, are a very important part of our community.

I have mentioned the need for urgency and for decisions to be made quickly. My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) has said that a timely decision is needed, and I cannot put it better myself. If the Army cannot be located to Lyneham, will the Government help the local council, local businesses and the local chambers of commerce to come together to draw up an economic plan for the use of the site?

Schools have been mentioned, and my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire has referred to Wootton Bassett comprehensive school. Again, plenty of primary and secondary schools in Swindon are already being used by service personnel, who I am sure would warmly welcome the children of Army personnel who relocate to Lyneham. In my view, it would be a seamless transfer if the Army came to Lyneham. It would not be the imposition of a wholly new culture on a community that was unfamiliar with it and that did not understand or appreciate the contribution of the armed services.

I urge the Minister and the Government to take up the suggestions made today and in other places to acknowledge the contribution of the local community to the life of our armed services, and to conclude that Lyneham is a no-brainer when it comes to relocating Army personnel from Germany.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) on securing the debate. I pay tribute to his hon. Friends for attending the debate and showing support for the case that he has made. I appreciate from their contributions that they have given support over significant time and that they recognise the difficulties that lie ahead.

I fully recognise the hon. Gentleman’s anxiety about the future of the base, its potential use and the undoubted socio-economic consequences of the closure of RAF Lyneham in just under two years’ time. As has been said a couple of times this morning, he was present in the main Chamber yesterday evening, when the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) initiated an Adjournment debate— albeit a significantly less time consuming one—on his local RAF base at Leuchars. He made a strong defence of the need to retain Leuchars on the grounds of its militarily strategic location, and he sought to raise the important matter of the socio-economic impact of such a closure.

I recognise that a number of local chambers of commerce from the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, including Wootton Bassett, have joined together to make the case for replacement employment at Lyneham. I want to put on the record my ongoing support for the people of Wootton Bassett. They have shown strength and fortitude over many months and, at the repatriation ceremonies that have regrettably taken place far too often, they have provided support for the families of those servicemen who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in the service of our country.

Unlike the uncertainty that surrounds RAF Leuchars, Lossiemouth or Marham, after a base review that took two years to conclude, it was determined in July 2003 that Lyneham would cease to operate in its current form. However, I recognise that that does not make it any easier for the people who are either on the base or living within the surrounding communities. Hon. Members have made the case that they want to see early decisions—the hon. Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames) has said that swift decision making is important—but it is important that the right decisions are made. We need to take appropriate time to think through the consequences of any decision. I wholeheartedly agree that when that site is vacated, swift action should be taken to put something else in place. If nothing happens when not only military bases but major employers in all parts of the country vacate large sites, those sites can rapidly turn into wastelands. Considering the beauty of the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and the surrounding area, we do not need a wasteland to develop at that location.

The hon. Gentleman made the point that the site is ideally located for training and that there is a standard of available accommodation. From what he said at the beginning of his contribution, I know that he appears to have the Prime Minister’s support. Irrespective of which party we are in, many of us would consider that having the Prime Minister’s support would mean we were making the right noises.

[Mr Gray]

Although I might seem to be arguing against my own case, I should perhaps make it clear that the Prime Minister has not said that he necessarily supports the Army going to RAF Lyneham. He knows that RAF Lyneham is one of a number of sites that the MOD is considering, and he has encouraged me to make the argument very strongly, but it would be quite wrong to claim that the Prime Minister has spoken in support of my argument, as he simply has not.

[Mr Brown]

The hon. Gentleman was just a little bit sharp on his feet, because I was about to make the point that he has the support of the Prime Minister in at least making the case. From what I have read in the Western Daily Press, the case needs to be made to the Secretary of State for Defence and to the Minister. I suspect that the hon. Gentleman might be somewhat anxious that back on 31 August it was being said that the Secretary of State

“has played down the chances of the West’s biggest RAF base being occupied by thousands of soldiers”.

If the manner in which the press have reported that is correct, the hon. Gentleman still has a battle to fight.

[Mr Gray]

I am most grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s advice. The journalist who wrote that story, my good friend Tristan Cork, acknowledges that it is based on absolutely no facts whatsoever. The story was, of course, written before the strategic defence review was announced and before we knew that the soldiers were coming back from Germany. Dear old Tristan, who is a very good journalist and a close friend of mine, will acknowledge that he is not absolutely certain what that story was based on.

[Mr Brown]

I am astonished that journalists are not correct all the time, but I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point.

As I said at the beginning of my contribution, it is clear that the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends have been arguing the case for RAF Lyneham since the announcement was first made in 2003. It is clear from the debate that he is not giving up one iota in bringing forward proposals for the future of the base. He has given the Minister what appears to be a significant document that outlines exactly what he would like to see. From what we have all heard in debates over the past weeks and months, however, I am sure that he recognises that something of a pitched battle is going on, because more than 15,000 troops are coming back from Germany. People are staking their claims to have those troops return to a variety of different locations across the UK to fill the gap that will be left when bases close. It will be appropriate for the Ministry of Defence and the Secretary of State to look at all those cases carefully before the final decision is made.

I am aware that, during the intervening period since the announcement of the base closure, certain tentative proposals have been flagged up. I only want to mention one, namely the proposal for the base to become a possible location for a consolidated support helicopter base under Project Belvedere. Regrettably for the hon. Gentleman, those on the base and the wider community, it was concluded that the proposal did not represent best value for money. Specifically, it was decided that the efficiencies that could have been achieved from such a major rationalisation programme would not produce the necessary return, given the investment that would have been required. If we are to consider whether some of the bases that will become vacant should become Army accommodation, perhaps some locations are more appropriate than others. The Minister may confirm this a little later, but significant investment might be needed in some of these locations. Value for money should be the underlying principle when the Government consider what to do.

I shall briefly return to the issue of decision making, because the Minister said yesterday evening:

“we do not expect that work to be concluded for some time yet, but we hope it will be by the summer.”—[Official Report, 25 January 2011; Vol. 522, c. 270.]

I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity this morning to say whether the decision on the future of RAF Lyneham will be taken at the same time as the decision on all the other bases currently under review. It would be inappropriate if the Department and Ministers were looking at one set of bases and not reaching a decision on the subject of this discussion, so I hope that they are all in the melting pot together. I also want the Minister to give an indication of what options the Department and the Government are considering, if he can give any indication at all.

The big issue, to my mind, is the socio-economic impact of what is happening or is likely to happen. The hon. Member for Chippenham has mentioned £90 million per annum flowing into the local economy, which is a significant sum. Such a gap cannot be plugged easily. I am not convinced, although I am no economist, that merely by moving in a couple of thousand Army personnel and their families, we would plug the gap if that £90 million were lost.

[Mr Gray]

May I correct the hon. Gentleman slightly? I do not mean to intervene on him too often and am most grateful to him for being so generous with his time. He is wrong, because if 2,000 or 3,000 soldiers and their families were to move into the area, it would exactly replicate the RAF personnel who are leaving and would indeed plug the economic gap that he has described. If we got a reasonable number of soldiers in there, it would be precisely what we want for the local economy.

[Mr Brown]

I bow to the hon. Gentleman’s probably better knowledge of what is happening in the locality. The main point that I am trying to make, to support the hon. Member for Chippenham, is that £90 million is a significant sum. That will need to be carefully considered.

In respect of finance, is the Minister prepared to say whether a specific and dedicated budget to assist with any transition arrangements for RAF Lyneham will be available? He will be determined to ensure that he keeps a tight check on the budget in the Department, but what additional support might be available to the local community if the MOD is not prepared to fulfil some of the wishes expressed this morning?

I fully recognise that it has been a traumatic time since the initial announcement in July 2003, and it is still a worrying time. Whatever the decision that Ministers and the Secretary of State make and whatever the outcome, if it is not good news, it will still be a devastating shock. I hope that, in the time that I am leaving available to the Minister this morning, he will be able to give a flavour of what is being considered by the Department, even though he cannot give details of any ultimate decision. We are all, perhaps a little tentatively, looking forward to the summer, when we will see the wider picture that he and his ministerial colleagues will be able to paint for the future of many of our bases.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Nick Harvey)]

It is a pleasure to have you presiding over our deliberations, Mr Betts. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) for initiating this important debate on RAF Lyneham and the effects on the surrounding community. Its importance is reflected in the fact that so many of my hon. Friends from the Wiltshire area have turned up to support him. I also thank him for the dossier that he has given me from local community leaders. I assure him that we will give full consideration to what it contains as we move forward with our decision making.

Hon. Members will know that my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire has been an assiduous and persistent advocate for RAF Lyneham. In fact, during the previous Parliament, he must have raised it with almost as great a regularity as the fondly remembered Tam Dalyell raised the sinking of the Belgrano. Nothing would provoke me to imagine that he will be dropping the subject any time soon. He has campaigned industriously against the closure of Lyneham on behalf of his constituents, and I recognise that a wide section of his constituency has a very great concern about the future of the base.

I join my hon. Friend and several other hon. Members in paying tribute to the people of Wootton Bassett, who have provided such a dignified and moving homecoming for the deceased. That has been appreciated by the whole nation. We shall shortly be moving the repatriations to Brize Norton, but this is a moment to pay tribute to the people of Wootton Bassett for what they have done.

I also pay tribute to all the personnel who have served at RAF Lyneham since it opened for active service in 1940. It is rather an important point that, as has been said, it was announced in July 2003—getting on for eight years ago—that the future air transport and air-to-air refuelling fleets would be co-located at RAF Brize Norton by 2012. It must be acknowledged that the savings from that co-location will be significant. It is not possible to reopen that debate—the co-location is going ahead—but that decision meant that Lyneham would no longer be required for its current purpose, with current units leaving the base by 2012.

The Department has examined several alternative uses for the site. As the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown), who speaks for the Opposition, has mentioned, it was considered as a consolidated support helicopter base under Project Belvedere, but for the reasons that he has outlined, that unfortunately did not work out.

[Mr Gray]

The Minister is, of course, right, and I would not seek to reopen that debate. We are none the less a little puzzled as to how it can be that we will save an enormous amount of money by co-locating the air transport fleet at RAF Brize Norton, but we would not save a similar amount by co-locating the helicopter fleet at Lyneham. There seems to be no logic in those two arguments: one co-location does not pay; the other does. However, that involved the previous Government, whom the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown) supported, so perhaps we need not reopen that argument.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Harvey]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, but, with respect, this bone of comfort—that the Army might come back from Germany—has been thrown only in the past couple of months, and I am still mystified why planning for a civilian future did not start long ago.

[Mr Gray]

The Minister must not be mystified. The explanation is that the Lyneham taskforce convened within weeks of the original announcement in 2003, and the civilian-military co-operation involving Wiltshire council has been constant since then. The local community has been fully engaged for the past seven years in looking for alternative uses, so the Minister is quite wrong to think that we have not been. As he has said, however, the Army is a useful bone to be thrown at this stage.

[Nick Harvey]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for clarifying that. Clearly, I had drawn the wrong implication from some of the other contributions, which suggested that we needed to form an economic plan now. My hon. Friend, in whose constituency Lyneham is based, has said that such plans exist, and it is useful to have that recorded and clarified, so I am grateful to him.

Since the announcement in October, work has been under way to look at the basing requirements of not only the Army, but the RAF and the Navy. As I said in previous debates, including the one about Marham and the one about Leuchars last night, that is a big piece of work; we must get it right, and we will take our time to do that. I hope that we will be in a position to put all these local communities out of their agony as soon as possible, and I readily acknowledge that uncertainty is being caused in every community.

We have received many representations from hon. Members, local authorities, local groups and the devolved Administrations, and we will do what we can to take them all on board. Of course, there will be socio-economic impacts, but that will be true at any of those bases. We recognise those impacts, but they must be balanced against each other. Our overriding consideration, at the Ministry of Defence, is the military arguments. Bringing the Army back from Germany is something that we will do only once, and it is important that we get it right and put the Army in the right place for the next several decades. I must stress that we cannot really have a beauty contest between different parts of the country to secure the prize of a base in their locality.

Whatever the outcome of the review, it must be about what is best for the armed forces. Bringing back the Army units stationed in Germany is not an easy job. Once it has been decided which units we are bringing back to which locations, detailed work will have to take place to plan those moves. As the Opposition spokesman has said, investments will have to be put in place to prepare the bases that will receive those Army units. The work going on to bring the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps back to Innsworth, near Gloucester, has taken years. I am sorry to disappoint my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire, who painted a rosy picture of the Army marching in as the RAF marched out, but the likelihood of that happening is infinitesimally small. The programme to bring the Army back from Germany will happen over 10 years, and in almost no imaginable case will we see the Army march in as those vacating bases in the next year or two march out.

I implore Members to reflect on what was said in the strategic defence and security review about the Army’s intention to organise itself into multi-role brigades. Although we would not necessarily seek to accommodate an entire multi-role brigade on a single site, we will nevertheless want units to be located near enough to each other to use common training grounds and make formations as a brigade for training purposes. There is, therefore, a wide range of considerations. Is the new base big enough to accommodate the units? Does it have the right accommodation? How much would it cost to upgrade? How much new building will there have to be? What is access to training facilities like? Are the training facilities of the right type? How long will travelling distances to those facilities be? Where will the other units involved in training be? All those questions need addressing, and it will take time to balance them all and ensure that we get things right.

The hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway asked about schools, and we will, of course, give every consideration to the education requirements of future military communities. He also asked about accommodation, and I acknowledge that there is a lot more work to be done on improving service family accommodation. However, I urge hon. Members to recognise our desire in the SDSR to build a new employment model for members of the Army. We want more super garrisons, so that people who progress through the Army will be able to spend more of their career in one place, which would be more like the Navy and the RAF, and therefore to put down roots and find houses among the local population. As we go forward into future years, more of the Government’s effort will focus on ensuring that members of the armed forces can buy their own homes and settle in communities. Although I do not rule out building further family accommodation, we view that as the second-best option. The desire will be to help people settle into communities.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about the scrutiny process and how we will let communities know about decisions. It would be desirable to let some community leaders know before official announcements are made, but the only way to inform whole communities is through the media, so the hon. Gentleman’s argument becomes slightly circular.

On the economic impact being £90 million, I agree with the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire, who said that replacing like with like has a neutral effect on the economy. I saw that in my own constituency, where the Marines replaced the RAF at Chivenor. The economy recovered fairly quickly, as did local services, schools and so on.

My hon. Friend has made a strong case on why Lyneham would be a good base for the Army. Many of his arguments have a great deal of merit. He mentioned the proximity to other Army units in Wiltshire and to Salisbury plain, and those are good arguments, as well as reasons why Lyneham is in quite a strong position as we look at the different bases.

The Opposition spokesman asked for guidance on how the Government’s thinking is going. My point about multi-role brigades and the need for units that will make formations together to be within easy reach of each other is one of the factors, and the military’s footprint across the different parts of the UK will be the other. One point that I would make about Salisbury plain, however, is that we must be realistic about its capacity to absorb a huge increase in the amount of Army training that goes on there.

The House has had debates about various other RAF bases. Obviously, every community is inclined to look at the worst-case scenario, but I reassure hon. Members that no decisions have been made yet, and we will continue to look at the whole issue with an open mind. Today has been a useful opportunity for the Wiltshire community to make particular local points. It has been useful to hear from the neighbours of my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire about the impact on the wider Wiltshire economy, which I am well aware of. One way or the other, I travel through Wiltshire twice a week. My wife’s family are from North Wiltshire and are still there, so I am familiar with the locality, and I can see the advantages of RAF Lyneham and the impact that it has on the community.

We must look beyond the local considerations, base by base, to the wider defence picture. We need to make the best use of our existing assets in the UK. I do not want to mislead Wiltshire Members into thinking that there is necessarily a future defence use for Lyneham at the moment—it is too soon to say that, because there is still a lot of work to do. In the mean time, we continue to make plans for the disposal of Lyneham. We shall, however, as I have said, try to put all the local communities out of their agony as soon as we can. We shall work with other Departments, devolved Administrations—where appropriate—and local authorities to ensure that our plans can be implemented with the least possible disruption for the communities affected.

As they were in the SDSR, our decisions must be objective, unsentimental and based on the military advice that we receive about what is best for the armed forces. We shall also have to look at what provides the best value for the taxpayer, and we shall, of course, consider the impact on communities and regional economies as we balance those factors. We must limit our resources to where they are most needed.

Armed Forces Bill

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Murphy]

There we have it, Madam Deputy Speaker —the right hon. Gentleman advocates such a timid Bill because the cuts that he is determined to make in the Ministry of Defence will not allow him to achieve his ambition. I can do nothing more than quote again Sir Michael Moore, the chair of the Forces Pension Society, who said:

“I have never seen a Government erode the morale of the armed forces so quickly.”

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman’s thesis seems to be that we are not going far enough in repairing the damage to the military covenant. Does he remember the moment in 2007, shortly after Lord Guthrie resigned as Chief of the Defence Staff under his Ministry, when Lord Guthrie said in the House of Lords that he could not remember a Government ever having been so bad at keeping their side of the bargain and honouring the military covenant? The covenant was wrecked under the right hon. Gentleman’s Government and we are taking steps to put it right; surely he should acknowledge that.

[Mr Murphy]

We introduced the first cross-Government strategy on the welfare of the armed forces, we doubled compensation payments for the most seriously injured, we doubled the welfare grant for those in operation and we gave better access to housing schemes and health care. If the hon. Gentleman’s point is that Governments can and should always try to do more, of course that is the case, but it is difficult for him both to demand that Labour should have done more when in power and defend the level of his Government’s cuts. Those contradictory positions cannot be achieved in one intervention.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Murphy]

As my hon. Friend knows, the previous Government offered a compensation deal. That was not resolved. The Government will rightly come forward with their own proposals. He and I will eagerly scrutinise the specifics of the proposals that the Government eventually produce.

I return to an issue raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), the former Secretary of State, which is the subject of clause 2 —the annual publication of the armed forces covenant report. Although I strongly welcome the continuation of the previous Government’s plans to provide an annual report scrutinising the Government’s progress on implementing commitments to strengthen the covenant, it is troubling that responsibility for doing so has been moved from independent experts and into the political control of Ministers.

It is welcome that we will have a debate in the House on the military covenant, but that should not be at the expense of proper independent scrutiny. One of the innovations of 2008 was the impartial oversight of Government progress in strengthening the military covenant. The external reference group, comprising charities and civil servant experts, was established as an independent monitor of the Government’s implementation of the service Command Paper. This was vital in ensuring public confidence in our commitment to issues that transcend party politics.

It is peculiar and puzzling that the Government, who are committed to cuts in defence spending, now seem to have embarked on cuts in accountability in defence. [Interruption.] It is essential that the reports are independent, expert-led and above party politics. The Secretary of State is chuntering from a sedentary position. As he knows, the Royal British Legion has already raised concerns about the issue—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State says, with a cavalier swish of the hand, that he has already dealt with it. He has already spoken about it, but that is different from having dealt with it. The Royal British Legion should not be dismissed in such a cavalier way.

Ministers will have to work very hard to persuade anyone other than themselves that they are better placed than charities and experts, often comprising ex-service personnel and their families, to produce that report.

[Mr Gray]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is a very beneficial improvement that rather than merely independent organisations scrutinising such reports, the Secretary of State will annually place a report before the House for its scrutiny? That is an increase in ministerial accountability and in the power of Parliament. Surely he should welcome that.

[Mr Murphy]

I have already welcomed the report and the fact that there will be an annual debate, but I do not welcome the fact that the production of the report will be in the hands of Ministers, rather than independent experts. It is an issue about which the Royal British Legion feels strongly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I am grateful for those comments and I will pass them on to Minerva in the Rhondda.

My other reason for wanting to take part in this debate is that Wales has a particular tradition of its own in relation to the armed forces, not only in successive wars but in producing a much higher quantity of young men and, increasingly, of young women to go into our armed forces than would be proportionate to its population. It is difficult, as the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) said, to get accurate statistics, but roughly 9% of the armed forces come from Welsh constituencies. That compares with just 5% of the UK population coming from Wales. There is, therefore, over-representation. That may in part be to do with the fact that we have higher levels of deprivation—multiple levels of deprivation —in certain parts of the country.

One of the ironies is that little of the time that Welsh personnel spend in the armed forces will be spent in Wales. They might have to go to Sennybridge. They might spend a very cold, wet, hideous, horrible time on the mountain tops in training, but the likelihood is that the vast majority of their time will be spent, even when they are in the UK, not in Wales but elsewhere.

I make a plea to the MOD and the Minister. I hope that he will be able to answer this later. When we are considering future bases in the UK, of course, as the Secretary of State said, the most important thing is ensuring the security of the realm. Every member of the armed forces would agree with that, but I argue that part of the military covenant is saying that deployment when at home, rather than when in theatre, should allow for a wider spread than is currently the case.

We have not mentioned the armed forces parliamentary scheme, but it is an important element of the way parliamentarians obtain information from those who have served or are reservists and from others from other backgrounds, and ensure that that informs our debate. In my time in the scheme, nearly everyone I met in the armed forces—this is not a partisan point—came from a Labour constituency, but all the sites we visited were in Conservative constituencies. That is not because anyone has decided to put them in Conservative constituencies; it is just because of a series of historical flukes. I urge the Government, as they consider what to do about the redeployment from Germany, to think about whether there is a base, for example, at St Athan, that might be used to base Welsh troops in Wales. I say that not as someone who supports a separation of Welsh armed forces from British armed forces but as someone who wants to reinforce the Welsh armed forces.

I believe that there are several elements to the covenant that are not mentioned in clause 2 but are equally important. We have debated one—equipment—at some length in the past few years, in particular because our troops are in theatre in Iraq and Afghanistan. The hon. Member for Milton Keynes North said that he felt that the equipment he was given when he was last deployed was far more suitable and up to date than previously. He is right, but there is going to be a constant process of change.

Likewise, ensuring that our troops have the most up to date, effective training possible is important. Several hon. Members have referred to whether it is possible to unify posts between the three services in relation to the military police. I argue that we need to go much further and extend that combination of training. Those who have had an opportunity to visit Shrivenham will know that bringing the training of officers in the Army, Air Force and Navy together in one place, which was at one point thought unthinkable—the idea that the Royal Navy would leave Greenwich was believed to be unthinkable—has brought enormous dividends to all three services. Notwithstanding the decision that seems to have been made in relation to St Athan and defence training, we need to be able to do more of our training on a shared forces basis because there is more that each of the services can learn from each other.

The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd has a long record of campaigning on veterans issues, for which I pay tribute to him. All too often, people think of veterans as people who served in the first or second world wars, but many of the veterans in my constituency are 25, 26 or 27 years of age and their service will not just be for the few years that they spent being paid by the armed forces; in terms of the psychological and physical issues that they have to deal with, their service will be for the whole of their lives. Not only will they be serving in that way, but their families will, too. He is right to point to the need for continuity of care beyond—in many cases far beyond—the day when someone goes into civvy street.

I caution the hon. Gentleman, however, as I tried to do earlier—this crops up quite regularly in our debates—about the difference between correlation and causation. For example, it is often argued that couples who co-habit and have children are far more likely to split up than those who marry and have children. It is factually true. The question is: is that because they got married, or because they are the kind of people who felt differently about the institution of marriage in the first place? In other words, is there correlation between these statistics, or is there causation?

That is where we need to be precise in relation to the ongoing care of those in the armed forces. Many of the young people who join the armed forces from the Rhondda go in with many of the problems that they will leave with. They go in, as we know, with lower levels of literacy, which is why the armed forces in recent years have had to do much more to ensure that our troops have a high level of literacy. Some of them will have difficulties with other educational issues that need to be addressed.

The point is that it is not necessarily because those people were in the armed forces that some of the problems follow. Where the problem is because they were in the armed forces—perhaps because their training was so effective that they do not realise the lethal nature of the punch that they could deliver compared with someone else—it is all the more important that the MOD and the whole of society take action to ensure that young people, as they go into the armed forces and see through their years in service, and when they leave, have the full support and training that they need.

I know that many others want to take part in the debate and I do not want to delay others from speaking any further, but I hope that the Minister will respond on the issue of Welsh troops being based in Wales because it is one of the ways that we can ensure that there is continuity for young people who are removed from the Rhondda to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan, or who spend all their service career living in Wiltshire. When they are finished, they come back to the Rhondda—

[Mr Gray]

As Conservatives.

[Chris Bryant]

I am not going to respond to that, although the hon. Gentleman is enticing.

By that uprooting, those service personnel are not given a proper chance when they go back. The key element is ensuring that that matter is addressed not just by the MOD, but by the Welsh Assembly Government.

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[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful to the Minister for his offer to meet me to discuss the matter outside the House, which I shall certainly take up. I will not labour the point for much longer, because other hon. Members want to speak. As we move to withdrawing troops from Germany in 2015—perhaps it will be slightly later, if the MOD does not get its timetable right—it is the right time to consider scrapping or phasing out the continuity of education allowance.

[Mr Gray]

Has the hon. Gentleman considered what effect that would have on the excellent Queen Victoria school in Dunblane, which is close to his constituency and located in my home town? It is a private boarding school for the sons and daughters of other ranks in all three services.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for highlighting that school. I have specifically referred to the continuity of education allowance. As the Minister will confirm, that school and its sister school in Dover—if the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) is listening, I am sure that he will confirm this—are directly funded by the MOD. That funding does not come through the continuity of education allowance.

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[Thomas Docherty]

It is strange that Conservative Members are unwilling to draw a comparison with the private sector. In my eight years in the private sector, I lived in a number of locations. I know many people who work in the private sector—and, indeed, in the public sector—who have to move home every two or three years. It is regrettable that as a result of some of the decisions that have been made, that trend will increase. It is unusual to hear Conservative Members say that moving home and uprooting one’s family is not part and parcel of a modern career path. I accept the point about interrupting the education of those pupils who currently receive the continuity of education allowance. That is why we need to consider phasing out the scheme, so that no child who is currently in receipt of it is adversely affected.

I want to move on to an issue that I am disappointed has not made it into the Bill, and I hope that the Secretary of State and the Minister will reflect on this point in the days before the Select Committee begins its deliberations. The issue concerns ensuring proper scrutiny and a proper process for base closures. Labour Members and many Government Members, including the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), have long held the view that the correct order of decision making on military matters begins with determining our national security threats and foreign policy objectives. We should then determine the defence postures needed to meet those objectives and threats, and then make decisions on the basing, equipment and personnel levels required to meet them. After that, we should decide how best to structure the funding.

[Mr Gray]

I, too, feel strongly about this matter because RAF Lyneham in my constituency is threatened, but will the hon. Gentleman explain which aspect of the Bill has any bearing whatever on the basing considerations?

[Thomas Docherty]

Like other Opposition Members, I would like a clause on this issue to be inserted into the Bill. As the Secretary of State has said, the Bill presents an opportunity to legislate on the armed forces and that opportunity comes around about once every five years. As he said, this is the Ministry of Defence’s opportunity for a Christmas tree Bill, to use American parlance, on which to hang additional amendments and clauses that do not necessarily fall within the strict area of military discipline. That is what Opposition Members seek.

I have just outlined the usual process and it is disappointing that the coalition has turned that process on its head with the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury telling the Secretary of State for Defence, “This is your budget: this is all you are going to get—go and make it work,” rather than taking any real cognisance of the vital national security role. That is why we are in the absurd situation of having aircraft carriers with no aircraft. Even if the French get their aircraft carrier to work, we will go a decade without any fast jets because of the folly of Treasury decisions. That has led to communities facing a great deal of uncertainty regarding base closures. Having attended some of last year’s debates in the House—as did the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray)—I have heard the concerns felt by communities around the country about the Government’s process of determining base closures.

Last year, I was fortunate enough to go to the United States with the British-American Parliamentary Group and I strongly commend that scheme to hon. Members on both sides of the House who have not had the chance to get involved in it yet, because it gave us the chance to meet, among others, representatives of the Pentagon, the Department of State and the National Security Council. On that trip I learned that the US has a legislative process for base closures. With such a system, we would not get the current absurd situation in which the Secretary of State for Defence has said that base closures would be a purely strategic defence matter, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has said that they would be motivated by socio-economic matters and the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have both told us that they will be driven by financial needs. Such confusion does not arise in the US because there is a clear process and military personnel have at least two years’ notice before any base may be closed.

The base realignment and closure process, as it is officially known, was set up in the late 1980s by the Reagan Administration to act as an arbiter between the Department of Defence, congressional leaders, individual Congressmen and communities who were understandably fighting—I hope hon. Members will pardon the pun—tooth and nail for each base. Going back to the question of the hon. Member for North Wiltshire about why this issue should be part of the Armed Forces Bill, it is because such a change would require an Act of Parliament in the same way that it required an act of Congress in the US. The BRAC process begins with a threat assessment.

[Mr Gray]

I am sorry to come back to this issue, but as the hon. Gentleman has mentioned me, perhaps it is reasonable for me to do so. The long title of the Bill shows that it deals with very specific issues to do with discipline, civilian courts, the Naval Medical Compassionate Fund Act 1915 and a number of other matters, but under none of the headings in the long title could the basing debate be considered. If it is in order to discuss this issue, I feel a lengthy speech on RAF Lyneham coming up.

[Thomas Docherty]

The hon. Gentleman is an excellent orator so we will all look forward to his speech, which I am sure will not feel lengthy to anyone. We are guided by the Clerks and the advice that we have received is that it will be entirely appropriate for us to table additional clauses in Committee. I am sure that the Clerks will advise hon. Members on the process for amending the long title of the Bill if that is necessary and practical.

I am conscious that other hon. Members wish to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I shall press on. The independent commission in the US is appointed by the President in consultation with members on both sides of the congressional aisle—I understand that there are two nominations from the Democrats and two from the Republicans and that they are traditionally former service chiefs. The commission carries out a very transparent process in which it is given a list of bases and works according to the criteria set out in law. The highest criterion is defence—I am sure that Members on both sides would agree that that is appropriate—but the commission is allowed to take into account, as a secondary consideration, factors such as the economic impact of closure on local communities. Regional public meetings are held to give the public an opportunity to give their input into the process. When the commission has completed its work, it forwards its recommendations to the President who can accept the proposal as a whole or simply reject it. If the President accepts the proposal, it is forwarded to Congress, which then has a debate and what is called a straight up-and-down vote on the list in its entirety. That is important because it prevents cherry-picking and means that the strategic objective of securing the best base system for the nation is not lost.

I conclude by asking the Minister to answer two questions in his response. First, he will be aware that many of the functions of supporting veterans fall on the devolved Administrations. What discussions between the devolved Governments and the Ministry of Defence have taken place and will take place as the Bill goes forward on how to ensure that there is no difference of interpretation or implementation between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? Secondly, will he clarify whether, given the comments of the hon. Member for North Wiltshire and others, it is technically in order for Members to seek to add new clauses in Committee, without prejudicing what the MOD’s thinking on that matter might be?

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[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell), as is his wont, added considerably to what has been a long and interesting debate so far this evening, predominantly on clause 2 and the military covenant. By reference to Colchester, the hon. Gentleman made a useful contribution to the debate.

Although the rest of the Bill is extremely important and our armed services would not exist without it, there are others much better qualified than I who will no doubt address the other parts of the Bill later in the debate and in Committee. Therefore I, too, will focus most of my attention on the military covenant.

It is a rather frightening and humbling experience in this place to follow speakers who know so much more about the subject than oneself. In particular, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) and his colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster), both of whom know more about the military covenant than most other Members in the Chamber today will ever find out. I pay tribute to their contributions.

I will not seek to equal that or compete with it. I shall focus on the concept of the covenant, why it is there, what it does, and in particular, what the Bill does to strengthen it. The covenant has, of course, existed for many years. I speak from two personal areas of experience. The first is as chairman of the all-party group on the armed forces. Several of my co-chairmen and vice-chairmen are present in the Chamber this evening. It is a humbling experience to see each of the brigades returning from Afghanistan marching through Carriage Gates, arriving at the east door of Westminster Hall and going down to the Terrace for a reception.

At the most recent event, when 4 Mechanised Brigade arrived, I was particularly struck by one soldier wearing his combat kit cut off where his boxer shorts would be. It was only afterwards that I discovered the reason. He was marching in the column. He was not a casualty. The reason for that rather unusual form of military dress was that the third degree burns to his legs were so severe that he was unable to take even the light cotton of desert combats against the skin. None the less, he was determined to march in with the rest of them. I pay tribute to such people. Very few of those in the Chamber tonight could compete with that level of true heroism.

I say the same thing about many of the people whom I meet week by week and day by day in the high street of Wootton Bassett. Large numbers of the regiments and the fallen soldiers’ families come to our events in Wootton Bassett, which are held twice a week. The heroism that they show and the bravery and pride that the families show about their close relative who has been killed in Afghanistan is a humbling experience.

With that as background, we have to think about what we as a nation and as a Parliament are doing with regard to our armed services. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire asked whether the military covenant was about improving the lot of soldiers by comparison with other citizens, or whether it was about removing the disadvantage suffered by soldiers. If somebody has to serve under the most appalling privations, as they do in Afghanistan and elsewhere; if somebody has to close the Queen’s enemy, risk being killed by them or, even worse, have to kill them, not something that any of us would want to do; if somebody has to risk the most appalling injuries, to which some of those whom we have seen visit Parliament over the years stand tribute; and if somebody has to suffer as our soldiers suffer, we as a nation owe them more than we owe other public servants.

Of course, public servants such as firemen and all sorts of people do useful things, but, when we require a person by his job to do the things that we require our soldiers to do, we owe them more than we owe any other public servant. So, with the military covenant, we ought to seek not just to resolve the disadvantages that our soldiers face, but to add to the covenant the idea of improved citizenship, as I think my hon. Friend called it.

A number of us in the Chamber have been out to Afghanistan, and I was there not so long ago with the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell). When one says to soldiers and, come to that, sailors and airmen, “What sort of things are you worried about? What are your problems here on the very front line? Are you worried about the kit?”, the answer by and large is, “No, we are not. The kit that we are issued with now is second to none in the world.” When one asks, “Are you worried about the Taliban, being shot at, being deployed, being hungry, being cold or the desert conditions?”, one finds that they are not concerned about that at all. Those of us who come to this place and say that somehow or other our soldiers are worried about that sort of thing are wrong. When one meets someone on the very front line and asks, “What is it you are most worried about in your service career?”, they say, “I am worried about the family back at home, the housing, my pay and conditions and what I am going to do after I have left the Army.” They are not worried about the ordinary, run-of-the-mill occupation of being a soldier, because they signed up. They recognise the dangers of being shot at, killed, serving in awful conditions and all those things. What they do not recognise are the appalling consequences for their marriages, families and lives after they have left the services.

Earlier in the debate, there was a rather sterile, academic and statistical discussion of whether a disproportionate number of soldiers find themselves imprisoned or suffer from drug or drink abuse after they have left the services. Those people do suffer after they come back, however, and it is thanks to us sending them there—our decision in this place. We decide to send them to Afghanistan. They face all those privations, they come back and many experience prison or mental, drug or alcohol problems thereafter, and we have to bear responsibility for that and put it right.

The military covenant aspect of the Bill is in some ways the most important part, although all the legislation has much to recommend it. With that as a background, it is important that we first thank and congratulate the Government on their commitment to recognise the military covenant and to put it into law. Secondly, we should very much recognise that they have taken some steps to do so, and that in the Bill we have clause 2, because in the military covenant’s long history it has never once been recognised in law.

Without being difficult, however, I have a couple of questions for the Government on which Ministers might choose to brood before they come to reply. First, I have some difficulties with the constitutional aspect of taking something that should be a ministerial or political duty and trying to put it into law. Law is something for which there is a sanction if it is not adhered to, so I wonder what would happen if some subsequent Government—I am sure not this one—20 years from now failed to fulfil the covenant. What would be the sanction against the Secretary of State? Would he come before the House and get ticked off? Would he go to prison, pay a fine or lose his job? What would be the sanction inherent in the Secretary of State failing to perform under clause 2? The same applies to a number of Bills that we passed before the general election on climate change and child poverty. They are not capable of sanction, and I slightly wonder whether there is a constitutional difficulty with putting the covenant in the Bill as it has been. In other words, should it not be a matter about which Ministers are overwhelmingly concerned, whether or not it is written into law? If they were not, they would lose power at a subsequent general election, so there is quite an interesting constitutional conundrum in the Bill.

[Dan Byles]

Does my hon. Friend also agree that there is a danger regarding who decides whether the law has been broken? Will the matter go before the courts? Will we see judicial intervention on the matter of whether the Secretary of State for Defence has broken the military covenant?

[Mr Gray]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting and important point—exactly what I was driving at. Who decides whether the provisions of the clause have been achieved in years to come?

That leads to me to the second part of my question. My party’s manifesto went to great lengths to say how important the covenant was and how we as a party in government would put it into law. We talked about a broad spectrum of things in the run-up to the general election, but before us we have a relatively modest clause, simply saying that the Secretary of State will bring forward a report once a year. He will draft it and say what is in it, although it will be about education, housing and health care and in such other fields as the Secretary of State may determine. So, he will sit down, write a little essay about all the things that he has done to achieve the military covenant and bring it before the House.

We do not know from the Bill whether there will be an oral statement, thereby allowing hon. Members to question him, a written statement or a statement to the Defence Committee, thereby enabling us to scrutinise it carefully. What form will the statement take, and what powers will the House have to hold the Secretary of State’s feet to the fire? Is it possible to imagine a situation in which he comes to the House and in his report says, “I am extremely sorry. This year we have broken the military covenant in a great many ways and done terribly the wrong thing by our armed forces”? Of course not. The Secretary of State will come along every year with his statement and say, “Look what marvellous things we have done with regard to the covenant,” and hope not to be too carefully cross-examined over it.

Given how strongly I feel about the importance of the military covenant, and given that I feel we owe it to our soldiers, sailors and airmen, whom we ask to do such awful things that we ourselves would never consider doing, I slightly question—I do not mean to be disloyal—whether the clause achieves what the coalition Government set out to achieve. Is it actually a rather sad little clause? Could it be strengthened? When the Minister responds to the debate, I would like to know in particular how the Government see it operating. Will it be a mechanism by which this House holds the Government to account? Will it enable us to hold the Minister’s feet to the fire and say, “Secretary of State, you’re not living up to the military covenant. You’ve broken it”? Or is it just going to be a little PR exercise, enabling successive Secretaries of State to say, “Haven’t we done well by way of the military covenant?” If it is, it will be not worth the paper it is written on.

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[Oliver Colvile]

I most certainly join the hon. Lady in that, and I thank her for her intervention—I must say that I have some trepidation when Members decide to intervene on me, for obvious reasons.

The King’s Centre found that nearly 5% of Iraq veterans display symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. It believes, having projected its statistics on to the 180,000 servicemen and women who have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, that as many as 48,000 veterans could suffer from some form of mental health problem, and that 9,000 could potentially develop PTSD.

Last October, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced that the Government would implement the recommendations of the excellent “Fighting Fit” report written by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), who sadly is not in his place at the moment. I pay tribute to him for the hard work that he undertook. The report contains 13 action points, including funding for an additional 30 mental health nurses and a dedicated 24-hour helpline for veterans.

The 2011 to 2015 Ministry of Defence business plan outlines a number of deadlines, including for drawing up a detailed plan to implement the recommendations of my hon. Friend’s report. I understand that that plan was completed in December. I would be grateful if my right hon. Friend the Minister could confirm when and if it will be published and put into the public domain. I would be grateful also if he could explain why the MOD’s structural reform plan monthly implementation update is still not complete, despite the deadline having been in November. I am happy for him to write to me about that, so I am not asking for a result this evening. Perhaps he could tell me when the production of the update might be achieved.

I know that there is a March deadline in the MOD’s business plan for the introduction of 30 mental health nurses, and it would be helpful if we could be told whether that is still on track and what measures the Government are undertaking to deliver greater co-ordination between the charitable sector, Plymouth city council and other organisations.

[Mr Gray]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we must know not only when the Government are going to implement the recommendations in the excellent report by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) but whether that implementation will be fully funded? There is precious little purpose in having the report in the first place if its 13 recommendations are not fully funded. I hope that the Minister will let us know whether those recommendations will be funded to the letter.

[Oliver Colvile]

That is a very fair point.

Plymouth is proud of its Royal Navy, Royal Marines and Army heritage. It has a large number of veterans—I suspect, although I have no proof, that it has one of the largest numbers in the south-west. It is a wonderful place to which to retire, where people can play golf and sail, and there seem to be an awful lot of people there who have been in the services. I understand that Combat Stress now has a regional welfare officer working in Sir Francis Drake’s home city, and I look forward to meeting the welfare officer in the near future.

All of us in Plymouth want to play a significant part in delivering the reforms that the Bill heralds. I would welcome a chance to meet Ministers to discuss how we might work with our friends in the Department of Health, the city council, the Royal British Legion, Combat Stress and other charitable organisations to help the Government implement the “Fighting Fit” agenda in our historic part of the south-west. Failure to get the matter right in that city, which I am proud to represent, could have a severe impact on our local services, so I firmly believe that it needs to be action stations today.

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[Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke).

We have made it clear that Labour will support the Bill, not least because it is a continuation of key reforms introduced by the previous Government. The Armed Forces Act 2006 resulted in the biggest overhaul of the system of military law for 50 years. It consolidated and modernised all the previous service discipline Acts and replaced them with a single system of service law applicable to all service personnel wherever they are based in the world. The Act introduced a fair, modern system of criminal justice to the armed forces while recognising the special circumstances, risks, dangers and demands that we place on service personnel.

The Bill will build on the 2006 Act and introduce other important reforms, including measures to increase the powers of the service police and provisions to strengthen their structural independence. The Bill will ensure that the service police disciplinary systems are consistent with the European convention on human rights; introduce the service sexual offences prevention orders to protect members of the service community outside the UK; strengthen the independence and impartiality of service complaints and procedures; and update regulations protecting prisoners of war detained by UK forces. We on the Labour Benches welcome those changes.

The reforms that we introduced in the 2006 Act, which will be continued and updated through this Bill, were part of a wider body of work by the previous Government not just to improve the system of law governing the armed forces, but to show our wider commitment to the brave servicemen and women in recognition of the unique contribution they make on our behalf. We have heard many excellent speeches in which numerous Members have praised our armed forces. They are right to do so, and I will add my own tribute, particularly to those serving in Afghanistan right now. We all owe a huge debt of gratitude to our soldiers, sailors, and airmen and women who do extremely dangerous and difficult work in conflict zones all over the globe. They are a generation who have seen active service in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, working hard to protect us and make our world a safer place.

We must not forget those who have gone before, those who have been injured and those who have lost their lives—veterans of conflicts going right back to world war two—who fought to secure the freedom that we enjoy today; and we must not forget the families of our armed forces and veterans. It places great strain on loved ones when husbands and wives, mothers and fathers and sons and daughters spend many months at a time away from home. Service families make huge sacrifices to support those on the front line, and we owe them just as big a debt of gratitude as we do those in combat. We owe it to them to help them address the unique challenges they face as the families of servicemen and women. We also heard today about the important role of reservists and cadets from my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and other hon. Members, some of whom are reservists themselves.

The previous Labour Government were the first to deliver a cross-government approach to forces welfare. The service personnel Command Paper, published in summer 2008, set out improved access to housing schemes and health care, free access to further and higher education for service leavers with six years’ service, and extended travel concessions for veterans and those seriously injured. We guaranteed fair pay for all our forces—that included the first ever tax-free bonus for those on operations abroad—while strengthening our support for their welfare. We invested hundreds of millions of pounds to reverse a legacy of decades of neglect in forces accommodation. The level of homelessness among service leavers was sharply reduced and the law was changed to give them better access to social housing. We also introduced Armed Forces day and veterans badges to make sure that the achievements and contributions of all our armed forces heroes are properly recognised.

Labour’s 2010 manifesto proposed enshrining in law the rights of forces, their families and veterans in an armed forces charter, which my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) mentioned. I am delighted that this Government have agreed on the need to improve the military covenant by guaranteeing rights in law, although we still await specific plans to make that a reality.

We heard much about rebuilding the military covenant, including in considered contributions from the hon. Members for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti), for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) and for Dover (Charlie Elphicke). As the Opposition, we have made it clear that we will support the Government on measures to show further our commitment and duty of care to our armed forces. However, as the shadow Secretary of State set out, we have some important questions for the Government on their position on the military covenant.

The Bill contains a specific proposal that the Secretary of State will publish an annual report on the Government’s progress on the military covenant. We have heard discussion of the external reference group, which the previous Government established to chart the progress made by Departments in delivering the commitments made to our armed forces in the service personnel Command Paper. The ERG includes representatives from service charities and service families federations, and provides an unbiased and independent progress report. I am aware that informal assurances have been given that the group will be consulted, but that is quite different from the ERG producing its own report. Unfortunately, MOD Ministers were accused in newspaper reports yesterday of politicising the military covenant. That may not be the intention of the Government, but we are very concerned that the important independent scrutiny in the form of a progress report by the ERG is being removed. That concern was raised by the shadow Secretary of State, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) and by some on the Government Back Benches, including the hon. Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster). The Royal British Legion has called for an assurance to be given that the ERG will be retained and will continue to produce its own annual report. As such, I urge the Government to re-examine the matter to ensure that both Parliament and the public have an objective view on the Government’s progress or otherwise. If that does not happen, the independent expert scrutiny provided by the group may well, unfortunately, be lost.

[Mr Gray]

Excellent as the external reference group is, does the hon. Lady agree that it has one major defect, which is that it is not answerable to this House? The Bill’s proposal strengthens that area considerably by saying that Ministers must come here to explain to us what they have done on the military covenant. That does not happen with the existing report.

[Gemma Doyle]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. As we have said, we welcome the fact that such a debate will take place in this House. However, as I have also said, we are in danger of losing the independent scrutiny that the ERG provides and we do not want that to happen.

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[Gemma Doyle]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but I am afraid that neither was it built on the cheap. We are awaiting a bit more action from the Government.

Let us take as an example the Government’s plans to link public sector pension rises to CPI rather than RPI inflation, which my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State mentioned, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East. They explained that that will impact disproportionately on members of the armed forces, who draw down their pension much earlier than other public sector workers. Servicemen and women, some of whom have suffered horrendous injuries in battle, could see the value of their pensions reduced by hundreds of thousands of pounds. War widows will be affected likewise. The change is fundamentally unfair to the very people who give their service to defend our way of life, and that is why we have suggested an alternative and potentially fairer approach.

The Government have also been accused of a betrayal by forces families following their decision to scrap major reforms to the system of inquests into military deaths. The changes that the previous Government legislated to introduce and that were due to be implemented imminently were supported by service charities and families. The Coroners and Justice Act 2009 would have delivered a better inquest service and ensured that the coroner undertaking military inquests had the training necessary to conduct an effective investigation. It would also have created a system of appeals against coroner’s decisions.

Anyone who has lost a loved one has the right to know and understand the full circumstances surrounding their relative’s death. Families need to have confidence in the inquest system and these changes would have made a huge difference. By scrapping the chief coroner and abandoning the reforms that families want, the coalition has made a real error. In Committee on the Public Bodies Bill in the other place, their lordships voted to save the office of the chief coroner by a substantial majority. I hope that the Government will reconsider their view on this matter.

[Mr Gray]

The coroner has been mentioned several times this evening. Will the hon. Lady take this opportunity to say that the coroner in Oxfordshire in days gone by and, more particularly, David Masters, the excellent coroner in Wiltshire, have done a superb job of running inquests over the past few years? Leaving aside the debate on the chief coroner that she has described, the system at the moment works rather well.

[Gemma Doyle]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. I would certainly agree that we want that excellence to be available throughout the United Kingdom, which is why we support these reforms.

These issues seriously undermine the covenant as well as the Government’s claims that they are seeking to rebuild it. It is no wonder that the chairman of the Forces Pension Society said:

“I have never seen a Government erode the morale of the armed forces so quickly.”

For the sake of morale in the armed forces and for the sake of our individual servicemen and women and their families, I sincerely hope that the Government will rethink their actions.

The debate has given us an opportunity to discuss the finer points of this important Bill, which builds on the work done by the previous Government in overhauling many procedures in the armed forces, particularly in relation to military justice and discipline. The Bill will ensure that the armed forces can perform more effectively, and it will make the lives of our service personnel safer. The debate has also given us the opportunity to contrast the Government’s rhetoric on the military covenant with their record of action. They have been found wanting, and they must reconsider their approach to the covenant.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

There was indeed no announcement of any short-term milestone on the way to 2015. In answer to the question of whether British troops might be able to come home in 2011 and reduce their number, the Prime Minister said that that was dependent on conditions on the ground, which is entirely consistent with the Government’s position in the run-up to 2015.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The numbers of Afghan forces—some 250,000 all told—are encouraging. That is a major step in the right direction, but does the Secretary of State agree that their capabilities and abilities matter more than just the numbers? What assessment has he made of the development—rapid or otherwise—of those capabilities?

[Dr Fox]

The capabilities speak for themselves. There have been enormous leaps in what the Afghan forces can do. The Afghan national army has conducted itself honourably and with great credit in terms of its technical ability, not least in Kandahar, and the Afghan national police are now moving ahead, for two reasons. First, the police were given equal pay status with the ANA, and secondly, along with that, literacy training led to a big increase in the quality of those joining. That is a major step forward from where we were in recent years.

Defence Spending (Wales)

James Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend include cancellation of the north Wales prison on that list?

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. Before the hon. Lady answers, I remind hon. Members that we are debating defence spending in Wales. It is not in order to discuss other projects that may or may not have been cut.

[Mrs James]

I thank my hon. Friend—and I include the north Wales prison on my list.

We are already witnessing the impact of the Government’s dithering, delay and abandonment. Last week, business confidence in Wales dropped severely from 22.4 points last quarter to 6.3 points. Scrapping the St Athan project was mentioned explicitly as a “significant dampener on confidence”. That is hugely worrying, and demonstrates the huge risk in the coalition’s assumption that the private sector will provide jobs for those in the public sector who become unemployed. For Wales, the stakes are even higher. Public investment plays a greater role in our economy than in England, and our business sector is much more fragile. As our Labour First Minister in Wales, Carwyn Jones, has said, the spending review is clearly regressive. The human and social impact could be both devastating and wasteful, and the real cost could be with us for generations. It further demonstrates how the Government are pursuing cuts with a scale, scope and speed that risk Welsh jobs, Welsh growth and Welsh recovery, and puts the squeeze on the most vulnerable in our society.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that a strategic investment of the magnitude that we are talking about would have a major multiplier effect on inward investment in Wales? I am talking about not just visitors and tourism, but the clusters of aero-industry, and encouraging early rail electrification, which has been delayed. Such measures work together in harmony for Wales, and without them the opposite applies.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sure that the hon. Lady will not allow herself to stray when responding to that intervention.

[Mrs James]

Success breeds success, and if the scheme had gone ahead, we could be looking forward to a much brighter and more successful future. Wales still has a lot to offer British troops serving in the UK and overseas. Increasing the defence footprint in Wales will strengthen the Union and local communities. The benefits are wide and invaluable, but the matter is not being addressed by the coalition.

When asked about the equitable distribution of defence spending across the UK, the Defence Secretary stated:

“When I meet troops in Afghanistan, they do not ask one another whether they came from Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh or London. They are forces under the Crown and proud of it.”—[Official Report, 5 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 18.]

And rightly so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. A large number of people are trying to catch my eye. I intend to call the Front-Bench speakers at 10.40 am, and I appeal to all those who wish to contribute to do so as briefly as they reasonably can.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Glen]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Obviously, not being the Minister, I do not have the ability to make those decisions. I am just flagging up the wider defence interests that are at play. A serious examination is needed of what is right for UK defence interests as a whole and the efficient delivery of tri-service support. I am making the case for that to be as broad as possible and for the right decision to be made for the UK.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

I call Mr Jonathan Edwards.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

Drivel.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Mr Robathan]

It is not drivel. My hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) knows that the previous Labour Government were planning cuts across the board, throughout Government spending, of 20%. Hearing people defending such matters does not go down well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Ruane]

What could be more important to a Member than defending a £20 billion investment in their own constituency?

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. Before the hon. Gentleman answers, let me say that it is a long tradition of the House that we do not discuss Members who are not present in the Chamber unless we have given them notice that we intend to do so. This particular discussion is not necessarily central to our debate on defence spending in Wales, and I suggest that the hon. Gentleman returns to the main topic under discussion.

[Simon Hart]

Absolutely, Mr Gray. I apologise for coming—unnecessarily, as it turns out—to the defence of my colleague.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. A further seven or eight hon. Members are trying to catch my eye. According to my elementary arithmetic, that means that they will have three or four minutes apiece. It would be courteous if hon. Members could keep the length of their contributions down to something of that order.

--- Later in debate ---

[Oliver Colvile]

I wrote, during the run up to the strategic defence and security review, my own submission, in which I said that we certainly needed to re-order our priorities, and that defence was No. 1 of the two issues that I thought were important, along with long-term care for the elderly, which I still think is a very important issue for us to deal with. However, we are where we are. None of us came into the House to vote to cut defence expenditure. I for one will continue to campaign to ensure that my constituency stays firmly up in its position alongside other such places.

Before I go any further I pay tribute to the Welsh servicemen who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, and those who have served in the Falklands, along with many Royal Marines from my constituency; no one should underplay the contribution they made.

Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport has, in the past 10 years, had similar concerns about what would happen to it to those outlined by hon. Members. Frigates were potentially to be moved to Portsmouth—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. That is not about Wales.

[Oliver Colvile]

If I may say so, Mr Gray, there is a similarity with some of the issues that affect Wales.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. Similarity is not enough. The debate must be about defence spending in Wales, and not about Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, close as it is to the hon. Gentleman’s heart.

[Oliver Colvile]

The issue of where in the United Kingdom public expenditure will go must be taken as a whole.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

The ultimate impact, of course, will depend on the future of Lossiemouth, and no decision has yet been taken. However, I reiterate what I said to the hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr Hamilton): my job as Secretary of State, and the job of Ministers, is to ensure that our basing makes sound military sense. If there are other implications—regional implications or economic and employment implications—that go wider than the Ministry of Defence, that has to be taken into account by Her Majesty’s Government as a whole.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The Secretary of State and I are both Scots, and of course we would like the troops to return to Scotland, but does he not agree that RAF Lyneham has a stronger case than anywhere in Scotland?

[Dr Fox]

My hon. Friend can take that as the second submission to the basing review. One of the general points that I would make to him is that when the Army comes back from Germany, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) mentioned, there will be considerable long-term savings to be made, but we will need to have accommodation, to bear in mind bases that currently have accommodation and to assess what the cost would be of upgrading that accommodation to ensure that those bases could be utilised.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

James Gray Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Arbuthnot]

It would be quite wrong of me to fail to pay tribute to the RAF. It achieves extraordinary things with a very small force—they are few in number. The same can, of course, be said of our Royal Navy and Army. I certainly share in the hon. Gentleman’s tribute to the RAF; it is well deserved.

As I said, the timetable for this review has been about five months. Most of the work has already been completed, about six weeks before the issue of the review. Even as I stand here, it is being finalised by the Treasury and the NSC. That means that the review has taken much less than half the time of the defence review of 1997-98, even though it is arguably even more important than that earlier review. Also, the current review should be based on an identification of the UK’s defence and security needs and what the threats are to us as a country and our interests, but it appears that it will end up being driven by the need for financial cuts and by little else.

The haste with which the review is being pursued has had some obvious consequences. Some 40 or so work streams fed into it, which is too few, and their analyses and costings cannot be as robust as they otherwise might have been, which threatens to weaken the review’s conclusions, possibly seriously.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

Am I right in thinking that somewhere in the report, the Committee comments on the unfortunate consequences that might arise if defence estates were closed down because of the review without proper thought being given to the effects on the local economy and community, such as those that would occur if RAF Lyneham in my constituency were closed?

[Mr Arbuthnot]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct to say that the Committee comments in its report on the need for the MOD to work out with other Departments the consequences of changes to the defence estates. We did not mention the words “RAF Lyneham”, but had we thought of him, I am sure we would have.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Harvey]

The Government—the Treasury in particular, but all Departments—will take seriously the economic consequences of all the decisions that are taken in the comprehensive spending review. If there are consequences that need to be addressed, every possible effort will be made to put in place remedial measures. How precisely the Government Departments that are responsible for such measures will approach the matter will be explained in due course. It is not predominantly an issue for the Ministry of Defence. All the decisions that are made across all Departments will have consequences, and the Government as a whole will do their utmost to address those consequences.

[Mr Gray]

The Minister will know that I am very concerned about Lyneham. While I, of course, accept what he says and understand that Departments are answerable for their decisions, does he accept that the communities that live around bases have given their wholehearted support to their base, so it is only reasonable that the Ministry of Defence—not other Departments—should be ready to say what it believes the economic consequences of a base closure will be and what it will do to support the communities thereafter?

[Nick Harvey]

My hon. Friend is allowing himself to go into the realms of speculation. We will have to await the decisions. He has known what is in the pipeline for RAF Lyneham for some time and of course any decisions that are taken will have economic consequences. My hon. Friend must keep his powder dry and see what exactly is decided about Lyneham, as other hon. Members will have to do about those bases or industrial issues that they hold most dear. Hon. Members have an opportunity to make these points today. We will listen; we will take them into account. However, despite the speculation in newspapers or elsewhere, it would be absurd for a Minister part way through a process to enter into some sort of running commentary on every twist or turn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

In congratulating the Backbench Business Committee on choosing this extremely important topic for debate, I would say very gently to the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) that I do not view it as an important occasion for party political knockabout, or as an occasion to talk up one of the regions or nations of Great Britain in the way he did. The nature of the debate was much better typified by the excellent speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, who approached criticism of how the SDSR is being handled in the most sensible, intelligent and balanced way. That is what we ought to be doing.

As chairman of the all-party group on the armed services, it would be wrong if I did anything other than start by paying the most wholehearted tribute to the men and women of our services who are doing such fantastic jobs in Afghanistan. There are two types of occasion, both very important in my life, on which I would not be able to look people in the eye, if I felt that the SDSR was doing anything other than its best for our armed services. The first are the regular occasions on the high street of Wootton Bassett, where the families of the fallen servicemen stand in silent tribute alongside the townsfolk. If I thought I could not look them in the eye and say, “The House of Commons and the Government are doing their best for our people in Afghanistan,” I would not be doing my job.

Equally, when, as chairman of the all-party group, I welcome back each brigade returning from Afghanistan—the next is 4th Mechanised Brigade, which is coming to the House of Commons on 23 November—it is important that we are able to say to those people, “We here have done our best to enable you to do your job.” And I hope that is the underlying principle behind the entire SDSR.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I hope that you will forgive me if I leave behind the more broad and clever discussions about the SDSR, how the foreign policy baseline is being considered, and how the whole strategic consideration is taken forward. Cleverer people than I will be advancing those arguments today, so in the short time available to me, I intend to leave those to them and instead focus on one extremely important aspect of the SDSR—the strategic air transport fleet and where it is based. Hon. Members know that I have a personal interest in these matters, although I do not intend to make this an entirely constituency-based contribution. I will seek to advance the argument that proper consideration of our strategic transport fleet is a vital, underlying principle behind the entire SDSR.

We have a fairly major crisis on our hands. The C-130K fleet, which has done such a fantastic job over many years—50 years altogether, I think—is nearing the end of its life. But so too, as I understand it, is the C-130J fleet. Those new Hercules were brought in very recently, but the tremendous battering they have had in Afghanistan means that many of them are nearing the end of their economic lives—in other words, their maintenance may well cost more than renewing them.

Equally, we are faced with the dreadful procurement shambles surrounding the A400M. We do not know when that plane will finally come into service, and we do not even know whether it is the right plane. It probably is—we are probably moving towards accepting the A400M as the right way forward—although many in the RAF would have preferred further C-130Ks and C-17s. However, the procurement and bringing into service of the A400Ms have been beyond words a shambles, and we do not quite know when they will be in service.

Just this morning, we saw a report from the Public Accounts Committee saying that the procurement process for the fleet of 14 new AirTankers that we are buying is equally shambolic. We do not know what the cost will be and we do not know how the planes will operate, and if we do not do something about it pretty quickly, we will have a real problem on our hands. And of course the VC10s and the Tridents are nearing the end of their useful lives too. We also have a fairly major crisis on our hands with regards to the air bridge to Afghanistan and all our air transport requirements, so I hope that the SDSR will pay real attention to that. I am sure that it will. It seems to me that a combined fleet of C17s and new Hercules C-130Js has an awful lot to recommend itself, but it might well be that we are too far down the track we are on.

Without boring the House, I will focus briefly on how the previous Government concluded that we should close RAF Lyneham. We have two air transport bases: one is RAF Lyneham and the second is RAF Brize Norton, but the previous Government proposed that we close RAF Lyneham and put all our air transport assets—both cargo and personnel—into RAF Brize Norton, reducing from three to one the number of runways we have, over-cramming RAF Brize Norton and leading to all kinds of complications and a vast capital investment in that base.

A large amount of money has already been spent on RAF Brize Norton, and I am not a good enough accountant to say whether so much capital has been spent already that it is impossible to reverse that decision, but I hope that it is not. Some of the accounting I have seen with regard to the move is questionable to say the least, and pouring good money after bad is not necessarily the right thing to do. I hope, therefore, that the SDSR will re-examine the bringing together of all our transport assets at Brize Norton, from a strategic and tactical standpoint, from my own constituency standpoint and from a financial standpoint. I presented to the last Government a dossier of thoughts on these matters, which I will ensure that the MOD has before the end of the consultation period next Friday. I hope it will make it a central part of the considerations on the SDSR.

With regard to my own constituency, if I am not successful in persuading the SDSR to reconsider the closure of RAF Lyneham for the RAF, I would like it to consider the base as a suitable place to bring back some of our 25,000 soldiers who we hear will be returning from Germany. It is close to Salisbury Plain and to all sorts of other military assets across Wiltshire. It is a secure base, has plenty of space, accommodation and buildings, and its runways will always be there, so it would be an ideal place for quick deployment of the Army. And the local community across Wiltshire, which would be so badly affected if the base is closed entirely, would welcome the Army there.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

I understand why the hon. Gentleman is making the case he is making, but is he aware that there would be a considerable cost to the Government in bringing the troops back from Germany in that we would have to pay the German Government considerable sums in order for them to take back some of those capital assets?

[Mr Gray]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. There would be a large cost in bringing our troops back from Germany, not least in providing accommodation for them when they got back here. Lyneham probably does not have big enough barracks, so there would have to be some capital investment. None the less, looked at over a longer period, I would hope that our presence in Germany would no longer be required. I know that the coalition has expressed its desire to bring our troops home from Germany, but the hon. Lady is right to say that there would be an economic consequence of doing so.

The base at Lyneham would be ideal for many Army requirements—one thinks in particular of the Royal Logistic Corps, which has two bases, one of which is in my constituency, at Hullavington, with the other at South Cerney. Bringing some of the Royal Logistic Corps people together in one place at Lyneham would be sensible, although there are a variety of other Army requirements for which Lyneham would seem to be ideally suited.

I would like to make one final plea to the Minister. If the RAF indeed leaves Lyneham, which we hope will not be the case, and if a satisfactory Army use for the base cannot be found, there are plenty of other things it could be used for. I have seen military bases vacated before—RAF Wroughton, under the previous Conservative Government, is one example that springs immediately to mind, as is Corsham in my constituency. What tends to happen is that Defence Estates sits on the vacated base and nothing happens for many years. People cannot make up their minds what will happen next, the economy of the area spirals downwards, vandals move into the base, nothing happens, and there are terrible consequences for the local area.

If my pleas to keep the RAF at Lyneham or to bring the Army in are not successful, will the Minister please guarantee to do one thing—something that I am glad to say my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister undertook to do in responding to me at Prime Minister’s questions some time ago? Will the Minister pull out all the stops to ensure that the appalling consequences for my constituency that would result will be minimised by the MOD and other Departments, and that Defence Estates will take steps to move out of the base as swiftly as possible, hand it over to local industry—or perhaps to low-cost local housing or other useful local purposes—and engage with the county council, myself and others to ensure that we create something in Lyneham that is economically and environmentally better for the area? We need something that we can look at and say, “We’re sorry that the RAF had to leave Lyneham after so many years of such distinguished service to the nation; none the less, that had to happen under the SDSR. What we now have at the vacated based at Lyneham is better than what we had before.”

Finally in the context of my constituency, let me say two things. First, I have seen the airmen and women from RAF Lyneham serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a variety of other places around the world. I know them and their planes well, and there is no finer group of people than the C-130J and C-130K pilots, engineers and others. The second group of people to whom I should like to pay tribute are the good people of Wootton Bassett. Tribute has been paid to them in the House before, but they make a vast contribution to the defence of this realm and to raising appreciation of our armed services. Week by week and in all weathers, they turn out and stand in the High street. They seek no thanks and no honour, but my goodness me, what a fantastic job they do, as they stand in proxy for all of us, in paying tribute to our fallen heroes.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robathan]

May I first, unusually, pay tribute to the previous Administration? The Army recovery capability represents a really positive, sensible move forward. They committed resources to it, and we shall continue to do so. Yes, at the moment, we are definitely on track for the opening times. I visited the current centre at the Erskine homes in Edinburgh three weeks ago and saw the work that has been going on there. That is improving the whole time. I should say that this is a new development, and things will evolve as we move forward.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

One of the centres will be in Bulford and Tidworth, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), and it will open in 2012. Does the Minister agree that, as well as looking after the injured servicemen, there are two elements that we must not lose sight of? The first is to look after their families, who often suffer greatly. The second is to find really practical ways of giving these people jobs and putting them in touch with employers, so that they can be employed for many years to come.

[Mr Robathan]

Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend. Families play a hugely important role in that regard. Indeed, I regularly meet members of the families federations of the Army and the other forces, and I can assure him that they let me know their views in no uncertain terms. Regarding his second point, the Army recovery capability is working on ensuring that, whatever the future of the personnel it is treating, they have a future either in the armed forces or in civilian life.