Veterans Strategy

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

I am building up to that but, to respond directly, it is important to share an understanding of what we are doing. I had the pleasure of attending the Invictus games in Sydney, which is such an illustration of how those who are injured, whether mentally or physically, find a new chapter. They are unconquered. They are moving forward with their lives successfully.

At the same time, in the margins of those events, we brought together all the Veterans Ministers of the “Five Eyes” community to share knowledge. The American team presented studies on suicide prevention, on blast injury and on mental health. It is interesting to see how we can compare notes, pick up ideas and share best practice, which is so important. Indeed, I was pleased to sign a memorandum of understanding to make sure that we share our knowledge and provide the best possible support for our veterans.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

We should put on the record in Hansard our thanks to Prince Harry for ensuring that the Invictus games have become a reality. As happens all too often, the recognition of his initiative has perhaps been lost, and it would be good for the House to reflect that the Invictus games started through his efforts, his energy and his interest.

[Mr Ellwood]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The whole House, indeed the nation, is indebted to the efforts of Prince Harry, who once again was able to come to the games, which are his creation. The Invictus Games Foundation has now got into a steady drumbeat of bringing together people from across the world every second year, and I am pleased to say that we will now hold a domestic event in the interim years, which again is all about bringing together and supporting those, whether they are in the armed forces or are veterans, who need to be given support to move forward. This has been hugely successful.

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[Mr Ellwood]

My right hon. Friend makes such a valid point, and it is not just Bill, but Belinda and everybody else. It applies not only to those in uniform but to the armed forces fraternity as a whole—it is the families as well. They may be the first people to pick up on the fact that something is not quite right. In my time, people held back and kept this to themselves, but it would incubate and then they would leave the thing they loved. It then became an issue for a veterans charity or the NHS, because people had not dealt with it from the earliest point. My right hon. Friend rightly points out that TRIM was developed in the Marines, who got it from the United States, and it is now being rolled out as better practice right across the armed forces.

The veterans strategy is about bringing all those things together. It is about looking forward and having a 10-year vision of a cross-government approach. I am pleased to say that it has the support of all the devolved Administrations. It is so important that we can let veterans and their families have a full understanding of what to expect from the armed forces and other agencies for the rest of their lives. The strategy is also about promoting and celebrating what our armed forces do; we need to tell people about their success stories. We have not been particularly good at that. We also need to promote the fact of what those in our armed forces actually do.

I was struck by a phone call I had with my mother, in which we talked about her father—my grandfather. I remember sitting on his knee and him talking about the battle of Passchendaele. I could not even say the word, as I was only four or five at the time, but I remember it because he showed me his medals. I had a personal connection with somebody who fought in the first world war. My two little boys do not have that connection, as there is now a distance. The cohort of people who are directly connected to armed forces personnel today has shrunk considerably from what it was at the time of the first world war, when an entire generation—every village, town and city—was affected. Everyone knew somebody who had been injured or killed, and they knew people who had survived. We need to make sure that there is not a skewed view of what it is like to be in our armed forces.

I make it clear that someone who serves in our armed forces will come out a stronger, better person, but obviously some people require help. Some of the things we see on TV, with “Bodyguard” being the latest example, give the impression that if people serve, they may be mentally affected. What does that do to the reputation of the armed forces? What does it do to a potential recruit if they get the idea that they might be mentally affected if they join the armed forces? It hinders them in signing up. What does it to do an employer that does not have exposure to or knowledge of what it is like being in the armed forces? It gives them a bias against signing up someone who has military experience. Veterans themselves might also hold a stigma about this because they have served. We need to change that. We need to be very proud of these people—particularly in Britain, because of the professionalism of our armed forces.

That brings me back to promoting and celebrating what our armed forces actually do, and we are going to push that forward through a consultation paper. The veterans strategy has now been published—it was issued yesterday, and there will now be a consultation lasting 12 weeks, in all corners of the country, to address how we implement it. It will deal with how we put this work into practice, which will be slightly different in different places. We are all aware of the challenges in Northern Ireland, where a very different approach needs to be taken from that in other parts of the country. I look forward to getting feedback from individual Members, as well as from charities, councils, academics, service providers and veterans communities themselves, on how we can make this work.

Extra funding has come through from the Budget; we have an extra £2 billion for the NHS mental health budget and £100 million for the rough sleeping strategy— that must obviously include the veterans aspect of the issue, which we have touched on. There is a further £10 million in the covenant fund trust, from which individual charities and organisations can bid for further funding to promote their own schemes and so forth. We have also developed specialist support, through the veterans’ mental health and wellbeing fund and, in England—this is a mouthful—through the veterans’ mental health transition, intervention and liaison service, which provides specialist locations where mental health issues can be looked at.

[Jim Shannon]

The Minister has referred to the regions and what more can be done. Will there be money set aside for the regions specifically?

[Mr Ellwood]

I had the pleasure of attending the Remembrance Day commemorations in Belfast at the weekend, and I took the opportunity to visit a veterans charity and to speak about how we can activate and invigorate the covenant over there. I also met some of the hon. Gentleman’s Northern Ireland colleagues, and I will be going there very soon to bring stakeholders together, because I appreciate that there is a different picture over there. We need to work closely at the grassroots level, but we will create a plan to implement the strategy in a way that meets Northern Ireland’s specific needs.

I am pre-empting the Opposition spokesperson, but we need better data. We need to know who our veterans are and whether our GPs are helping them, and we need to understand particular challenges such as suicide and so forth. We are now looking at ways of making that happen and working with the Ministry of Justice so that we can better track what is going on. We check with our veterans 12 months after they have departed the armed forces, and they already go through a transition package, often lasting two years, to make sure they are equipped. As I well remember, moving from the armed forces, where one feels part of a family, a unit, a community, a tribe, and into the wide open world is quite a culture shock, and we need to be there for veterans. We cannot just give them up. Some 90% of those who go through the transition service are in education or employment within six months of their departure.

I hope that I have illustrated my passion, and that of the ministerial team I am pleased to see here supporting me, for the veterans strategy. The Defence Secretary shares that passion and very much wants it to work. We are advancing our support for the armed forces community. To those thinking of a career in the armed forces, I say: I encourage you. You will do things you never thought you would do, you will learn things about your character you never thought you would learn, and when you march on the parade square for the very first time, you will make your mum and dad very proud as you begin to represent the nation. To those serving, in both the regulars and reserves, and to their families, I say: thank you for your service. You allow us to say we have the most professional armed forces in the world. And to our brave veterans—I mentioned Kitchener saying 100 years ago, “Your country needs you”—I simply say: your country owes you. We owe you a debt of gratitude and support for the rest of your lives.

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[Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald), and I thank him for his kind and generous words. He can be assured that while I may not be in government, I will continue to believe that defence has nothing to do with party and everything to do with the nation and those who have served us, and that all of us have a responsibility to them. It is a pleasure and a privilege to be their advocate when necessary—be that the families, those serving or those who have left the service—and to support them by lobbying Ministers in whichever Department we are required to.

It is a real pleasure to stand here in a debate in Government time about veterans—those who have served. When I arrived here in 2015, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) helped me to understand that there had been a loss of impetus from the Government in speaking about military matters in the Chamber. A number of us have taken that as a challenge over the past three years, and it is fantastic that our incredibly passionate Minister, who took on this role last year, has driven forward the determination to have these conversations more widely and to push out there the issue of those who serve and have served.

I want to mention a very special remembrance event last weekend in Berwick—that most northern point of England. Twenty-five of the most northern parishes came together in Berwick parish church to lay wreaths. We held a vigil on Saturday night. The wreaths were placed in the shape of a cross in front of the altar, which was moving in itself, then four of my young cadets from the Army Cadet Force came and stood at each corner of the cross. They stood there from 7 pm until 11 pm, without moving, as the names of all those who had served in world war one and world war two were read out slowly by an extraordinary group of people, the representatives of each parish, old and young. There were many there who were new to their parishes, and many whose families had been part of that community for 100 years.

It was profoundly moving to see those young men and women, whom I know well because I spend a lot of time with them, standing to attention and respecting not only those who had died but the armed forces. I know that three of them want to enter the armed forces themselves and take on the extraordinary challenge that is faced by all members of the forces. It means a really exciting career and learning exceptional skills, but it also means a willingness to put their lives on the line if necessary to defend us and our nation. That will never cease to amaze me, and to fill me with the utmost respect for every single one of them.

When I set up the all-party parliamentary group on the armed forces covenant when I was first elected, I wanted it to speak up for armed forces families. The covenant put something very good into law, but I began to discover things accidentally, as so often happens when a person becomes an MP—we discover all sorts of subjects with which we have had no particular relationship before. Military families came and talked to me about their struggles and the issues in their lives, from school places to housing to medical assistance. You name it, they were all there: the challenges of moving around, the challenges of not having a base and the feeling that the system could not support them.

Three years on, it is really exciting to see a strategy for veterans that has a wrap-around effect on their families as well. I pay tribute to the Minister, who I know has battled with the system to get it to where it is now, and also to his team. I have worked with many of them over the past year, and I know that they have put in an enormous amount of work to reach the beginnings of a strategy that will be incredibly supportive to all the families.

I want to raise a number of issues about which my knowledge has grown over the last three years, and on which I think we can make progress in the years ahead. One of them is the question of money. Families who are seeking support in relation to a particular issue—as well as veterans, and, in some cases, those who are still serving—say, “It is so complicated. There are so many charities. I don’t know where to go. It is very difficult. How do I start?”

For a long time I worked in the north-east with a group called the Community Foundation. That extraordinary organisation, which has now spread across the country, originated in the United States. Regional charities’ finances are held together in a pot so that the money that they all hold can be used in a better way. Members of a central board can direct those who come seeking support to the right charity, so that an individual who is probably in distress, or is battling other issues, does not have to go hunting for the right support. There are more than 3,000 charities, many of which hold very small amounts of money and have a particular focus. A charity may have been set up by a family who had lost someone who served, for instance.

If we could draw charities together to work in a collaborative, central way so that people seeking support could go to a central point and a board would direct them, that would relieve them of a great deal of stress. There is so much support out there—it may not be in the part of the country where we live, but that does mean that it does not provide the right specialist care for the person we are seeking to support. I will leave that suggestion with the Minister, but I should be happy to follow it up and see whether we can have a more cohesive conversation with charities. I have spoken to some of them about that already.

The veterans gateway, which was set up last year, is a great start in that it provides people with an initial central point to go to. During its first year it has responded to many questions, from “Where can I get my medals replaced?” to “My husband is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and I do not know where to go.” An extraordinary range of questions have been sent down that telephone line. The team are working to build the network and signpost people in the right direction, but the question I would ask is, are we really tracking whether the right outcomes are achieved for those who call? I am not sure that we are there yet.

Sometimes there may be an easy question for which there is an easy answer—big tick, it is sorted. That is fantastic. But I remain concerned that people are signposted to a charity that ought to be able to help, but no one from the gateway is then checking that they have actually received that help. So they may end up back in the ether, still struggling to find the support that they need. I ask the Minister to set out—or to consider, if this is not being done—how we can have a real tracking system so that the outcome of the support the gateway is supposed to provide is actually achieved. Some of the cases will be difficult, and will not simply entail making a direct phone call to the next person, with the solution then being provided.

That brings us on to a wider question about the MOD’s responsibility to look after veterans. That question has frustrated me, because one reason why the covenant was such a great thing for David Cameron to put into law in 2011 was that that is not only the MOD’s responsibility. Although the MOD does of course have a duty of care to those who have served and have needs afterwards, that should be a cross-Government project. The veterans board was a great start, and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon) for battling to get it into the manifesto so that it could come to fruition at the end of last year, but I am not sure that every other Department understands the vital contribution that they each make, because veterans and their families are affected by their work just as everybody else is.

If the covenant is to be real, we must realise that we have committed as a nation to giving veterans and their families support without question. That is what the covenant means to me: it means that we value them for the rest of their lives. As the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) said, for many of our veterans now, that is going to be a very long time—they are going to live long lives with challenging issues and disabilities that will appear later down the line, especially mental health problems. We see Northern Ireland veterans now coming out with severe mental health problems, 20 or 30 years after they served.

As a public services community we must make sure we are ready to pick up these issues. I worry that we are always thinking, “They were soldiers once, so it’s the MOD’s responsibility.” That is not good enough; that is not what the covenant should be. I concur with the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) that we should consider taking the covenant to a higher statutory level, rather than simply having it setting out its vision. The MOD’s job is to defend us; that is its purpose—to be prepared for war, to have the deterrents to try to prevent war from happening, but to have soldiers, sailors and airmen ready to take us to war if necessary. That is the MOD’s job, whereas the job of the NHS is to look after us if we are sick, and the council’s job is to provide people who need a house with housing and to look after education services. All those issues affect veterans and their families, because they are participant members of our society for the rest of their lives. So we must continue to question whether we leave the responsibility for the covenant in statutory terms in the hands of the MOD, or whether the Government and Parliament should consider taking it to a higher level.

I receive many letters such as the following one, which is from a serviceman’s wife, because families contact me all the time. I apologise if my voice breaks while reading it, as it is not an easy letter to read. I will read it anyway, because it illustrates the issues we are struggling with:

“I write to you to tell you of my experience of living with a husband who has PTSD following his tour in Afghanistan in 2010.

This weekend may have potentially seen the end of our marriage and there is a real risk my husband will self-harm to end his life. His behaviour has caused me to ask him to leave. He has gone to his Grandma’s and my understanding is his parents have contacted the correct health authorities to get the help that he needs. They have moved faster than any of our local authorities have here. He has previously presented at his local GP who told him to self-refer to a local mental health charity. I find it shocking that people have to “self-refer” when they have a mental health condition. The temptation is to just go home and do nothing, brush it under the carpet, do it another day, ultimately delaying treatment.

He has received community CBT and EMDR from people who have absolutely no experience in dealing with conflict trauma. The hospital he presented at yesterday said the treatment he has received has been a sticking-plaster no more, no less, and that he is seriously ill.

This has been ongoing for eight years. For eight years I have had to live with his financial mismanagement and deception, which has taken a sinister turn over the weekend. His actions are not compatible with a stable marriage and for the sake of my children and I, I have asked him to leave to seek treatment.

I have never received any support from the military as to how I deal/manage with my husband’s PTSD. My husband likewise hasn’t had any contact from the Army. I just cannot comprehend this lack, and total disregard, for their duty of care.

He was medically discharged for physical injuries he sustained during that tour in 2014. He served in Helmand as a platoon commander leading young men at a young age in an area that, without exception, was the most dangerous place in the world. How can the army not follow up with serving members of the forces to check they are ok when people have died on patrols that they have led? People have lost limbs, had spinal fractures, have been injured in an IED explosion themselves. How can they not check that the families have the support that they need? How can they risk more potential casualties in the form of suicide? I am alone in facing this. The government cannot delegate their duty of care to charities. Relying on people to approach them.

My husband talks a good game. On any vague assessment he would present as healthy. He hid his physical injuries for 2 years as he felt others had it worse. This ended his career. He will likely be wheelchair bound at 60. In terms of his physical injuries, his Regiment have utterly failed in their duty of care. He has never been treated at any of the army rehabilitation centres because a doctor only spotted the physical injuries 2 years post tour when he presented for something else. He didn’t fall into the category of ‘conflict wounded’. He has had to rely on community treatment and has always had to push for his own treatment, paying privately in each instance. It just baffles me how this can all happen. His Regiment, Army and the government have abandoned him and us. Our local mental health services are woefully inadequate to deal with such complex injuries and I am not a qualified mental health expert! My greatest fear is that this letter will be included one day as an exhibit in a bundle”—[Interruption.]

[Jim Shannon]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Trevelyan]

Yes—thank you.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady is very passionately telling the story of someone she knows very well. That example is replicated across the whole of the United Kingdom, and every one of us has encountered people that that has happened to. I want to support her in making her comments, and to reassure her that everyone in the House understands exactly what she is saying.

[Mrs Trevelyan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman; he is very kind. This Chamber is the most wonderful thing when it works in a collegiate fashion.

The serviceman’s wife finishes by saying:

“My greatest fear is that this letter will be included one day as an exhibit in a bundle collated for the Coroner. I have no voice but I know that this cannot continue.”

I get far too many of those letters, and I imagine other colleagues do as well. We do our best, but the challenge is to provide these people with a voice. The Minister cannot independently battle his way through the system and make every Department suddenly behave as it should for these families. I have been raising this matter for a while, and he will not be surprised to hear it again.

The covenant cannot work solely by virtue of kindness, consideration and everybody out there saying that it is a good thing, perhaps without understanding exactly what that responsibility means or rising to the challenge of prioritising where it is required. At the moment, the covenant is a carrot. It is a positive, uplifting and encouraging message of support from the Government to those who have served, but that is not enough if families are having to experience years of frustration. The military do not ask for help—that is an extraordinary phenomenon. I have an RAF base and a large Army base in my patch, and no one there ever complains about anything. I hear about problems from a vicar or from a schoolteacher, and then I go looking to help to solve them. They never come to ask for help. They will battle on, because they are a can-do community that will try to find its own solutions. They have an extraordinary gift of resilience. As a community, they look after each other because that is what we ask them to do in times of war, but the families cannot always do that.

I believe that we need to create a system that involves some kind of covenant ombudsman. We have a parliamentary ombudsman to go to when nothing else has worked, and we need a covenant ombudsman as well. It should be an organisation that sits outside any Department and that is empowered by Parliament to have a voice and to fight wherever it is required for each family. It cannot be right that we receive letters such as the one I read, that we cannot solve those problems and that such families have had to wait so many years before they feel it is okay to stick their heads above the parapet and cry, “Help!”

I leave that with the Minister. It is not a new request, but it is one we need to drive forward. The carrot mentality is just not enough to ensure that families get the support they need when they need it.

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[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster). I think I have intervened quite a few times now. I am usually the last speaker, but I am pleased to contribute to the debate and thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me.

I have a registered interest as a former serving soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment for three years, and in the Territorial Army, Royal Artillery reserves, for 11 and a half years. The veterans strategy means a great deal to me, not only because of my personal interest as a former part-time soldier, but because the constituency I represent, Strangford, has a good history of interest and service in all the services, whether the Army, the RAF or the Royal Navy.

Like the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), I attended four remembrance services last Sunday. The first was at 8 o’clock in the morning at Cloughey, the second at 11 o’clock at the cenotaph in Newtownards, our major town, the third at 2.30 pm in Ballyhalbert, and then there was a church service at 7 o’clock in the evening. At every service, I was struck by the turnout of youth organisations, including church groups, the scouts, the Boys’ Brigade and the Girls’ Brigade, and the cadets. While we noticed those who were missing from the year before, we were greatly encouraged by the number of youth organisations that were on parade. The next generation is coming through, which is good to see.

I thank the Minister for referring in his introduction to the new consultation document. He can expect to receive some applications from my part of the world. It is good news that money has been set aside regionally, so we can all benefit. I know that is what he always wants, and it is what we always want as well.

Looking about at the remembrance services, we noticed the older veterans, of course, but also the number of people in the crowds who were there to watch and support, wearing their medals with pride. It was a reminder that veterans walk among us every day and are not simply older pensioners. When I saw those men and women standing in solemn remembrance, straight backed, medals on their chests shone to within an inch of their life, I felt the deep frustration and anger to which other Members have referred.

The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford is no longer here, but he mentioned certain things that I hope to speak about as well, because it is important to put them on the record. I thought of the depth of frustration and anger that would cause a veteran to ask his constituency MP, the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield), to return his medals to the Prime Minister a number of weeks ago. I do not know more than what I read in the press, but the reason for that was the witch hunt of ex-service personnel in Northern Ireland due to the Irish Republican agenda to rewrite history. Men and women in their 80s are waiting for a letter questioning them about events that took place some 45 years ago. I thought of that as we thought of our veterans on Remembrance Sunday last week.

It is right and proper to acknowledge the 100-year anniversary of the armistice, but I believe it is also right and proper to acknowledge that we owe a duty of care to the veterans of service in Northern Ireland. We are not fulfilling that duty satisfactorily, with respect and as well as we can. It is estimated that some 300,000 military personnel were deployed in Northern Ireland in the course of Operation Banner, which I served in myself. It was the longest running military operation in the history of the British Army and incorporated service in many aspects throughout the troubles.

Many of those men and women who participated carry the scars of that today. Those soldiers who bravely put on the uniform to serve Queen and country are now sitting in their retirement home or their own home frantically trying to recall what they had worked for years to forget, having knowingly put their lives on the line in the battle against the lowest of the low terrorists—terrorists who believed they were justified in firing into a gospel mission hall in Darkley; terrorists who believed they had the right to blow up a war memorial in Enniskillen with women and children surrounding it; and terrorists who had no qualms whatsoever about sending false information to ensure the biggest fatality of innocent people doing their shopping in Omagh.

For many of those veterans, the pain and trauma of the past is very real. They have memories of holding their dying friends in their arms, of sifting through rubble and human body parts, of the screams of anguish, and of the fear of that car driving slowly up to their checkpoint. While sitting here, I thought of one story in particular. One of the first UDR men to be killed was a fellow called Winston Donnell in Strabane. A car reversed up towards him and IRA gunmen shot him. He was one of the first to die.

These veterans have memories of the fear of speaking to anyone when off duty and wanting to grab a beer, for fear of a honeytrap, or a beating when their British accent was heard. I often think of the three Scottish soldiers who were murdered in Belfast; they are very much on my mind. All those things are re-traumatising veterans, as we allow them to be re-terrorised in order to provide a sop to the republicans, who have no shame about anything they did and inexplicably wish to rewrite history to seem justified.

There was and is no justification for the murder of my cousin Kenneth Smyth on 10 December 1971 outside Clady in County Tyrone. There was and is no justification for the murder of Lexie Cummings, also a former UDR member, in Strabane on his lunchbreak. And there certainly was no justification for the murder of the four young UDR men at Ballydugan outside Downpatrick, three of whom I knew personally. There can never be any justification for that. This debate on the veterans strategy must incorporate a promise to stop allowing republican murderers to justify their actions.

No one was held accountable for any of those murders. No one was ever held accountable for the murder of Kenneth Smyth. Nobody was ever held accountable for the murder of Lexie Cummings. The person who did it works across the border in Sligo and is a prominent member of Sinn Féin. The person who carried out the murder of the four UDR men at Ballydugan got his just deserts in Downpatrick some time later, but the fact of the matter is that seven other people were arrested, and whatever their role may have been, they were not held accountable either. We need to stop allowing republican murderers to justify their actions at the expense of the mental and physical health of men and women who did nothing wrong, other than to dare to be British and to serve their Queen and country.

Any veterans strategy must incorporate support for those questioned and put an end to the questioning by police. The fact of the matter is that veterans who served in Northern Ireland and who live in Northern Ireland get a raw deal. They still have heightened security concerns due to their service and yet have no benefit from serving.

We do not have a right and proper implementation of the military covenant due to the section 75 element of the Belfast agreement, which has given 20 years of excuses for republicans to continue their hatred and persecution of anything that is slightly related to being British. I am proud to be British and proud to be part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I often refer to myself as a proud Ulster man who lives in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Those 20 years of excuses for republicans to continue their hatred show the power of section 75. The Minister referred to it earlier, and I hope we can move that along. I know that discussions are ongoing, and I hope we can get some satisfaction. The most ironic part is that it was those veterans, whom they hate so much, who gave them the right to have section 75 to start with.

I hope that Members will forgive me if I repeat the poem read by the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford. I heard it for the first time last week, on Remembrance Sunday, when one of the young people was doing readings at the Cenotaph. The poem reads:

“It is the Soldier, not the minister

Who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the Soldier, not the reporter,

Who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the Soldier, not the poet

Who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer

Who has given us freedom to protest.

It is the Soldier, not the lawyer

Who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the Soldier, not the politician

Who has given us the right to vote.

It is the Soldier who salutes the flag,

Who serves beneath the flag,

And whose coffin is draped by the flag,

Who allows the protester to burn the flag.”

These soldiers did not do a shabby job. They did the best they could in situations that we cannot even begin to imagine. We need to stop being shabby to them.

If we medically retire a 30-year-old soldier who joined up at 18—the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) gave us an example from her constituency that I must say very much resonated with me—we need, without going into too much detail, to ensure he has a place to live, training for a job that is suitable to the disabilities caused by his service and, vitally, mental health support to help him to deal with the trauma and scars that service has left.

Dr Deirdre MacManus, a lead consultant psychiatrist at Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the transition, intervention and liaison service in London, has said:

“We have seen a greater than 100 per cent increase in referrals over the last six months… We still get soldiers who served in Northern Ireland coming.”

Almost 50,000 veterans have mental health issues, which are often sparked by combat stress. Another 6,000 are homeless and 10,000 are in prison or on probation, as others have mentioned. We need to address those issues as well. I ask myself the question, but I also ask the Minister: are we doing enough? We do look to the Minister for such support, and I have no doubt whatsoever that it will be forthcoming.

How can we do this better? I want to be able to look the veterans in the eye when I meet them, as I do in my constituency. As I always do, I will meet them on Remembrance Sunday next year. When I tell them, “We are remembering you”, I want to be able say that we have done something in this House to make the situation better.

I want to refer quickly to the charities. SSAFA does tremendous work. I have held a coffee morning for it every year since I became the Member of Parliament, which has raised almost £30,000 for it over those years. Help the Heroes and the Royal British Legion, of which I am a member, also do tremendous work. The hon. Member for Torbay mentioned the Royal British Legion and the great work it does. I suppose it is the principal port of call for most people.

May I also give a plug to Beyond the Battlefield? The Minister will forgive me for saying this, but he knows I will refer to it. It does tremendous work in getting to the people who are under the radar, such as those who do not register with the associations. The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed mentioned how associations do not always pick them up, but it is funny how Beyond the Battlefield seems to do so. Whether for benefits, housing, health issues or the appeals, it is there and it does tremendous work. So many people across Northern Ireland are indebted to it for the hard work it does. All these charities do phenomenal work, but that should be additional work, not the only support. That is the point we are trying to get to, if we can.

I will conclude, because I am conscious that the shadow Minister and the Minister want to speak. I believe it is time that we enabled the talking in here to be turned into action out there. I believe—I will reiterate this again, as others have—that the urgent thing is to stop the witch hunt against soldiers and start helping all the veterans who gave their all for us.