Service Accommodation

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Commons Chamber

Select Committee statement

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

We now come to the Select Committee statement on behalf of the Defence Committee. Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi will speak for up to 10 minutes, during which no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of his statement, I will call Members to ask questions on the subject of the statement. These should be brief questions, not full speeches.

I emphasise that questions should be directed to the Select Committee Chair, and not the relevant Government Minister, but Front Benchers may take part in questioning. I plan to finish the Select Committee statement after 20 minutes.

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[Mr Dhesi]

I welcome the Minister’s comments and, indeed, we will be supporting and scrutinising the work of Government. We look forward to working with the Armed Forces Commissioner as and when they are appointed. As I intimated earlier, Tuesday’s announcement is very welcome, but there is a great deal of work for the Minister and his colleagues to do. The proof will be in the planning and the delivery.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[James MacCleary (Lewes) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats fully support the findings of the report and we hope it will mark the beginning of a much better and fairer deal for armed forces personnel. For too long, they have been failed by successive Governments. Does the Chair agree that this is a long-overdue change, welcomed by our party and across the House? Our service personnel, who at times put their lives on the line for this country, should at the very least expect to have a warm, safe and secure place to call home. Does he also agree that the backlog and repairs to the basic services he has highlighted are unacceptable and should not be allowed to recur in future?

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[Mr Dhesi]

I concur fully with my fellow member of the Defence Committee. Given his vast experience of having served in our armed forces, his contribution as a member of the Committee will be substantial, and I know he will bring that experience to bear as we look forward to remediating things. He is correct that service accommodation is the foundation on which we must ensure that our servicepeople have the very best facilities that we as a nation can offer.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

For the record, I declare an interest: I participated in the inquiry while serving on the Committee in the previous Parliament. I thank the Committee Chairman for kindly pointing that out. Also for the record, we welcome the Annington decision, partly because we had done a lot of work on that prior to the election. I thank the Minister for playing fair on that.

Now that we have hopefully resolved the issue of the ownership of the estate, there is still the question of its management. Changing the ownership does not fix the boiler. Will the Chairman of the Committee be pleased to hear that, in the same bipartisan spirit, we are happy to work with the Department and Ministers to see if we can provide proposals for improving the management of the estate now that, hopefully, we have resolved the ownership question?

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[Mr Dhesi]

My hon. Friend, along with other hon. Members, speaks with a great deal of experience having lived in service accommodation. When I had the honour recently to visit Catterick, I was able to see for myself some of the service accommodation. We do need to ensure that people are held to account. I have no doubt that the Government will put pressure on those management companies to ensure that compensation commensurate with what people have suffered should be forthcoming.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

That concludes the Select Committee statement.