Armed Forces Covenant

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Trevelyan]

I thank the Minister for his comments. My suggestion about a smokescreen is based on the feeling among military families and personnel that four questions were asked, but that the existing SFA opportunity was not among them. There was an opportunity in a separate, non-mandatory question for military families who thought that SFA was a good thing to indicate why they thought so. The survey contained four questions about the four different choices that military families might want to make, which included living in privately rented accommodation and owning their own home. I simply reflect the voices that have shouted very loudly at me that there is a deep sense of anxiety, as all the families’ federations surveys have indicated.

[Sir Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Much as I respect my hon. Friend the Minister, when we read the questions in the screenshot we can see how they are designed to produce a particular answer. To take just one example, the most common reason why people are in favour of change—two thirds are nominally in favour—is that they want to live in a better house. Nowhere are they told that once they go into the private sector, they will be totally responsible for persuading landlords to do something about the maintenance of their homes—unlike in the very expensive Australian model, in which the Department of Defence has kept that responsibility.

[Mrs Trevelyan]

My hon. Friend reflects the deep concerns about the way in which the survey was put together and the framing of the questions, which left a lot of personnel unable to give the answers that they wanted to give. I think the Minister is mindful of that, and I am glad to hear that no formal decisions have yet been made.

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[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend who succeeded me as Minister with responsibility for international security strategy at the Ministry of Defence. I would like to say more on this subject, but you, Madam Deputy Speaker, have asked us to be brief.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) on introducing the debate and on her incredible work in highlighting this issue. The military covenant is not specific to any particular party. All of us, across the Floor, can embrace this issue. It is a covenant not between the Government and the armed forces, but between the armed forces and the people. We, as Members and Ministers, are acting on behalf of the people. I represent the home of the British Army, Aldershot, which has about 5,000 troops and their families, and we feel that acutely.

Project Allenby Connaught is the largest private finance initiative in the country. Nobody knows anything about it because it is hugely successful—a £19 billion PFI which, I have to say, was started under the Labour Government. I would like to put on record the fantastic job Aspire is doing in running the garrison under the PFI. Admittedly, it has released land to build 3,850 units of accommodation to sell. Nevertheless, the result has been a complete transformation of the military facilities in Aldershot. We have some of the finest single living accommodation and new headquarters—the recently opened Montgomery House—for the home command. The whole garrison in Aldershot has been transformed thanks to this PFI, so a small note of thanks to Geoff Hoon. He opened the fantastic sports facility, which is the home of the army sports board. There are world-class tennis courts. It really is a great garrison and I pay tribute to all those who have contributed to it. I rarely receive complaints about accommodation. The Minister, whom I actually met in my constituency when he was a sapper with the Royal School of Military Engineering—

[Sir Julian Brazier]

The picture my hon. Friend paints is an excellent one, but I think he would confirm that the cost of housing, both to buy and rent, in his constituency is extremely high. Is it not so much better to have the arrangement he describes than to put people out on allowances in the private sector?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Absolutely right. I can tell my hon. Friend that the average cost of housing in Aldershot is £259,000. That illustrates the challenge for people in the military trying to find their own homes.

Rushmoor Borough Council, which signed up to the military covenant in 2012, is doing a really good job. There is a tremendous relationship between the garrison and the council. Recently, the council met Hampshire County Council and the garrison commander—another great man, Lieutenant Colonel Mac MacGregor, who is doing a great job. They will carry out a workshop together to discuss how better they can implement the covenant in Aldershot. That is good news.

CarillionAmey is doing excellent work on the married quarters. It has created a forum for quarterly meetings with the wives and I very much hope that that will prove to be very successful.

Mike Jackson House is doing a stunningly good job of providing supported housing to single veterans who are either homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. If any Members know people in my area who could benefit from it, I ask them please to get in touch with me.

As an illustration of how the garrison and the town are working together, a lot of companies have signed up to the community matters partnership project. I am very pleased to say that the new chairman is none other than the garrison commander. There is more that can be done, but a lot of good work has come out of the covenant. It is important to recognise what it has delivered.

I am also bound to say that the Aldershot military wives choir is of course the finest military wives choir in the country. Since my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) is nowhere to be seen, I can confidently say that without fear of challenge. When they come here to sing, I hope right hon. and hon. Members will accept my invitation to listen to them.

The covenant has done a tremendous job to engage with the public on the need to support our armed forces. Much more needs to be done, however, and most importantly on accommodation. I have people who have no connection with the Aldershot area, save that they have served there, come to see me having left the Army—sometimes their marriages have broken up because of PTSD or other such difficulties—and although the council does not put them at a disadvantage, it does not put them at the top of the list either. These men and women deserve to go to the top of the social housing list, as against some of the young ladies who come and see me and say they need social housing because they fell pregnant. It is not quite the same as having suffered PTSD. That is the big challenge. The other big challenge that the Minister should take away is that we will not rest until those who served in Operation Banner no longer face the risk of prosecution while the terrorists get away scot free. That is not acceptable.

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[Sir Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) on securing this debate. It is a particular pleasure to follow the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson), whose praise for my hon. Friend and for the late Duke of Westminster I very much endorse.

It is an unavoidable fact that the body of men and women whom we ask to do the most difficult and dangerous tasks for us have, for obvious reasons, no public voice. We in this House therefore have a particular duty to take an interest in their concerns. I am glad to see the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster)—a man who has done three operational tours—in his place today. The growth and flowering of the covenant is in no small part thanks to him, and it grieves me greatly that I shall spend almost all my speech talking about a subject on which we profoundly disagree.

Last year, the Ministry of Defence won a settlement that committed us to defence expenditure of 2% of GDP, which was a welcome move, and to a modest but positive growth path. However, that is still the lowest proportion of GDP since before the second world war. At the same time, we committed ourselves to an equipment programme that has resulted in the amount of money left to pay for our personnel being badly squeezed. This debate on the armed forces covenant gives us an opportunity to discuss that position. The armed forces have felt the same pressures as the rest of the public sector—and rightly so. They had to undergo the same pay squeeze and the same large-scale reductions in pension rights, but on top of that they had already suffered in a number of ways. They have had large rises in rents, restrictions in the availability of various allowances, and even a noticeable decline in the quality of food for single personnel.

The effects of those changes can be seen in the numbers. In my view, the Army now has the best senior leadership for a generation or two, with a new breed of generals who came through middle-ranking command positions in combat now introducing all sorts of reforms, yet the Regular Army today is 3,600 short and still shrinking. The Royal Air Force is nearly 2,000 short, and we have the smallest number of pilots since the service was founded. Naval numbers have stabilised at a level quite close to their target. That is a remarkable achievement by the senior service, given that it has the greatest budgetary pressures of all and a colossal level of operational tasking, but for reasons that will become evident, the Royal Navy is not the main concern of my speech. I shall speak mainly about the other two services.

Regular surveys of those leaving the armed forces show each year that the largest single factor involved is the strain on family life. It is in that context that I want to focus exclusively on chapter 3 of the covenant and the new accommodation model. Many colleagues will be aware of the recent report from the National Audit Office that refers to the condition of the housing stock and the long backlog of repairs, but I am much more concerned about what it goes on to say about how short-term thinking over the past generation is setting us on a downward spiral. It states:

“To manage the estate within its budget, the Department has made decisions that subsequently offer poor value for money in the longer term, including the 1996 decision to sell and lease back the majority of Service Family Accommodation, which is now limiting the Department’s ability to manage this element of the estate cost-effectively.”

An additional problem in that regard will arise in four years’ time. It is a matter of record that I opposed that sell-off.

Against this unpromising background, I have much sympathy for my hon. Friend the Minister as he tries to find a new way forward for housing. He will no doubt tell us that the survey that the MOD has just published suggests that 55% of the 20,000-odd people who responded were broadly in favour of the proposals—almost twice as many as were against them. Nevertheless, I hope to persuade the House over the next few minutes that there are four reasons why that is a profound mistake.

The first reason why the new accommodation model is profoundly wrong is geography. Unlike the Royal Navy in Portsmouth and Plymouth, the majority of our garrisons and RAF stations are not near a supply of affordable housing to buy or to rent. Catterick and Tidworth, which are our two largest bases, are in the middle of nowhere—my sister lives near Catterick. Our RAF bases in Oxfordshire are among some of the most expensive housing areas in the country. All three of our fast jet fighter bases are in remote locations. Even where housing is plentiful, as in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth), it is unaffordable.

The second reason is the effect on officers. The statement in the covenant is clear, but let me digress for a second. America has a policy of having allowances rather than family accommodation in some cases where housing in the area is affordable, but it is strictly based on rank. In contrast, the Government state that

“the accommodation allowance of tomorrow will be provided based on… need, regardless of…rank”.

I want to focus the House’s attention on the group who will lose out most. The critical group from which we are losing people is that of captains who are about to be majors in the Army. Company commanders and squadron commanders are the backbone of the regimental system. Those people and their counterparts in the RAF, which includes those coming up to the first breakpoint for fast-jet pilots after all those millions we have invested in them, will be told that unless they happen to have a large family, they will be given a small allowance instead of a substantial house in order to fund a much more generous arrangement for junior ranks with large families. Any civilian business that tried to follow such a principle would go bust within a year or two. Special arrangements for the regimental sergeant-major, the backbone of the regiment, are also being brushed aside.

The third reason is the continuing need for mobility. As long as I have been a Member of Parliament, every Government have committed themselves to greater stability, but there is some evidence that mobility has slightly increased. The Minister might well introduce a bit more stability, but all the staff training and all the best staff jobs for all three services are in southern England. However, the majority of Army units and almost all RAF units are not. Officers from those two services will continue to have to be posted up and down the country. It is the same for the submarine service, which is in a different position from the rest of the Navy.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a complete nonsense that senior military personnel should have to go by second-class public transport? I had a general in Aldershot who had a national command. With a helicopter, he could brief his staff at 7.30 am in Aldershot and be up north by 10 o’clock. My hon. Friend is making an important point and the Minister had better listen to him.

[Sir Julian Brazier]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his endorsement. He makes an important additional point.

This is not only about officers being posted around staff jobs. The centres of excellence where we train the next generation for the Army should get the cream of the senior NCOs from all over the Army. Brecon is shortly to have no Army units near it, but of course we have to post people in and out of there. The same goes for all the other phase 2 training schools. It is crucial that the best of the instructors go to RAF Valley, for example, but the nearby housing market is very thin.

The fourth reason is the question of cost, and that takes me on to the survey, about which I am sure the Minister will enlighten us. Let me provide some examples of how the wording of the questions and the issue of cost weigh against each other. The first is about housing quality.

The Australians operate a successful system whereby they lease properties in the local housing market. Their bases, unlike ours, are nearly all in major centres of population. They work on the basis that all the risk and all the maintenance is taken on by Defence Housing Australia. Such an arrangement is very expensive, and DHA funds it.

The reason that the majority of people gave for preferring the new system, as it was put to them, was that they thought they would get better houses. They were reminded in the survey—I have a copy if anyone wants to see it—that there is a lot of dissatisfaction with existing housing. The survey did not tell them that, in future, they will be responsible for all the risk and maintenance if they go away on exercises—as MPs, we all know how bad some private sector landlords are—unless they take on a huge extra cost.

Again, the survey says that we are going to reach out to unmarried families. I am in favour of that, and there is a serious case to be made for it, but how far do we go? If a soldier enters what might be a short-term relationship with a partner with three or four children from a previous relationship, are we really going to give them a gigantic allowance, perhaps twice as much as an RSM or a major with no children? There has to be a limit somewhere, but this is all dangled in the same survey.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making some fantastic points, and forgive me for interrupting him because he is being crystal clear. I merely encourage him to observe one further thing, which is that the nature of military service means that people are frequently dragged away from their home base. That means that a spouse, perhaps from abroad or from a very different part of the country, is then responsible for dealing with a landlord or landlady who might not have their best interest at heart, to put it politely. The spouse will not then have the protection of the command structure above or of the Department, and they will not have civil servants to assist them; they will, quite literally, be on their own.

[Sir Julian Brazier]

My hon. and gallant Friend puts it in a nutshell, much better than I have.

I will finish in a moment, but I have one last point on the survey—you have been very tolerant, Madam Deputy Speaker. The survey refers to home ownership 11 times. People in the armed forces desperately want to own a home, and they worry about what will happen to them when they leave the service. Nowhere does the survey say that we are moving out of the many garrisons where home ownership is practical: Canterbury has closed; Chester is about to close; and Ripon is closing. We are focusing on areas where it is not practical to become a local owner-occupier.

What do I suggest? We need to come to terms with two basic points. First, within the defence budget to which we have committed ourselves, there has to be a degree of rebalancing. I—and, I suspect, most of the other people in this Chamber on a Thursday—believe that we should spend more money on defence, but if we cannot persuade our colleagues to spend more on defence, with all the threats out there in the world, the budget needs a degree of rebalancing. We either have to accept slightly smaller Regular forces or we have to buy less equipment. Rather that tearing up a model that works, we need to fund it properly.

Secondly, we have to find a vehicle for enabling a route to home ownership. The key to that for many people is buying to let, which means a special arrangement on last year’s Budget change that hugely disadvantaged service landlords, who are treated as if they are ordinary landlords, even though their property is the only one they have. They pay a higher rate of tax on the rent coming in than the relief they receive on their mortgage interest payments. There has been a bit of progress, but we also need to revisit the way in which the Forces Help to Buy scheme operates so that people do not have to apply to let the property, but can just let it when they get moved, with a guarantee that there will be no problems.

We need to find ways of reinforcing that model. We need to put a little more money into it, and we need to address the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) that people in the armed forces at the bottom end of the financial scale should be prioritised on waiting lists. But—and this is a crucial but—it must be done in a way that is fair. This cannot just be where they are serving—my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) made a strong point about this—it must be in their place of origin, otherwise a few communities will carry the whole weight.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you and the House have been very tolerant with me this afternoon. I firmly believe that this Government are strongly committed to our armed forces and I have huge confidence in our Ministers, and I know that everybody who has stayed behind for this debate on a Thursday cares about our armed forces, but I believe that the new accommodation model is a serious threat to two of our armed forces.