Future Accommodation Model

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Tuesday 18th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[Sir Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

May I say what an honour it is to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Walker? I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) on securing the debate and on his thoughtful and interesting speech.

The House, and indeed the Minister, have heard me speak several times before on this subject, so I will be fairly brief. However, it is worth saying at the outset that we face some quite serious manning shortages in two of our three services. The Army is now 4.9% under strength on paper and, looking at the large rise in the number of people who are still serving but who have been medically downgraded over the past five years, the underlying trend is worse. The Air Force, on paper, actually has a slightly higher deficit than the Army, but the Navy has managed to stay within 2% or so of its target. Retention is a very big factor, but so are justice for, and the welfare of, our armed forces.

I have been a passionate believer in opportunities for home ownership for the armed forces for my whole political career. The only time I went to see Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister—which shows how old I am—specifically regarded a scheme for home ownership opportunities for members of the armed forces; I did ten-minute rule Bills and the rest of it. I will try to set out now why I think the vision for home ownership in the future accommodation model is not quite right. We are essentially talking about a move towards two models—not a complete move, but a move away from service family accommodation as the main model and towards a system of allowances and owner-occupation.

The hon. Member for Manchester, Withington has already mentioned some of the complexities involved. We are not proposing to do as the Australians do, which is a very expensive scheme whereby its Department of Defence takes on houses in a community and all of the legal risks; it does the tenancy, maintenance and all the rest of it, and people move in and out as if they were in service family accommodation. The proposal that has been put forward, as originally announced, would leave people in a position whereby, at most, the Ministry of Defence might find a property, but after that the tenant would be responsible for the tenure, the length of which might not correspond with the length of their tour. If it is a rolling tenure, they can be thrown out with two months’ notice, and if it is an annual tenure, they will clearly have problems with renewals because their postings will not always tidily fit the years.

Above all, on maintenance, whatever the issues now— I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for his progress in driving up the quality of what we are getting out of the maintenance contracts from CarillionAmey—the reality is that, with the private sector, people would be on their own. Like the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington, I have had some very bad constituency cases. For soldiers on operations, such as airmen flying in Iraq, if their family’s boiler breaks down or roof leaks and the landlord does not want to know, they cannot go to their commanding officer because Defence would not have a say in it.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the importance of morale when troops are away, not only on operations but also often on extended exercises abroad and so on. When we still had Howe Barracks in Canterbury, I remember canvassing there and meeting a little boy kicking a football with his friends. His father had just been shot the previous night by a sniper in Iraq. The fact that he was there with all his mates, whose fathers were all subject to the same risk, was an important part of the supportiveness that the military estates provide.

I am also puzzled—I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will say something about this—as to whether we really are serious about moving people out into the community. The places we seem to be moving out of, such as Canterbury, Ripon, Chester and Maidstone, have affordable accommodation in the community and good employment prospects for wives, but we are expanding places like Catterick, and keeping open places like Lossiemouth—for at least 15 years or so—where there is very little of either.

This knocks on to the armed forces covenant. I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend the Minister has done on the covenant. One thing to come out of that is that we have persuaded councils to remove the local requirement in the case of service families for housing, so that if a serviceman or servicewoman is serving in an area and does not have a local connection beyond the fact that they have been posted there, they will still be eligible to get on the housing list when they come out. However, as we increasingly focus on super-garrisons, I cannot see how that can continue. Are we really going to say that the council in North Yorkshire, which covers Catterick, will have to take on soldiers from that very large—and further to be increased—base, and that that is suddenly a problem just for the ratepayers in that one small area?

I do not think that a move towards an allowance is a good idea. I do not have an ideological objection to having allowances for some fringe cases, so that we can manage the housing stock more efficiently, and some people would occasionally have to wait for a short time in a hiring on the way in. However, we have debated this before, and I cannot see how a needs-based allowance will deliver this for the officer corps.

We are critically short of young majors, and captains becoming young majors. They are roughly the same group as pilots coming up to the first breakpoint. These are the most expensive people in the armed forces in many cases and the people we most need to run the system. They are the people who, in many cases, have not yet started their family; they are perhaps married but do not have children yet. They will end up with a very small allowance, rather than good-quality married quarters that are compensation for the penalties of service life, including the lack of spousal employment in many cases.

As I said at the beginning, I am a passionate believer in home ownership. I certainly do not believe it is fair at the moment to have a situation where the Army, and to some extent the Air Force, are so gravely disadvantaged. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to consider that promoting owner-occupation is not the solution for the Army and the Air Force. It means that if someone is posted in an area where there is no affordable local housing or housing on a scale where large numbers of people could buy it without driving the house prices up, they are then outside it.

If we start to reduce the subsidy for married quarters—as we increasingly did in the last review, when 81% of rents went up—but provide extra allowances for people who are owner-occupiers, the people in service life who suffer least from it are the very ones who will then get the most benefit out of it; one could mention a couple of examples. For example, if someone is living in RAF Waddington, which is one of a very small number of airbases on the edge of a big city—in that case, Lincoln—where there is plenty of spousal employment and plenty of affordable housing, they will be able to do very well out of it. If someone is living in Colchester, they will be able to do very well out of it; that is one of the few Army bases where that applies.

However, the people who are paying the extra rents and losing are those who are living in the Cattericks of the world or in Aldershot, where there is lots of housing but it is too expensive for them. It is the people living in remote places such as Lossiemouth or the instructors at RAF Valley and the infantry training school at Brecon. Those are crucial people who do not have affordable housing there, and who in many cases have very little opportunity for spousal employment. They cannot go down an owner-occupier route.

If we want to provide a fair route to getting a foot on the housing ladder, it must not be tied to owner-occupation. It has to be available for a mixture of different tenures, so that if someone happens to be living near a house and at one point in their career lives in it, they can let it the rest of the time. Unfortunately, if someone does that at present, they will be hit by the Chancellor’s new landlord tax when they let it.

I know that the Minister is starting to free it up a little, but the rules are still pretty dour at the moment. If someone has taken out a forces help to buy loan, they have to apply for permission to let the house to anybody. Looking at the small print, that is not a commercial risk I would want to take on. So yes to home ownership for getting a foot on the property ladder, but no to tying it to owner-occupation.

I want to reinforce what the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington said and what my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan)—I am glad that she will be speaking shortly—has been saying for a very long time about the survey carried out on the future accommodation model. For my sins, I am a graduate mathematician, and I worked as a professional statistician. It cannot be said too often that a self-selected sample is not a sample. The problem is not that one fifth is not enough. It is easily big enough if it is a sample, but this is not a sample; it is a self-selected sample, which is very different. If only one fifth choose to fill in a survey, they are not representative. Any polling organisation —I know that one was involved in this survey—should advise that.

I have a print-out here of the first page of the survey website. After the note on privacy at the beginning, the very first words read:

“Service personnel are dissatisfied with the current accommodation system and it is becoming unaffordable, so the MOD is thinking about accommodation options for the future—the Future Accommodation Model.”

From the word go, the scene has been set to encourage people to support change. The current option is not actually given as an option anywhere. There may be more, but on flicking through quickly I found no less than 10 references to opportunity for home ownership. However, nobody says that the number of postings that are near affordable housing will be reduced; that is not mentioned. Nor does it tell people that there will be an extra tax if they buy a property and let it.

Group after group have hints that they will get extra allowances out of this. We are told that it will be extended to the unmarried. There is a very strong case for that, but will it include children from a previous relationship? It will become very expensive if it does. That is not made clear, but that is one group of people to whom it could apply. There is a hint that people might get more help with their mortgages. As we go through, it is suggested that more money may be available for area after area. It does not actually spell out that if the thing is to remain affordable, we will end up potentially with higher rents and other issues for those who are still in married quarters, unless money can be found elsewhere. There is just one comment at the very beginning about this being within a fixed budget. As we go on, we can see why more and more people thought this was nirvana coming.

I will end by saying that I have the highest respect and regard for my hon. and gallant Friend the Minister. We worked together, which I very much enjoyed. I know he is deeply committed to the armed forces. Indeed, he has served for nearly 30 years in what was the Territorial Army. I share his vision that we need to find routes to home ownership for people in all three services; there is a perfectly good one for the Navy at the moment. However, I urge him to think again about whether owner-occupation is the right way for the Army and Air Force and to ask himself whether moving towards a needs-based allowance and away, in many areas, from SFA will maintain a happy and effective Army and Air Force.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mark Lancaster)]

Mr Walker, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for what I sense will be the last time this Parliament, although we shall see.

I start, of course, by congratulating the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) on securing this debate, which provides us with another vital opportunity to discuss the future accommodation model. It is vital because the welfare of our service personnel is the basis on which we build a world-class armed forces, able and willing to take on the threats and challenges of these volatile times. Getting this matter right is absolutely in all our interests. Let us be honest—we have not always done that.

As I have said previously, nobody is under any illusions that successive Governments’ records on service family accommodation in recent years have been an unqualified success. Indeed, issues with CarillionAmey, which several hon. Members raised today, have been well-documented. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the comments made by my hon. Friends the Members for Canterbury (Sir Julian Brazier) and for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan), and others, which show that there is at least an acknowledgement that we have made progress in recent months. There has definitely been an improvement, but I am not remotely complacent. Much more needs to be done and I reaffirm my previous statement that if CarillionAmey does not perform on its contract, it will be replaced.

Equally, a number of detailed questions were put to me today and I will do my best in the time I have available to answer many of them. As ever, with some of the more technical questions, I will endeavour to write to hon. Members in the shortened timeframe we now have before this Parliament dissolves; I am sure that my officials will work especially hard to try to get those answers for me as soon as they can.

However, I will start by gently making just one point. The hon. Member for Manchester, Withington basically said that he felt this process was being rushed; I would argue that it is anything but. Absolutely no firm decisions have yet been made, and this debate is yet another valuable opportunity for colleagues from all parties to contribute to this process and influence it. We do not anticipate coming to any firm conclusions, or rather that the next Government will not come to any firm conclusions, until probably the end of the year, with a trial not starting until the end of 2018, and a move to a new model will probably not be completed for perhaps 10 or even 12 years. With respect, that is hardly a rush.

The focus of today’s debate is not the past but the future, and in particular our intent to ensure that, when it comes to service family accommodation, we move with the times in a way that is logical and beneficial for all. As our troops return from Germany and we look to rationalise our estate, there is an unprecedented opportunity for us to do just that, by taking the opportunity to modernise the way we provide housing for our people, making it fair, flexible, and affordable.

Our future accommodation model is the mechanism for achieving that goal. Its benefits are not well understood —I accept that—and there are many myths and misconceptions shrouding it. However, before I hopefully go on to debunk the most prominent of those, I should start by explaining why the FAM will be a vast improvement on what has gone before.

Equally, however, in response to the comments from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), I must say that I believe that across the House there is a will to provide a workable, practical and sensible solution for our armed forces personnel. Indeed, this may well be one of the last points of unity that we find over the next seven weeks as we head towards the excitement of the general election in 51 days’ time. As I say, there is a will to try to get this matter right and although, judging by his comments, my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury may feel that we are on different sides of this argument, I am not sure that we are. This is all about delivering choice rather than prescribing to our service personnel what they will take. Also, let us not forget that some 20% of our service personnel opt out of the system and get absolutely nothing, which cannot be right.

First, I want to see a system that will be fairer, reflecting the societal norms of the 21st century rather than those of some bygone era. Let me give just one example. Currently, a married senior officer will be assigned a four-bedroom home, even if he or she has no children or other dependents, and will usually pay just £350 to £450 a month for it. By contrast, an unmarried member of the junior ranks, with a partner of 10 years and two children, is entitled to nothing more than a single bedroom in a block. How can that be right? If that service person moves out into the private sector to live with their family, it could cost them well over £1,000 every month.

The absurdity of this state of affairs becomes all the more apparent when one reads the testaments of the men and women whom it affects, such as the Royal Navy sailor who wrote to tell me how he cannot live with his girlfriend, even though they have been in a relationship for several years and have children together, or the couple forced to live apart because they are not married, or the father forced to live as a visitor with his own family. We cannot turn a blind eye to these situations any more. So, under the new model, we are committed to ensuring that provision is based on need.

However, FAM will not only seek to redress inequity but to be far more flexible than the current model, and flexibility is the key. The current model is failing to keep pace with modern life. What our service personnel want today—indeed, what they need—is choice and stability. They want to be given the choice of how to live, where to live, and with whom they want to live, and to be near the schools of their choice, to own their home and to provide their partners with stability and employment opportunities. Currently, however, our personnel must like what is on offer or lump it and, if they choose to go it alone, we cut the purse strings and they get nothing—no assistance, financial or otherwise, from the Ministry of Defence. That does not make sense and it needs to change.

We have made a start, through our forces Help to Buy scheme, which has so far helped more than 10,000 service personnel, but we have to go further. Under the proposals being considered as part of the future accommodation model, service personnel will be better supported to make their own decisions, and will receive our support regardless of where they choose to live.

The final point in this section of my speech is that the future accommodation model will be affordable. The current offer is inefficient and increasingly unaffordable. At present, we spend more than £800 million a year on accommodation, and that is set to rise, but a fifth of the personnel do not benefit from it. FAM will make savings by reducing management overheads, reducing further spending and stamping out inefficiencies. Let me make it clear—in case hon. Members are in any doubt—that savings will not be made through reducing the effective subsidy that personnel receive. This is about doing away with inefficiencies, such as the 10,000 or so MOD properties that currently sit empty. How can it be right for the taxpayer that we have those properties, all of which take money to maintain and currently serve no purpose because they are empty? We now try to rent them out when we can, getting an income that is reinvested, but we must keep a number of them empty, and rightly so, to try to always have ready what we say a service family should live in.

The intent is clear: we want a model that is fair, flexible, affordable and fit for the 21st century. That is our steadfast intention, but exactly how we get there is still being carefully considered and debates like today’s are feeding positively into that. To give just one example, the point has been raised with me before that even though we are moving to a system based on need there should be certain appointments that absolutely maintain a property: a commanding officer probably should have a property that goes with the appointment because of the wider needs of his role. We are looking at the various options to ensure that that is possible but, as I have said, at this stage no final decisions have been made. Nothing is set in stone. Ideas and plans will continue to evolve as we assess policy options over the coming months. Towards the end of the year we should be able to give more certainty about what the future policy will look like, but it will be important to continue engaging with service families to get the detail right, and we will eventually test policy in the real world with several pilots towards the end of 2018. I cannot at this stage give the exact details of what shape those pilots will take, but hope to do so shortly.

Crucially, our people will remain at the core of the decision-making process. We are listening, and will continue to listen, to service personnel, their families, family federations and other organisations. For instance, since we last debated FAM in Westminster Hall in October 2016, the FAM survey results have been published, with more than 24,000 servicemen and women responding and giving us their views on the model, indicating their housing preferences and needs. Hon. Members made some criticism of the survey in their contributions, and I shall attempt to address that, but it is interesting that this did not include cases in which the survey produced information that supported their points. None the less, I agree that it was a self-selecting survey and will be subject to response bias, but that has been recognised in our use of the results, which we have combined with many different sources of evidence. It is, after all, only one source of evidence. We tried to find a balance between giving enough information to inform a response and not putting in so much that we made it too complex. Crucially, I can say, as a statistician, that because of the number of responses, the survey gives a 99% degree of confidence that broadly—[Interruption.] I can see that my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury is itching to intervene. I have provoked him.

[Sir Julian Brazier]

A sample of 24,000 would give an exceptionally high level of confidence but, as I stressed earlier, this is not a sample—it is a self-selected group. I am sorry, but the claim of 99% just does not stand up.

[Mark Lancaster]

My hon. Friend has made that point twice and I take it firmly on board. I will respond only by saying that the survey is one of several sources of evidence we are using.

It is because of the views of service personnel and suggestions made in this Chamber last October that we have looked in more detail at how personnel should be supported in the private market, at how service families accommodation might be a bigger part of the future model and at how we assess the potential impact on retention and operational effectiveness—matters raised by several hon. Members. Later this year, we will visit garrisons, air stations and naval bases to talk to service personnel about the model, to ensure that they understand what it could mean for them, to inform them of the opportunities that lie ahead and to listen to their feedback.

Much remains fluid as we continue to seek the most expedient solution for all involved but, despite our best intentions, that fluidity has resulted in speculation, concerns and incorrect assumptions that must be quashed, and I turn briefly to those now. First, we are not getting rid of all service family accommodation and single living accommodation. That could not be further from the truth. Single living accommodation enables rapid mobility of personnel, offers good value for money and delivers a unique service not seen anywhere else on the private market, so we will be keeping it. Likewise, we recognise and value the additional support to service personnel that service family accommodation provides. Decisions on the quantity of retained service family accommodation will be based on the local private market, demand, value for money and operational needs. Those factors will be at the forefront of our minds during the decision-making process. I encourage all hon. Members to go and look at the nearly 1,000 homes we are building around the Larkhill area if they want to see for themselves our commitment to service family accommodation.

Secondly—I said this earlier, but it is a point worth repeating—the £400 million effective subsidy that service personnel as a whole receive will not be cut. Thirdly, just as we do now, the MOD will shield our people from variations in rent across the country. From north to south, be it in Catterick, Northolt, or Andover, service personnel will have access to subsidised accommodation, and will make the same contribution for the property regardless of the geographic location and of whether it is service family accommodation or a private rent. In practice, that means that a service person in Yorkshire will contribute the same as one in Wiltshire, with the difference being covered by their allowance. What is changing is that we will move to a model that, for the first time, provides support to service personnel both in and outside of the wire.

We have had a well-informed and useful debate. Whatever our opinions on the finer points at stake, we should not lose sight of the overriding fact that we all share the same fundamental desire to ensure that those who serve us are well provided for. I reassure hon. Members that their views, and those of their constituents, will continue to shape our plans. Working together, I have no doubt that we will engineer a future accommodation model that will provide our people with the greater choice and stability they expect, deserve and need; as I said earlier, something that it is in everyone’s interests to get right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lancaster]

I can, but equally I am confident that, after the Secretary of State’s intervention last year with CarillionAmey and the introduction of the get well plan, we have seen a significant improvement in satisfaction. That might not yet have filtered down into the survey, but recent stats show that the satisfaction rate on the service from CarillionAmey has risen from 40% to 61%. We take this matter very seriously, which is why I am keeping a close eye on it and am determined that the services standard should continue to improve.

[Sir Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the progress that has been made on the CarillionAmey contract. However, does he agree that continuing to have service family accommodation—the patch, as it is affectionately called—is critical in providing a supportive arrangement for families when their loved ones are away on operations or indeed extended exercises?

[Mark Lancaster]

What our families really want is choice and support, but I can say to my hon. Friend that only recently I visited Salisbury plain and saw in Tidworth, Larkhill and elsewhere some 1,000 brand- new service family accommodation homes being built, so we take the matter very seriously. I am confident that SFA, as it is referred to, will continue to be provided, and some of those homes really are of an absolute first-rate standard. However, this is about trying to support the modern lifestyle of our service families and the way in which they work.

A Better Defence Estate Strategy

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Sir Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) on securing the debate and on her excellent speech. Let me be clear: I agree with the principle of what the Government are trying to do. We have to take some painful decisions and some of those decisions will inevitably have effects on individual constituencies that some of us will not like. However, I share the concerns of a number of other speakers that we are in danger of losing our national footprint.

I should like to introduce two specifically defence elements into the equation. First, spousal employment continually comes up in the top three reasons for leaving the armed forces. The second factor is local house prices. I do not support the idea of an allowance to replace service family accommodation, but I do support aspirations for more members of the armed forces to have the opportunity to buy housing.

In terms of those two factors, if we look at the footprint of what is proposed, we find all too often that the bases under threat are places where there is plenty of spousal employment and plenty of affordable housing—Canterbury in my constituency, which closed recently, Maidstone in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald, Chester, Ripon and so on. The expansion is increasingly taking place in places such as Catterick, completely isolated and in the middle of nowhere, or in areas such as the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth), where housing is desperately expensive. That cannot be retention-positive. It is not fair to ask my hon. Friend the Minister to take account of wider community issues beyond a certain point, but those points are critical for the future manning of the armed forces.

I echo a point made by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). I happen to know Redford barracks quite well. When I had some responsibilities for Scotland, I visited it a couple of times. It is a prime historic military site on the edge of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Unlike the hon. and learned Lady, I am a passionate Unionist. That site should be one that we make more of, as we get rid of some of the frankly uneconomic and unmanageable garrisons in the edges of Scotland. I know Fort George and the rest are unhappy, but I support those closures. Redford should be a place we concentrate on. I am not going to ask my hon. Friend the Minister for the figure because that will be commercially confidential, but I will ask him to write to me to reassure me that the estimate for the value of Redford barracks in his considerations takes account of the fact that it is listed and, as such, is of very little value to a developer. I understand that even the outbuildings are listed.

That point is paralleled all over the country. To take the point through, there is the alternative of moving more units to Leuchars, which is a very nice base—my son happens to be serving there. Unfortunately, the local community is not large enough to provide spousal employment for a large expansion and, because it is right next to St Andrews, house prices are among the most expensive in Scotland.

My hon. Friend the Minister has to take difficult decisions. I am with him on the fact that difficult decisions have to be taken within our shrunken defence budget, which I, like others, would like be greater. However, in deciding where we focus the armed forces of the future, we must take account of the two key factors of spousal employment and house prices, and the overall footprint.

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

These are voluntary missions in which we participate not simply because they are European, but because they are in our own national interest—curbing piracy off the horn of Africa, bringing peace to the Balkans and helping to stop the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean. The right hon. Gentleman is right that we will have the opportunity, if we wish to do so, to co-operate with our European partners on future missions where it is in our national interest.

[Sir Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the answers to earlier questions illustrate that we punch above our weight compared with many of our European partners, both in terms of spending and in terms of deployments to protect the eastern flank of Europe? Does he further agree that that is something that our European neighbours would do very well to keep in mind as we negotiate a new relationship with them after Brexit?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his knighthood, as I should earlier have congratulated the hon. Member for Bolton North East (Sir David Crausby). My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to continue to improve the effectiveness of our work within the European Union and NATO.

Trident: Test Firing

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

The hon. Gentleman is, of course, opposed to the Trident deterrent that has kept this country safe for so many years. First, let me caution him against believing everything he has read in the weekend press. Secondly, let me repeat that the Government are in no doubt about the capability and effectiveness of our deterrent and would not have asked this House to endorse the principle of the deterrent and our plans to build four new submarines if there had been any question about its capability and effectiveness.

[Sir Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that secrecy and transparency are simply incompatible, and that it is right that every British Government—as well as, indeed, every Government of our nuclear allies, the Americans and the French—have always put secrecy first in this area?

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

Article 5 was last invoked after 9/11, when the rest of the alliance pledged to do everything possible to help the United States following the most appalling attack on the twin towers. The answer to my hon. Friend's question, of course, is that once article 5 is triggered, each member state has to examine its obligations to the alliance as a whole. Before that stage, as tensions escalate, I would expect the deployments that we have prepared, including the very high readiness taskforce, to be enacted.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the new Administration will be much more interested in deeds than in words when it comes to NATO and article 5, and that Britain is setting an example for the rest of Europe not just on the 2% but with the troop deployments we plan for Poland and the Baltic states?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and, indeed, we agree with President-elect Trump’s call for other European countries to do more. It is true that eight of the 28 members have now set in place firm plans to reach the 2% figure. We reach 2%, but some 19 members of NATO do not even do 1.5%, and four or five of them do not even do 1%. So European country members of NATO, in particular, still have a long way to go to fulfil the pledges on which we all agreed at the Wales summit.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin]

The hon. Gentleman will know that there is a double lock in terms of the budget and that it is based not just on 2% of our economy, which I am pleased to say grew again in the third quarter. There is also a lock in terms of a rise of 0.5% above inflation every year to 2020.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend confirm that this issue arose from the first review for about 30 years to result in an increase, rather than a reduction, in the size of the armed forces? Does she agree that, as the world gets more dangerous, it is all the more important that we get more bang for the buck from every pound spent?

[Harriett Baldwin]

May I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his efforts during his time at the Department? They resulted in the settlement in the 2015 autumn statement, which I mentioned earlier. He is absolutely right to say that defence spending is going up every year, and that is so that we can invest in the new Type 26 frigates, aircraft carriers, attack helicopters, fast jets, armoured vehicles and, as we heard last week, our cyber-defences.

Defence Estate

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman about the number of jobs per site, but I can tell him that the local authority has ambitious plans for the future development of that accommodation. Some of the units are likely to be re-provided for at Leuchars, but we hope to see that site become part of the commercial lay-down in the Stirling area.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster) on the work that they have done to provide a good set-up for defence and to meet the housing target of 55,000 homes. I urge my right hon. Friend, in looking at the accommodation strategy, to bear it in mind that the provision of good-quality service family accommodation is crucial not just for retention, but, in many cases, for maintaining morale among soldiers and other service people who go to war, particularly when there are casualties.

[Sir Michael Fallon]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his earlier words. Some of the decisions in this strategy document were difficult decisions. That is inevitable when we have to match the defence estate to the capabilities and needs of the modern Army. It is important that we give families certainty about where they are likely to be going, which is why some of the timescales are some way out. So far as future accommodation is concerned, all the receipts from the decisions that have been taken in this document will come back to defence, and they will be part of the regeneration and renovation of the defence estate more generally. Much of that will find its way into better and new accommodation for our service members.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

I think we all welcome the demise of Public Interest Lawyers. It is for the regulatory authorities to look closely at what it did and how it earned its income. I trained at Sennybridge many years ago. I assure everyone in the armed forces that these Ministers and this Government are behind them and will make sure that we protect them as much as possible.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend to his place, and especially welcome his stance on this matter. He may have to spread his net even wider than he thinks. Is he aware that Phil Shiner, who has made so much money out of this situation, is trying to conceal his ill-gotten gains by threatening those editors who are threatening to expose him with recourse to the Independent Press Standards Organisation on the basis of so-called mental health problems?

[Mike Penning]

First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work—not just as Minister for the Reserves but ever since he came to the House—for the reserves, in which he has served honourably, as well. Let us let the regulatory bodies do their work first and see what comes out of the other side, and then see whether any other processes, including perhaps even legal action, are needed.