Oral Answers to Questions
Karl Turner Excerpts(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mark Lancaster)
I will meet the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), shortly. I had several such meetings with his predecessor at which we discussed mental health.
Mark Lancaster
The hon. Gentleman makes a valuable point. The problem is not specific to veterans; for some time, we have had problems in society whereby mental health has been a stigma and people are reluctant to come forward. We are working closely with the Department of Health, because ultimately this is its responsibility, but we also have a number of programmes within the Ministry of Defence, not least the veterans and reserves mental health programme, which ensures that veterans are contacted one year after they leave the service to be encouraged to seek support if they need it.
Karl Turner
Servicemen and women are able to access defence mental health services for up to six months after they leave the military, but poor mental health can kick in at any time. Given that the NHS is frankly on its knees in relation to mental health services, will the Minister consider extending the access period to allow veterans proper priority in mental health services? That would also take the pressures off the NHS.
Mark Lancaster
This is an interesting area. Ultimately, the national health service is responsible for our veterans because, as a society, we do not have a specialist veterans department; I think that is the right approach. Nevertheless, we have invested over £13 million of LIBOR money in this specialist area. We do indeed allow people access for up to six months, and I am happy to look at the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion to see how we can perhaps do more.
Oral Answers to Questions
Karl Turner Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)
9. What progress he has made in improving recruitment to the armed forces.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
12. What progress he has made in improving recruitment to the armed forces.
The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Hammond)
Armed forces recruiting remains a top priority within the MOD, and a new multi-media recruitment campaign was launched on 11 January. As I have previously announced to the House, there has been a series of issues affecting the management of the recruitment process, including IT problems. Action is in hand to address these issues. The recruiting element of the Army website was updated in December, a simplified online medical questionnaire was launched last week, and a new simplified mobile and tablet-compatible application form will be launched later this week. Although it is early days, there is evidence that the principal objective of the national media campaign—to raise awareness of armed forces recruiting—is being achieved, with visits to the Army recruiting website up by over 50% compared with last year’s weekly average.
Mr Hammond
By definition, we cannot answer that question. Every effort has been made by the application of additional manpower to the system, going back manually checking records, to make contact with anybody who may have got lost in the system during the past year, and I welcome the opportunity to place it on record that we would welcome being contacted, as my office has been, by anybody who is so affected who wants to pick up the threads and re-embark on the process. We will make sure that that happens.
Karl Turner
With the fiasco of the failed recruitment system costing, I think, £6.7 million and the failure to recruit reservists to plug the gap from redundancies, will the Secretary of State now admit that he is gambling with the nation’s safety?
Mr Hammond
No, and I would not gamble with the nation’s safety. The £6.7 million has to be seen in the context of the overall budget for the reserves and regular recruitment process, which is £1.36 billion. As the hon. Gentleman will know, because I have said it many times before, the project to increase the size of the reserves is not to backfill for the regulars as the Regular Army is reduced in size to 82,000; it is part of a broader restructuring of our forces, making different use of regulars and reserves, additional use of contractors and more effective use of civilians.
BAE Systems
Karl Turner Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
I start by congratulating the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) on securing this important debate. I come to the debate late, not just because I have been called to speak late in the debate or because my alarm clock did not go off, but because my involvement with BAE goes back only to the last general election when I was elected to represent Kingston upon Hull East. I bow to the greater experience of right hon. and hon. Members across the House who have done huge amounts of work over the years in relation to the company.
I want to say something about the trade unions at BAE Systems in Brough. I have met them on numerous occasions over the past 18 months and they have always been very committed to the company. They are pragmatic, and are not the type of trade union that hon. Members on the Government Benches would normally like to describe. They are very sensible in what they do and, in my experience, have always been very supportive of the management. But something changed. I met trade union representatives in July. Some redundancies had been announced at Brough, but they thought that everything was going well. As far as they were concerned, nothing was on the horizon. That was also the attitude of the management at the time, but on 27 September something went wrong and 899 redundancies were announced at Brough. The impact on the individuals concerned is clearly massive, and how they found out about the potential redundancies was disgraceful. They found out the same way I did—in the media.
The work force are flexible and the trade unions are pragmatic, but from my meetings with the management I am convinced that they have already made up their minds. In my respectful submission, this so-called consultation period is complete nonsense. They seem unlikely to change their view, and why would they given the yellow book situation that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden alluded to? I am told that up to 80% of the redundancy bill will be paid for by the taxpayer, so when a trade union official said to me yesterday, “That is me paying for my own redundancy,” he was absolutely right.
The management have come out fighting. Chris Boardman claims that it is not entirely the company’s fault. He said:
“we are in a really difficult period and the recession and the action the current Government has taken has just exacerbated that”.
That might be right but the management have still acted particularly badly. The Government need to speak to them to see what we can do to save those jobs in my area.
I want to talk about the campaign being run by hon. Members and others. A few Saturdays ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) and I spent some time collecting signatures for a petition. Members across the House have worked hard on this together—it has been a case of non-partisan politics—which has been helpful. The Hull Daily Mail, too, has run a campaign to protect people at Brough, and should be commended on doing an extremely good job.