Armed Forces Covenant Annual Report

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and James Gray

Thursday 7th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gray]

I beg the hon. Gentleman’s pardon. If I may say so, Mr Hanson, I wish that the screens in Westminster Hall better indicated who is speaking here and what the topic is here, rather than who is speaking in the main Chamber. Currently it is rather hard sometimes to follow the debate here. That is a point that is perhaps worth making.

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. I particularly respect what he has had to say because standing up for the armed forces or serving the armed forces in Northern Ireland is a significantly more difficult thing to do than for those of us who are in areas such as mine in Wiltshire, where almost the most natural and easy thing to do in the world is to stand up for the armed forces. To do so in Northern Ireland, in the way that he has described, is particularly difficult, so I pay particular tribute to him and the points that he made, and I know that the Minister and the Government will listen very carefully to them.

I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) and her two male colleagues—my hon. Friends the Members for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) and for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer)—for having the initiative to call for this outstandingly good and useful debate. As she said, it is very important that we discuss the armed forces covenant. We should be doing so on an annual basis and I was astonished to discover—perhaps it is my fault and I should have called for such a debate myself—that we have not done so after the previous three annual reports on the covenant. So I respect and pay tribute to the way that she has done that, and very much hope that this example will be followed in future years. We could actually debate every year what progress has been made in the implementation of the covenant.

I should first of all say that the covenant itself is an outstandingly useful and worthwhile document, and I pay tribute to the then Labour Government, which first created such a document. They did not write it into law, but it was their idea to write down a contract that had been in existence for many centuries—that invisible contract between society and our armed forces. It was the Labour Government that said, “This time, we ought to codify, write down and make it plain, create a metric of it”. It was then a Conservative Government that wrote the observance of the covenant into law, which again was a very worthwhile thing to do, and the annual reports that we are now producing are extremely good.

No one in the debate today—indeed, no one in the Palace of Westminster and probably nobody in Britain—would disagree with the fundamental principle behind the covenant, namely that we ask our armed service people to do things that we ourselves would under no circumstances consider doing, and that in return for that we provide support for them. That is support of every kind. I will come back in a moment to talk about veterans and support for people who have suffered as a result of their service in the armed forces, but that support is not the purpose behind the covenant.

The covenant is about supporting people in our armed services every day of their lives, and their families. There are about 200,000 people who currently serve in our armed forces and do a brilliant job of doing it. There are also their families. If we take 200,000 people and consider regular turnover, probably a million people, or something of that sort, in Britain today have served in the last 20 years. Add their families to that number and we are talking about 2 million, 3 million or 5 million people who are being affected by service in the forces. The purpose behind the covenant is to ensure that they are not disadvantaged as a result of that service. It is about enabling them to go off to places around the world, to serve in the way that they do—they do so superbly well—and to ensure that their families are given education, housing, medical support and all the other things that they deserve. Those are things that they must have as service families.

I pay tribute to the variety of charities that do those things so extremely well. I am proud to be a patron of Recruit for Spouses, which provides jobs for the spouses of armed service personnel. I am also a patron of Mutual Support, which looks after service people with multiple sclerosis, as the initials indicate. A whole host of other similar charities of one sort or another do all sorts of things to help the families of our armed services.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

I echo the hon. Gentleman’s sentiments and comments on the charities that do so much good work. Would he join me in sending the wonderful volunteers at HorseBack UK all our best wishes as they try to deal with the flooding affecting their premises in Aberdeenshire?

[Mr James Gray]

I was not aware of the particular circumstances that the hon. Lady mentions, but if that is occurring in west Aberdeenshire—I know the area extremely well—I of course wish them well in their work, and I hope that they successfully rehabilitate their premises.

An enormous number of military charities across the board are doing all sorts of good work for people who are serving, for their families and for veterans. I am glad that they do that work. I am proud to be wearing the SSAFA tie this afternoon. Such organisations, which include the Royal British Legion and Help for Heroes—we spoke about them earlier—are outstandingly good charities doing outstandingly good work for our armed services.

One or two of the speeches this afternoon have focused on those who are disadvantaged because of their service in the armed forces, but that seems to misunderstand slightly the nature of the covenant. Of course it is right that people who have been injured in warfare, whether physically or mentally, should be looked after properly. Of course it is right that when people have come back and have all sorts of difficulties—whether they find themselves in prison or have problems with drugs or drink or other issues—we should look after them properly. That, however, is a very small part of the covenant.

The covenant is a broad document that concerns every aspect of the armed forces and every aspect of how we look after those who we ask to do jobs that we ourselves would not do. It is right that on such an occasion as this we should celebrate the triumph of the magnificent armed forces, their fantastic work and how we in this place are duty-bound to look after them and say, “Thank you very much” for what they do.

The covenant usefully covers what happens during a person’s active service. In North Wiltshire we have a huge military presence, and a great many cases come to my notice, including bullying in the armed forces, failure to be promoted and all sorts of other things that might go wrong in a serviceman’s career. The covenant says that we must look after our armed servicemen and what they are doing on the ground. We must encourage them in their careers and help and support them. They have a difficult job to do. Often they are away from their families and are asked to do all kinds of things that we would not normally do ourselves. Their career path must be encouraged and supported by what we do, and the covenant must take account of that.

I will focus on one particular aspect this afternoon in my brief contribution. I must be careful about my language, but it is what the press have called “ambulance-chasing lawyers”. That issue does not really appear in the armed forces covenant, but perhaps it should. Lawyers have been trawling around Iraq in particular, finding people who allege some form of abuse by our armed forces in Iraq 10 or 15 years ago. That has been highlighted in particular with the lawyers, Leigh Day, which behaved very badly in the al-Sweady inquiry, wasting £31 million of public money in pursuing a case that should not have been pursued in the first place. A whole variety of other lawyers are doing similar work in Iraq today.

We must be very aware of that issue because it does not only affect our veterans. It must be terribly worrying for large numbers of our veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan when they did things perfectly correctly under orders and behaved naturally, but some lawyers for their own financial reasons are seeking to investigate what they did. That must also have an effect on the operational capabilities of our forces today. Any soldier doing something might have to think, “What would happen if I got this wrong? What would happen if I breach some rule? What will happen if, in 10 or 15 years’ time, the law changes and the law comes back and haunts me and seeks to arrest me or prosecute me for something that I should have perfectly happily been doing under the law?”

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling, who wrote a magnificent paper about “lawfare” called “The Fog of Law”. He wrote it with Laura Croft, if I remember rightly. That fine paper lays out precisely how the law might interfere with operational effectiveness on the ground, and we have seen that issue become a great deal worse in recent years.

I would not want what has been a consensual, pleasant and important debate to become party political in any shape, size or form—it would be quite wrong if it did—but it is none the less worth noting that the shadow Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), who was appointed just yesterday, is in receipt of £45,000 of cash from this particular bunch of lawyers. It is she who, among other things, described that firm as a “great firm”. Our armed servicemen, who are worried about whether they will be picked up by that “great firm”, might be worried by her attitude.

Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and James Gray

Thursday 15th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

I am pleased to be able to follow the thoughtful speech by the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond). I should like to reflect on the events of a century ago and put on record some of those who made the ultimate sacrifice. War memorials in Scotland record many lives lost at the battle of Loos, which raged briefly in September 1915. The newly built war memorial funded by the people of Neilston, in my constituency, remembers the sacrifice of soldiers from the village and the surrounding areas who were killed in world war one, a number of whom were lost at Loos. I grew up in Carnoustie, a town that prides itself on two men who were awarded the Victoria Cross. Lance Corporal Jarvis of the Royal Engineers was the first recipient of the Victoria Cross in the first world war. He risked his life for over an hour under enemy fire to destroy a bridge to protect retreating colleagues. Petty Officer Samson of the Royal Navy Reserve gained his Victoria Cross for tending the wounded on the beach at Gallipoli.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) has said, we support the Bill. I also echo the words of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), in saying that we look forward to debating the detail of the Bill in Committee, to ensure that it will be the best and most effective that it can be.

It is worth recalling that the backdrop to recent legislation in this area has sometimes been the fraught relationship between the Government and the armed forces in regard to issues such as Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, senior officers were forced to go public in an effort, as they saw it, to protect those under their command. The current members of our armed forces are entitled to ask that we learn lessons, when they are there to be learned, and that we do not repeat any mistakes that might have been made.

We also need to look at how best to support those who have been involved in wars. As my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute said, the Scottish National party’s manifesto made a commitment to the creation of a British armed forces federation. I was encouraged by the positive words from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on that subject. This would represent real progress in the way we deal with our responsibility to undertake our duty of care to our service personnel. We absolutely must use the opportunity that we will have in Committee to continue to modernise the governance of our armed forces and to consider properly how we treat those who enter the services. In so doing, it is particularly important that we understand and act on our responsibilities to those who suffer as a consequence of their service, and to their families—for instance in relation to their housing needs. The Scottish Government’s funding for supported housing in Cranhill is very welcome in that regard.

It was positive to hear the Prime Minister’s comments yesterday at Prime Minister’s questions on the care that the forces medical services provide so well. It was also useful to participate in yesterday’s Adjournment debate on veterans mental health provision, secured by my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron). There is clearly a will in this House to properly and effectively consider the mental health of our service personnel during and, importantly, after their service. We need to work together to ensure that the provisions of the Bill reflect that good will towards our armed forces.

We must commit to doing more work like the intensive post-traumatic stress disorder treatment programmes that NHS Scotland and Combat Stress are undertaking. Like the hon. Member for Portsmouth South, I have been fortunate to meet a number of organisations dealing with veterans over the last few months. It is striking how much of a support network is provided by charities such as the Coming Home Centre, Horseback UK and Scottish War Blinded. The work that they and others do to support our armed forces and our veterans is immense and we owe them a debt of gratitude.

I am pleased that Scotland is leading the way with the appointment of a Scottish veterans commissioner. That appointment is most encouraging, and it reinforces the Scottish Government’s commitment to providing support to the 400,000-plus ex-servicemen and women living in Scotland and to the capacity-building funding they are providing to Veterans Scotland to allow the organisation to work on developing and improving support for our veterans over the next two years.

Let me briefly mention my own constituency. I was heartened by the focus on the veterans in East Renfrewshire as well as in neighbouring Inverclyde. Our local authorities are working together in Renfrewshire on a veterans support service, which provides local support to address individual circumstances.

Veterans and our current serving personnel will rightly expect this House to use the opportunity of this Armed Forces Bill to examine all the issues, including the creation of a federation, the extension of veterans’ initiatives and how we continue with issues relating to the gathering and use of data, as was mentioned by the hon. Member for Strangford.

[Mr James Gray]

I strongly agree with much of what the hon. Lady has said in regard to veterans, mental health and a number of other things. However, I am a little unclear as to which part of the Bill she thinks can be amended to take account of the things that she proposes? For example, where will she get this proposed armed forces federation into this particular Bill?

[Kirsten Oswald]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and for his positive words. As I mentioned earlier, there are important discussions around these areas that we must bring forward in Committee.

In conclusion, let us be ambitious for our armed services, our veterans and this important Bill. Let us work in Committee positively to improve the Bill, to probe and to debate so that we make real positive progress for our armed forces and veterans.