Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Twist Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sally Jameson (Doncaster Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

14. What progress he has made on establishing an independent armed forces commissioner.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)]

21. What progress he has made on establishing an independent armed forces commissioner.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Luke Pollard)]

The Armed Forces Commissioner Bill is a landmark piece of legislation and a major step taken by this Government to renew the contract between the nation and those who serve. Second Reading of the Bill will be later today and the commissioner will be a strong independent champion for our armed forces and their families, improving parliamentary oversight and getting to grips with the welfare issues faced by our armed forces.

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[Luke Pollard]

That was a commitment we made in opposition, but it is also a commitment to increased scrutiny that we are proud to make from the Government Dispatch Box. We want to make the case that, to improve morale and to improve the relationship and the contract between the nation and those who serve, having an independent and impartial figure to champion our armed forces and their families will improve not only the lived experience of those people, but the operational capability of our forces, encouraging more people to recognise that someone is genuinely listening to their concerns and that Ministers are prepared to act on them as well. There is a lot of work to be done to renew the contract, but the Armed Forces Commissioner is a key first step.

[Liz Twist]

Last month I visited the Northern Hub for Veterans and Military Families Research at Northumbria University to hear about its suicide prevention work. Its research found that many military families bereaved by suicide felt helpless and unsupported as the wellbeing of their loved ones declined. Does the Minister agree that the Armed Forces Commissioner Bill is a vital opportunity to deliver better support for families going through difficult times?

[Luke Pollard]

Any death by suicide is a tragedy, though it remains fortunately a rare event in the armed forces community. It is positive to hear of the work by Northumbria University in this area. This month we published a refreshed edition of the armed forces suicide prevention strategy and action plan to enhance the MOD’s commitment to reducing suicide and better supporting those affected by it. A future independent commissioner will have the discretion to investigate welfare matters affecting our forces and will be a direct point of contact for bereaved families of our serving personnel, and that would naturally be a matter worthy of their attention.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Twist Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

3. What recent steps Veterans UK has taken to support veterans and their families.

[Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab)]

4. What recent steps Veterans UK has taken to support veterans and their families with the cost of living.

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[The Minister for Defence People and Families (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

With other Government Departments, the Ministry of Defence delivers a range of services to our brilliant veterans and their families. That includes the administration and payment of armed forces pensions and compensation, the provision of tailored advice and assistance through the veterans welfare service, defence transition services and the integrated personal commissioning for veterans.

[Liz Twist]

A new report from Northumbria University found that suicide among serving personnel and veterans could be reduced if there was better understanding within existing care provision of the specific challenges that they face. The report also found that military families felt unheard, misunderstood and not cared for during the most difficult periods of their lives, so what steps is the Minister taking, alongside our NHS, to deliver compassionate trauma-informed support for serving personnel and veterans?

[Dr Murrison]

I am glad that the hon. Lady has raised that issue. She will know that we have a defence suicide prevention strategy, which is reviewed regularly. She will also know that, overall, suicide in the armed forces is below what we might expect in the civilian population. There is a sub-group within that—young men—where it looks as if the rate is going up. We are looking very closely at that to better understand the reasons for it and how we can prevent it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Twist Excerpts

Monday 19th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My right hon. Friend can rest easy: I have been down to visit HMS Albion since those questions, and I can confirm that one of those ships will always be being made ready to sail. He can therefore be very relieved.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

T6. Suicide rates among veterans under the age of 24 are two to four times higher than in the civilian population, but figures show that this group is less likely to be in touch with mental health services. How will the Minister ensure that young veterans can access the support they need?

[Dr Murrison]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question—she has been consistent in her inquiry into this matter. She will be reassured to know that across the service community, the rate of suicide is lower than we would expect in the civilian population. There is a subset of young men within the serving population for whom there is an excess, and we are looking very closely at that. I very much commend to the hon. Lady the suicide action plan that we have published, which lays out what Defence is doing to drive down the suicide rate in our armed forces. Whichever figure it is, it is too high.

Service Family Accommodation: Maintenance

Liz Twist Excerpts

Monday 19th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Helen Morgan]

I agree with my hon. Friend wholeheartedly.

My understanding is that the current maintenance contract allows just two weeks after a family leaves a house to carry out any required upgrade work, including any repairs but also big-ticket works such as retrofitting insulation and replacing kitchens and bathrooms. Clearly, two weeks is not long enough if a significant amount of work is required. That leads to incomplete or poor-quality work, which costs more to fix in the future and causes disruption to the family living there.

The overall feedback from my constituents—there has been a lot of it—is that the response to requests for repair and the management of empty houses have deteriorated since the contract was restructured last April, and that while the coming of spring and summer has improved living conditions in the short term, there remain significant concerns about the operation of the process. There appear to be too many hand-offs between, in the case of my constituents, the contractors Pinnacle and Amey. I note that in response to an urgent question in December last year, the former Minister acknowledged that there were IT issues. That rings true with the experiences that have been related to me, in which requests have either not been logged in the first place or have gone missing in the hand-off between the two companies.

Anyone who works in a business knows that IT issues in a contract restructuring of this scale are inevitable, but the Minister suggested that they were unresolved in December 2022, a full nine months after the restructured contracts went live. Has there been any further improvement to date? I have a constituent still reporting little progress on a leaking roof and radiators. The roof was fixed in five days, but the scaffolding remained up for five weeks at goodness knows what unnecessary cost to the taxpayer and the radiators still leak. There is damp and mould, and they have not been given the results of a damp survey that was apparently carried out in December last year.

I hope I have illustrated the chaotic and broken process of reporting an issue and getting it fixed under the newly restructured contract, the shocking state of dilapidation of some empty homes that could otherwise be used for housing our service families, the impact on the service family community, and the unacceptable waste of taxpayers’ money. This is the price of a failing process. We have spent much time in this Chamber rightly debating, and indeed agreeing on, the need for social housing to be of a decent standard, and for tenants to have the right to demand a decent standard, both in the context of the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill as it passed through Parliament and in demanding an end to the system that led to the shocking death of Awaab Ishak.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on setting out the issues in her excellent speech. Labour launched our “Homes Fit for Heroes” campaign a few months ago to focus attention on this scandal and my Front-Bench colleagues have said that, if elected, we will make addressing it a priority. As she said, we cannot carry on with leaky roofs, broken boilers and damp; we must make this a priority. Does she agree that the Government could have done a lot of work already to improve things for the services?

[Helen Morgan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I broadly agree with her.

We need to accept that our service families have the same right to decent housing as everyone else in this country. When they report a problem, they should expect a response. I do not need to remind anyone that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) pointed out, servicemen and women are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for us. We should at least ensure that they can have a hot shower and a mould-free home in a supportive community. I am sure the Minister will agree with that point, so I would like to conclude by asking him to respond to some questions about the functioning of the contract as it currently stands.

Will the Minister update the House on the current situation regarding outstanding calls and issues raised? How confident is he that all the data on those calls has been captured, given the issues I have recounted of problems not being recorded or being lost in the hand-off between the two companies? What is the long-term plan to deal with the issue of empty properties falling into disrepair and out of use altogether? Does the Minister believe that the current contract structure is commercially viable in the long term, given the unanticipated additional resource that the contractors have had to commit to resolving backlogs and dealing with the additional hand-offs within the process? Is there a deadline by which he expects these contracts to be operating on an acceptable “business as usual” basis? Has he considered restructuring and renegotiating the contracts, given the obvious operational difficulties that have been experienced? Finally, is he able to quantify the additional cost to taxpayers of dealing with the problems that have occurred over the last year?

I am grateful to the Minister for his time at this late hour on a Monday, and to Mr Speaker for granting a debate on an issue that I know is of the utmost concern both to the service families currently based in North Shropshire and to those elsewhere in the UK. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Twist Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

5. What steps the Government are taking to support NATO allies in responding to the invasion of Ukraine.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

7. What steps the Government are taking to support NATO allies in responding to the invasion of Ukraine.

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[James Heappey]

The hon. Lady asks an excellent question, but I hope that she will not mind if I draw an important distinction. NATO is not involved in the planning of or in direct support of the Ukrainian war effort. That is a really important point, because Putin claims the exact opposite to the Russian public and is entirely wrong to do so. Those who support Ukraine do so as an alliance of friends of Ukraine outwith NATO, but of course NATO is invariably supportive of the work that we are doing.

The hon. Lady is right to observe that NATO has a job of work to do to strengthen its eastern flank, to provide wider deterrence against any sort of growth or escalation in the conflict and to make sure that the lessons of modern peer-on-peer war fighting in Ukraine are learned by the entire alliance, and learned quickly.

[Liz Twist]

Labour has fully backed moves to bolster NATO allies in response to the illegal invasion of Ukraine. What steps is the UK taking to ensure that our NATO obligations in respect of enhanced forward presence are completely fulfilled?

[James Heappey]

In the immediate response to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, we doubled the size of the battle group in Estonia as a further show of support for the Estonian Government and recognition of the importance of the enhanced forward presence category. We have also contributed to EFP battlegroups in Poland and Romania in the last 12 months. What will change, and what was announced at the summit in Madrid, is that there will be a new NATO regional defence plan, which will be an evolution of the in-place EFP battlegroups, alongside national defence plans. Of course the UK will be very supportive of the plan in the region that NATO assigns to us, but that is very much under review, and the UK looks forward to hearing the details from NATO once it has finished its work.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Twist Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

The hon. Lady has fallen into the same trap as the hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey). She really must not take what she reads in the press at face value. I gave the timetable in my opening remarks, and I said that it is for the HD committee to make a determination, which it will. She must not confuse commemorative coins and medallions with medals. Medals are worn on uniform; medallions and commemorative coins of the sort that other countries have issued cannot be worn.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

3. What assessment he has made of the impact of the cost of living crisis on veterans.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

8. What assessment he has made of the impact of the cost of living crisis on veterans.

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[Dr Murrison]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

We are working at pace across Government and the service charity sector to understand how the veterans community may be impacted, including in the forthcoming national veterans survey and in the recent Cobseo-led survey relating specifically to the cost of living.

[Liz Twist]

With up to 80,000 veterans currently in receipt of universal credit—a benefit that was, like others, uprated by only 3.1% in April, which was far below the rate of inflation—what are Ministers doing to step up to support our veterans and their families?

[Dr Murrison]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. It is important to understand the extent of this, which is why the Government have backed Cobseo to do a deep dive in October on how the cost of living is impacting on our veterans. In advance of the outcome—the Secretary of State and I will have meetings to discuss that shortly—I point out that we have accepted the armed forces pay review body’s recommendations in full, we have frozen the daily food charge to our personnel, we are limiting the increase in accommodation charges, we have increased the availability of wraparound childcare, which is vital for families, and we intend to have a cost of living roundtable before the end of the year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Twist Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

I was delighted to address the Committee on this matter only the other day, and to discuss it. It is absolutely true that we need to follow the money. We know that £21 billion has been given to the NHS to cover the next 10 years, of which a proportion will go to mental health. The Prime Minister herself wants to see parity between mental and physical health and wellbeing, so let us make sure that we can identify where those funds are. I hope that I, or the Defence Secretary, will have a meeting with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care as soon as possible to see what more can be done.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

8. What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of Capita’s Army recruitment contract with his Department.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mark Lancaster)]

The Army continues to work closely with Capita with multiple interventions now in place and the delivery of improvements. Regular soldier applications remain at a five-year high with this year’s “Your Army needs you” advertising campaign seeing over 15,000 applications in January alone. It will take longer to see increases to trained strengths due to the length of the recruitment and training pipeline.

[Liz Twist]

The Secretary of State has said he might re-examine the Capita contract in the next financial year, meaning we will have to wait another 12 months before any action is taken. All the while Capita is failing abysmally, with Army numbers falling year after year. Instead of endlessly kicking the can down the road, why do the Government not deal with the problem now: strip Capita of the contract and bring the service back in-house?

[Mark Lancaster]

I answered that question earlier and, with respect to the hon. Lady, she clearly did not listen to the answer I just gave her. Applications are up; there is the start of a process. One of the confusions the House has is that we talk about trained strength, which is the number—93% manned in respect of the Army—but that is after a very long process of going through not only basic training but, for example, for Royal Engineers also combat engineer training and then trade training. So this can take up to 18 months from the first time somebody puts a uniform on and considers themselves to be part of the Army. Those in training do not go home and say “I’m not in the Army because I am not fully trade trained yet.” There are some 5,000 soldiers now in that process who are wearing a uniform but are not included in the numbers; in time they will join the Army and we are seeing that uplift. It is the time lag that this House is not fully understanding, but I understand why.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Twist Excerpts

Monday 18th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

As I am sure my hon. Friend is aware, when we make major announcements, including on the delivery of carrier strike, they are shared across the Government. The deployment of the Queen Elizabeth and the carrier group to the Mediterranean, the middle east and the Pacific is an important sign that Britain is a global nation and a nation that wishes to play its role in upholding our interests and, of course, our values. As we have invested so much in our global carrier forces, it is important that we put them to sea and demonstrate Britain’s global presence, our involvement and our ability to act when required.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

T9. Does the Secretary of State agree that a statutory association body, such as that provided for the police, would allow armed forces personnel to make representations to the Government on a wide range of issues—falling morale, for example?

[Mark Lancaster]

No, I do not, and, crucially, I sense that there is no appetite within the armed forces for such a body.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Twist Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lancaster]

I would be delighted to look at that. Indeed, I am sure that the House will be delighted to know that the one request I received from just about every nation when I was travelling in east Africa last week was for further places on UK training courses—our Royal College of Defence Studies, our advanced command and staff course, our higher command and staff course, or even at Sandhurst. Places on such courses are incredibly valued by overseas nations. Unfortunately, demand exceeds supply, but I will look carefully at what more we can do to support our Baltic colleagues.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

18. What recent assessment he has made of trends in the size of the UK armed forces.

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

24. What recent assessment he has made of trends in the size of the UK armed forces.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mark Lancaster)]

We are committed to maintaining the overall size of the armed forces. The services are meeting all their current commitments, keeping the country and its interests safe.

[Liz Twist]

According to a recent National Audit Office report, at the current rate of recruitment the RAF estimates that it will be another 20 years before it has enough pilots. What urgent steps is the Minister taking to rectify that?

[Mark Lancaster]

I do not recognise those figures. We have just done a review of the pilot training scheme and will shorten and simplify the process, which has not changed much in the past 30 years. Owing to successes in selling our aircraft overseas, some of our pilot training system is occupied by overseas pilots, so we need to look carefully at how to find a balance to ensure that, with the limited capacity available, we can continue to train all the pilots we need.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Twist Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lancaster]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. It is absolutely right that hard power is an important part of maintaining our defence and security. Indeed, the vice-chief of the defence staff said the same last week, and he made a strong case for spending more on defence. Our armed forces and our civilians in defence must and do work in partnership with other Departments in international development and, indeed, diplomacy.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

14. What steps he is taking to monitor the performance of the recruiting partnering project with Capita.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mark Lancaster)]

I continue to monitor the recruiting partnering project very closely.

[Liz Twist]

Recruiting people into our armed forces today is more important than ever. The Defence Secretary said recently: “We’re working closely with Capita to make the contract work better”. Can the Minister give some specific examples of that work? How will he assess whether performance has improved, and in what timeframe?

[Mark Lancaster]

Defence has been working closely with Capita on a recruitment improvement plan, which is now being implemented. Initial signs are promising. We now expect Capita to deliver on improvements in converting applicants to enlistees. We will monitor progress closely in the coming months, including ensuring that the new defence recruiting system reaches full operating capability as quickly as possible.