Armed Forces Bill

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 48. As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, it aims to improve mental health services and to provide additional support for serving personnel, particularly those affected by the United Kingdom’s withdrawal and the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan this year. I also support the other two amendments in this group, Amendments 60 and 66A.

At Second Reading I highlighted Operation Courage, a partnership between the NHS and Combat Stress and other mental health charities, whether Armed Forces-specific charities or local or specific mental health charities. In principle, Op Courage is a really good example of how mental health services for current serving personnel or veterans should be able to provide a strong, signposted short cut to mental health services when and where they are needed.

Combat Stress reports that during August it saw a doubling of calls to its 24/7 helpline. This was on top of already struggling to afford to offer its specialist treatment to around 1,600 veterans with complex mental health needs annually. It estimates that there are at least double that number out there who Combat Stress cannot afford to support.

As a charity, Combat Stress is currently 75% dependent on voluntary donations and the generosity of the public. I think we all know that donations to charities have significantly reduced during the pandemic. I have no doubt that with extra resources it and the other specialist mental health charities can deliver the services needed, because they understand the specific pressures facing serving personnel and the traumas that too many have to learn to live with, both during and after their terms of service.

Leo Docherty MP wrote to all MPs and Peers on 24 September, setting out the support available for service personnel and veterans, their families and the bereaved, should they need it. It was a helpful and informative letter, but it did not refer to when the further £2.7 million will be made available for Op Courage. Does the Minister have that detail available? Is it for spending in a particular period, or does it extend over more than one financial year?

The letter from Leo Docherty did not mention one welcome intervention in recent years: the training of mental health first-aiders in our Armed Forces. The mental health first-aid charity MHFA England says:

“In 2015/16, 3.2% of UK armed forces personnel were assessed with a mental health disorder—over 6,000 people. Many more go undiagnosed and untreated.”


When I have talked to service personnel who have become mental health first-aiders since their return from deployment in Afghanistan, I have heard of how the training that they received enabled them to recognise the warning signs this summer in those they currently serve with, as well as past comrades. One soldier told me that, in August, the community of personnel was able to come together on social media to support and encourage those reliving tough memories or, worse, flare-ups of PTSD. Because of their mental health first-aid training, they were able to help these colleagues to access phone lines—for example, to Combat Stress and other organisations.

How many Armed Forces mental health first-aiders are now in place? Will the extra funding announced in September include training for more mental health first-aiders in the future? Also, can the Minister explain how Op Smart, which was designed to develop mental resilience across personnel in the Armed Forces, sits with Op Courage? Op Smart is much to be welcomed, and is critical to personnel becoming not just self-aware but aware when colleagues may be facing problems. How is Op Smart, and specifically the mental health first-aider programme, funded? The last part of Amendment 48 talks about collecting data. It would be very beneficial to see data on all these issues, including, as the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, said, on suicide. Can we find such data now? If not, will it be collected and, as the amendment says, included in the annual covenant report?

I return to the extra £2.7 million of funding. Many current and former service personnel who served in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and are currently reliving their traumas, need to access NHS mental health services, including crisis care, right now. Unsurprisingly, these services are facing extraordinary pressure already. The NHS Providers activity trackers show that, for October 2021, referrals remain 10% higher than pre-pandemic levels, with many people having to wait significantly longer than the 18-week target time for their first contact.

In July, NHS England proposed setting new mental health access service standards, working in conjunction with Mind, the mental health charity, and Rethink Mental Illness. The new urgent care proposals would mean that community mental health crisis teams could reach patients within 24 hours of referral. The other key target for mental health liaison teams linked with A&E departments would also be rolled out across the rest of England. Detail on the actual level of funding to deliver this new target is still awaited. For this Bill, I am particularly interested in how all this will fit in with Op Courage. Perhaps the Minister can help me; if she does not have that information at her fingertips, could she write to me afterwards?

This amendment seeks urgent, extra, specific support for Op Courage—and, I hope, for Op Smart too—to ensure that all those people who are serving, or have served, their country do not fall through the net when they need mental health services.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-chair of Peers for Gambling Reform. I rise to speak to Amendment 60 in my name. I tabled it because I am concerned that the Ministry of Defence is not taking gambling-related harm in the military community sufficiently seriously. On two occasions in response to my concerns in this area, the Ministry of Defence has stated that it has seen no evidence, or does not hold information, suggesting that serving personnel are more prone to problem gambling than any other group in society.

At the same time, it was disappointing to hear that evidence from the United States that suggested that serving personnel were more prone to problem gambling did not constitute an evidence base for the UK Armed Forces. This leaves us with a clear impasse, where the Government refuse to accept research from abroad but, at the same time, do not commit to researching whether there is a problem.