Armed Forces: Remuneration, Housing and Family Support

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 18th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

As a number of your Lordships have indicated, it is important to make clear how we value what we ask our Armed Forces personnel to do across the piece, whether it is pay, accommodation, conditions or tackling some of the challenging maintenance issues that have arisen. We are doing our level best to make sure that there is improvement; there is now clear evidence of that improvement.

I say to my noble friend that I think one of the most exciting things to happen recently has been the Haythornthwaite review, which is an innovatory, robust piece of work that defence is already working on, particularly to introduce flexibility—the zig-zag careers. That may sound like jargon, but it means that we give people in the Armed Forces the option to change paths and move direction: we give them the chance to switch between regular and reserve and we give our Civil Service the chance to switch between the service and industry. That is responding to the modern world in which we live; we are trying to make sure that we are sympathetic to the circumstances that confront each of our Armed Forces families.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I have listened carefully to the Minister’s responses to a pretty specific Question about spending. I notice that at no time have I heard any figures in her responses, which is what you would expect to hear in answer to questions about spending. I repeat: my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe asked her about day-to-day spending on remuneration, housing and family support for members of the Armed Forces. Can she tell us in simple terms—I have an open mind and will listen to her answer—precisely what those figures were a couple of years ago, say, and what they are today?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. Let us take the example of service families’ accommodation and look at that investment. Some £337 million was invested there in the financial years 2020-21 and 2021-22 combined, with a further £163 million in the financial year 2022-23. The forecast for 2023-24 is £312 million following the recently published defence Command Paper refresh—which I am sure the noble Lord is an authority on—which announced an additional £400 million of funding over two years; £220 million of that has been received for this financial year. I hope that that gives a flavour of where some of the spend is going.