Armed Forces: Personnel

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, for initiating this debate, which is very appropriate. In reaching its recommendations, the Armed Forces Pay Review Body, which the noble Baroness mentioned, must have regard to,

“the need to recruit, retain and motivate suitable, able and qualified people taking into account the particular circumstances of Service life”.

I make no excuse for raising in this debate a subject that I raised at each stage of the Armed Forces Bill: Armed Forces housing. Surely the state of availability of such housing must be a major factor in recruitment, retention and motivation. Adequate housing must be one factor to balance against the “high operational tempo” that the Armed Forces pay review report identifies. The report described the lack of choice in accommodation, the variable maintenance performance and also what constitutes family eligibility for accommodation.

In answers given by Ministers to my many previous comments on Armed Forces housing, the proposal was made that in future families will be enabled to own their homes. This was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Dean. I said at the time that I agreed with this as an alternative and as an aspiration but that home ownership should not be a requirement for our forces. The report rightly says that the MoD will need to continue to make a significant provision of good-quality housing for a mobile workforce.

A significant part of the report deals with the levels of rents and the size of any subsidy. My criticism is that the financial and economic requirements laid down in the report are divorced from the state of maintenance and the modernisation of services accommodation. The report states that there are 49,000 service family units in the UK, and that the 39,600 units in England and Wales—80 per cent of the 49,000—are leased from the commercial concern to which the MoD sold the properties. Only 20 per cent are owned by the MoD or by others.

The good news is that in 2010-11, £62.5 million was spent on improvements, with 900 properties being upgraded. The bad news is that there will be a three-year pause in the improvements programme from April 2013. The report shows that the MoD’s procurement strategy was to sell off most of its English and Welsh SFA estate for £1.7 billion in 1986, whereas the rent it has paid for those often badly maintained properties has been a massive £2 billion compared to the money received by the MoD of £1.7 billion. I hope that when my noble friend replies, he will comment on that procurement policy of the Ministry of Defence. Putting my accountant’s rather than my defence hat on, given £1.7 billion with interest of, say, half a billion pounds over the six years, one could have borrowed the £1.7 billion, paid the interest of roughly half a billion, and the MoD would still own the properties having received £2 billion-worth of rent and, at that stage, the rent roughly equalling the cost of repaying the loan and the interest. The MoD, would still own the properties which it has to repair and maintain although they are owned by someone else. I ask my noble friend whether it is right to make a judgment on forces’ housing on purely financial grounds without a strong consideration of the debt we owe our service personnel as contained in the Armed Forces covenant.

I do not want to be all negative, because I take account of the fact that I am part of a Government coalition party. There are many things which we have not highlighted. For instance, there has been a rise in council tax relief to 50 per cent for service personnel overseas, a pupil premium of £250 for every child with a parent in the services and a yearly fund of £3 million to support state schools with service children. I was delighted that the operational allowance was doubled for Armed Forces personnel serving in Afghanistan. The community covenant scheme was launched to strengthen support between civilian communities and the forces with a grant of £30 million and the establishment of a veterans’ information service—they often need it.

Members of the House will know that during various debates I have made a big thing about treatment of veterans and medals. I am pleased that the Armed Forces compensation payments have been ensured as not being required as payments for social care. Improvements to the Army's education programme have also been secured. I was also delighted that during the passage of the Armed Forces Act, thanks to input from many Members of this House, there was movement, with the Minister's help, on medals which had been awarded but were not allowed to be worn. That was a move of great sensibility in which I thank the Minister for taking such a great part. I hope that the commission set up to look into medals and veterans, which seems to be clouded in a measure of obscurity, looks at the whole question of medals, the treatment of veterans and the National Defence Medal itself.

The review is important and I hope that when the Minister replies to comments made by me and the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, we can feel more comfortable on behalf of our valuable Armed Forces personnel.