Armed Forces: Reserves

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for his kind welcome. As to my relationship with the Minister, I am sure that we each give as good as we get, but I rather suspect that much more unites us than divides us in how we should defend our country.

When I served as a Defence Minister my mission statement, put simply, was, “We will value our service men and women and do everything in our power to care for them”. Our most valuable resource is not the latest piece of kit but our people, and nowhere is that more important than in the Armed Forces. The first duty of any Government is to care for the welfare and well-being of their citizens, and I believe that that must include the defence of our nation.

The noble Lord, Lord Freeman, in opening this debate, has articulated well the important role that our reserves play in the defence of Britain. For more than a decade now we have seen the regulars and the reserves working more closely together, although there is clearly much more to do. Indeed in the Army, as a result of Army 2020, there is even greater demand on our reserves than ever before. This brings me to a particular worry: the mental health of our reservists.

The annual report of the Reserve Forces external scrutiny team, helpfully provided to us by the library, gives cause for concern. It points out that the protracted exposure of reservists to intense operations makes the matter of their mental health very important indeed. The team have a statutory duty to report on this matter, but they struggle to do so because of the paucity of data available and they doubt that UK Defence Statistics is in a position to provide them with anything better. What are the Government doing about this? Without adequate data, the external scrutiny team cannot be expected to carry out their duties properly. I appreciate that it is a big ask because the team themselves say that the department’s ability to track individual cases is very limited. I would suggest that one reason for this is that reservists’ first point of contact on health matters is the National Health Service. One problem there is the lack of signposting.

In late spring 2006 I was still a Defence Minister, and I was due to speak at the annual conference of the BMA. The telephone rang and it was Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said he was giving me the DCM—“Don’t Come Monday”—and I was no longer a Minister. Had I gone to the conference, my remarks would have been about signposting, urging GPs, whenever a patient presented with a mental health issue, to ask: “Are you ex-service?”. If the answer was yes, in addition to treatment the GP should point them in the direction of the Veterans Agency, as it then was, or organisations like Combat Stress. Is that being done now? If not, will the Government take it up with the BMA? I understand that GPs are encouraged to refer those patients with service connections back to the military healthcare system. Is that happening? Of course, such signposting should apply to our reservists, too. The scrutiny report recommends that the Armed Forces covenant team look at this. Can the Minister give us an undertaking that this will be done?

Many reservists who may be suffering with mental health problems may be inclined towards denial in case it affects their full-time employment. In terms of the ongoing duty of care, if a reservist has a mental health problem, what is the MoD doing to help with their domestic and employment concerns? Does the Minister’s department collect data from the Armed Forces charities that work in this field?

I spent a day with a Combat Stress counsellor, after I had ceased to be a Minister, visiting veterans and their families, discussing health, financial matters and domestic worries. What I experienced that day has been with me ever since. I visited homes and saw photographs of strong, healthy, young men proudly in uniform. In one particular case, sitting alongside one such photo, I saw a shrunken wreck of a man who will never be the same again. I met his wife and children, struggling to cope, living with someone they now hardly knew. I witnessed the care, attention, sympathetic understanding and practical advice that Combat Stress offered the family that day. After a couple of hours we left that home where the atmosphere and hopefulness was in marked contrast to the despair I had witnessed when I arrived. I have nothing but admiration for the Armed Forces charities that go that extra mile to fill the gap that we as a country are not filling.

Finally, the external scrutiny team offered to work with the MoD to determine how reservists’ mental health reporting can be made more effective. Can the Minister say something about this in his reply? Can he give us an assurance today that his department will act upon this request? Perhaps he can come back to us at a later stage with an update, perhaps as a Written Statement. We, and more importantly our reservists, should not have to see the external scrutiny team come back next year, unable to make progress because of a lack of information to protect and help in their welfare.