Armed Forces

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, I join colleagues in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Soames, for securing this debate and for his powerful and insightful introduction. It was direct and to the point—but I think the House would expect nothing less from the noble Lord.

When I had the honour of serving as a Defence Minister, I was responsible for service families, their accommodation and well-being. One thing I soon learned was that, if our service families were happy, our service men and women were happy—and if they were happy, we could send our forces anywhere in the world in defence of our country’s interests. But I very much regret that that would be more challenging today, as the morale of our forces continues to decline.

I will focus my comments on the latest Armed Forces Continuous Attitude Survey, which reveals that satisfaction with service life has fallen for the second year in a row. In 2021, the level of service satisfaction was 50%, but since then it has fallen eight points to 42%. Satisfaction with basic pay has fallen considerably in the last two years: down to 31%, the lowest ever recorded. Furthermore, satisfaction with allowances has fallen 19 percentage points since 2021. Just 39% of personnel think the allowances are fair. Just as worrying is the satisfaction with the quality of maintenance and repair of service family accommodation, which has fallen markedly in the last year. Satisfaction with the overall standard of service family accommodation has fallen from 52% to 46%. That is bad news.

The survey is a very thorough piece of work and provides us with vital insights into the attitudes of our service men and women. That brings me to a key point. Throughout my professional and political life, I have held the view that the greatest asset of any organisation is not its IT system, working environment, kit or additional benefits. Its greatest asset is its people. That came home to me very strongly when I was a Welsh Office Minister. An official came in one day and said, “I have some bad news, Minister. One of our RAF fighters has crashed into the sea off the Pembrokeshire coast. The pilot has ejected and is safe”. Then he added, “£5 million plane lost; £10 million pilot saved”. Those figures are illustrative, not actual; I am afraid that age has prevented me from remembering the exact figures. But the point he was making, and that I want to make, is that we invested far more in the person than the kit, and that it was easy to replace the kit, but we could not easily replace the person.

I make that point because one of the most worrying concerns I have is that the proportion of personnel planning to leave the services has increased for the second year running. The survey suggests they are leaving for a variety of reasons, but I fear it may be because they do not feel valued. Some 24%—a quarter—of personnel surveyed are planning to leave the services.

The survey also reveals that our service men and women do not believe that we will do anything about it. Overall, 48%—almost half—of personnel surveyed say that we will not act on the findings. They believe we will do nothing about their concerns. We must change this, and we will do that only by taking their concerns seriously and putting right what they see as wrong.

There has been a steady erosion of morale of our Armed Forces for some time now, and for me that is the most urgent problem that needs to be addressed. Failing morale, poor service family accommodation and increasing numbers leaving the forces is a real crisis at the heart of the challenge facing Britain’s defence. Labour’s Shadow Defence Secretary John Healey has said that Britain has to do more of what he termed the “moral component”. He said:

“It is not acceptable, but it’s also not viable, if your satisfaction ratings are less than 50% of those who are serving”.


I welcome his comments, but I stress that I am not seeking to make a party-political point here, because I believe that colleagues on the Conservative Benches and across the House will also be concerned about the failing morale of our Armed Forces. All of us in this House would welcome hearing from His Majesty’s Government how they plan to respond to the key points in this survey.

I hope the Minister, who is hugely respected in this House and beyond, and who went out of her way to a great extent to help a former constituent of mine with a problem, will, when she replies to this debate, give us some guidance on what the Government are going to do, so we can say to our servicemen and women of our Armed Forces, “We are listening and we will do something about your concerns”.