Armed Forces: Post-service Welfare

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, for securing this debate. I particularly thank him for his opening tribute to the previous Labour Government, which set the right tone for the debate. He had some thoughtful words about the covenant, particularly on mental health. While we have known about the problems of mental health in combat for many years, only now do we understand the depths of the problem.

The previous Government had a good record on the military covenant. We published the service personnel command paper—a first in government strategy—and made substantial investment in facilities such as Headley Court, including a new cognitive and mental health unit. We started community-based mental health pilots to provide veterans with expert assessment led by a community veterans’ mental health therapist. We started a number of initiatives on mental health, particularly with New Horizons: A Shared Vision for Mental Health, published at the end of 2009, which contained seven action points for the MoD and the Department of Health, particularly to look after support for veterans.

We also made commitments during our election campaign to continue with those strategies, particularly on developing pilots to deal with combat stress, which we signed up to in January 2010. They would improve veterans’ access to mental health facilities. If successful—and I hope they will be—we would have carried them forward. I hope that this Government will do so.

I move now to what the present Government are doing. There was an important commitment in the SDSR to:

“A dedicated 24-hour support line for veterans … and … 30 additional mental health nurses in Mental Health Trusts”.

That commitment was made as a result of the Fighting Fit report by Andrew Murrison. I should like to know from the Minister just how much progress has been made in securing those resources.

The interesting Fighting Fit report built upon New Horizons in its opening section and made 13 recommendations, of which only a couple have been clearly signposted and committed to. Perhaps we saw some progress today from Dr Liam Fox when writing in the Sun. He said he would be,

“working to implement them to provide much better and wider mental health support”.

That is good news. I hope that the Minister can report on progress. The Secretary of State also committed to changes in compensation. He said:

“Changes will be put into law next month to increase payment. They will nearly treble the maximum compensation for those suffering the severest mental health problems, and increase the amounts they are paid for life on leaving the forces”.

I hope that the Minister can give us more detail on what that commitment in the Sun from Dr Liam Fox actually means and to whom it will apply. Can the noble Lord confirm that the provisions will be introduced next month, how much it will cost the MoD, how many people will receive these higher payments, and what the exact scheme payments are that are being increased?

Looking further into the report, there are two particular recommendations on which, so far, there seems to have been no progress. They are a,

“Trial of an online early intervention service for serving personnel and veterans”,

and,

“Incorporation of a structured mental health system inquiry into existing medical examinations performed while serving”.

I hope that we can have some indication that these recommendations, together with the other recommendations in the report, are about to be implemented.

This has been an important debate and the areas in which improvement is necessary are understood. The Government have made some commitments to make these improvements, but I really need to know what the pace and future commitments are. My knowledge might have been illuminated by an article in the News of the World, which I would like the Minister to confirm or not. Not everyone will have reached as far as page 36 of last Sunday’s edition, but there was an interview with Mr Nicholas Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, by the paper’s chief political editor. He reported:

“Nick Clegg is to spearhead a huge drive to give better care for troops traumatised by war. The Deputy PM will soon unveil a ‘health for heroes’ service … Under the scheme, millions of pounds of extra money will be pumped into the NHS to fight battlefield stress. A new screening programme will identify victims … family doctors will get special training while an army of therapists will be drafted into hospitals to spot post-traumatic stress disorders”.

If all this is true, it is to be welcomed. However, it does not seem to relate to the more incremental and steady progress reported elsewhere. It has not been mentioned in Parliament and does not seem to accord with the plan in Fighting Fit. It is news to us and to the forces’ charities. If the Minister is aware of the details of this programme, perhaps he could give us some indication of what extra money there is, where the millions of pounds will be spent, the timescale for implementation, and why it is to be announced by the Deputy Prime Minister, not the Secretary of State for Defence.