Armed Forces: Civilian Life

Lord Walker of Aldringham Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walker of Aldringham (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise most profusely to the House and to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, for being absent at the very start of this debate. I declare two interests. I am a trustee of Veterans Aid which aims through a caring and non-judgmental approach to care for veterans in crisis and contribute to their return to society. I am also president of Stoll, a housing organisation which supports vulnerable veterans in the hope that they can live as independently as possible.

I would like to address two areas this evening. One is to do with the Forces in Mind transition study itself and the second is a wider point affecting the veterans sector in the UK as a whole. It is a great pity that the study did not address the singular and very knotty problem of foreign and Commonwealth personnel as they transition to civilian life here. There are about 8,500 such folk in the Armed Forces—some 5% of the total. It is not known how many of them aspire to British citizenship, but the annual number of foreign and Commonwealth veterans who have sought help from the Veterans Aid charity has increased exponentially over the past seven years and now constitutes some 22% of those who were seen by the charity this year.

This may be due in part to the successful resolution of the Lance Corporal Baleiwai case. Your Lordships may remember that he was a Fijian soldier who had served with distinction for 13 years, including on operational tours in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan, but, because he had had a barrack room fight with another soldier, was threatened with deportation. Following a petition and a relaxation of the rules by the Home Office, he and his family were allowed to stay. The publicity surrounding this case may well have given more of those likely to encounter such problems the courage to seek help. However, if there is a belief that because of interventions such as that the problem has gone away, that is not the experience of the charity. If anything, the situation is worse than it has ever been and the problems do not relate just to citizenship but to applications for indefinite and further leave to remain in the country. Many of those affected are service men and women who have served for less than four years and have been discharged on medical grounds or made redundant through no fault of their own. They believe that they have a fair claim to stay, but often do not. Public perceptions of the wider immigration issue also work to the detriment of this cohort. Indeed, they are further disadvantaged by the £1,000 cost of an application to regularise their status, which is not refundable if it fails.

A recent case is that of a former Royal Engineer from Nigeria who left the Army in September after two years of service, having been medically discharged. He had lived in the United Kingdom for six years but had never applied for citizenship. After leaving his Army quarters, he had nowhere to go. When he went to see the charity, he was sleeping in a garage and his 18 month-old daughter and pregnant wife were sleeping in a cupboard. The charity provided immediate intervention but this is not a long-term solution and the outcome remains uncertain.

Discretion can be exercised in these cases, but although there are guidelines they are by no means clear. They are further confused by the bureaucracy surrounding the applications, which is very complex, even for those with legal training, and virtually impenetrable to the lay soldiery. Not everyone can be helped, of course; there are clear cases where the actions of an individual make him or her ineligible. On the other hand, a single error on a form can generate rejection or critical delay.

Things are happening. A Private Member’s Bill in the other place seeks to amend the British Nationality Act 1981 so that foreign and Commonwealth citizens in the forces who want to apply for naturalisation as British citizens are not disadvantaged because of time served overseas. Current law states that foreign and Commonwealth citizens must have been in the UK for five years prior to making an application, and those who have spent time serving overseas, albeit on active service in Afghanistan, may have to wait longer to apply than non-service personnel or those who have spent their entire military career in the United Kingdom. It is clearly a well intentioned Bill that was introduced to ensure that the military covenant is delivered in practice as well as in spirit, and it should be applauded. It will, however, address only a small part of the wider problem.

This brings me to my wider point, which concerns the veterans sector as a whole. There are currently three studies relevant to this issue—the mapping study itself, the study of the noble Lord, Lord Ashcroft, and a study being conducted by the Centre for Social Justice. The latter two have yet to report. We should await the outcome of these studies before any action is taken. However, coupled with the recent enshrinement into law of the military covenant, high expectations have been raised in the veteran community and the many charities involved.

We should not forget that the vast majority of those leaving the Armed Forces manage the transition to civilian life well. Those veterans in crisis or real need constitute a relatively small but none the less important cohort. At the same time, the veterans sector is comparatively well provided for. The Charity Commission calculates the net assets of Armed Forces charities at about £1.1 billion, with an annual gross income of nearly £750 million. However, there are currently some 2,050 Armed Forces charities from which these totals are aggregated. This seems a staggeringly high number and suggests that there is a charity for every 10 members of the Armed Forces. I suspect that many of them are unsustainable in the longer term and that many, too, are donor-led rather than needs-led, with good folk having what seems a cracking good idea and starting up a charity without serious analysis of the need. The marketplace is, indeed, very crowded.

Therefore, I suggest that, however well intentioned all these studies are, the time has come for a much more radical look at the veterans sector. We should revisit the notion of an independent veterans’ champion or ombudsman, or whatever would be the best title to describe him. The Ministry of Defence is the principal department with responsibility for veterans and has, through no fault of the individuals, had something like seven Secretaries of State and seven junior Ministers handling the veterans portfolio in the past eight years, which is not a recipe for focus and continuity. This is a source of concern for the ex-service charity world and begs the question of whether it is not time to look at the Canadian model of a fully fledged department of veteran affairs with an enshrined veterans’ charter. Working with the Charity Commission, this official or department should be able to bring a better coherence to the veteran sector while encouraging needs-led rather than donor-led activity and provisioning. It should also allow the sector to get the biggest bang for its buck, which is certainly not the case at the moment. It would have a much clearer focus on the issues across the board and across government and would have the independence to recommend courses of action to the Government, untrammelled by departmental agendas.