Mental Health Services: Serving Military Personnel

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

I hope that service personnel do not feel that way, and rather that they feel well supported, but my noble friend is right. It is notable that incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, is extremely low in the UK Armed Forces in numerical terms. One can attribute that, in very large measure, to the services and support that are now available to Armed Forces personnel, both in this country and on deployment.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours is absolutely right: it is outrageous that we are chasing, many years later and in an open-ended way, the men and women who have tried to protect us. Can we not carry out an urgent investigation into firms of solicitors that I know use agents in Iraq—and no doubt will in the future in Afghanistan—effectively to ambulance chase to get cases? We are constantly seeing these cases, which cost immense amounts of money and cause mental anguish to our men and women, so they affect the issue we are talking about. We really need to get a grip on this.

[Earl Howe]

As the noble Lord rightly points out, there has been extensive coverage and publicity on this very issue in the press in recent weeks, and I share his concern. The fact of the matter is, though, that it is not the Government chasing our armed services personnel. Every time a complaint is raised, we have a duty to investigate the complaint. It is not a matter of hounding Armed Forces personnel but rather of trying to get to the bottom of the complaint as quickly as possible. Indeed, many of these complaints have been found to be without foundation, but I share his concern about the behaviour of certain law firms.