Service Accommodation

Debate between Luke Pollard and Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi

Thursday 19th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

It is an honour to present the Defence Committee’s first report of this Parliament, which is on service accommodation.

As we approach Christmas, we would all hope that the brave servicepeople who put their lives on the line for our country would all have decent housing, where they could celebrate in the warmth, without fear that their living conditions would put their health or their families’ health at risk. However, that is not always true, as our report and other reports have found. What is more, there is not yet a robust funded plan to put the situation right.

Before I say more about the Committee’s findings, I want to put on record my immense gratitude to my fellow Committee members in reaching strong recommendations on a cross-party basis. I thank members of the Defence Committee in the previous Parliament, including the now shadow Defence Minister, the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), who took the evidence that informed this hard-hitting report. In particular, I thank Robert Courts, the former Member for Witney, who originally proposed and led the inquiry. I put on record my gratitude to the House of Commons staff whose hard work made the inquiry possible, especially Sarah Williams, who managed the inquiry with curiosity and care, from conception to report.

Our armed forces personnel dedicate their lives to protecting this nation, often at great personal sacrifice. Ensuring they have access to safe, comfortable and well-maintained accommodation is not just a matter of duty—it is a moral obligation. The Committee’s investigation has revealed a deeply concerning situation that has developed over many years. The condition of both service family accommodation and single living accommodation falls far below the standard our servicemen and women deserve.

We have found instances of dilapidated housing, inadequate maintenance and unacceptable living conditions, including some truly appalling persistent problems with damp and mould; cases of total loss of heating, hot water and cooking facilities for months in winter; flooding; and rodent infestations. Such substandard living conditions directly affect the morale and operational readiness of our armed forces. They are also a significant challenge to recruitment and retention.

Our report highlights systemic failures in the management and maintenance of service accommodation. The current system is plagued by lack of clear accountability and has reached a point of crisis, following insufficient funding over decades. Satisfaction with service accommodation is very low. That is hardly surprising given that a third of single living accommodation and two thirds of service family accommodation are in such poor condition that they are essentially no longer fit for purpose.

The Committee has put forward several key recommendations to start to address this situation. We call for detailed funded investment plans for service accommodation, which are crucial to address the backlog of repairs and to bring the housing stock up to acceptable modern standards. Such plans are also crucial to enable effective planning for how best to manage the interim situation in which so much defence housing remains substandard.

For all accommodation maintained under contract, we call for the Ministry of Defence to review the assurance processes and performance measures for those contracts as part of a plan to improve the management of accommodation. There needs to be much more focus on the satisfaction of servicepeople and their families. That must include making sure that complaints processes are accessible and fit for purpose. Better communication with servicepeople and their families is absolutely key, alongside better delivery of real improvements that people value.

The Committee also examined recent developments relating to the allocation of family accommodation—namely, the botched mismanaged nature of it. Both the proposed changes and the subsequent pause in their implementation have caused significant uncertainty for service personnel and their families. The situation underscores the need for clear, consistent communication and highlights the importance of thorough consultation with those affected by such changes.

I want to emphasise that this is not about apportioning blame but about recognising a shared responsibility across Governments, over many years, to do better for those who serve our country. However, it is now for the current Government to put things right. The challenges are considerable and require a meaningful plan of investment and effective delivery and communication.

I warmly welcome the announcement on Tuesday that the Government are buying back the service family accommodation portfolio. The decision back in 1996 to sell the portfolio was a major mistake and was compounded by the terms of the deal, which has been described by the Public Accounts Committee as “disastrous”. It left the public purse billions of pounds worse off and the Government responsible for maintaining and upgrading an estate that was, in effect, owned by somebody else. That is why the situation was a nettle that needed to be grasped.

Buying back the portfolio is the right decision and has the potential to be a real game changer. However, essential though that is, the buy-back will not, in itself, directly improve things for servicepeople and their families right now. Along with my colleagues on the Defence Committee, I will be looking closely at the plan that follows and how it is funded and delivered. I commend the report to the House.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Luke Pollard)]

I put on record this Government’s support for the report that my hon. Friend has just published. The state of military housing is not good enough. Too many of our military families are living in poor-quality accommodation, and that is precisely why the Government seek to renew the contract between the nation and those who serve. That is why we are bringing Annington homes back into public ownership. That will save the taxpayer £600,000 a day, which is money that can be used to better support our service families. I am grateful to hon. Members from both sides of the House, including the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) for his work in support of the deal.

Does my hon. Friend agree that this decisive break from a failed past is just our first chance to renew the contract between the nation and those who serve? I hope he will keep the Government honest on our commitments to improve service life and accommodation. Through the work we are legislating for with the Armed Forces Commissioner, I hope his Committee will be able to support and provide ongoing scrutiny of service family accommodation, because decent housing is the least that all our armed forces and their families deserve. This Government are intent on delivering on that.

[Mr Dhesi]

I welcome the Minister’s comments and, indeed, we will be supporting and scrutinising the work of Government. We look forward to working with the Armed Forces Commissioner as and when they are appointed. As I intimated earlier, Tuesday’s announcement is very welcome, but there is a great deal of work for the Minister and his colleagues to do. The proof will be in the planning and the delivery.

Ukraine

Debate between Luke Pollard and Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi

Thursday 19th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee on Defence.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the diligent Minister for advance sight of his statement. It was good to chat with the Secretary of State on his return from Ukraine, and I welcome his pledge, while there, of a £225 million package of support for Ukraine, because as the Minister rightly highlights, Ukraine’s frontline is the frontline of our own security. Can the Minister provide further detail, however? After the UN Secretary-General’s statements last week about turbocharging defence, can the Minister provide further details of discussions with NATO and other allies, in particular our US friends, including recent discussions between the Prime Minister and President-elect Trump, on the international defence steps being taken at this critical juncture?

[Luke Pollard]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support for the military package outlined today. The UK Government will increase defence spending to 2.5% of our GDP, and a path for that increase will be laid out in due course at future fiscal events. We will publish the strategic defence review, which will set out, perhaps more importantly, what we seek to spend any money on; we can then look at what capabilities we need to develop and how that takes us further. We continue to speak with our NATO allies through the SDR process, to make sure that the UK’s defence offer is a “NATO first” offer that allows more interoperability and supports our NATO allies, especially on NATO’s eastern flank. I look forward to being able to speak more about that in due course to my hon. Friend’s Committee.

Chagos Islands: UK-US Defence Relationship

Debate between Luke Pollard and Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi

Monday 2nd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Defence Committee.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

The UK-US base on Diego Garcia is of great significance for defence and has strategic international significance. Steps must be taken to ensure that its legal status is secure in the future, and of course the voice of the Chagossians must be central in any future arrangement. It has been reported that President-elect Trump has reservations about the proposed treaty, and newly elected Prime Minister Ramgoolam of Mauritius has ordered a review into the treaty. What further representations have been made to both our partners to ensure that we have the support of our international partners?

[Luke Pollard]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The continuing operation of Diego Garcia is in the interests of UK and US national security, and this deal secures that operation. I congratulate Dr Ramgoolam on his election. In a letter to the Prime Minister on 15 November, he noted his commitment to completing the negotiations, and Jonathan Powell was in Mauritius this week to start that process.

Afghan Special Forces Relocation Review

Debate between Luke Pollard and Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi

Monday 14th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Chair of the Defence Committee.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I welcome the statement by my hon. Friend the Minister, who was a staunch advocate for the Triples when in opposition. We should never have needed the review, because those individuals bravely supported us when we needed their assistance for the betterment of Afghanistan. Can he advise whether a member of the Triples whose case was previously rejected under the ARAP scheme will be aware that their case is under review? How will the Department and the Government go about making contact with those individuals?

[Luke Pollard]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support for ARAP and the Afghans involved. As part of the Afghan Triples review, 2,000 or so cases are under consideration. Where we discover that there has been a negative decision that should be overturned, we are contacting individuals immediately, but that does not mean that all Triples are eligible. Nor does it mean that everyone who served as part of the Afghan national army in support of its mission is eligible for relocation to the UK. Additional routes are available via the Home Office, but in the very particular case of the Triples, we aim to conclude the review at pace, contacting all those who we now deem to be eligible based on the new evidence we have found. There is still some work to be done and a number of the most complex cases are still to be delivered, so he will understand that I cannot put a timetable on when that review will complete. However, we have made sorting out the ARAP scheme one of our early priorities as a Department and we will continue to deliver the changes we need to make to ensure we can have confidence that all the decisions made in relation to the Triples are the right decisions.

Equal Franchise Act 1928

Debate between Luke Pollard and Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi

Thursday 5th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) for securing the debate. She is a woman I am proud of, as I know many Members are.

It is vital in such a debate not only to celebrate the achievement of the 1928 Act, but to remember the stories of the women and fighters who campaigned for it and who won the battle for electoral reform, suffrage and equality. It is 100 years since some women got the right to vote—not all of them, but some. It was a good step forward. People often get confused between the different Representation of the People Acts. Were it not for the fantastic Voice & Vote exhibition in Westminster Hall, it would be easy for Members of Parliament, too, to be confused about when each piece of legislation was passed, and what it meant.

In 1918 the vote was given to some women—only those at the top of society. The 1928 Act gave the vote to all women over 21, rather than those over 30 who were landowners. That was a huge step forward, and it meant that 52.5% of the electorate in the 1929 general election were women. That was transformative. The fact that it took 10 years—two whole Parliaments—fully to extend the franchise shows just how scared the establishment was of giving proper representation to women and the working class across the UK.

I pay tribute to the incredible campaigners who continued to make the case for the legislation. Many gave up their freedom, faced imprisonment or went on hunger strikes. Many, such as Emily Davison, gave their lives for the cause, but the campaigners never gave up. They are an inspiration to all of us in this House and we pledge ourselves to further their cause. The story is often overlooked.

In Plymouth we are proud to be part of the suffragette story, and of the fact that the suffragette movement there was not just one of rich women campaigning for the vote. The women took things into their own hands. Members may be familiar with the beautiful Smeaton’s Tower on Plymouth Hoe. That lighthouse still stands proudly, but the suffragettes put a bomb in it and tried to blow it up. They wanted to attract attention to their cause. I am glad that the lighthouse still stands, but the story of how local women in Plymouth resorted to those means to try to gain attention and credibility for their cause should continue to be talked about.

I want to talk now about Nancy Astor. As my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury said, the story of how we reached the point where only a third of our Parliament are women started with Nancy Astor taking her seat in 1919. She represented Plymouth Sutton and was introduced to the House of Commons flanked by Balfour and Lloyd George. It will be the 100th anniversary of her election—and of Plymouth’s voting for a woman—in November 2019. She and I would disagree fundamentally on nearly everything. She stood for many things that I could not stomach, countenance or go along with, and I am sure that that would be the case for nearly every Member. We would not share her views on slavery, anti-Semitism, fascism and LGBT equality, but her story, the fact that she was the first woman to take her seat in this place, and the fact that Plymouth was the first place to elect a woman who took her seat means we are intimately entwined in the story, which we must keep telling.

There are far too many girls and young women in schools in Plymouth and across the country who do not know about Nancy Astor. I do not want her political views to be advocated; I want the story of brave women, many of them standing alone, doing brave things and pushing the boundaries for women in general. She was initially known as the Member of Parliament for women, and we should talk about her role. There should be debate about the good and bad sides of all politicians. The first step that she took is important. It may seem odd for me as a Labour MP to speak here about a Conservative MP—especially one I fundamentally disagree with—but we need to tell the story. It frustrates me that the story of women in our politics is not told. We hear about men, and occasionally about the women standing behind them. We need to break that, and we can do so only when we—men in particular—start to tell the story. We cannot leave it to women to tell the story of women in politics. It is for all Members of Parliament, male and female, to talk up the role of women in Parliament.

[Mr Dhesi]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. As to women pushing boundaries, does he agree that women, and especially those from ethnic minorities, are often not given much credit for their accomplishments? The first black lady mayor in the country, Lydia Simmons, was elected in Slough. She was an inspiration for many, yet often such individuals do not get the credit they deserve.

[Luke Pollard]

My hon. Friend has proved my point precisely that we need male MPs speaking up as well as female MPs, and I thank him for taking the advice so quickly.

I recently visited the superb Voice & Vote exhibition in Westminster Hall. I pay tribute to the House authorities for putting it on. It really is a superb exhibition, and hon. Members who have not visited need to take the time to do so. They will notice that one exhibit is Nancy Astor’s dress, on loan from Plymouth museum. She picked the dress because it looked like a man’s suit; it looks like a double-breasted suit. Beside it is a little plaque explaining that she chose it because she wanted people to judge her by what she said and not for what she wore. It is therefore somewhat ironic that 99 years later I stand here, as one of her successors, talking about her dress and disagreeing with all her words, but perhaps those are the joys of democracy.

Parliament was a very different place when Nancy Astor became a Member. Voice & Vote tells us the story of a system that did not welcome women to Parliament. It did not afford them the equality and credibility that they deserved by virtue of their election. We can see that in the fact that in 1929 there was only one coat hook in the Lady Members’ Room for eight female MPs. That was simply unacceptable. However, there is still far too much that the women at that time, Nancy Astor included, were fighting for that we are still fighting for today.

Nancy Astor was not afraid to stand up for herself as a woman, even in the face of power. She had an incredibly canny sense of humour, and people who have spent time in Plymouth will know many stories about her. I will touch on just a few. In particular, I want to touch on her relationship with Winston Churchill. Many hon. Members will know one story about it, but there were so many glorious clashes between them. Apparently, Churchill once told Nancy Astor that having a woman in Parliament was like having one intrude on him in the bathroom, to which she retorted, “You’re not handsome enough to have such fears.” She is also said to have responded to a question from Churchill about what disguise he should wear to a masquerade ball by saying, “Why don’t you come sober, Prime Minister?” But perhaps the most famous exchange, which I am sure all hon. Members will know of, is the one in which Nancy Astor said, “Mr. Churchill, if you were my husband, I would poison your tea,” to which Churchill replied, “Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it.”

So many stories are told about Nancy Astor, but so few are told about many of the other fantastic female MPs for Plymouth. I want to single out Lucy Middleton, who was the MP from 1945 to 1951 and a real tower of strength in the trade union movement. She is not remembered enough by my party in Plymouth, or by all of us here. Sadly, she lost her seat, to a male member of the Astor dynasty, Jakie Astor, in 1951, but it is good to see her name on the wall of female MPs in the Voice & Vote exhibition, because there is so much more that needs to be said in that respect.

One thing that frustrates me every time I come to Parliament—and that helps keep alive in me the fire so that I do not become accustomed to or cushioned by this place—is looking around the rooms in which we have our meetings and seeing all the old white men in wigs staring down at me. This place has a problem, because nearly every room—except, perhaps, this one—has too many pictures of men, too many pictures of old men, and too many pictures of old, white, rich men on the walls. Where are the women? Every single one of these rooms should have 50:50 representation. If there are not the paintings of women from our political history, commission them or borrow them and put them up. Take down those images of old white men, so that when young children from Plymouth come to visit Parliament they see pictures of people who look like them. Let us also ensure that there is not just male and female representation. Let us ensure that we have on our walls LGBT heroes, black, Asian and minority ethnic heroes, and disabled heroes. This place looks far too much like the old stale white male club that it sometimes was in the past.

We can change that. We need to do it by speaking up about equality. We need to continue to be restless about it to ensure that we keep fighting the misogyny that we see in our politics, in our parties and in our society. We need to give a voice to the single parents, to the WASPI women and to those people who are standing up for equality and want a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. That is what we all need to do. We can all do our bit to ensure that we get there by telling the story of women in politics, and the 1928 Act is a really important part of that. I look forward to my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury still being in this place in 10 years’ time to lead the debate on the 100th anniversary of that Act.