Military Covenant

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

I am incredibly pleased to follow the first two Back-Bench contributions to this debate. I hope that my contribution will be of the same incredibly high order, because it is that high level of debate that our armed forces want to hear from this Chamber, not the yah-boo politics that we heard from the Front Benches.

The military covenant is about the duty of care and the principles of that duty. It must set out the responsibilities of the Government and the country to those who serve and have risked their lives, just as the father of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton North East (Mr Crausby) did and as the hon. Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster) has done. The military covenant is about people who do not have a choice over where they go or what they are called on to do—people who have no right to strike or raise objections; people who have no voice. The military covenant should give a voice to those voiceless, and it must be enshrined in law.

Why must the military covenant be enshrined in law? At the moment, our military is suffering from insecurity and instability. Morale is at an all-time low. Everyone in the Chamber has talked to military families. They will have had military families come to their surgeries who are concerned about how they will weather the strategic defence and security review, the cuts in allowances that have suddenly come upon them and the job losses, whether they are civil servants, many of whom are ex-military, or serving military personnel. There are pressures and tensions everywhere across our armed forces.

The sacking of personnel by e-mail has sent shock waves through the armed forces. The failure to follow through on the training commitment to those young people—many were hours away from completing four years of training to achieve a qualification that would have carried them through the rest of their lives—has devastated families and young people.

Why has the British Legion taken the unusual step of writing to Members of Parliament to ask that the military covenant be endorsed in law? This is a matter of trust, but I do not think that we demonstrate a tremendous amount of trust when we descend into making party political points about the military covenant. I am sorry to say that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have already become the parties of broken promises and broken commitments—[Interruption.] I have to say that promises have also been broken by my party.

All of us have a duty to make the highest level of commitment to our armed forces, and we should be judged by our actions. We can all make a list of the things we have done and the things we have failed to do, but what we really need to do is think of the consequences in our communities, because families can be devastated by the decisions that come out of this Chamber. Young people’s futures can be destroyed when their dreams of serving their country are thrown away, after they have read about the decision in a national newspaper.

The military covenant must not be simply a concept or a philosophy; it must be something that people can hold in their hands and feel secure about. It must be something that we, as a country, stand up to and stand by. Our armed forces and their families need to know that, whatever Government are in power, we will stand strongly by our commitments to them and that we will honour those commitments. As I have handed over veterans badges across my constituency over the past few years, I have seen the pride that people still felt about their years of service. They felt that those were the best years of their lives, and the times when they were most alive. We must honour those people, and make a commitment to them in law. If we are to have only a report, there must at the very least be a commitment to a free vote on the covenant for every Member of the House.