Ministry of Defence
Debate between Madeleine Moon and Lord Beamish(6 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the fantastic overview that the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) set out of the defence estimates. For Members who do not find themselves—as many of us do—becoming defence-obsessed, due to our concerns at the lack of funding being sent into the defence of this wonderful realm, it was a fantastic primer on the concerns that we must face as a country.
I want to look at the reserve forces, an area that the hon. Gentleman also raised. I declare a sort of interest as the chair of the all-party group on reserves and cadets. I recently met an academic from the University of Bath, Dr Patrick Bury, who has been looking at the progress of the Future Reserves 2020 plan, the main purpose of which was to provide direct support to a reduced Army and to increase the reserves to 35,000. Following the meeting, I rather upset a Minister in the Ministry of Defence, who received more than 100 parliamentary questions in the lead-up to Christmas. He took me aside to remonstrate with me for giving him so much work. I pointed out that if he had answered some of the questions the first time around, there might have been 50% less questions, but that is the way of asking and pursuing parliamentary questions.
The information I will speak to in today’s debate is all provided—sometimes reluctantly, but it was provided eventually—by the Ministry of Defence following parliamentary questions. I am deeply concerned that the expenses involved in Future Reserves 2020 not only show a programme that is struggling to achieve its goals, but are such that we need either to redefine or to look at whether the money we are spending, given the outcomes we are achieving, would be better spent elsewhere. We all know that the Ministry of Defence cannot afford to waste that expense. Every penny counts in the Ministry of Defence.
To provide context and make the costs clear, what is the current reserve structure? The reserve model means that Army reservists sign a contract in which they commit to achieving a certain amount of training time, and to achieving training targets over a financial year. That involves 27 days’ training, including a two-week continuous period away, which is known as annual camp. If the reservists achieve that commitment, they are considered to be fully trained and up to date, and ready to fulfil their role in supporting the Regular Army—in other words, they are deployable—and are rewarded with a tax-free bounty cash payment.
It goes without saying that, for a reservist to achieve a high level of practice and well-honed skills, they would need to achieve that minimum level of training. It is only 27 days. Many members of the armed forces parliamentary scheme spend more than 27 days in the armed forces and do not qualify to be reservists. They nevertheless give that commitment. Unlike those in the armed forces parliamentary scheme, the reservist is not compelled to complete their commitment to get their pass-out certificate. They have only to complete a minimum of 27 days. The only compelling desire is achieving the tax-free bounty.
We can therefore use that tax-free bounty as a useful way of assessing how many people in the reserves are deployable. It is possible to be an Army reservist without achieving any training targets in a financial year, so if we want to know about the Army reserves, we need to look at how many achieve their bounties. Let us look at the cost of the programme. The easiest way to calculate the cost is to look at the bounty payments combined with the number of reservist service days claimed over the past few years. I am making a general assumption. A basic private’s pay in April 2017 was £46.42 a day—some will earn more, and therefore my numbers might be lower, but I am giving the benefit of the doubt and working on the assumption that everybody gets the minimum payment.
In 2016-17, 1,008,290 reserve days were claimed, and 14,930 reservists qualified for their bounty. That resulted in a spend of £68 million—it was nearly £69 million. In the year 2015-16, 957,390 reserve service days were claimed, and 14,990 reservists qualified for their bounty. In 2014-15, 884,050 reserve service days were claimed, and 14,270 reservists qualified for their bounty. Therefore, despite the rising costs, and despite continual recruitment, the true number of qualified reservists has remained stable, at just less than 15,000. It is not just that we are failing to meet targets year on year, as pointed out by the hon. Member for Gainsborough, but we are not increasing our numbers of deployable reservists.
The wages and the bonuses are low.
Mr Kevan Jones
What my hon. Friend is describing is fascinating. Does she agree that Army 2020 was really designed to give the Government political cover in the light of the reduction of the Regular Army to 82,000? It is not just a question of the retraining days; it is a question of whether the 15,000 reservists to whom she referred can actually be deployed alongside regular troops. I am told that in some cases there is no joint training at all.
Mrs Moon
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. What we have here is a consistent pattern of only about 15,000 deployable reservists. Despite the money that has been poured into the reserve forces, we have not increased their number, but we have massively decreased the number of regulars. Our Army capability is therefore shrinking. That is something that we must be very worried about, but what worries me even more is the fact that we are spending huge amounts of money while receiving little or no return.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) on his introduction to the debate. I agree with him that it is important to secure more such opportunities to discuss defence and how it is financed.
I do not think that anyone who follows the defence world and the way that the MOD has conducted itself over the past few years would conclude that the situation is anything other than dire. It is fair to say that the new Secretary of State realises that as well. There is also, however, a collective sense of acute amnesia, certainly among those who were Government Members in 2010, about how we arrived at this position. It is clear that the mess that the defence budget is in today is a direct result of policies taken by the coalition Government and the present Conservative Government. Seven years of ill-thought-through, rushed cuts and, on occasion, very bad decisions are now coming home to roost. The new Defence Secretary has the unfortunate task of sorting it out—a task that I do not envy, to say the least. It is therefore worth recapping how we have arrived at this position.
The Chair of the Defence Committee, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), said that these were not political decisions. They were political decisions that led directly to the mess we have today. To ignore that is to avoid the evidence and means that we will not learn lessons for the future for how we manage our nation’s defence. In 2010, the new Conservative-led coalition implemented a number of deep cuts to the armed forces. The right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), the then Defence Secretary, justified them by claiming that the defence budget had a £38 billion black hole, which somehow meant that rash and direct action would have to be taken straightaway. No one knows how he arrived at £38 billion. I have asked Ministers in this House to explain it on numerous occasions. The NAO and the Defence Committee could not arrive at a £38 billion black hole either, but it was used in every debate as the reason why cuts to our defence budget had to be made.
The Government stopped using the figure after a while, when they realised they could not justify it. I think it came about from a clear misinterpretation of the 2009 NAO report on major projects started under the previous Labour Government. The report was a snapshot of cost increases in 2009 and related primarily to the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers, the A400M transport aircraft and the Astute submarine programme.
Mr Jones
It was a deliberate strategy, in the Cameron-Osborne Conservative party, to ignore the facts and spin—“If we keep saying it long enough, people will believe it.”
The 2009 NAO report said that if the equipment budget was not increased at all over 10 years, it might be possible to arrive at a figure of £36 billion. How did they then get an extra £2 billion? I think the then Defence Secretary just added some personnel revenue costs to get to the £38 billion figure. What the report actually said, however—this point was completely ignored—was that the scenario it envisaged, of the budget remaining constant in real terms over the 10-year period, would lead to a £6 billion funding gap, which could have been managed over that 10-year period.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) is right. The impression was given to the public, and to everyone else who wanted to hear this spin, that the £38 billion had to be found in year straightaway. That was a clear fabrication. We know that, because when the current Chancellor became Defence Secretary, following the resignation of the right hon. Member for North Somerset after two years, he suddenly announced that the black hole had disappeared. I do not know whether he was auditioning for his current job as Chancellor, but the idea that it is possible to get rid of a £38 billion in-year black hole in the defence budget in just two years is complete nonsense.
The Conservative Government used that as a smokescreen to allow them to cut the defence budget, as part of the Chancellor’s austerity drive, by 16%. The effect of that has been some of the decisions referred to earlier on, including the scrapping of capability such as Nimrod. Making people compulsorily redundant in our armed forces was completely inexcusable. Certainly, if the Government I was a member of had done that when I was a Defence Minister, we would have been rightly decried by the people who are always arguing for defence. Those decisions have had an impact on what is happening today. My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) referred to the increased expenditure on the Trident programme. The £1.2 billion to £1.4 billion in additional costs happened because that decision was delayed. The deal done by the then Prime Minister David Cameron to get the Liberal Democrats on board in coalition delayed the programme, which built in costs.
Mr Jones
The right hon. Gentleman is nodding. He and I kept raising that and asking why that decision had not been made. The costs arriving now are because of the decisions taken by the coalition Government. I accept all that has been said about increased defence expenditure, but we cannot get away from the core decisions that have led to the problems we have today.
The 2015 pre-Brexit strategic defence and security review announced an additional £24.4 billion spending on new equipment. Some of that, for example on the P-8, was to fill the gap the Government created in 2010 with a hasty decision to scrap the Nimrod. Reference was made earlier to the civil service making decisions. I am sorry, but it was not civil servants or generals making those decisions; it was Ministers making these decisions, including the right hon. Member for North Somerset and the current Chancellor, when he was Defence Secretary. They decided to reduce the size of the Army to 82,000. I asked a retired senior general, “Who came up with the figure of 82,000 for our armed forces?” He scratched his head and said, “We were just told that that was what the figure was going to be to fit the cash envelope.” We then had the construct of Army 2020, which is a complete political cover, to try to give the impression that we are going to keep the Army at nearly 100,000. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend very eloquently outlined in her contribution to the debate, that is not only not producing the additional personnel required, but is actually costing more than if we had not done that in the first place.
Another point about the 2015 review is that, again, hasty decisions were taken in ordering the P-8. There is a gap, created by this Government, in maritime patrol aircraft. The P-8 was to be bought off the shelf—the Apache contract was announced at the same time—from the United States. That was pre Brexit. The added costs in foreign currency exchange are now creating pressures on the defence budget, and that is before we look at the effect on the economic and industrial base of our country. It may seem an easy option to buy off the shelf from the United States, but that lets our own industrial base decline, and that is what is happening. I have not yet seen any meaningful commitment by the contractors, Boeing, to create real jobs in the UK. What angers me is that if it was the other way around and we were selling equipment to the United States, we would be unable to do so without a clear commitment to jobs and investment in United States industry. That is where the MOD woefully and shamefully let down the British economy.
Mrs Moon
My hon. Friend will not be surprised to hear that during a visit to the Boeing factory in Charleston three weeks ago, I asked Boeing whether it regretted taking action against Bombardier and almost damaging and destroying the economy of Northern Ireland. Its response was, “We’re American, it’s what we do. It’s America first, second and third.” That is the sort of company that we were putting our trust in.
Mr Jones
It is. As an example, we have to look only at the sale of Airbus in the United States market. As part of that deal, it had to build a plant in Alabama, I think. We have the mindset in this country that somehow the ticket price looks cheap, but we are not thinking about the loss in tax revenue going back to the Exchequer and the fact that the defence industrial base is suffering.
Some decisions in 2015 were very strange. The Navy has been mentioned, and I accept that naval platforms are far more capable than they were 10 or 20—and certainly 50—years ago, but people are fixated on the number of hulls. The Government came up with the novel idea of having a cheap alternative through the Type 31e. This was literally just to deal with the idea that we have a certain number of hulls. I asked what the Type 31e is capable of doing. It cannot do NATO tasks and it is not clear what weaponry will go on it. Lo and behold, when I looked at the Ministry of Defence budget, I saw that there was no budget line for it at all—it has a £1.3 billion price tag on it—so again, how will it be paid for?
The Secretary of State needs to look not just at asking for more money, which the budget clearly needs, but at some of the ill-thought-out decisions. Take the P-8, for example. Buying off the shelf from the United States might look like a simple solution, but as I understand it, sonar buoys and missiles cannot be fired from the P-8 as it is configured, so we will have to redevelop the programme, adding more costs in. This is about looking at whether we have to revisit some decisions and take things out of the budget. I think that will be the case if we are to fit the budgets,
The issue of numbers is always contentious. When we were in government, I remember the hue and cry from the Conservative Front-Bench team—the right hon. Member for New Forest East was part of it—when we froze training days for the Territorial Army. The cost was £20 million. From looking at the headlines and at the way some Conservative politicians were going on, one would have thought that the world had stopped. If a Labour Government had slashed the defence budget by 16% and sacked people or made them redundant, as this Government have, they clearly would have been condemned.
It is the same old story. I understand the point that the right hon. Member for New Forest East made about arguing for defence—I have argued consistently for it in this House—but these are political decisions. When I was in the Ministry of Defence in 2010, I did not hear Conservative politicians stand up and say, “No, we do not need extra expenditure.” We were being condemned because we were not spending enough. In 2010, I did not see a single poster or anything in the Conservative manifesto saying, “We are going to slash the defence budget by 16%,” but these are the real facts and we cannot ignore them.
Let me turn to recruitment, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend touched upon. I do not like to say, “I told you so,” but the decision on the Capita contract for recruitment was criticised at the time. My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling raised complaints, asking why armed forces personnel were being taken out of recruitment centres and why such centres were being closed in some areas. The position we find ourselves in now was bound to happen. We have heard some of the stories. The recruitment process is not only taking a year, but given the rate at which people are being failed, it is no wonder the Government are not meeting the targets. It is now time to revisit the contract and put uniformed personnel back into recruitment centres. The Capita contract should be scrapped, because it is completely failing to deliver what was outlined.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend talked eloquently about reservists. It is time to rethink Army 2020. It was never going to work. It was political cover so that when the Government were cutting the Army to 82,000, they could still give the impression that they had an Army of more than 100,000. The issues my hon. Friend raised are not the only concern. I have never had an answer to the question about how we get formed units. How do we get training whereby regulars and reserves can train side by side to go on operations? I have not seen any evidence that that is happening in practice. If, in addition, it is costing what my hon. Friend says it is, it might be time to revisit it and see whether those resources can be put elsewhere. Let us come back to the suggestion that Ministers were asking advice from the Army about this. They were not; it was a political decision imposed on the Army.
Court Closures
Debate between Madeleine Moon and Lord Beamish(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs Moon
Indeed, no surprise.
Realistically in south Wales, one has to move north or south to the M4 before travelling east or west. Before reaching the M4, there are very few chances of moving east or west, so the movement of these courts will cause huge problems for people’s capacity to reach the new venues.
Mr Kevan Jones
Does my hon. Friend also agree that the consultation and decisions, certainly in County Durham, assume that everyone has access to a private car and take no account of the time it will take to get to court—or the impossibility, in some case, of doing so—by public transport?
Mrs Moon
My hon. Friend makes the most valid of points. Yet again, the Government have failed to recognise the needs of the poor and the disadvantaged, particularly those who are victims or witnesses of crime, and their capacity to access the justice system.
By car, the journey from Bridgend to Cardiff can take an hour. Parking is a nightmare at many times of the day and is very expensive. Port Talbot justice centre is just under 15 miles away, but, depending on where someone lives in my constituency, it can take a minimum of 30 minutes to get there by car. For people on low incomes, who disproportionately depend on court and tribunal services, access to these sites will take longer and be more expensive. Car ownership in poor communities in Wales is particularly low: two thirds of those on working-age benefits do not have daily access to a car. I hope the Minister is listening to this. The majority of people travelling from Bridgend to Cardiff or Port Talbot to access legal services will therefore depend on expensive public transport links, but the timetables are a nightmare, especially if someone has to be in court by 9 o’clock or 10 o’clock and has childcare or caring commitments or a disability or if—God forbid—they miss the bus.
Armed Forces Bill
Debate between Madeleine Moon and Lord Beamish(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Kevan Jones
It is a pleasure to follow my next-door constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson).
I, too, pay tribute to the Minister for accepting amendments that I tabled in Committee, and for looking at this issue in a practical way. That has been his approach to the Bill: he has looked at where he can make a practical and real difference to people’s lives. In Committee, he announced that, from that date onwards, people would have a choice about whether to accept compensation as a lump sum payment or as a war pension.
My hon. Friend has just outlined the issues involved in retrospection. I am aware of them from my time as a Minister, when I had to deal with issues such as pensions, but will the Minister consider this point? Will he make an exception for individuals alive today who were diagnosed just before the cut-off date that he had to introduce? As my hon. Friend said, they are under a death sentence—in many cases, they will not live for very long—so can that specific group be looked at? From speaking with my hon. Friend, I understand the difficulties of retrospection, so I know that there is a broader issue, but could individuals who already have a diagnosis and may be in receipt of a war pension be looked at? I do not expect the Minister to come up with an instant solution and say yes, but it would be very much appreciated if he could go away and consider that point.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon—[Interruption.] I have dramatically moved him from the north to the south. I mean my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones).
The armed forces have no trade union or anyone to fight for them, except armed forces charities and Members of the House. It is very much the responsibility of Members of the House to be their champions, to fight their cause, to fight for what is right, and to fight for justice for them. I totally and utterly agree with my hon. Friend that people alive today who have received such a diagnosis are under a death sentence. The acknowledgment that their service in the armed forces has caused them to suffer from this most hideous of diseases would make a difference to them and their families. My brother-in-law died of mesothelioma, so I know how short but horrific such a death is, and how horrific it is for the family to watch as people struggle to breath and die inch by inch, day by day.
This subject is very emotive, but it is one that says what we are as a country and how seriously we take our responsibilities to the members of the armed forces who faced risk not in war, but in their place of work. As a country, we have accepted such a responsibility for people who worked in civilian life, and we have a moral responsibility to accept that we have a duty to meet the needs of those armed forces personnel currently diagnosed, who are dying now, and to give them access to the compensation scheme.
I hope that the Minister will take this matter very seriously. As Opposition Members have said, the Minister has been very active in this matter and supportive of making changes to the Bill. I hope that this is another change that he will accept, consider and bring forward.
Armed Forces (Service Complaints and Financial Assistance) Bill [Lords]
Debate between Madeleine Moon and Lord Beamish(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs Moon
Amendment 22, which is in my name, seeks to define “undue delay”. I pay respect to the Minister, who has taken time to meet everyone involved with the Bill. We had considerable discussion on the issue of undue delay and how it could be defined, and we agreed that, although I would not press the amendment today, it was important that there was a dialogue about delay.
There are two things that one can say for certain about the current complaints system: delay is an endemic problem within the system, and everyone is aware of it. It came to the attention of the Committee many times that only 25% of cases are resolved within a 24-week target, and only 26% of complaints made in 2013 were closed during that year. The internal risk register looking at the implementation of the service ombudsman Bill within the MOD stated that there was a high risk that the system would lose further internal credibility if there was continuing media exposure of how powerless the ombudsman is. Rather than media exposure taking place, it is important that the system operates well so that there can be internal confidence.
There is a high risk that the system will continue to fail and that current delays will continue. There is a high risk that service personnel will be let down, damaging their mental health and leading to suicide attempts. None of us wants to see any of that, which is why the Defence Committee has worked as closely as possibly with the Minister to ensure that we move forward in a constructive and productive manner.
In January 2013, 325 complaints had a red flag. By December 2013 that figure had swelled by over 50% to 500. We have seen repeatedly how delay has been used to wear down complainants so that they go away. It is also used as a punishment for complaints being made in the first place.
Members have raised concerns about this being an attack on the chain of command. Let me say that, since the Bill Committee, I have taken time—I have spoken to the Minister about this—to talk to people in the chain of command and to ask them how they feel about the changes introduced by the Defence Committee. Every person I have spoken to has welcomed the changes and not felt threatened by them. They all felt that the changes were right and that they would focus people’s minds and attentions on complaints so that they are not put in a cupboard and regarded as an annoyance, but are seen as one of the parts of the job to be dealt with first, so that the unit operates efficiently and effectively. The bad pennies that exist would be dealt with quickly and a clear message would be sent that bullying and harassment, in particular, would not be tolerated anywhere in the chain of command.
Delay is caused in part by the labyrinthine system that was initially set up by the Ministry to process complaints. In his evidence to the Defence Committee, retired Lieutenant Colonel Jeremy Field railed against the masses of paperwork involved. The abuse of process by those in the chain of command either to propel a dubious complaint or to hold up a legitimate but inconvenient one is also a worrisome cause of delay. Such abuses can have a devastating impact on individual complainants and on their mental health and well-being. When such cases come into the public domain, the system and confidence in it are undermined.
I raised the case of Tom Neathway on Second Reading and in Committee. Another concerning case that I would like to mention briefly is that of Sergeant Major Michael Booley, who was Prince Harry’s flying instructor. He accused the Army of gross mistreatment after a four-year dispute that ended his distinguished career. When reading about the case, it is very worrying to see that the service complaints panel found that Major Graham, who Sergeant Major Booley claimed had been acting deliberately and maliciously against him, was an unreliable witness and that his conduct not only wronged the complainant, but acted against the interests of his employers in the Army. I think that that is the big issue. Where there is bullying and harassment, it is against the interests of the Army, the RAF or the Navy. We must always keep that central to our thinking and our focus when looking at complaints. That is why the changes set out today are so important.
I think that it is important to have some sort of definition of undue delay, but I accept that it might not necessarily need to be in the Bill, or even in regulations. It can be something that the ombudsman sets out herself when setting out the definitions that will guide her judgments. I therefore hope that the Minister will consider and discuss with the ombudsman how we can move that forward.
Mr Kevan Jones
I give the Minister 10 out of 10 for her brass neck, because these amendments were tabled subsequent to her losing the vote in Committee, and the Government do not want to press them to a vote tonight for fear that she might lose again. The amendments are consequential to the major change that took place in Committee, namely that to the nature of the ombudsman. What the Minister originally proposed was a dry institution that would have dealt only with maladministration, but the ombudsman’s role has now been opened up to cover a wider range of complaints. I have been arguing for that for a long time, and the Defence Committee also argued effectively for it in its report.
Armed Forces (Service Complaints and Financial Assistance) Bill
Debate between Madeleine Moon and Lord Beamish(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Jones
I am glad to see that the dinosaur tendency of the Conservative party is still alive and kicking on the Back Benches. Exactly the same arguments were made against the introduction of the armed forces complaints commissioner. This is not about making the training or the discipline less rigorous; it is about behaviour that is totally unacceptable. The hon. Gentleman should read Lord Justice Blake’s report and the Select Committee report that went alongside it to see whether he can justify some of the things that went wrong then. I accept that, as the Minister says, things have moved a long way since then, but the type of behaviour that we saw was not acceptable then and is not acceptable now.
Mrs Moon
The argument that has just been articulated—that somehow the armed forces are different and separate—may be part of the reason why so few Members are present in the Chamber. There is a feeling that that is so. The reality is that the law is set by this House. This House sets the rules and the legislation under which the armed forces operate, and long may that last. That is how a democracy works. The service chain of command must accept that.
Mr Jones
I agree with my hon. Friend. We are making progress by changing the attitudes of some of the old and the bold in the Conservative party and changing the culture among the senior management of all three services, who accept as a fact of life that bullying, harassment and sexual discrimination are not acceptable in our armed forces and will not be tolerated. The Minister is right that the present chiefs, as I know them, take a zero-tolerance view of such behaviour, and this will support them in ensuring that it does not happen.
Mental Health
Debate between Madeleine Moon and Lord Beamish(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Mrs Moon
I am very aware of that research; the point I was about to make comes from it. The problem is that we often use the police as our first line in dealing with people with mental health problems, but they are not trained and equipped to carry out that role and function. We must do something about that. Otherwise, the person with the mental health problems is often dealt with as a disruptive element, and treated as if they are someone violent and aggressive, rather than someone who has a mental health problem. We must deal with that problem.
Words and anecdotes can be dangerous, particularly in the military. Research was published this week by the Defence Analytical Services and Advice agency on Falkland veterans. It found that 95 veterans had taken their own lives since the end of the conflict. That figure is lower than previously assumed, although each death is a tragedy for the individual and family involved. The research showed that, of the 26,000 mobilised, 255 died in conflict and 95 took their own lives, but 455 died of cancer. We sometimes forget that our armed forces community has problems we need to address that are not necessarily mental health problems.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I agree totally with my hon. Friend that each of those 95 people taking their own lives is an individual and family tragedy. My problem is that, in opposition, the Conservatives, including the Prime Minister, took the figure used prior to the research and quoted it freely, like confetti, to try to discredit what the Labour Government were doing for veterans’ mental health.
Mrs Moon
The repeating of such figures is the dangerous part as it places the perception in people’s minds. More dangerously, it goes into the minds of veterans, who then think, “I have served. I will have a mental health problem and post-traumatic stress disorder,” when the opposite is true. It is incumbent on all hon. Members to ensure that our work and the facts we share come from academically proven research. A study by Lord Ashcroft suggested that 92% of the public believe that all veterans will have a mental health problem, but research suggests that the opposite is true—that 90% do well.
We have had a 15-year report from the King’s Centre for Military Health Research, but we need a 20-year report showing the impact of the draw-down from Afghanistan and the increased numbers of veterans in the community.
In this debate on mental health, words can be dangerous—they can harm and create impressions in vulnerable minds. They can make people believe they have a problem they do not have, or that they have a problem that they can survive and grow from. Military mental health is robust. The transition to civilian life, alcohol misuse and reservists are risks that we must take seriously and tackle. The MOD will need to work more closely with the Department of Health. As people leave the armed forces and become civilians, civilian society organisations need to be equipped and ready to help. As civilians, we face the same problems together.
Mr Jones
We need to explode the myth that the problem is funding. I do not think it is; I think it is where the funding is spent—a point raised earlier. Indeed, funding that is properly spent on early interventions for people with mental health issues will save the NHS money in the long term, not cost it.
Mrs Moon
There is an issue with the interaction of mental health and alcohol. I repeatedly had texts from a dear friend of mine who is a minister in the Church. He had severe depression and was self-medicating with alcohol. His family and the police would repeatedly take him to mental health services, which would turn him away, because they said he had been drinking. He was drinking because he needed their services and could not access them. We have to ensure that mental health services cannot turn away people who have been drinking, but hold them until they are no longer under the influence of alcohol and then ensure that they access the services they need. The link between alcohol and mental health has to be explored and tackled.
Defence Reform
Debate between Madeleine Moon and Lord Beamish(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Jones
The Minister is making various assumptions, which is not unusual for him. That note says precisely what I am saying today, which is that we need to shoot down this erroneous myth that has been put about by this Government. If he wants more evidence on this, he should read the National Audit Office “Major Projects Report 2009”. It says of the defence budget:
“The size of the gap is highly sensitive to the budget growth assumptions used. If the Defence budget remained constant in real terms, and using the Department’s forecast for defence inflation of 2.7 per cent, the gap would now be £6 billion over the ten years. If, as is possible given the general economic position, there was no increase in the defence budget in cash terms over the same ten year period, the gap would rise to £36 billion.”
Even the NAO did not reach the £38 billion figure, therefore. I acknowledge that the figure it gives is £2 billion out and this Government seem to think such sums are unimportant, but I have just quoted from the NAO report. That is possibly where Conservative central office first got the figure of £36 billion, but there is a big difference between £36 billion and £38 billion. The £36 billion is based on an assumption of a flat-cash budget over the next 10 years and every single item in the equipment budget being maintained, when everyone who has ever been involved in MOD matters knows that things come into the equipment budget and things fall out of the equipment budget.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
The Defence Committee was advised in one of its briefings that the projected figure of £38 billion included a roll-forward of all items on wish lists—not things for which contracts had been let, but items the MOD had expressed a possible interest in purchasing for the future. This was, we were told, the equivalent of an individual becoming bankrupt because they fancied buying a Ferrari but never actually bought one.
Mr Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for that. Let me quote from the evidence given to the Select Committee by the former Secretary of State. In response to a question from a Member, he said:
“There is a huge ability to reduce a very large proportion of that. My guess is that of that £38 billion we are talking of something like £8 billion to £9 billion, and that is a ballpark figure.”
During that evidence session, he gave a commitment to the Select Committee Chair that he would write giving details of how he arrived at that figure, but he did not. The Committee was still waiting for that information when the report was produced, but it did not appear. I heard one of the Government Front Benchers scoff when I said that certain things move in and out of budget, but they clearly do. My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) is right: the Government racked up everything in the programme over a 10-year period and assumed that it would all be delivered. That is similar to the argument used about pension black holes, the assumption being that all the money is paid out, today. That is not the way the defence procurement budget is structured.
Business of the House (Thursday)
Debate between Madeleine Moon and Lord Beamish(13 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Jones
My hon. Friend takes me on to my next point, which is about the decision to debate the issue in five hours tomorrow. That is to ensure that the measure will be dealt with before the framework document is in place, but it seems ludicrous to have the discussion tomorrow and fundamentally change the funding of higher education in this country before we have the full framework policy document. That should be in place, not only to reveal how what is decided tomorrow may be interpreted, but to allow some newer universities a debate about their financial future. It is clear to me that some of them will struggle when these measures are implemented.
Mrs Moon
Is it not one of the risks that we are running that many universities in England will find it more attractive to bring in overseas students paying, yet again, higher fees? English students will not be able to afford to go to university. We are going to debate the issue within five hours, but the structure of education in Britain is to change dramatically. We need more than five hours to discuss that.