Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Francois Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

I am obviously sorry to hear about that case. I would ask the hon. Member to write to me with the details, and I will look into it with the DIO. The key thing is that, wherever we are talking about—whichever specific barracks or base—if we are going to get on with the works, we need the money there, and we have got that. We have put in place the extra £400 million, and as I set out in the winter plan, thousands of forces personnel will now benefit from that work.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

The DIO is not fit for purpose, and the Future Defence Infrastructure Services accommodation contract has been a disaster, including completely unacceptable delays in issuing and checking gas and electricity safety certificates. No private landlord would get away with this without being sued. The Secretary of State had a good run out at the Defence Committee last week, and said he was potentially looking at radical reforms in this area. Can I urge the Minister and his boss to do precisely that to honour our service personnel and their families in a way they are not being honoured at present?

[James Cartlidge]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend. He knows that I share his passion for seeing genuine step change improvements in our accommodation. That is why we have announced the spending that we have. On the performance of the contractors, which the DIO ultimately oversees, one of the important aspects of the winter plan is a significant increase in staff manning the telephone service, so that we see better service to personnel. We expect the average waiting time for one of those calls to go from seven minutes to 29 seconds. It will be very important to service personnel that, when they make those calls, they get answered in good time.