Military Covenant

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Wednesday 21st November 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr Mark Francois)]

I greatly welcome the opportunity to open this important debate on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government. It is a particular pleasure to respond to the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson). As he knows, I have taken an interest in Northern Ireland matters down the years. In fact, some years ago I visited Northern Ireland as his guest. We are debating a serious subject, but I hope the right hon. Gentleman will not mind my telling the House that I also bumped into him in 2009, when I was in Northern Ireland during the European elections. We were each separately with our respective campaign teams when we came around the same corner. As politicians do on these occasions, we exchanged some banter, and one of the right hon. Gentleman’s fellow campaigners described me as a “communist.” I have been called a number of things down the years, but that was a personal first for me. I have happy memories of that trip, and I was determined when I saw this debate coming up to get that quote into Hansard.

Let me begin by saying that we greatly value the contribution that all our armed forces make, and in particular that made by the Irish regiments over the years. The right hon. Gentleman and some of his colleagues rightly touched on that. As evidence of this contribution, one statistic stands out. Some 173 Victoria Crosses have been awarded to members of the armed forces who were Irish. That is more than one in eight of all such awards, including the first ever Victoria Cross, which was awarded to Charles Lucas from Scarva—in the constituency of the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson)—which he earned while serving as a mate on HMS Hecla in 1854. Following a swift promotion to captain, Charles Lucas eventually retired at the rank of rear-admiral. So that is a not a bad start for the VC.

Continuing this naval theme, I should like to mention HMS Caroline, about which there has been good news following our decision to gift the vessel to the National Museum of the Royal Navy. It has agreed to keep the vessel in Belfast, where it has been berthed since 1924.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

HMS Caroline was built in the Devonport dockyard and it is the last surviving ship from the battle of Jutland, at which my grandfather was a gunnery officer on HMS Valiant. This is incredibly good news, therefore, and I will make sure everybody in Plymouth rejoices.

--- Later in debate ---

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

I congratulate the Democratic Unionist party on having the foresight to secure this debate on the military covenant. It was perhaps sad that we were unable to discuss the matter immediately before Remembrance Sunday, as it would have been particularly pertinent at that time. The debate nevertheless gives me an opportunity to talk about some of the issues that affect the military in my constituency.

I also want to thank the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) for his announcement about HMS Caroline. That was brilliant news. I would like to ask the DUP and the Executive in Northern Ireland to ensure that representatives from Devonport are invited to see it in Belfast, because it started life in Devonport; that is where it was built. It was one of the last ships to be built there, in 1914.

I pay tribute to those Northern Irish and Irish soldiers, sailors and airmen who have served in our armed forces. I also want to pay tribute to those members of 3 Commando Brigade who died during the troubles in Northern Ireland. We need to recognise them. All too often that has not happened because people were more interested in what was happening in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I welcome this opportunity to talk about the military covenant. A number of things need to be done, and I welcome the fact that the Government will be publishing their first report before Christmas. The issues affect not only the regulars but the reservists. I want to say a little about the reservists, because it is their families who end up bearing an awful lot of the brunt when their husbands or partners—or even their wives—go abroad to serve on operations. I hope that we can have a debate about what we are trying to do for reservists’ families.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

The families do not lack support when the reservists are away; the support received from the regiment is second to none. It is when a reservist is demobilised and returns to civilian life that they feel the most isolated and in need of support. When a regiment comes back from theatre, the individual soldiers have the support mechanism of their comrades and the family of the regiment itself, but the reservists go back to being civilians. They lack having comrades around them who understand what they have been through and the readjustments that they are having to make.

[Oliver Colvile]

My hon. Friend makes a fair point. That is certainly the line from the Army, but those in the Royal Navy—or, for that matter, the Royal Marines or the Royal Air Force—do not necessarily live on base in the same way, and therefore both regulars and reservists can feel isolated during that process. Those serving in the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines do not normally live on base. They are encouraged to buy their own homes. The Government need to look at how we can encourage such people to get on to the property ladder.

The reservist families need a significant amount of support. When I was on Woodbury Common last year on the armed forces parliamentary scheme, I came across a Royal Marine—I do not know whether he was a reservist, but I suspect he was—who lived in Aylesbury. He said that when he went home, he experienced some real difficulties. He wanted to talk to his friends about what had happened during his time in Afghanistan, but he found that it was not easy to do so. When he went back to his wife and said, “I have had an interesting time”, she said, “Don’t talk to me about what kind of day you’ve had; I’ve ended up having to answer 300 e-mails.” Perhaps she was working for a Member of Parliament and replying to constituents. He had been under mortar fire for seven or eight hours during the day and found it difficult to talk to her about that, so he went off to find his mates, but they had not been through that experience either, and they also had difficulty understanding what he was talking about. He thus had to go and find his fellow Royal Marines to talk to, as they understood his experiences.

We need to ensure that we set up a chat room for those reservist families so that they are able to talk to each other while their husbands or family members are away. I very much welcome the comments made about TRiM—trauma risk management. We recently had a breakfast here with the Royal Marines, and they talked enormously about it. In Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, we have signed the community covenant, too, which is working incredibly well. Last Friday, we talked quite extensively about how to ensure that people are looked after in respect of housing, for example.

[Mr Francois]

I apologise for interrupting my hon. Friend, but to give all due credit to the Royal Marines, my understanding is that they initially helped to develop the TRiM programme. It was such a success within the brigade and its commandos that it was exported to the rest of the armed forces. It is quite right to pay tribute to the Royal Marines as basically they came up with the programme.

[Oliver Colvile]

I suspect, if I may say so, that the programme is very good because the Royal Marines is a small unit able to deliver it, but there are many lessons to be learned.

Finally, the Royal Navy in Plymouth and Devonport, with the help of the Prime Minister, is doing an enormous amount of work on dementia, because it understands the impact on a family when personnel are abroad. We have a lot to do, and I would be interested to know when we are going to have the debate.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, especially when he is close to finishing his speech. The issue of the particular needs of servicemen also relates to the provision of sheltered housing for homeless ex-servicemen. Will my hon. Friend reflect on whether we should follow the model, already pioneered in Catterick, of specialist provision for homeless ex-servicemen so that they can relate to each other in a way that might not be possible in other forms of sheltered housing?

[Oliver Colvile]

My hon. Friend is quite right. One organisation he may wish to talk to is Alabaré, which does a lot of work on homes for ex-servicemen and is very well regarded by the Minister for the Armed Forces, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan). We have a lot of work to do, and I look forward to the report on the armed forces covenant.