Wales’s Contribution to UK Armed Forces

Robin Millar Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones) on securing this debate.

It might seem strange that I wish to speak today when I represent a constituency without a major military presence, but we have deep and real connections to our armed forces in Aberconwy. As a member of the armed forces parliamentary scheme, I have been privileged to visit military bases across the UK to speak to enlisted men and women and officers. A recurring theme in conversations is the importance of people. The commanding officer of HMS Dragon, for example, spoke more about the team around him than the £1.2 billion vessel we were standing on at the time.

I cannot speak today about Wales’s contribution to the armed forces without speaking again about Welsh veterans. I am proud to say that in Aberconwy we have many, and we are home to several inspirational charities that offer support. It has long been recognised that active military service has the potential to adversely impact mental health and wellbeing, with physical, mental and emotional symptoms commonly reported by veterans. I note and welcome the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire about the importance of support, and I ask: is it the place of the Welsh Government to stand between UK funds being made available for UK citizens in such a way at this time?

Concerns regarding impaired health and wellbeing have achieved a high profile recently. I want to take this opportunity to thank the veterans of Aberconwy for their years of service to the United Kingdom. I also wish to pay tribute to organisations throughout Aberconwy that work in their support, including the Royal British Legion, Blind Veterans UK and Homes for Veterans Cymru-Alabaré. Those are established, but on Saturday I had the extra pleasure of meeting a new initiative—the Military Minds football club. The founders—David Owen, Ryan Davies and Kyle King—and I sat together in Llandudno. They have set up that new charity football club to help veterans, and I have no doubt that this initiative will provide support in the months and years ahead. As someone who is passionate about football and about supporting our armed forces and veterans, I will follow their adventure with interest.

In truth, we do have a military presence in Aberconwy. The training camp in Capel Curig has been the temporary home to many thousands who have trodden our hills in pursuit of physical and technical expertise: Snowdonia/Eryri offers a unique environment for that. However, I do not want to speak about what happens on our hills, but about what happens in the skies above them. Along the coast, at RAF Valley in the constituency of Ynys Môn, is the training centre for our fast jet pilots. The UK and our allies face ever-greater and ever-changing military and security threats, especially from an increasingly belligerent China, Russia and Iran. Among many responses being developed, this year, for the first time in over a decade, a carrier strike group of the Royal Navy—the senior service—sailed on active operations. After 11 years without aircraft carriers, it is a milestone of note that the UK has re-established our ability to project air power from the sea once again.

The pilots of the RAF and Royal Navy F-35 Lightnings are trained at RAF Valley, one of the finest centres of military aviation in the world. There is a whole force team there of over 1,500 people, which is an important contribution—a Welsh contribution—to the UK’s ability to defend our interests and our allies around the world. Crucially, those training flights bring those jets over Aberconwy. There is no doubt that the sound of birdsong and insects on a sunny day in Dyffryn Conwy is a thing of beauty: it nourishes the soul. There is also no doubt that that bucolic idyll is shattered by the noise of the Texan T1s, the basic fast jet training aircraft used at RAF Valley. I know that this can be a real source of annoyance, and even distress, to many of my constituents. I acknowledge those concerns and have been working with colleagues to mitigate this issue, moving more flights over the sea rather than the land and reducing the windows during which those flights take place. I am also encouraging colleagues in the Ministry of Defence to make more effort to explain the work that is happening. This is a partnership—a real relationship that needs communication, and can be helped only through greater and better understanding.

For now, while I continue to represent the concerns of constituents who are affected by the sound of those swirling, soaring Texans overhead, whether in their homes, in their businesses or on their farms, I must also recognise that it is the sound of freedom. This is a real price: a local contribution that many pay daily. It is a real part of Wales’s and Aberconwy’s contribution to our nation’s defence, so in conclusion, I offer my thanks to my constituents for the part they play.