Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lancaster]

I am more than happy to do so. The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that there was a review. It is fair to say that the French authorities have simply been overwhelmed by the number of applications, but we have a system in place now whereby 200 are sent each week to the French. Of the original applications that were made, I understand that all have now been awarded.[Official Report, 28 June 2016, Vol. 612, c. 1MC.]

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

T6. My hon. Friend will be aware of the valuable and essential work done by African Union troops to prevent and ameliorate conflicts all over Africa—work that is also essential for this country. Will she update the House on the support being provided to the AU by the UK to assist with its peacekeeping role?

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. and learned Friend affords me the opportunity to pay tribute to our armed forces who are training the Rwandan defence force as well as the African Union’s Eastern Africa Standby Force. The training that we are providing is there to help security sector reform and enhance their capabilities for peace operations and disaster relief.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Monday 18th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. First, one should not refer to the place to which the hon. Gentleman referred. After six years in the House, frankly, he ought to know that. Secondly, that was pretty wide of the question.

I call Stephen Phillips. Not—

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Ah! Mr Phillips is here. Splendid. How could I have thought otherwise for a moment? It is only that the hon. Gentleman has perambulated to a different position in the Chamber. We are delighted to see him.

[Stephen Phillips]

17. What measures he has put in place to improve the quality of service housing.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mark Lancaster)]

My Department is committed to improving the quality of service family accommodation provided to our service personnel and their families. We have been working closely with Carillion Amey to deliver those improvements. Work to improve accommodation has resulted in the upgrading of some 3,000 homes through complete refurbishment and the separate installation of around 10,000 new kitchens, bathrooms, and central heating systems.

[Stephen Phillips]

I will be short, Mr Speaker—which may be why you did not see me earlier.

Service housing is absolutely critical not only to the wellbeing of our servicemen and women and their families, but to their morale. Carillion Amey has been an appalling contractor, and I know that the Department has taken this issue seriously. May I encourage my hon. Friend to continue to be robust, and to take the contract away from it unless and until it starts to discharge its obligations properly?

[Mark Lancaster]

My hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right to highlight the poor performance of Carillion Amey to date. I am determined, as indeed is the Secretary of State, to improve this matter, which is why we will continue to work closely with Carillion Amey. I can reassure my hon. and learned Friend that Carillion Amey has committed to meet all the key performance indicators across the suite of the next generation estate contracts, including the national housing prime contract, by the end of May 2016.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

The picture in northern Syria in particular is confused; it is not a simple conflict with front lines as we would normally understand them. It is our long-term objective for Syria to be free of both Assad and ISIL, and we continue to work with moderate elements in Syria to provide them with the equipment they need and, where we can, with training outside Syria.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

7. What plans he has for consolidation of Royal Air Force stations.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mark Lancaster)]

Any consolidation of Royal Air Force stations is being considered as part of the Ministry of Defence footprint strategy. The attacks in Paris remind us that the threats we face are growing in scale, diversity and complexity. We are therefore determined to configure our defence estate to optimise our support of military capability.

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer. He will know that Lincolnshire is the home of the RAF, and while I appreciate that he cannot give definitive answers today, he will no doubt agree that that should remain the case and that there are very good reasons for consolidating more personnel and assets in our great county.

[Mark Lancaster]

My hon. and learned Friend is a champion, not only of his constituency but of Lincolnshire. He is right to say that that county has had a long association with the RAF. He is right that I cannot give any further details today—not even after half-past 3—but I hope to be able to provide further information in due course.

Britain and International Security

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), who has, as always, made a thought-provoking speech.

The events at Calais, and the events—as tragic as they are horrifying—on a holiday beach in Tunisia, have brought home something that was perhaps obvious but that we have overlooked for too long. It is a fact that this country sits in a continent separated from some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people by what is effectively an inland sea capable of being crossed in less than a day. That passage is made by thousands every day. The majority of them are of course seeking a better life, but it can safely be inferred that some are coming to Europe, and attempting to make their way to the United Kingdom, in order to harm us and our democratic way of life. I spoke about that in the debate on the Adjournment last night, and it is a problem that will not go away unless and until we deal with its root causes and direct a focus, which has hitherto been lacking, on the problems that are being experienced particularly in Africa and particularly in relation to corruption. Those problems are leading to much of the difficulty that we now find ourselves in.

The first duty of a Government is, and must always be, to ensure the security and safety of their own people. I know that this Government are well aware of that; it is in part why we make the case—not always popular in the country—that we should spend 0.7% of gross national income on international aid, which is one of the greatest tools of soft power we enjoy. That is not only the right thing to do; it is critical to our own national security. We have been through some tough times, and that is perhaps what has led the Washington Post and the federal Government in Washington to the view that Britain has not walked as tall on the international stage over the past few years as it has done in the past. I venture to suggest to those on the Government Front Bench that it is time to change that view.

We need to ensure that whatever proportion of our national income we spend on defence, we continue to have strong armed forces that are capable of projecting British power across the world. We need that not merely to ensure some form of national aggrandisement, but because what we do overseas matters—it matters to our own security at home. The threat we face from Islamic terrorism in particular means that we have no option but to think long and hard about how we use both our hard and soft power internationally to deal with an ever-increasing menace.

Although many colleagues have focused their remarks on a wide range of subjects, particularly on the middle east, the base of Daesh and al-Qaeda, I wish to focus my remarks on Boko Haram and its operations in northern Nigeria and the surrounding region. What began as a radical political movement in 2002 has essentially become a violent Jihadist insurgency that has killed and abducted thousands, and caused many more to flee their homes in fear.

Boko Haram’s ambition to carve out a caliphate in the region, its links to al-Qaeda and its bloodthirsty violence bear similarities to Daesh in Syria and Iraq. Its exporting of Jihad across post-colonial borders is destabilising the region, just as Daesh is destabilising the middle east. But we cannot, and I know that Ministers will not, forget or ignore the threat of Boko Haram not just to the region but to our own security. The task is far from easy, as I recognise. Boko Haram has seldom shown much regard for national boundaries. It readily retreats across them when threatened, and it crosses into neighbouring states to recruit and train disaffected young men, as indeed has recently been the case in Niger. Its focus has changed recently from the north of Nigeria to a much larger area—perhaps in an attempt to replicate the Kanem-Bornu empire that once spanned parts of northern Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon under the Muslim Sayfawa dynasty. We have seen increasing numbers of incidents on Cameroonian soil in particular, especially kidnappings and village attacks, none of which, it must be said, has attracted much coverage in the media here and still less any debate in this House. The United Nations rightly remains concerned. The Secretary-General has said that he is deeply troubled by Boko Haram’s

“continuing indiscriminate and horrific attacks”.

The world seems largely to have forgotten the girls who were kidnapped overnight on 14 and 15 April 2014, but the truth is that Boko Haram has been kidnapping girls from northern Nigeria for years, often for sale as slaves. Although the Nigerian people and the international community were rightly horrified by the scale of the mass kidnap of more than 200 girls from the town of Chibok, such kidnappings have continued to this day and very little is being done to stop them. The horrifying nature of these kidnappings underscores the horrific nature of the menace with which we have to deal, because it does threaten us here in this country.

The displacement of people from the immediately affected area in which Boko Haram is operating is also causing refugee crises all over the region, as terrified people flee further and further away to get out of the reach of the violence, even to the Maghreb from where they attempt to make their way to Europe.

[Tom Tugendhat]

rose—

[Tom Tugendhat]

I have been part of the main debate from the beginning.

Does my hon. and learned Friend recognise that it is the governance problem in Nigeria that is causing the rise of Boko Haram? The rise of so many of these insurgent movements has rather more to do with governance and diplomatic problems than military ones.

[Stephen Phillips]

I recognise that, and I am coming on to it, although it is always difficult to condense—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

The hon. and learned Gentleman is out of time.

[Stephen Phillips]

It is always difficult to condense a longer speech into a shorter speech, but I will take the injunction from the Chair.

In closing, this is a problem that Ministers must not forget. Of course the threat from Daesh is critical and something with which we must deal, but the threat of Islamist terrorism across Africa is also a very real threat. It threatens us here. I hope that the Minister will say that it is a matter of which the Foreign Office is aware and on which it will concentrate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

Let me explain to the hon. Gentleman. The figure of 900 relates to the total mission—all those involved in helping to defeat ISIL—which of course includes our air crews in Akrotiri in Cyprus and at other bases in the Gulf. We expect the numbers on the ground in Iraq to reach about 275, with the increase that was announced at the weekend. As he said, the total mission will then involve about 900 people.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

T5. Further to the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson), my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will know that post-conflict reconstruction and renewal costs borne by his Department do not currently count towards the 2% of GDP spending. Does he have any plans to lobby the OECD and/or NATO on this, and what is the Government’s position?

[Michael Fallon]

My hon. and learned Friend makes a fair and interesting point. We need to look at where expenditure from the defence and development budgets is security expenditure in the round. Where it is preventing conflict, helping to stabilise countries and avoiding the future commitment of British troops, there is a very strong case for looking at all these things together. The House will know that a sizeable part of our operation in Sierra Leone and indeed the humanitarian work in Nepal, to which the Minister for the Armed Forces referred, is classified as humanitarian assistance to those two countries and will be recouped from the overseas aid budget.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

The first thing to say is that we should resist absolutely any duplicity—[Interruption]—any duplication between NATO and the European Defence Agency. It goes without saying that we should avoid duplicity at all times. The important point to note is that cyber-security is a sovereign capability and is therefore not something that we believe should be subcontracted to supranational organisations. Of course we have to discuss doctrine and dogma and how we interact with this evolving modality, but cyber-security remains a sovereign capability as far as we are concerned.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

13. What recent discussions he has had with his ministerial colleagues on the mental health of armed forces veterans.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Anna Soubry)]

This obviously remains a huge priority for me and other Ministers. One of my first actions after I was appointed was to go to the King’s Centre for military medicine and meet Professor Sir Simon Wessely and his team, which was one of the most enlightening and indeed informative visits that I have made. He discussed with me the state of health of our veterans, and in particular their mental health, which is actually as good as, if not better than, that of those in civilian life. However, when our veterans have mental health difficulties, they must remain a priority for treatment.

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer. My constituent Anthony Gibbs, who came to see me in my surgery, is a very brave young man who served in Northern Ireland and a number of other places. His service led in subsequent life to severe post-traumatic stress disorder, and he still has very severe mental health problems. The Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), wrote a report—which the Prime Minister told me last year was being fully implemented—on this issue, but it is quite apparent that things are still going wrong. I hope my hon. Friend will agree to a meeting with me and, if he will come, Mr Gibbs, so that she can have further conversations with her colleagues in the Department of Health and we can start to get this right for the brave young men and women of our armed forces.

[Anna Soubry]

My hon. Friend has written me a letter, which I have before me. All those proposals have been implemented, but we are conscious that GPs, for example, do not always refer people for the treatment that they need. We have discussed the issue at length with the Department of Health. I am not saying that this cannot be done, but it will be difficult, because we cannot tell GPs to make the referrals. I should be more than happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the matter further.

IT Systems (Army Recruitment)

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

To interpret the hon. Lady’s question, I am clear that the problems with the ICT platform are not initial difficulties. We have made a clear decision that the Atlas platform is not fit for this purpose and have asked Capita to develop a dedicated platform for Army recruitment.

However, I think that the hon. Lady is probably referring to the wider challenge of recruiting the necessary reserve numbers. She is right to say that there are two components to that. There is the technical challenge of processing recruits through the pipeline. I have admitted to the House on a number of occasions that the system is very clunky, which is partly but not exclusively because of problems with the ICT platform. There is also the wider challenge, in the face of societal change and public attitudes, of encouraging people to want to join the Army Reserve and encouraging employers to want to support employees in joining the Army Reserve. It is very early days, but the signs are encouraging. I have no doubt that I will continue to report to the House as the evidence becomes more readily available over the course of the year.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen), my right hon. Friend referred to the reservist recruiting targets that he set out before Christmas. He has also indicated to the House when he first became aware of the IT problems. Will he confirm that the targets that he set out for reservist recruitment took into account the problems that he has outlined to the House in his statement today?

[Mr Hammond]

Yes, the growth trajectory is fully cognisant of the challenges that we face and the time scales for correcting those problems.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

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

Lord Newby has been leading negotiations on behalf of the Treasury as the Public Service Pensions Bill has gone through another place. We are now working with our colleagues in the Cabinet Office and the Treasury to understand the implications of the amendment made to the Bill in the House of Lords, which I believe is at the heart of the hon. Gentleman’s question. We are currently considering how to respond.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

T3. My hon. Friend will be aware of recent problems caused by former military personnel accessing the MOD estate. Will he tell the House what measures he is going to implement to deal with this matter?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Dunne)]

I am grateful for this opportunity to announce a comprehensive set of measures implemented in the MOD by the Secretary of State to ensure that both former and current employees are clear about the rules and restrictions on access.

For the first time, a list of all ex-MOD personnel who are subject to lobbying restrictions under the rules of the Advisory Committee for Business Appointments will be available for all MOD staff to see. The MOD permanent secretary has written to all former MOD personnel who are subject to business appointment restrictions to remind them of their duties under the advisory committee, and to the Association of Defence Suppliers to ensure that industry members are aware of the rules. Transparency measures have been radically increased, and since the review the permanent secretary has removed nearly 2,500 passes allowing access to the MOD’s main building to ensure that only members of staff who require regular access to the MOD are granted it. Passes that have not been used for 60 days have been disabled, and there will be an ongoing audit of those who are granted visitor passes.

Defence Budget and Transformation

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Not without busting the budget again, I am afraid. There is a programme for the modernisation of accommodation, part of which is continuing. Another part of it has been put on hold until 2014-15, and I am afraid that is where it will have to stay for the moment.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

On behalf of the regiment in which I had the honour to serve, may I join my right hon. Friend, and indeed the shadow Secretary of State, in paying tribute to Lance Corporal Davies for his sacrifice?

No Government Member doubts the enormity of the £38 billion hole left by the previous Government or that it is, as the shadow Secretary of State has said, the principal weakness of the Labour Government. Will my right hon. Friend tell the House what effect promising much and delivering little has had on the morale of our armed forces?

[Mr Hammond]

It has sapped it and undermined it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robathan]

Certainly. We are not contemplating broadening the scheme to the armed forces parliamentary scheme, but bursaries do exist. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point on board, as I did the previous point. We should give the bursary scheme good publicity. However, I think he will find that there is considerable over-subscription to the bursary scheme, not under-subscription, because young people know about it and are a bit quicker than I am.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

16. What support his Department provides to armed forces veterans with mental health disorders.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

Further—wrong one.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I am glad the right hon. Gentleman’s sense of humour has not deserted him.

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful to the Minister for that answer. Martin Pratt, about whom I wrote to my right hon. Friend in November, was a constituent of mine before his untimely death. He served his country in the SAS and his experiences were sufficiently traumatic that, long after he had left the Army, he suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder which ultimately led to alcoholism and the death of a much loved husband, father and grandfather. It seems clear that there is little understanding in the civilian medical community of such cases of later-life PTSD in military personnel, and very little joined-up thinking between agencies responsible for the care of veterans. I hope that my right hon. Friend can assure Martin’s family and the whole House that he will look into this case in detail with his colleagues in the Department of Health so that the lessons that plainly need to be learned are learned.

[Mr Robathan]

My hon. and learned Friend makes a good point. He will understand that it would be invidious of me to comment on an individual case, but he will understand that I have a particular regimental interest in Mr Pratt. This is a joint venture between the MOD and the Department of Health, and my hon. and learned Friend should have received—or he will receive it shortly; I have a copy here—a letter from the Minister of State, Department of Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), explaining what should have been available and what may not have taken place in this particular case. My hon. and learned Friend must see that letter himself. We are very concerned about this. We are pursuing the “Fighting Fit” report from my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire and we are putting in place many measures that will assist people who have PTSD and other mental health problems.