The Army and RAF Lyneham

Thomas Docherty Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

Thank you for calling me, Mr Betts. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today.

First, I want to congratulate the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) on securing this excellent debate and on the way in which he has made his case so eloquently. He and I have attended a number of debates in the past few months, which were secured by the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) and, as he has mentioned, the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell).

What is very clear is the deeply held affection that communities up and down the United Kingdom have for their military bases, which has been demonstrated by their Members of Parliament. I am sure that we all pay tribute to the community around RAF Lyneham for the way in which it, as the hon. Member for North Wiltshire has said, has conducted itself and supported our gallant and fallen service personnel on their return from overseas.

I simply wish to make a few observations to the Minister to tease out some answers, as the hon. Gentleman has already tried to do. The Minister will obviously be aware that a large number of troops are due to return from overseas in the next few years. Obviously, he will also be aware that when the Chief of the Defence Staff appeared before the Select Committee on Defence, of which I am a member, he introduced a note of caution about the timetabling for the return of the troops from Germany.

It will probably not surprise you, Mr Betts, or indeed the Chamber, that two issues in particular concerned the CDS, and it is fair to say that those concerns were shared by the Defence Committee—I say that as I look at the hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), who is also a member of that Committee. The first was the issue of the troops’ families. As the hon. Member for North Wiltshire has already said, it is not simply a case of bringing home 15,000 servicemen and women, because their families will obviously need to be accommodated. I remind the Minister that, according to his own Department’s figures, accommodation for some 25,000 personnel within the defence estate of the United Kingdom is considered to be not of the highest standard, and my understanding is that there are currently no plans to upgrade that accommodation.

The second issue that concerned the CDS, as he pointed out when he appeared before the Defence Committee, is how we will educate the children of the returning service personnel. I do not wish to repeat the argument that the hon. Member for North Wiltshire and I had during consideration of the Armed Forces Bill about how to educate those children, but there is a very real issue about the schooling that we need to provide for all the children of returning personnel.

[Mr Gray]

It is worth paying tribute to the first-class Wootton Bassett comprehensive school, which is two or three miles down the road from Lyneham. At the moment, of course, its pupils are 30% to 40% RAF, so we would have primary and secondary school places immediately available in the surrounding area, if necessary.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that clarification. I hope that the Minister will be able to go slightly further and give a guarantee that, as part of the assessment that I am sure he is making, there will be a proper assessment of the current capacity for education of returning service personnel’s children and, if necessary, a guarantee that additional funds will be provided to any of the military bases—or rather, the local authorities in whose areas the military bases are located—that are chosen to house returning personnel, to ensure that we do not have a surplus of demand over capacity and so that no local authority is left with challenges as a result. I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point that the schools in his local area already have that capacity, but I nevertheless hope that the Minister will carry out a proper assessment of this issue.

Regarding the accommodation of service personnel and their families, I would be grateful if the Minister were to tell the Chamber whether the MOD is confident that all accommodation at RAF Lyneham is of the highest standard. If it is not, can he say what the timetable is for bringing it up to a suitable standard?

As the hon. Member for North Wiltshire will recall, we touched on the final issue that I want to raise with the Minister today in last night’s Adjournment debate. I have a long-standing concern that the MOD has perhaps not always carried out its decision making in a duly transparent way and has not sought to ensure that the communities affected by its decisions are the first to know about them. I hope that the Minister can give a guarantee today that not only will the process for any decision making on the return of troops and their stationing within the UK be conducted in a clear manner and that he will share the details of that process with the House and the Defence Committee, but that he will do everything within his power to ensure that the communities affected by those decisions are the first to know about them, then the House and lastly the media, rather than what has unfortunately happened in the past, where the media have found out about decisions before the communities affected by them.

I want to end by again congratulating the hon. Member for North Wiltshire on securing this debate and on his powerful words.