RAF Centenary

Debate between Toby Perkins and Stewart Malcolm McDonald

Monday 26th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I know he has a very good relationship with the base there: it is a solid part of the local community in his constituency. I am sure there are many great jokes to be made in future SNP adoption meetings about his being the MP for the balloon corps. I would not be so unkind as to illustrate them on the Floor of the House.

It was of course a tremendous act of foresight by this place—something it does not always get right—to create the Royal Air Force, the only one of the forces created by an Act of Parliament. The RAF went on to play a vital role in securing the security, dignity and freedom of millions not just in this country but across the world. I want to pay particular tribute to the RAF Benevolent Fund, which will be known to many Members, and the excellent work it does to support RAF families and veterans. It was an honour to join it in Edinburgh this year as part of the RAF100 celebrations, with other hon. Members.

To turn to more contemporary matters concerning the RAF, it is true that SNP Members have not always agreed with the decisions made by this and previous Governments on how they have chosen to deploy military force, but for the purpose of this debate, we can sit that to one side. However, we need a serious discussion and all wish to see serious progress on morale among those serving in the forces. The last continuous attitude survey showed that only 41% of those serving in the RAF were satisfied with service life and only 32% reported having high morale. The armed forces charity, SSAFA, found in 2016 that 40% of working-age veterans said that they were suffering from depression, 36% felt that they had a lack of hope or purpose, and 30% said that they had a mental health issue.

Somewhere around the beginning of the debate, it was mentioned that the Government brought forward a debate on the new veterans strategy. It is a good strategy and I sincerely hope that it delivers, but there has to be an acknowledgement of the lack of joined-up working and joined-up thinking on how we can tackle these issues. At Defence questions this afternoon, we heard about the work that is done, for example, by armed forces champions in different local authorities. I am not entirely sure what the make-up is in the rest of the UK, but in Scotland we have 32 armed forces and veterans champions in 32 different local authorities, and in some cases, we can have 32 different people doing 32 different jobs, because the role is not clearly defined. It seems that it is really what the champion chooses to make of it, and I think that those who have served in the RAF and the other forces deserve a bit more than that.

We have to consider these issues when we look at the larger issue of the recruitment crisis. I do not have the exact figures in front of me concerning the RAF, but I know that the House has shown great concern about this in the past.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is raising an important point about morale. Alongside the difficulties that he raises, does he agree that many people in the air force have very transferrable skills that are worth a huge amount of money in the private sector, and that as they get towards the mid-levels of their careers in the air force, the pressure on family life and the alternatives that are available mean that they move on and we end up with a deskilled air force? We still have top-quality people and top-quality equipment, but we are perhaps not as match-fit as we should be in the current climate.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct to raise that point. Indeed, the continuous attitude survey even found examples of large numbers of people in not just the air force but the other forces joining up for the purpose of getting a skill to then move out into the private sector. This cannot be a taboo subject that we dance around in such debates; we need to have a serious discussion about this and tackle it head on.

Let me turn to how we make the armed forces a more attractive career and a place that does not have such a movable workforce, with people going in to get a skill to then go into the private sector, as the hon. Gentleman said. The Scottish National party has introduced one proposal in particular that we believe could help to not just resolve some of these issues, but show that there is real political will to make the armed forces an attractive career prospect—it is on the issue of an armed forces representative body. This often causes some Conservative Members in particular to get a bit hot under the collar, but it is an entirely normal practice in several other NATO countries, in many of their armed forces, and it operates in different ways. The model that we suggest as a starting point is based much on that of the Police Federation.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood)—the Minister for defence people and the armed forces—said at Defence questions earlier that the reason we do not need to have a body or a trade union, or whatever we want to call it, is that the armed forces have Members of Parliament to do the bidding for them. Look around you, Mr Deputy Speaker—if this is the backstop for members of the armed forces, then my goodness, we are in much more trouble than some of us suspected. If we go back to video footage of the parliamentary debate on the veterans strategy, we see that we could have fit every MP who was here for that debate on to the Treasury Bench alone.