Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Monday 21st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

The hon. Member is wrong to make a connection between morale and numbers in that way. In my experience, and with the soldiers and sailors I have been meeting recently, morale is high. In my experience in serving, morale is mainly about when someone is used to do things usefully and when they are there on operations. He may like to reflect on the operational decline currently of our activity in our forces, which may well have some effect on morale.

On the issue of numbers, it is important not to reduce any armed forces debate to numbers alone. We need the size of the armed forces to be fit to meet the threat. It may be more. It may be less, but the key thing is to make sure we meet the threat and invest in those men and women we have who are serving.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

I have recently spoken with the founder of the Combat2Coffee project in Ipswich, which does vital work supporting local veterans’ wellbeing. One of the key issues that he and other veterans are facing is the bureaucratic and sometimes distressing health assessments that they have to go through to get the pensions and benefits that they are entitled to. Will my hon. Friend look at streamlining this process to make sure that veterans living with challenges such as PTSD are not put off accessing the support they deserve?

[Johnny Mercer]

I pay tribute to the men and women who work at Veterans UK. They have been working with historical records—paper records—for a long time. It could be a fairly unloved part of what the Government do. We are completely changing that and digitising all these records. It is our ambition that veterans’ care is in the palm of people’s hands, on a smartphone application by the end of this Government, and we will make sure that this is the best country in the world in which to be a veteran.