Oral Answers to Questions

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

The integrated review is indeed being refreshed—quite rightly, because in the past nine months we have seen war in Europe and growing belligerence by China in the far east. Exactly what the shape of our nation’s armed forces must look like must be a consequence of those new threats. I am not going to rule anything in or out at the Dispatch Box today, because we need to look at what those competitions with Russia in the immediate term and China in the longer term look like, and what our armed forces therefore need to look like.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

9. What steps his Department is taking to support veterans.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

The Department, through Veterans UK, provides information and advice to our veterans on statutory benefits, pensions and jobs, one-to-one welfare support, and administers service pensions. Under the veterans’ strategy action plan, the UK aims to be the best place in the world to be a veteran by 2080.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

As someone who worked for the career transition partnership, I know how much many employers value veterans and the service that they provide in employment. Too often, charities are the ones left picking up the pieces, such as Only A Pavement Away, which I met a few weeks ago. It specifically focuses on getting veterans who are a long way from the job market into hard-to-fill vacancies. What more can the Government do to support charities such as that?

[Dr Murrison]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. Given her background, she will be aware of the efforts that the Government are putting in to get people into jobs in the public sector. We start in the Departments where perhaps we have some control over: the health and care sector and the prisons service, notably, are good examples, but there are others, including the civil service. The Government will work with charities and others—the Office for Veterans’ Affairs has primacy in that—to ensure that, across Government, we are doing our very best to get people who have a great skill set into jobs.