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Armed Forces Personnel

I, too, pay tribute to our armed forces throughout the world. I also want to put on record my thanks to all military and civilian staff serving our armed forces in Shropshire. I pay tribute especially to the excellent work of the Army Base Repair Organisation. Earlier this year, the Government announced that ABRO was to close. I thank the Minister of State for rethinking that decision and giving ABRO a stay of execution, certainly for the next three years. I also pay tribute to the Defence Committee and its Chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot), for highlighting in their Afghanistan inquiry the role that ABRO needs to play and is playing. I hope that the Minister might today throw a further lifeline to ABRO and say that, given the possible three-year deployment in Afghanistan, and the possibly longer commitment in Iraq, ABRO’s life will be extended beyond three years and into the next decade and beyond. I hope that we can be encouraged on that. I also pay tribute to the Defence Logistics Organisation in my constituency and to all those who work at Sapphire house in the neighbouring constituency of Telford. Of course, the Minister will know that an announcement was made this week that might see 400 job losses at the DLO. Notwithstanding the points made on both sides of the House about whether the merger of the Defence Procurement Agency and the DLO is right or wrong—and I question whether it is right—one must ask whether the timing is right. The Secretary of State said earlier that the timing of any decision to change things can never be right. To return to the Afghanistan inquiry, one of the key reasons for the ABRO decision being changed was the timing of the troop deployment to Afghanistan, where vehicles suffered attrition due to rough terrain and needed to be repaired more frequently and quickly to be redeployed to the front line. The same logic applies to the DLO. We have rightly paid tribute to our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, but let us not forget those in Gibraltar, Cyprus, the Falkland Islands, Congo and many other places around the world. All those forces require logistical support. I therefore hope that the Government will rethink the decision about the DLO, as it rethought the decision about ABRO, which I put on record that I welcome. There is time to do so. There is no shame in the Government saying that they have concluded during the consultation that the timing is wrong, and that the principle of whether the DPA and DLO should be merged can be discussed later. I may be in a minority among Conservative Members on this matter, but perhaps Parliament needs to debate at some point whether privatisation of our defence sector has gone too far. Do we now just want to outsource responsibility without establishing that output will be better than it is in the public sector? The public sector contains both military personnel and civilians who have served in the forces and have a military ethos—a public service ethos. Such people are often reluctant to go into the private sector, and not just for reasons to do with pay, terms and conditions and TUPE arguments. They joined a military organisation because they wanted to be part of a military organisation. That leads me to the defence training review and RAF Cosford. As I said here earlier today, unemployment in Shropshire rose by a whopping 30 per cent. between May 2005 and May 2006. With manufacturing outflow and the retail sector under threat in some of our market towns, there has never been a greater need to protect Shropshire’s defence sector, and that includes the 2,200 personnel, both military and civilian, at RAF Cosford. I hope that the review will be objective, measured and non-political, and will conclude that the experience, dedication and commitment required in defence training is best provided by the personnel at Cosford—and, indeed, throughout the west midlands technology corridor and supply chain, and in the aerospace cluster in Shropshire and surrounding counties. I am proud that Combat Stress has a facility in my constituency. The staff at Audley court in Newport, Shropshire, do a marvellous job. I have been there several times, met staff and clients and listened to many of their stories, which are varied. The people there have been involved in different conflicts, some recent, some dating back to the Falklands, and some even dating back to the second world war. Those stories are extremely moving. It is absolutely right for the Government to consider improving mental health services for our armed forces personnel. We know that without early intervention, post-traumatic stress becomes post-traumatic stress disorder, which is far harder and more costly to treat. I think that those who are currently in the armed forces receive the message that people with mental health problems are not being treated well, and that that lowers morale. I think it also causes people to wonder whether they should join up if our veterans are not treated properly. That in turn leads me to the issue of the joint forces payment agency and the Armed Forces Personnel Administration Agency. A number of constituents have contacted me over the last few months about late payments, lost documents and redundancy settlements that have not been given to them in time. That has caused them real financial hardship. I hope the Minister will ensure that those agencies abide by their duties and fulfil their obligations to those who have served the country and Her Majesty’s armed forces over many years. It is absolutely right for them to be treated as well when they leave as when they arrived. Perhaps if they are treated better when they leave, more will join. It strikes me as a tragic paradox that while our armed forces are fighting for democracy overseas, when in theatre they are unable to exercise their own democratic rights and vote over here. I hope that the Minister will give us some assurance that when the next general election comes along, everyone who serves in Her Majesty’s armed forces, whether military or civilian, will be given plenty of time to register their votes so that they can exercise their democratic rights and choose the Government whom they want to serve this country. Some months ago, I raised the issue of the haemorrhaging of special forces personnel to private security companies. The then Secretary of State for Defence said that a statement on the matter, either written or oral, would be presented to the House. It may have passed me by, but I am not aware of any statement on how the Government are dealing with the ongoing haemorrhage of special forces, such as members of the Special Air Service, the Special Boat Squadron, the close protection trained Parachute Regiment and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) mentioned earlier, the Royal Military Police. Retention of such personnel is a problem and I hope that the Minister will give us some idea of how the Government are dealing with that important matter.