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Defence in the UK

As I have just said, I welcome the efforts that the Government are making. Indeed, I have visited some excellent new service accommodation, but the programme is still moving too slowly. While I welcome the Government’s positive efforts, I am sure that the Minister would agree that they should be speeded up to ensure that the problem is dealt with as quickly as possible. In my previous incarnation as a practising family doctor, I spent part of my time looking after the joint service Royal Army Educational Corps at the Defence School of Languages at Beaconsfield in south Buckinghamshire. In the morning I looked after the armed forces and in the afternoon I saw their families in my civilian practice. It seems to me that even now there is too much of a dislocation between the health care given to the personnel and that given to the families. I shall give just one example. All over the country, service families come to MPs’ surgeries with the same problem. A family member is put on an NHS waiting list for treatment. The family is then moved to another part of the country and they go to the bottom of the waiting list there. They can be perpetually on a waiting list, penalised for being a member of a service family and never getting the health care they need. It cannot be beyond the wit of Government and the civil service to construct a scheme that means that service family members are not disadvantaged in that way. It is preposterous that every week constituents come and tell Members about the same problem, but nothing happens. I want to make a special plea to the Minister to make representations to the Department of Health to come up with some method to ensure that those people do not continue to be disadvantaged in that way.