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Defence in the UK

My hon. Friend makes an extraordinarily important point that gives me an opportunity to praise the fine work of organisations such as Combat Stress. However, the treatment for mental illness available in this country is generally completely substandard, and I have campaigned for a long time for better health services here. They remain the Cinderella of the health care system, and the flaw is often that we ask mentally ill people to get in touch with the facilities that are available, even though, almost by definition, they lack the insight or ability to access those services. It is therefore incumbent on our welfare and medical services, whether in the military or outside, to make sure that they extend a helping hand to the people who may be suffering, instead of waiting for those people to make contact. Given that studies in the US show that up to 12 per cent. of Iraq veterans return with some sort of psychological disturbance, we must make dealing with those who suffer from post-traumatic stress or other psychological illnesses a priority right across our health services. The problem of overstretch is one that we have discussed many times in this House. The Government produced the strategic defence review at the beginning of their period in office. Many people considered it to be a very good review, and in my view it is one of the two best reviews that have been compiled since the second world war. From the SDR emerged the defence planning assumptions, but the trouble is that the Government have exceeded those assumptions for the past five years and the Opposition maintain that the Government have not increased defence funding in line with that. In a written answer of 16 April, the Secretary of State for Defence made an interesting statement. He said:"““The level of operational deployments is reducing and we judge that it will return to within the level assumed in our planning assumptions.?—[Official Report, 16 April 2007; Vol. 459, c. 124W.]" When will that happen? The Under-Secretary will respond to the debate, and I hope that he answers that question. If the Government believe that they are returning to levels of deployment that are within planning assumptions, the House has a right to see the evidence, and the time scale within which that might occur. The Opposition believe that the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have never been funded fully by the Treasury and that, as a consequence, there has been salami slicing in the rest of the armed forces. When the Under-Secretary gets to his feet this evening, I hope that he will tell the House what is the Government’s estimate of the cumulative cost of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq to date. Perhaps he would even like to answer that question now, as I am sure that someone is scuttling away to get the answer at this very moment. A number of practical problems have arisen as a result of overstretch, and we have discussed them many times in this House. For example, there is no excuse for the length of time that it took to get the requisite amount of body armour into theatre. There can be no excuse either for the slow progress that was made towards getting the correct number of armoured vehicles into theatre, or for the continuing lack of helicopters to which those of us who visit—and my colleagues have made many visits—constantly allude.