---

Defence Policy

My hon. Friend must not allow his common sense to get in the way of the Government’s red herring, or of Government Members having a good time in the Chamber. I doubt whether the arguments that they make today will carry much weight with those who have to carry out those commitments overseas, and who find themselves increasingly overstretched. I wish to turn to the circumstances that our armed forces face, and I begin with the issue of bonuses for those on operations. As the press reported over the weekend, there is understandable animosity between military and civil personnel on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan with regard to the amount of bonus that civilians get paid, compared to their military counterparts. Let us take a major and a grade C2 civil servant as the comparators and, using monthly figures, let us see how military pay stacks up against civilian pay for those in Iraq or Afghanistan. A major—a company commander responsible for the well-being, training, health and safety of more than 225 soldiers and marines—will earn roughly £4,320 in taxable income a month, including separation allowance, plus a £386 tax-free operational allowance. A civilian grade-C2 civil servant on the same deployment will earn £2,333 a month, plus an operational deployment allowance of £1,750 per month and an operational working allowance of between £3,500 and £6,500 a month. That means that the civilian will receive a minimum of £7,583 a month in taxable income. The civilian in headquarters is therefore at least £2,500 a month better off than the major, who is acting as a company commander in the field, and who is leading soldiers and marines in combat. It appears that the X factor needed to make civilians deploy is more than 225 per cent. of their salary, or 3.25 times their salary. Keep in mind that those figures are for a Ministry of Defence civilian, as compared to a field rank officer. Of course, the pay difference between an MOD civilian and a private or corporal is even greater, and it is the latter who are doing the shooting, the fighting and, in most cases, the dying. I understand that civilians volunteer for service in Iraq or Afghanistan, but we have an all-volunteer military, too. I would like the Government to reflect on the following question: although civilians play an important role in supporting the armed forces on operations, are the bonuses that both parties receive balanced and proportionate? I think that the general public would answer in the negative. What about the question of eligibility for bonuses? What about the 1,000 or so soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who thought that they were going to Iraq and would receive the tax-free operational allowance, but who will find that they are going to Kuwait, Oman or other places in the Gulf? I am sure that I do not need to remind either the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Armed Forces that the Kuwait border is only 30 miles from the Basra air base. As a result of that small difference, service members will lose out on hundreds of pounds a month, although their American counterparts receive the same bonus regardless of whether they are in Iraq, Kuwait or Qatar. If the Secretary of State made it clear that those allowances will apply to all those in the region, and not just those in Iraq, that would be a major step forward.