---

Defence Policy

We did not, actually; that was voted for by Members of this House, including some on the hon. Gentleman’s side. Even those who voted against it will no doubt spend it. I am sorry, but we cannot have such one-way criticism. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I respect him, but all I am saying is that if we are considering the defence budget, we should look at everything in it. I turn to welfare for Her Majesty’s armed forces and their families. Whenever I visit members of the armed forces, I am always impressed not only by the young men and women themselves, but by the amount of responsibility that they carry on their very young shoulders. Sadly, some of them pay the ultimate price of losing their lives or having terrible injuries. We have heard again tonight about the ““terrible”” situation at Selly Oak hospital. I should like to put the following on the record, as it is important. An urban myth has built up that somehow the hospital is letting down our armed forces. Given the last two occasions on which I visited, I do not think that anything could be further from the truth. The urban myth drips out of newspaper articles as if it were the truth. In The Sunday Telegraph last Sunday, Tim Collins wrote a good article—but sadly, he used the words:"““As a result, the broken and injured servicemen and women are brought back to the UK to face at best indifference, at worst abuse in the mixed wards in the notorious Selly Oak Hospital.””" I am sorry, but it is not notorious. Dedicated men and women from the armed forces and the NHS are working at the hospital. When, as part of the Defence Committee’s report into medical services, we visited it recently, we saw some first-rate treatment. When I was there, I put to Julie Moore, chief executive of University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, some of the headlines that had appeared in the newspapers in the previous six months. On 2 October 2006, The Daily Telegraph carried the headline, ““Muslim accosts injured Para in hospital””. On 5 March this year, the Daily Star had this one: ““Hero squaddie told by British hospital to strip uniform as offensive to Muslims””. Finally, on 10 June this year, The Mail on Sunday ran the headline, ““Muslim women abuse soldiers at troops’ hospital””. I put those headlines to the chief executive, because it is important to get to the truth. If the stories had been true, I would have been totally appalled by them. However, what Ms Moore said was interesting. In respect of the first headline, there were no Muslim nurses on the ward in question; in response to the article, every soldier there had been interviewed, along with representatives of the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, but nobody had complained about what had been alleged. The second article was partly true, in that people are told to take off their uniforms if they are going to get into bed. However, anyone who has been to Selly Oak will see uniformed armed forces personnel walking around, so it is simply not the case that they are not wearing uniform. For the last claim, she could find no evidence whatsoever. I put those questions again to the clinical director, Dr. David Rosser, and asked whether he could find any such instances that had really taken place. His answer was no, and neither could the chief executive. We have to deal with fact, not mythology. Before people repeat the kinds of things that they have during this debate, they should go back to the facts in question.