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Armed Forces Personnel

My right hon. Friend is, of course, correct. I can say with all sincerity that it is hard not to feel some sympathy for the Secretary of State, given the budgetary pressures that he is going to face as a result of the spending settlement that he has received. That is why I did not ask him for a specific commitment on the pay review body's recommendations, but only for a commitment to explain any decision fully to the House. We are aware of the pressures facing the MOD as a result of its current financial settlement. Armed forces personnel do not live in a vacuum, and the current high levels of deployment have a great impact on service families. If we were to say that a group of people in our society move home more often than the norm, have lower levels of home ownership, higher levels of substandard housing, rising divorce rates and higher levels of family separation, we would not be describing the disadvantaged in the inner cities. We would be talking about our service families, who offer so much to this country. We have spoken many times recently in the House about housing, health care and education for service families, and about the need for proper mental health services operating on a through-life basis. Dealing with all those problems is a matter of urgency, but there are places where some people are already making a difference. In Cyprus, for example, the organisation Relate is carrying out splendid work to help to hold service families together, with excellent results. The same work could be undertaken more widely here at home if there were greater Government support. I ask the Secretary of State to look at the work that Relate is doing and at the high success rates that it is achieving, because it has brought something very positive to bear on the welfare of service families. I hope that he will find an opportunity to meet Relate staff and discover what help that organisation can give to service families in the UK. The Government talk about how they value our armed forces, but their inaction and the subsequent breaking of the military covenant have merely added to the strain already placed on our armed forces. That will have a long-term impact on Britain's military readiness to meet the unexpected challenges that undoubtedly lie ahead. The next Government will inherit a military that is both overstretched and undermanned, and in possession of equipment that is worn out as a result of the on-going operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is not an assumption; it is a fact. Equipment is wearing out faster than expected—faster than in the original plans—and there seems to be no visible attempt by the Government to do much about it. We are still not properly prepared or equipped for our current undertaking in Afghanistan. When I visited that country a few weeks ago, I found that we had too few serviceable Apache or Chinook helicopters. Spare parts had not been given sufficient consideration in advance, and the current tempo of operations means that there is no option on the ground but to cannibalise other aircraft. The Government's catastrophic decision in 2004 to cut the helicopter budget by £1.4 billion is now biting hard. Even some of the excellent new Mastiff armoured vehicles—I give the Government full credit in that respect—are sitting idle because of a lack of spare parts. In personnel and manning, the numbers are only getting worse, despite the gloss the Secretary of State tried to put on them. In April last year, the Government's own agency reported that the British armed forces were 5,790 trained personnel short; in December last year, we learned that, in the span of six months, that figure had increased by 1,240 to more than 7,000. The position is deteriorating—it is reaching crisis point. That is a scandal. Troops are leaving in droves, to the delight of their disenchanted families. The July 2007 Public Accounts Committee report on recruitment and retention stated that"““70% of those intending to leave and 53% of those who had left said that their inability to plan ahead in life outside work was an important factor in their decision to leave.””" That is a direct result of overstretch. Service members are now deployed more, with less time in between deployments, which places a tremendous burden on service families who are left behind in the UK. After six years of intense fighting and overstretch, our military is nowhere close to being capable of meeting this Government's defence planning assumptions. The 1998 strategic defence review, which is 10 years old this year, is, for all intents and purposes, out of date. We need another strategic defence review. Since 1997, the percentage of total Government spending allocated to defence has fallen from 6.7 to 5.9 per cent. That is a drastic reduction, given that that period covers major operations in Kosovo, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq, but it reflects where defence comes in this Government's priorities. The first duty of Government is the defence and security of the British people. In using our armed forces personnel for that purpose, the Government have a responsibility and moral obligation to ensure that they are fully trained and fully equipped and that their families are adequately cared for. To date, this Government have failed—not only part-time, but second rate.