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Armed Forces Personnel

I congratulate the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (John Smith) on two of the comments that he made. First, he said that this debate is too short. The new topical debates, which have turned out to be simple re-launches of the Government's current initiatives, do not seem to be a good idea, particularly when they take time out of armed forces debates, which tend to take place on Thursday afternoons. The second point on which I should like to congratulate the hon. Gentleman is the fact that his constituency will receive from Bordon in my constituency many people who work in mechanical engineering. He is lucky to have those people coming to his constituency. When they arrive, I hope to be invited to visit and see how they are getting along. This is a short debate. Last week the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust produced a report suggesting that the Ministry of Defence was glamorising war. I do not think that it is doing that at all. The Minister was absolutely right to suggest that it is not in the Ministry of Defence's interests to give, in any sense, a false idea of what people are going in for when they join the armed forces. However, it is also right to draw attention to the benefits of a career in the armed forces. In many respects, it is a fantastic career. One gets qualifications and finds a camaraderie that cannot be found in any other career. It is therefore right to pay tribute to the type of career that can be had in the armed forces, as well as to the extraordinary and wonderful men and women who take up that career. It is also right to pay tribute to the families of our armed forces. We often think of the armed forces as they serve in Afghanistan and Iraq, but in many cases the real difficulty is faced by those who are left behind at home doing the worrying, but without the constant adrenalin and local support that the work of the armed forces involves. All that—the men and women of our armed forces, the careers that they provide and the quality that they generally produce—is now a part of what it means to be British and a is a matter of national pride. I should like to make another tiny point about national pride, part of which derives from military bands and the music that they play. They bring to an emotional head some of the strength of our military. I worry nowadays that our military bands are being reduced in number and that we have taken a financial approach to them, without appreciating the strength that they give to our armed forces. I hope, one of these days, to be able to persuade the Defence Select Committee to carry out an inquiry into our military bands because they are so important. My hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State referred to overstretch and the Secretary of State referred to stretch: it does not really matter which word is used, because the reality is what matters—and the reality is as follows. On the planning assumptions, our armed forces have now been operating above the levels for which they are resourced for seven of the last eight years—for every year since 2002. It is utterly unacceptable that that has gone on for so long. We can manage that sort of problem for a year or two—perhaps for a year or three—but continuing with it for so long is unacceptable. The Chief of the General Staff has said that"““we now have almost no capability to react to the unexpected””." That is also unacceptable. The Ministry of Defence has a target—public service agreement target 3—to"““generate forces, which can be deployed, sustained and recovered at the scales of effort required to meet the Government's strategic objectives””." That is not at all surprising, one would think. It seems a perfectly ordinary test; it is, actually, a crucial test for the armed forces of this country and of any country. However, according to the MOD in its most recent quarterly report:"““Owing to the continuing high level of operational commitment, we do not now expect to reach the target level by April 2008””." It will therefore not be able to generate the forces that can be"““deployed, sustained and recovered at the scales of effort required to meet the Government's strategic objectives.””" That is deeply worrying. Reductions in the commitments to Iraq and the Balkans are welcome in that regard. Some people expect us to be completely out of Iraq soon. I have to warn the Secretary of State that the Defence Committee had a meeting this morning with the United States House Armed Services Committee, which made it plain that for the US to remain in Iraq without substantial support from its closest friend, the UK, would not be well understood or received in America. We need to take that into account. What of the harmony guidelines? The Army's guidelines have been mentioned, but the RAF guidelines say:"““Unit Tour Intervals should be no less than 16 months””." However, that is routinely breached. RAF regiment field squadrons have an average tour interval of around 10 and a half months. We met the Chinook crews, who are based at Odiham in my constituency, when we were in Afghanistan last year. They are flying all hours of the day and night—thank God, because of the critical work they do in support of our armed forces. Their tours are long, they get little time to rest, and they are flying in the most difficult conditions imaginable. Landing a Chinook in the dust of Afghanistan is a highly skilled task. People cannot see the ground because of the dust blowing up. At night, it is even harder, and people are probably being shot at, after having very little sleep. Luckily, our crews are the best in the business. They manage to cope with all that, but we must never take them for granted. We sent them there; they are doing all this for us. We must treat them right, pay them well, house them well, educate their children well, provide proper medical care and give them the very deep respect that they fully deserve. I pay tribute to the Defence Select Committee, whose members work extremely hard at what they do. In recent months, we have completed reports on the defence education service, which is doing a good job in circumstances of great turbulence. On housing, we drew attention to our worry that it will take so long to get the standard of all defence housing up to an acceptable level. The Secretary of State made some perfectly fair points about that today. We are just concluding our inquiry on Defence Medical Services. Of course, we have some concerns. For example, there is a severe shortfall in some specific specialities, but we have found much in the Defence Medical Services that is excellent. My final point concerns visits to our armed forces deployed abroad. The Secretary of State often visits them, as do other Defence Ministers, and I think that as a result they have a good understanding of the experiences that our forces are undergoing. The same cannot be said of the Ministers who make the financial decisions—the Ministers in the Treasury. I welcomed the Prime Minister's recent visits to our troops, but while he was Chancellor of the Exchequer such visits were rare. I hope that Treasury Ministers will arrange a programme of visits. If they do, they will be impressed. They will see a group of wonderful young men and women upholding the values of Britain, standing up for our interests and putting their lives on the line for us. When those Treasury Ministers see what is really going on, they will have a changed perspective when they return to the United Kingdom to negotiate with the MOD; and the MOD, our armed forces and our country will benefit accordingly.