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Armed Forces Personnel

I will try to adhere to your recommendation, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones), who made some important comments, particularly on the subject of inquests. It is bizarre that under our system, wherever the Hercules or C-17 lands, that is where the inquest has to take place. I encourage the powers that be to ensure that a Bill is expedited, so that we can remove that quirk in the system. In this debate on armed forces personnel we have heard a lot about cuts to the size of our forces and reductions in budgets that have led to overstretch, and to pressures on members of our armed forces across the board. As we have heard, that has certainly led to challenges for recruitment and, more worryingly, for retention. Since 1997, the Army has been reduced by 9,000 people, the Navy by 10,000 and the RAF by 16,000. Those are colossal numbers, considering the expectations and burdens that we put on our armed forces personnel across the world. I shall focus my attention on two issues. The first is the aftercare provided to service personnel once they have left the armed forces. We have rightly covered a range of issues, including welfare, equipment, and frequency of tours. Those are all important, but we have to remember what happens to a soldier when they have picked up their armed forces long service and good conduct medal after 16 years, or when they have taken an honourable decommission, and decided to go on civvy street. I pay tribute to the Royal British Legion and many of the veterans' associations that look after our heroes once they have decided to take a role in civilian life. They play an important role, providing reunion opportunities, support, and the mechanisms and facilities that are needed to ensure that armed forces personnel make a healthy, informed transition from a military to a civilian environment. After the 25th anniversary of the Falklands conflict, it was horrifying to learn that more than 300 veterans of that conflict had committed suicide since returning—a statistic that will shock the House. That is more than were killed in action on the islands. It is an unacceptable figure. One would think that things would have changed, but a recent report in the British Medical Journal highlights some of the psychological disorders and concerns that affect Army personnel, particularly those who are in combat situations for a total of more than 13 months. They include post-traumatic stress disorder, psychological distress, multiple physical symptoms, and symptoms connected with alcohol problems. I appreciate that much has changed since the 1980s and the Falklands conflict, but I was horrified to learn, in response to a written question that I asked the Defence Secretary, that 17 serving soldiers who served either in Iraq or Afghanistan have committed suicide. We are talking about Army personnel who were still in uniform. They had not even left the protection of the military family, but decided to take their own lives. I would hazard a guess that the total number of people who have committed suicide having served in those two areas of conflict is double that figure, because there are those who were not receiving the attention and security that the military environment can offer. I do not know the numbers, and I seriously urge the Minister to investigate and try to find out the number of suicides among those who served in those conflicts but who left and were civilians. I am afraid that the US does not fare any better: 99 American soldiers have killed themselves since 2006. That is the highest suicide rate in 26 years. We have not touched on that issue before, and I hope that the Minister will heed our concerns. We have a duty of care, which I do not believe we are fulfilling. We have a responsibility that goes far beyond the battlefields and parade squares, and we have an obligation to look after our heroes long after they have hung up their uniforms. My second theme is the changing role of our military. We had a little engagement on that subject with the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Willie Rennie), the Liberal Democrat spokesman. It was interesting to hear the Foreign Secretary's recent comments on the ““Today”” programme, in which he promised to prioritise the Government's work on conflict prevention, and to work better with the armed forces. That is the stance of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The Foreign Secretary also pledged greater integration and better co-operation with the Department for International Development. I agreed with those sentiments, but I shall not hold my breath. I agreed with the comments of Sir Hilary Synnott, who is a respected commentator on Iraq. He has worked in the civil service and written and travelled extensively throughout Afghanistan and Iraq. He said:"““We shall not be holding our breaths. We have heard the like before. The imbalance of effort, of outlay of blood and treasure, between the military and the civilian arms of government has brought shame upon the Government.””" Those are harsh words from somebody so respected and so knowledgeable about such matters. I shall touch on our concerns. We had a statement from the Liberal Democrats pointing out that our military are still in Iraq, and I am sure they would say the same about Afghanistan. We should be more concerned about what happens underneath that umbrella of security. The only reason why our military personnel are in those two operational environments is that we have not been able to achieve the level of infrastructure and improvements to those countries that would allow the military to move from a war fighting capacity to a peacekeeping one. That is because we do not have a proper co-ordinated plan in either of those environments. I visit Afghanistan frequently and I was in Iraq not long ago. In both cases, we went in not understanding what was expected of DFID and of the FCO. The only expectation was that our military were to go in and somehow kill the bad guys and make the place safe. Let us suppose that that happened, and that in Helmand province we reached an agreement with the Taliban that was put in place. We would then have to start infrastructure-building from scratch. It is not the military who do that. It should be done by a combination of DFID and the FCO with the United Nations and the European Union. That is not happening in any part of Afghanistan on the scale that it should. That is the concern, and it applies to Iraq as well. There are conflicts in Basra between the Mahdi army and the other groups, and the only thing that links them is their hatred of the British, who are seen as hostile because we are no longer liberators but occupiers. That is a horrible thing to say about our British forces and the good work that they do—[Interruption.] I hear barracking from the Government Benches. Does the hon. Member for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce) wish to intervene?