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Armed Forces Personnel

I begin by drawing the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members' Interests. I would also like to add my expression of admiration for our men and women in uniform, their long-suffering families, veterans and the organisations that look after them and their interests, often unsung. Veterans Aid, an organisation that I visited on Tuesday with my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis), is a drop-in centre near Victoria station, and many such organisations are doing similar work unsung, day in and day out, and we must pay tribute to them. We have had an interesting and varied debate. A total of 11 Back-Bench speakers have all added, in their individual way, to the debate on this important subject. The right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) said that he was concerned about cadets and how people's exposure to the military may have been reduced in modern times. He might have mentioned the abolition of the Government's school visits teams, which were doing a great deal to increase the profile of the military in our schools but have been replaced by a compact disc. The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Willie Rennie) talked about mental health problems. I sincerely recommend that he visit the medical assessment programme at St. Thomas' hospital, which I did on Tuesday. I say in all sincerity that if he did so, he might gain a slightly more profound understanding of some of the extremely complex—and in many ways highly technical—issues that relate to mental health, and of the occupational implications of service in the armed forces. The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (John Smith) was greatly exercised about training, quite obviously, because MOD St. Athan lies within his constituency. He did not mention the voids and cancellation rates that apply to much of our training effort at the moment as a result of operational pressures and undermanning. My right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot) rightly took exception to the Rowntree report. However, when we recruit people to our armed forces, it is appropriate that we highlight the positive aspects that represent a truthful reflection of what they are likely to be exposed to. Certainly, things such as sport and adventurous training, which have deteriorated in recent years because of operational commitments and pressures, are not quite as obvious an attraction to our young men and women as they were 20 or 25 years ago when I joined up. It is right that we paint an accurate picture of what the future holds in store for our recruits. My right hon. Friend also echoed Lord Guthrie's remarks about the now Prime Minister's apparent disinterest in military matters when he was Chancellor. The hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) talked about the importance of logistics. Again, that is understandable, given his constituency interest. He was right to mention the importance of in-theatre tracking. My hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron) spoke authoritatively about his battalion and its return to Hounslow barracks. The Secretary of State said that he was interested in Hounslow barracks—I am, too, and I would like to visit. Perhaps we can all visit together and the Secretary of State might like to give us a lift. The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) talked about health care, which is close to my heart, and the importance of taking a balanced view of the military covenant. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) rightly paid tribute to the Royal British Legion, which has done so much to highlight the military covenant in the past few months. He spoke knowledgeably about suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder, which is related to overstretch and harmony guidelines. The hon. Member for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce) railed against retired top brass. I have one or two things to say about the top brass, but in a slightly different vein. I thought that the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) would refer to early-day motion 2030, which he tabled in the previous Session. It related to a windfall tax on our defence supplies and the potential impact on our defence community. It is important to place what we now call the military covenant in a proper historical context. Rudyard Kipling talked about the trials of Tommy Atkins in 1892. He was observed to be the saviour of his country in wartime but at other times was denigrated by an ungrateful and unappreciative public, who misunderstood him. A hundred years on, it seems as though Tommy is still being slighted in some quarters. We have heard about people being told to remove the Queen's uniform in British hospitals, airports, even sports facilities and being refused service in retail outlets. The difference between then and now is that our society is less deferential, less civil and arguably less polite. People's ire today is freely and frankly expressed. Disapproval of the military has been heightened by unpopular conflicts and the Government's failure to win the British people's support for them. The military covenant is a deal that is struck in recognition of our troops' willingness to sacrifice everything. It is a tripartite deal, which involves, in equal measure, our armed forces, the people and the Government. According to ex-service chiefs and charities, two of those parties have reneged on the deal. Understanding the public's attitude to the military does not necessarily help us fix it. Tommy Atkins may simply have to put up with the cold shoulder of public opinion, but there is no excuse for the third party to the covenant, the Government, to mirror society in disregarding the Army and its veterans. It is odd that the Government should set up an inquiry into the relationship between the people and the military while apparently ignoring their part in the covenant. Given the unpopularity of their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this Government, more than any other, owe it to the armed forces to do the right thing. Who can doubt that overstretch and incompletely funded discretionary commitments lie at the heart of the current sad state of affairs? They run as a thread through everything that relates to the armed forces today. Our troops put up with single accommodation for trained soldiers that first-year college students would laugh at. They put up with a gulf between social housing and homes apparently fit for heroes and with a Government who refuse to adopt even the minimal decent homes standards that apply elsewhere. As the Public Accounts Committee said in November, housing is viewed as low-hanging fruit when savings are required. Our soldiers put up with inequitable Government funding for Army schoolchildren in counties such as mine. In a letter to me this week, the Minister for Schools and Learners suggested that he would consider a revision to the funding formula to reflect forces children only in the context of people such as migrant workers, whose children also changed schools frequently. No special consideration—so much for the military covenant. We have seen harmony guidelines routinely breached, with 10 per cent. of the Army's trained strength currently affected and dire consequences for mental, physical and domestic well-being, as we know from a recent study published in the British Medical Journal. We have seen delayed coroner's inquests, as well as a gross shortage in medical staffing, including a monstrous 55 per cent. shortfall in trained doctors in the Defence Medical Services, and a Government unwilling to say whether increased spending on the NHS has been reflected in full by a commensurate uplift for defence medicine. We see compensation for wounds that looks tawdry when set against settlements for relatively minor industrial injuries. All those are examples of how a mismatch between commitments and resources and the traditional grudging attitude of Labour Ministers to the military has fractured the covenant between the armed forces and the Government. The result is that people who can leave do leave, hence the Public Accounts Committee's revelation in July that there are now more than 80 operational pinch points, from medics to aircrew. That is why 1,344 Army officers quit in the final six months of last year, which was twice the comparable six-month figure for 2005-06 and three times the figure for 2004-05. Unfortunately time is extremely limited, but I have two anecdotes that exemplify fairly well the problems that we face through the Government's and the public's attitude to our military. The new year has already brought us two bad weather stories that, in their own different ways, encapsulate the shoddy way in which the public and the Government deal with our troops. The first anecdote is about 200 homecoming soldiers who were apparently ordered to strip off their desert combats on freezing tarmac before entering the terminal building at Birmingham airport, to which they had been diverted because of fog at Brize Norton. An airport spokesman said that"““certain airlines may refuse to accept personnel in military uniform.””" Will the Minister clarify who told those soldiers to remove the Queen's uniform and assure the House that whoever it was has been rigorously re-briefed? Will he also undertake to blacklist any airline that presumes to stipulate that our servicemen may not fly in rig? Fog at Brize was apparently also responsible for the diversion of 130 soldiers returning from Basra to Prestwick in a horrific 36-hour transit fiasco that got them back to their home base in Wiltshire at 5 am on Christmas day. Why were soldiers left stranded at Prestwick, armed only with a railway warrant? Why was the charter flight sent over dozens of fog-free English airports to dump those troops at Prestwick? On Christmas eve, why did not somebody from Whitehall's newly refurbished, incredibly plush MOD retirement home for the top brass get their finger out to ensure that those boys and girls got home on time? Is it not the truth that the Government's commitment to honouring the covenant does not extend to replacing clapped-out airframes, showing bargain-basement contract operators the door and coughing up the paltry runway dues or whatever else it takes to get our people home for Christmas? I look forward to hearing the fogbound Minister's account of what on earth was happening on both those occasions and to listening to what he thinks they say about our commitment to the military covenant.