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Armed Forces Personnel

We will update the House on that, but it is not appropriate to spend much time on it in an already shortened debate. There is no huge disagreement between what the hon. Gentleman is saying in principle and what we agree needs to be decided on those issues. The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) talked about homes, particularly the contract for Annington Homes. He is right: we still live with the consequences of that contract. As he said, we have paid more in rent than we have received. However, the contract was entered into and we must honour it. The company had the good fortune to buy property at the bottom of the market at a time when it was impossible to lose. The hon. Gentleman said something that has been said repeatedly in the House. As the Secretary of State said in his opening speech, we recognise what still needs to be done to improve accommodation, but let us stop this nonsense about half our accommodation being sub-standard by any measure. The standards that we use to measure our service accommodation are higher than the standards applied in civilian life—and rightly so—and we have aspirations to ensure that our people live in the best grade of accommodation. The fact that we are not prepared to lower our aspirations should not allow people to exaggerate the situation. There are people who must put up with bad accommodation, and I accept that it is 100 per cent. bad for them, but huge progress is being made. Money is being spent and has been spent over a long period, and we have plans for continued spending which the Secretary of State set out.