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Service Personnel

My hon. Friend, who is a member of the Defence Committee, knows that we have been working in this area; in particular the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), has been working in this area with some vigour. Apart from the mental health pilots, which were extremely successful and which we are now about to roll out across the country, one of the things that we put in place early was the tracking system to enable us to keep in contact with our people, recognising that the symptoms of mental health problems sometimes have a late onset. So my hon. Friend can be reassured that we are developing that system and we have confidence that we shall be able to keep in touch with our people. Another of the innovations of our approach to mental health is that we now deploy, with our troops mental health support staff, both psychiatrists and psychologists to enable us to deal with these issues in the circumstances where early symptoms sometimes arise.