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Defence in the UK

I join the Minister in paying tribute to the 10 service personnel who lost their lives on operations. I also wish to remember the larger numbers who have been seriously injured on those same operations. Service welfare in the United Kingdom is always among the issues raised in debates such as this. Previously, the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) dealt with that topic; he was a humane and assiduous Minister, and we wish him well following his departure from Government. In his place is the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones), who has put his name to robust Defence Committee reports that have rightly described some single living accommodation as appalling and have rightly deplored operational overstretch and the consequent failure to meet harmony guidelines; it will be interesting to see how he gets on in addressing those issues. Joining the ministerial team at the Ministry of Defence as an additional member is the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies), in the latest twist of an eventful parliamentary career. He takes over the defence equipment and supply portfolio. In its last two incarnations, that has been held by Lord Drayson and Baroness Taylor, Members of the upper House—perhaps the hon. Gentleman is hoping that a trend in that direction is being established. The hon. Gentleman has always been intellectually independent, grounding the positions that he takes in considerable historical knowledge. The hon. Gentleman shares that quality with the new Secretary of State for Defence, as I discovered last year in the national archives when I looked up from my researches into counter-insurgency and propaganda to see him immersed at an adjacent desk in the records of the Lancashire pals' battalions, on which he was writing a book. At least we know that the Secretary of State, unlike some other prominent parliamentarians, actually writes the books to which he puts his name. Referring to the leader of his party, of whom the Secretary of State is such a well known admirer, they do, however, have one important factor in common—they both have important shipbuilding industries in their constituencies. Barrow is the home of UK submarine construction, and it will be interesting to see how many of the eight attack submarines promised by the Government in 2004 will be ordered and built there. The outgoing Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Des Browne), deserves credit for his promotion of the case for the next generation of the nuclear deterrent, which was not an easy thing for him to do in the context of Labour party politics. Many Conservative Members often challenged him on other issues, but he always responded without rancour. It was his misfortune to fall victim to the Prime Minister's ill-judged decision to lumber him with a second ministerial portfolio at a time when the country is involved in two counter-insurgency campaigns abroad and a significant security issue at home. Every working minute of the Secretary of State for Defence should have been focused on those threats and the service welfare and procurement issues that traditionally hamper the conditions and capabilities of our forces in the field. It was not fair to the right hon. Gentleman, and it certainly was not fair to our forces in the field, that he had to spend up to 20 per cent. of his time on Scottish affairs. Never before has a Prime Minister taken such a half-baked, ill-judged and morale-sapping decision on parliamentary job sharing. Where United Kingdom defence is concerned, it must never happen again. Listening to everything that the Minister said about service welfare, I was reminded of the famous American film, ““The Best Years of Our Lives””, which won seven Oscars in 1946 and had tremendous resonance with the public, both in America and in the United Kingdom. It was about the problems of re-entry into society at the end of four years of war, in the case of the USA, and six years in the case of the United Kingdom. Our servicemen and women face that problem of disconnection and reintegration into society at the end of every six-month tour. The harmony guidelines are supposed to give them 18 months between operational deployments, but we all know that that does not happen. Viscount Slim, the victor of Burma and one of the greatest modern strategists the British Army has seen, once did a radio talk in which he compared people drawing on courage with drawing on a bank balance—although I do not think that he had the modern conditions of British banking in mind. He said that they can overdraw from time to time but must replenish their resources. He also said that the bravest men will crack if they are not rested adequately, and yet, conversely, men who are exhausted but are rested adequately can go back and win the highest awards for valour. Last night, I viewed a recording that I had made of a BBC3 programme from two days ago. It was about a lance-corporal in the Grenadier Guards who was described by his company commander as, ““Fearless, occasionally to the point of recklessness, but a very brave young man.”” The Army deserves great credit for allowing the BBC access, in Afghanistan and back home, to what was going on in that company. The BBC likewise deserves credit for its sensitive and objective presentation. The young lance-corporal ended up, on the self-same day, being congratulated on the mention in dispatches that he had been awarded for heroism under fire and losing his rank for disciplinary offences that he had committed on his return home. He had done four operational tours in his five years in the Army—so much for the harmony guidelines. When service personnel return to the United Kingdom, they need understanding, support and conditions of accommodation that reflect the regard in which they are held by society. Great improvements have been made for those damaged in body, but not enough yet for those damaged in mind, particularly those who could become damaged in mind when subjected to inadequate facilities and unnecessary pressures on their return to the UK. The lance-corporal I referred to has now left the Army, but I know of another who aims to serve his full 22 years. He took part in the initial campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he has since done a third tour lasting seven months—not six—in Afghanistan. Now back in the UK, he has spent time in the Browning barracks in Aldershot, where the toilet blocks stink even when the lavatory pans are not blocked with sewage, and where the corridors are overheated whilst the rooms are freezing cold. His weekend get-you-home pay is supposed to give him £270 per month. Sometimes it is paid when it should be, but sometimes nothing comes through for three months at a time. That unevenness causes him, often unwittingly, to dip into the red, and thus incur punitive charges on every direct debit and every other transaction on his bank account.