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Defence in the UK

I am delighted that the Under-Secretary is getting off to such a good start. I shall certainly do that, and I will be very pleased to see if he is able to do something to put that situation right. My point is that bank charges of that sort are irrecoverable. The man in question has not complained to me about it, but his partner has. She said:"““It eats away and eats away at you—until you say, why the hell am I bothering?””" The welfare of our armed forces personnel is not really at issue between the parties. The Government, as we have heard, produced a study and a Command Paper. I hoped that the Government would acknowledge today that pressure from the Opposition parties encouraged them to take some of the measures that they have. My party leader has consistently recommended tax concessions for service personnel when they are on the front line, and he set up the Forsyth commission on the military covenant, which achieved a considerable measure of publicity for its recommendations. It slightly lowered the tone of the debate for the Minister of State to say some of the things he said about a body on which served people of the calibre of Simon Weston and Stuart Tootal. Those people are not party political. They served on the commission because they wished to do good for their comrades, and I am very disappointed about some of the remarks made about their efforts.