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Armed Forces: Redundancy

My Lords, the impression abroad is that the delay in arriving at a good and proper military covenant is that the MoD and the Government wish to get this lot out of the way, as has been discussed in your Lordships’ House this afternoon. Is it not a fact that great stress was placed in our debates in the past few weeks on the immediate need to bring forward a new military covenant that would not only set the scene for redundancies and everything else that we have been talking about, but would assume complete responsibility from the day that someone joins the services until he dies? It was made clear in several speeches that it was the responsibility of the Government to look after those who are being made redundant or who leave the services for any other reason. I say that because more and more evidence is appearing of soldiers, sailors and airmen slipping through the system, over the net and through the net, and now begging on the streets of Manchester, Birmingham and London. When will the military covenant be brought forward, so that we will know what the total responsibilities of this Government to soldiers, sailors and airmen are?