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Armed Forces Covenant

I am grateful to acknowledge the long-running support that my hon. Friend has given on these matters. He will be extremely pleased today that we have managed to achieve what we have. With regard to the speed at which we can make some of the improvements to accommodation, we are limited by budgetary constraints. We will want to go as quickly as we can. We fully recognise, as we have set out, what our responsibilities are. We also have, as I hate to point out, a wider responsibility to be fiscally conservative, to bring our budget back within affordability and to restore the nation's economy to health, because that gives us the ability in the longer term to make the investments that we all want to see.