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Armed Forces Covenant

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that valid point.

The number of training exercises that have been cancelled will not have helped matters, nor will the months of leaked reports on plans to cut the Marines as part of the modernising defence programme. The state of morale should concern us all, so I would be grateful if the Minister set out what he feels is behind this worrying fall, and more importantly, what he plans to do about it, because low morale will only compound the problems that we are already experiencing with retention in the forces. Personnel numbers are down across each of the services compared with last year.

Satisfaction with pay and pensions is the lowest ever recorded, and while I am of course pleased that the Government have finally agreed to lift the pay cap, this alone will not make up for seven years of below-inflation rises, and of course the Treasury has refused to provide the money centrally, meaning that we are likely to see yet more defence cuts.

As we had a debate on veterans last week, I will keep my comments on specific veterans issues brief, but I want to raise with the Minister my very considerable concerns about further privatisation of the veterans service. Members from across the House have talked about Capita’s abject failure to deliver the recruitment contract and Ministers’ seeming unwillingness to sack the company, so would the Minister kindly explain to the House why, given the problems with other contracts, his Department now proposes to hand over yet more services, including the armed forces compensation scheme, the war pension scheme, the Veterans Welfare Service and the Medal Office, to private contractors, who inevitably

will be tempted to put profit before serving our veterans? And Members do not need me to tell them who one of the bidders is in this case. Will the Minister put a stop to this now, and have a complete rethink?