This Government are delivering on their commitments within the veterans’ strategy action plan to support veterans and their families. Our plan, which is backed by an additional £33 million announced by the Chancellor in this year’s Budget, contains commitments across Government, including support for health provision, housing and employment, the majority of which have been delivered or are on track.

I initiated that review when I first came back into office under this Prime Minister. That review has now completed. It was due to report before Christmas, but I have pulled that forward and I want to see a response from Government to the review by the end of September or the beginning of October. The

review highlights changes that have been overdue for some time and I look forward to having more to say to the hon. Gentleman on that matter when the response comes back.

First, I have to correct the hon. Gentleman. He is not right to say that veterans, or indeed defence personnel, are more likely than the general public to

suffer from mental health problems. The reverse is the case. However, it is absolutely essential that we do all in our power to promote the mental health of our men and women. That is absolutely right, and he will be aware of a number of projects, including Op Courage and throughout peoples’ careers, to promote their mental health. We will continue to do that, but he needs to understand that defence is a positive experience for the vast majority of people who experience it.

This continues to be under review. I look forward to updating the hon. Member in due course.

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says and I absolutely recognise that we are now the only country in this regard. The last internal review was in December, and I have asked officials to go back and look at that again.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that the transition is critical, and we want to see a through-career preparation for leaving the armed forces. That is something that we are resolutely focused on in our veterans strategy, which I will be publishing later this year.

I actually commend the long and noble tradition that we have of armed forces charities assisting the Government in their response to supporting veterans, and I am pleased that our support to them this year will top out at more than £20 million.

The Government continues to recognise and be grateful to all Service personnel who participated in the British nuclear testing programme, including Mr Eric Denson. They contributed to keeping our nation secure during the Cold War and since, ensuring that the United Kingdom was equipped with an appropriate nuclear capability.

On 16 March 2021, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) advised Mr Denson’s widow of the outcome of her application for the Elizabeth Cross in respect of her late husband.

The delay in providing this response was due to the impact of COVID-19 on the working arrangements of Departmental officials, and, in particular, the ability to access Mr Denson’s Service records from almost fifty years ago, which exist in hard copy only. Mr Denson’s widow was advised that there would be a delay in considering her application.

There is no correlation between being awarded a pension under the War Pension Scheme and the criteria for the Elizabeth Cross. The Elizabeth Cross is granted to the next of kin of Service personnel who have died since 1 January 1948 on medal earning operations, as a result of an act of terrorism or on a non-medal earning operational task where death has been caused by the inherent high risk of the task. A claim considered before 6 April 2005 under the War Pensions Scheme required the award of a pension to be made unless it could be shown beyond reasonable doubt that Service had played no part in an illness or death.

There is not a carve-out in the budget for veterans who live overseas, but we are committed to ensuring that the armed forces covenant works equally for them as it does in this country. We are introducing the Armed Forces Bill in the coming months to legislate for the first time to ensure that discharge of duties cannot result in disadvantage from local authorities in health, housing and education. I look forward to the hon. Member supporting the Bill.

Veterans can access the same services provided by the Ministry of Defence, no matter where in the world they live.

The Veterans’ ID card provides both a memento of service and allows statutory and charity service providers to more easily identify an individual as someone who has served. Phase one of the Veterans’ ID card is complete, with Service leavers now receiving a card as part of the discharge process. Phase two will enable existing veterans to more quickly, easily, and securely prove they served in the UK Armed Forces so they can access the services they need, through digital means. Future-proofing and safeguarding against fraudulent use means the process for phase two rollout will take longer than anticipated. This Government is committed to making the UK the best place to be a veteran in the world, and we need to ensure that this is not abused.

The Ministry of Defence, including Veterans UK, is working with the Office for Veterans’ Affairs within the Cabinet Office to develop ideas on how to build an online digital verification tool so that people can prove they served; this is a commitment in the Strategy for Our Veterans. We are beginning to move this work forward but are unable to announce a delivery date at this point.

Information on phase two of the Veterans’ ID card will be released closer to the launch date at the following website:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-veterans-id-cards-rolled-out-to-service-leavers

I am certainly not going to take lectures on what is and is not good enough from a Labour party whose veterans’ care I experienced over a number of years. No services have been closed. We have changed the way of doing business. Clearly we cannot do new face-to-face consultations at this time. Again, I reiterate that not a single veteran in the care of Veterans UK has had their needs unmet at this time. I would caution Members against politicising what is clearly a very important issue.

The Department has not provided any direct funding for Service Charities to provide rehabilitation services to veterans of the armed forces.

However, since 2010 the Department has invested over £22.5 million to improve both mental and physical health services for veterans and used additional funding from LIBOR fines to banks to broaden the range of services available, including £2 million to Combat Stress to provide specific services for those veterans with alcohol problems and £2.7 million to help for Heroes for their Hidden Wounds programme providing mental health support for veterans.

The number of veterans who were contacted/not contacted by the Veterans Information Service in 2012 and 2013 is:

This information is not available by year prior to May 2012. However, I can confirm that 56,653 veterans discharged between 1 September 2009 and 30 April 2012 have been contacted and 5,996 have not.

The Forces Help to Buy Scheme launched on 1 April 2014 is designed to assist members of the armed forces in purchasing a home. The scheme is for serving personnel, but those being made redundant will be eligible.

For details on the support available to veterans, I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 28 April 2014, Official Report, column 442W, to my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie).

Military staff in particular, but also civil service staff, change posts regularly in their career. The need to hand over to their successors, or other staff in their unit, is built into the ways of working for each unit, according to the nature of the job, and is handled at unit level. Retirement is a particular instance of that, differing only because it is not readily possible to ask further information after people have left their service.

We try to be responsive and innovative in thinking about how we repay the debt we owe to our veterans. An example is the recently revamped defence discount service, which covers discounted holidays and travel. Other direct support includes reduced rate air travel, via the South Atlantic air bridge, for Falkland Islands veterans.

As someone who flew Ryanair from Stansted over the bank holiday weekend recently, I am in favour in principle of just about anything that gets people on to aircraft more efficiently. The hon. Gentleman’s idea could be worth looking at, but he and the House might be interested to know that the MOD has been having much broader discussions with business and industry about how they can do a range of things for the armed forces community under the auspices of the armed forces covenant, and we hope to have something to say about that in the relatively near future.

The latest figures (2011-12) from CHAIN (Combined Homeless and Information Network), which covers London and contains detailed information on London's rough sleepers over the year, highlights that only 4% of rough sleepers from the UK have experience of serving in the armed forces.

The Department publishes an annual headline figure on the number of people sleeping rough on a single night across England. This does not provide more detailed information such as whether they have served in the armed forces.

We secured an additional £70 million last year to help local agencies prevent and tackle homelessness. This includes the £20 million Homelessness Transition Fund to support the national roll out of No Second Night Out, tackle rough sleeping and protect vital front line services and the £20 million Single Homelessness Prevention Fund to help ensure single homeless people get access to good housing advice.

This is on top of the existing £10.8 million to help single people access private rented sector accommodation and the £400 million we are investing for homelessness prevention over four years (2011-12 to 2014-15).

The Ministerial Working Group on Homelessness published its second report Making Every Contact Count in August which focuses on preventing homelessness

and includes people leaving the armed forces. A copy of the report can be obtained at:

www.communities.gov.uk/publications/housing/makingeverycontactcount

We are determined to ensure that current and former members of the armed forces gain the housing they deserve, recognising the sacrifices they have made for the country. We have, therefore, introduced measures to place members of the armed forces at the top of the priority list for home ownership schemes, including FirstBuy.

We published the final new statutory social allocations guidance on 29 June following consultation, setting out how councils' allocation schemes can give priority to all service personnel, including through the use of local preference criteria and local lettings policies.

We are also changing the law by regulation so that former personnel with urgent housing needs are always given 'additional preference' (high priority) for social housing; and councils are prevented from applying local connection requirements to disqualify members of the armed forces and those within five years of leaving the services. Following consultation, we are also extending these regulations to bereaved spouses and seriously injured reservists. The qualification regulations came into force on 24 August; the additional preference regulations were laid before Parliament on 18 October.