| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
5.56 pm
Mr. John Wilkinson (Ruislip-Northwood): I shall be brief. My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) made a vigorous and admirable speech, but I take issue with him on one point only. He said that the Minister for the Armed Forces made a very good contribution, but I thought it was too sanguine and I fear that it verged on the complacent. Although the quality of our armed forces is quite exceptional, their quantity is wholly inadequate--there are only 210,000 regular personnel. In the Kosovo war, Royal Air Force air crews won more Distinguished Service Orders and Distinguished Flying Crosses than in any conflict since world war two, and no one can doubt the commitment of our personnel. However, we must address the problem of retention to make sure that we have balanced and experienced armed forces that will achieve best performance on a continuing basis.
Members have spoken about shorter tour intervals in the Army and the long separations endured by sea-going personnel in the Navy, and pointed out that offensive support squadrons of, particularly, the Royal Air Force are abroad for long periods of time. The effect of that is exemplified by the fact that the fast-jet force of the Royal Air Force is 20 per cent. short and the Royal Navy Harrier force is 30 per cent. short. They are serious deficiencies.
We should consider the total force concept. That is why I was so pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury and my right hon. Friend the Member for
Wealden (Sir G. Johnson Smith) spoke as they did. The concept of reserves is important, because we cannot consider personnel policy for the armed forces without considering the reserves. We should also consider European engagement through the European defence initiative, which will increasingly determine the nature of our defence policy.The hon. Member for Crawley (Laura Moffatt) made an interesting and original speech and she recognised that the armed forces are a community apart. However, despite what she said, their distinct nature needs to be nurtured and encouraged and they need special treatment on pay and allowances. That is the bedrock of the problem. They do not receive sufficient financial and material compensation for the serious sacrifices that they make on our behalf.
That point was brought home to me by the phasing out of the London allowance, an issue that effects my constituency. I put down a parliamentary question on 20 March and received a long, courteous and detailed reply from the Minister for the Armed Forces. The London allowance, which compensated service men for the additional costs of living in London, has been withdrawn, with a transitional period, with effect from 1 April this year.
It is true that a recruitment and retention allowance was introduced on 1 April 1997, but that does not compensate those personnel who, since 1997, have resided continuously in London and whose service obligations require them to remain in London. That can mean that personnel in outer London--for example, at RAF Northolt in my constituency--who do not live in their own property might lose £45 a month. Personnel serving in outer London, but living in their own property, could lose £110 a month. All those figures were spelled out in the Minister's letter to me.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) referred to a similar problem. He spoke about the vagaries of the overseas allowances system. Personnel normally stationed in Germany, who serve in the Balkans, suffer cuts in their overseas allowances, notwithstanding the difficult conditions in which they have to operate in that theatre.
It is imperative that the House does everything possible to emphasise that good conditions of service are vital. We do our best, but the armed forces personnel debate is not the right structure for that. As the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) pointed out, we still need our single service debates. May I suggest, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that we hold such debates in Westminster Hall? That would be an ideal forum; we could sit in our hemicycle. We all care about our individual services and those of our constituents who are members of them. It would be an appropriate atmosphere in which to address the problems.
Of course, we need international forums, such as the North Atlantic Assembly, of which my right hon. Friend the Member for Wealden is a member, and the Western European Union Assembly, of which I have had the privilege to be a member. As the WEU is absorbed into the European Union and its Assembly becomes the European Defence and Security Assembly, it will be more than ever important that national parliamentarians continue to sit on the EDSA. Through their defence committees, debates and access to their Defence
Ministers, they will be able to ensure that their defence budgets are adequate and that the problems of personnel and policy are properly addressed.It is important for Her Majesty's Government to respond positively, as the French Defence Minister has done. A press release of 7 April, following his meeting with Mr. Buhler, the President of the WEU Assembly, stated:
- According to Minister Richard, the structures of the WEU and in particular the WEU Assembly offer the real advantage of involving all European countries--
- (the 28 WEU countries and, he suggested, possibly Malta and Cyprus in the future) in a uniquely "inclusive" forum.
I have 10 suggestions for improving the lot of our armed forces personnel. First, bounties should be payable at regular intervals for those who stay on--rather than paying gratuities to those who leave. Secondly, the Government should consider instituting personal, portable pensions for service men. There should be a funded pension scheme. Over time, that would permit more funds to be devoted to purely defence uses. Thirdly, there should be more generous education allowances for service men. The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Smith) rightly mentioned that in his speech.
Fourthly, there should be substantial investment in defence medical services, from which regulars and reservists ought to be allowed to benefit. Fifthly, there should be a joining bounty for regulars who join the reserves--a golden hello for regulars who stay on in reservist service--because we need their experience. Sixthly, recipients of the reserve forces decoration--the reserves do not have post denominationals--ought to have a bounty as a tangible sign that they not only are valued but will be rewarded for their service over many years.
Seventhly, we should increase specialist pay, particularly for categories of personnel such as aircrew who are in short supply. Eighthly, there should be a statutory right to council accommodation. Local authorities should be required to provide social housing, whether through the council or through housing associations, for ex-regular personnel who settle in their area. Next, we should introduce housing allowances. Many service men have so many commitments that they are unable to save enough to provide a permanent home for their families. If they had a housing allowance to enable them to do so, they would be less likely to leave the services early.
Last but not least--this point is debatable--those units that are recruiting well and which are up to their manning levels should be allowed to form additional battalions. Obviously, I have in mind the Gurkhas, but it could apply to other units. Units that do not recruit well and which fall seriously below their manning levels could be temporarily disbanded. In the Royal Air Force we have a system whereby squadrons are regularly formed, disbanded and reformed. It would be possible for the Army to be more flexible.
I hope that some of those suggestions are useful, and I welcome the chance to speak in the debate.
6.7 pm
Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East): Rarely does a week go by without our being reminded of what we owe to our service men, past and present, and today is no exception. The Times carries the obituary of Rear-Admiral Douglas Parker, my constituent and a member of my constituency association. It sets out his record, saying that he was
- the first British aviator to overfly and attack the Japanese mainland
That generation is getting to the age at which increasingly we expect to read their obituaries, so there will, sadly, be no shortage of such splendid records to remind us of all that we owe them.
It is a privilege for me to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson), whom I first met in 1970 when I was an Oxford undergraduate and he was already an MP and, even then, an expert on defence by virtue of his RAF background. He was fighting then for strong defences for this country, and he has never wavered in that fight to this day.
I take this opportunity to thank the Under-Secretary, who has attended almost all of the debate, for his recent letter to me indicating that he will seriously investigate the case of Corporal Henry, the constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts). Corporal Henry committed suicide after what seems to have been an extremely unjust court martial and disproportionate punishment.
In the short time available I want to do what I generally do in such debates, which is to say something about people, something about problems and something about the past. The right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) did Parliament a favour in drawing attention to the questionable value of dispensing with single-service debates and replacing them with separate debates on personnel, equipment, and so forth--not that that has prevented hon. Members from bringing into the debate whatever it was they had to say about our armed forces, whether or not it had to do with personnel.
In our previous debate on armed forces personnel, on 1 July last year, I drew attention to the campaign waged by the Officers Pension Society, urging that pensions be transferred to the widows of officers who married after retiring from the services. Today, I shall concentrate on an even more worthy cause that was drawn to my attention by my constituent, Mr. Trevor Emans of Holbury, who was shocked to read about the way in which St. Dunstan's--the charity for service men and women who have been blinded in the service of their country--had been refused a lottery grant.
Let me tell the House about St. Dunstan's. It was founded in 1915 by Sir Arthur Pearson, of the newspaper publishing family, in the belief that those who came back from the first world war blinded should be cared for with the greatest commitment that society could afford, not reduced to beggary in the streets. St. Dunstan's takes in service men and women aged 19 to 90, even if blindness is a delayed effect of their service. It teaches those men
and women how to manage basic daily tasks, and those who are of employable age are taught to master a trade, from shopkeeping to the handling of computers. Then they are shown how to re-enter communities.St. Dunstan's has about 11 welfare officers who visit St. Dunstaners, as they are called, at home or at work. The aim is to make those people, to whom we owe so much, as independent as possible and to enable them to live as fulfilled a life as possible. The charity owns about 500 properties, mostly two-bedroom bungalows; and there are about 2,600 people on the books, including a limited number of spouses, widows or widowers of St. Dunstaners and about 30 to 40 dependent children. The charity's main base is at Ovingdean near Brighton, but 95 per cent. of the gallant veterans for whom it cares live in their own homes.
St. Dunstan's lost its last veteran of world war one only in 1998, at the age of 99. He was cared for by that charity from 1916 to 1998. Not many charities offer, as part of their raison d'etre, such long-term care for anyone. Therein lies the source of the problem. Seventy per cent. of the people for whom the charity cares were injured in world war two, and the other 30 per cent. in the post-war era. The problem is that long-term care such as St. Dunstan's provides must, to a considerable extent, be funded from the interest derived from investments. It is easy for critics to point out that the charity has about £90 million in assets--which it has had--and so does not need help. However, those assets cannot be dispensed with: they pay for the buildings and are, above all, used for the investment income that provides only one third of the value of the support the charity gives to the 2,600 St. Dunstaners on its books.
At the time when the request was made to the national lottery, St. Dunstan's was hoping to extend its rehabilitation and training unit and to install specialist accommodation for those receiving rehabilitation and training, such as the handless blind--think about that: the handless blind. The charity was hoping to get a new bus that would have on board the sort of toilet facilities and wheelchair access facilities that would enable the more severely disabled St. Dunstaners to go on trips from which they are currently excluded.
I do not know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, whether you were present at Prime Minister's Question Time on 3 November last, but I was, and I do not think that I have ever seen the Prime Minister so discomfited. It is to the credit of Liberal Democrat Members that he was. The hon. Member for Southport (Mr. Fearn) had drawn Question 2, and this is what he asked:
- The millennium dome . . . entails the expenditure of £758 million. Of that, £399 million is from the lottery. How does the Prime Minister square with that the fact that St. Dunstan's, which cares for those who have been blinded in the service of their country, has applied . . . for lottery grants and has not received any?
- I should point out to the hon. Gentleman that four fifths of the lottery stream goes to a host of other lottery causes. I cannot comment on the particular cause to which the hon. Gentleman draws attention.
- I am happy to make inquiries, but it is not for me to distribute lottery money. That is done by the relevant organisation.--[Official Report, 3 November 1999; Vol. 337, c. 290.]
I do not know why that person was invited on to the programme at that time in order for it to present a deeply hostile and one-sided attack on St. Dunstan's, arguing that the charity was far too wealthy and did not need lottery money. That was done, incidentally, in a pre-recorded slot that the person who was interviewed on the programme was forbidden to hear in advance. I do not know whether that timing was sheer coincidence, or whether it was yet another favour that the BBC was doing for its new Labour friends--
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |