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6.45 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr. Lewis Moonie): I congratulate my hon. Friends on speaking to the theme of the debate today. Most of what I listened to from Opposition Members was at best tangential, but one can forgive them that as clearly they have nothing worth saying on the subject of personnel. [Interruption.]I will carry on saying that until they do.
We have heard, during today's debate, how our armed forces are able to act as a force for good in the world from Northern Ireland to Kosovo to the Gulf. They work to alleviate suffering, build trust and prevent conflict. Our ability to do all those things depends, above all, on one factor--the quality of our people. I intend to concentrate most of my remarks on aspects of our services for our people, which give rise to justifiable concern. If there is any time left, I shall attempt to answer points raised during the debate. I will not have time to take interventions. [Interruption.] If people want me to take interventions, they should make shorter speeches.
I am pleased to say that the quality of our people is immensely high. We ask a lot of them, and they never let us down. However, this is a two-way street. In return for their professionalism, loyalty and courage, we must look after them and their families. The policy for people--a key part of the strategic defence review--is delivering that. My hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces has described the programme of change that we have introduced through initiatives such as the service families taskforce, the learning forces initiative and the overarching personnel strategy.
I make no apology for saying that the watchword of this Government is modernisation, and the armed forces are central to this process. Hence, our policy for people remains our highest priority short of actual operations,
because without the right people we cannot achieve all of the other things that are necessary to modernise Britain's defence.I wish to refer to some of my areas of responsibility. First, I wish to refer to the defence medical services. As a doctor, I am delighted that that is one of my ministerial responsibilities. First, I pay tribute to the excellent support that they provide to our armed forces, both at home and overseas--particularly in the deployments in Bosnia and Kosovo. They provide first-class medical care to British forces. It is a further testament to their skill and professionalism that they also provide medical care to local civilian populations on a wide range of humanitarian operations, particularly in the Balkans.
The House will be well aware of the problems besetting the defence medical services--problems which this Government inherited. A succession of reviews--culminating in the now notorious defence costs study 15 in 1994--left the defence medical services with low morale and too few people. It is a bitter irony that, by 1997, the defence medical services themselves were haemorrhaging.
The defence medical services were chronically underfunded and, worse, were losing people at a rate that threatened our armed forces' capability to meet their operational commitments. One of the Government's highest priorities has been to reverse the shortages in defence medical manpower and equipment. The changes we are making as a result of the strategic defence review and our new strategy for the defence medical services are hard evidence of our commitments to medical care.
Mr. Robathan: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I always understood that a wind-up speech was meant to encapsulate the debate, and was not a scripted speech to be read out.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): Ministers must wind up the debate as they see fit.
Dr. Moonie: A wee bit of remedial education on the other side would not come amiss.
Mr. Robathan: Will the Minister give way?
Dr. Moonie: Having listened to five minutes of drivel from the hon. Gentleman, I do not think that he has any right to speak now.
Mr. Robathan: Will the Minister not take an intervention?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. It is for the Chair to decide when hon. Members should resume their seats. Perhaps we could carry on in a slightly calmer atmosphere. This is a very important debate.
Dr. Moonie: I have noticed no loss of calm in myself, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but a certain lack of self-control on the other side, perhaps.
We have already provided an additional £140 million for medical manpower and equipment. That extra funding covers the four years to April 2002. More money will be
made available after that. Let there be no doubt that, as in every other area of defence, people are at the very heart of the defence medical services. Making good the current shortfalls of medical personnel is the single greatest problem facing them.I am pleased to say that there is now some evidence that the high rate of people leaving the defence medical services is levelling out, and that the manning situation is stabilising. Recruitment into training is generally satisfactory, but it takes several years to train medical personnel and, in the case of surgeons, a minimum of eight years. If we are to see any significant improvement in the short to medium term, we need to recruit directly fully or partially trained personnel. That has proved difficult in the past and work has been put in hand to identify the obstacles to direct entry recruitment.
I know that defence accommodation is a matter of great concern among hon. Members. It is a matter for which I have responsibility, and one that greatly affects morale among both single and married service men and women. Our armed forces are as good as any in the world, and better in most cases. We ask a lot of them, and they have a right to expect the best in return, in terms not only of training, equipment and firepower, but of the way in which they are looked after as people.
We are committed to caring for our people and their families across the spectrum of their needs. We have set in hand an extensive programme of improvements to existing accommodation, together with the construction of new-build housing at a number of defence establishments. I hope that our approach of--to use the usual phrase--joined-up government has shown that, working with local authorities, other Departments and the private sector, we can provide the best accommodation for our people.
We have a good working relationship with Annington Homes, which has bought most of the service families quarters, and we have plans for public-private partnership arrangements to provide new housing. The programme of releasing property to Annington Homes has been a great success, and we are running ahead of the numbers envisaged at the time of sale, so far having released a total of 3,100 properties, with a further 3,000 releases planned for this year.
When accommodation is too old to be repaired, we have plans for new build. Private finance initiative contracts have been placed to provide new properties at RAF Lossiemouth, Cosford and Shawbury, at RNAS Yeovilton and in central Scotland. Two further contracts are currently being negotiated to build new properties in Bristol, Bath, Portsmouth, Shrivenham and Wattisham.
We are also making improvements to the accommodation available to our single service men and women. We appreciate how important the standard of accommodation is, and we are committed to giving them what they deserve. In 1998, my hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces directed that a steering group be set up at a very senior level in the Ministry of Defence to establish a co-ordinated approach to managing the single living accommodation across the three services. That was as a direct result of the strategic defence review and, again, I believe that our approach has shown that we can bring real success in the short term.
For example, the Royal Navy has invested a total of more than £10 million in flats at HMS Dryad and Bickleigh barracks, the Army has just finished improving Robertson barracks at Swanton Morley in Norfolk and there are a further 10 programmes to improve the standard of Army single living accommodation across the UK, ranging from Southampton to Catterick.
We are well aware of some of the problems with the existing accommodation at Aldershot, and a programme of improvement has started there. I know that the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) would have liked to be here but had to leave.
On the subject of overstretch, my hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces mentioned the many improvements that we have made to the terms and conditions under which service men and women have to exist, and we remain firmly committed to tackling overstretch in the armed forces.
I was asked a specific question on the statistics for the three services, and it is true that we tend to use the Army as the reference point. It is difficult to give the figures, because all three services use different methods for calculating what they consider to be overstretch and what they consider to be the active deployment of personnel. They have different environments, structures and operational postures, so it is hardly surprising that they are different, but that means that it is difficult to make direct comparisons of relative overstretch levels.
The Navy include all seagoing personnel in their figures, the Army includes those deploying, deployed and recovering from operational duties, and the RAF provides statistics only for those physically deployed away from base. That explains why the RAF gives a comparatively low figure of 3.4 per cent. of trained strength on deployment. The Navy often has up to 40 per cent. of its serving personnel on active duty--in other words, at sea--and the Army has managed to reduce its figure to 27 per cent. from its previously much higher levels.
The hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) mentioned fast-jet pilots. Although we are short of pilots, we are unable to put in the air only nine aircraft, so the situation is not as bad as it sounds.
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