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Mr. Leigh: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Ingram: I am going to try to make progress. I have taken a lot of interventions, and there are many issues. We are dealing with morale, and I want to touch on some important issues. I hope that my remarks will be heard elsewhere.

We recognise the pressure that we place on our personnel and the potential impact on their families. That is why we seek to ensure that commitments do not become unsustainable. From a deployed operational peak at this time last year, we have managed to reduce the number of our service personnel on operations outside the UK and the Falkland Islands from 48,500 to 11,700.

I shall move on to the policies that we have in place to sustain our people, and the current manning position. Recruiting and retaining the right numbers of the right quality personnel remains critical to achieving operational success. In part, that means getting pay and conditions right, and the Armed Forces Pay Review Body is key. I shall take the opportunity to pay tribute to the work of Baroness Dean, who retired after five years sterling effort as chair of the body. I would also like to welcome her successor, Professor David Greenaway. Under his guidance, I am confident that the Armed Forces Pay Review Body will continue rigorously to scrutinise service pay and to draw careful conclusions. This year, the Government have again accepted in full the Armed Forces Pay Review Body's recommendations, and we look forward to receiving its report early next year.

Beyond pay, we must reassure our people that they can expect a good pension when they retire, and we must also provide adequate compensation for those who are injured in the course of their service. The House will be aware of our plans to introduce a new armed forces pensions and compensation scheme, and the Armed Forces (Pensions and Compensation) Bill completed its Commons stages on 6 May. Subject to successful
 
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completion of the necessary legislation, the schemes should be implemented in April 2005. Independent review has confirmed that both schemes will offer high quality benefits.

Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con): I am grateful to the Minister of State for giving way. Will he comment on the remarks of the Royal British Legion, which assists in large numbers of compensation cases? Up to three fifths of people who would get compensation for suspected war injuries under current arrangements will no longer get them because of the Government's plan to make such injuries more difficult to prove.

Mr. Ingram: I am aware of the views expressed by the Royal British Legion. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, who has been dealing with the Bill, advises me that we do not necessarily accept the methodology used to reach those conclusions, and that we continue to discuss the matter with the Royal British Legion and other bodies that have raised it. Many of the issues have already been discussed, although the matter will be considered in another place, and we will return to the Bill at a future stage, when the hon. Gentleman might have more information or have been satisfied by our explanations.

Pay and pensions is only one part of the package. We must provide our people with the training and education that they require to get the job done and to facilitate their personal development. Their performance in Iraq is a remarkable tribute to their dedication, determination, training and preparation. The 2001 defence training review made more than 200 recommendations for improving individual training and education for both service personnel and civilians within the defence field, three quarters of which have already been implemented.

Alongside training is the need for education. The Ministry of Defence is the largest provider of post-16 education in the UK. Individuals can gain transferable skills and qualifications that enhance both their careers and their future employment prospects. Across the armed forces, more than 40,000 personnel are registered for nationally recognised qualifications. Defence makes a vital contribution to wider national training and educational priorities.

Before I close, I should like to highlight some of the wider work that we have in hand for our people. We have long recognised that the armed forces must truly reflect the society that they protect and are drawn from, and again the figures show sustained progress. At 1 February 2004, women represented more than 8.8 per cent. of the overall strength of the armed forces. At 1 January 2004, the figure for representation of ethnic minorities in the armed forces was 4.8 per cent., compared with 1.1 per cent. in 1999, and we are working hard to improve the position. All three services have specialist teams aimed at promoting careers in the armed forces to ethnic minority communities. Over the past year, the armed forces have increased their dialogue with the Muslim Council of Britain, and other spiritual leaders, to address how to encourage more people from those communities to take up a career in the armed forces.
 
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Finally, I would like to turn to families. We ask so much of our people's families that we owe them the right support. We have undertaken work to improve our handling of inquiries and investigations into death and serious injury of our servicemen and women. We want to reduce the time taken to conduct such inquiries, whenever possible, and keep families better informed of progress.

A wide range of important work is in hand to address the concerns of service families. I should like to highlight in particular the service families taskforce. We have established a joint working group with the Department for Education and Skills to resolve the issues facing schools providing education for service children. The taskforce's contribution is also vital to ensure that Departments are informed of the impact of proposed legislation on service families. Finally, the taskforce has rightly identified housing provision as key in supporting our families. There is much that we can do to improve matters in this area.

We are wholly committed to the provision of good quality accommodation for service personnel. The defence housing strategy outlined in the defence White Paper aims to meet those aspirations through a mixture of high-quality service family accommodation in the right locations to support mobility and choice for those individuals who choose greater stability. We aim to give personnel and their families more opportunities if they choose to settle or to buy their own house. That should help to improve continuity in health care, education and spouses' careers. Ultimately, all living accommodation, both for service families and for our single personnel, will be managed and delivered with a single vision in mind—quality and choice.

I am sure that many of those issues will be raised in the debate, and I know that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will return to some of them when he winds up.

As at 1 March 2004, the full-time trained strength of the armed forces stood at 190,240—an increase of some 2,000 on last year's figures. That is the result of sustained hard work across the three services. There remain pinch points where shortages of skilled personnel remain a concern, but even here there is good news to report. I should like to highlight in particular the Defence Medical Services. In January this year, we had nearly 350 more fully trained medical personnel than in 1999, and over 500 more are in the training pipeline. That represents real progress.

Mr. Peter Viggers (Gosport) (Con): What effect will the cancellation of the Royal College of Defence Medicine at Selly Oak have on recruitment and retention in the Defence Medical Services?

Mr. Ingram: I do not have an answer to that, because such matters have to be judged over time. The same question could be asked about any developments that may affect retention. They must be watched and studied, and we do so very carefully. That is why the Armed Forces Pay Review Body will return to areas where there are significant problems, then perhaps recommend certain payments—golden hellos and other incentives—that will attract people or retain them. We must take account of any detrimental impact that works against the trends that I have described.
 
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Our people are working, as we speak, in many places—the Gulf, Africa, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland—to bring peace and stability to a very turbulent world. By dint of their efforts, and sustained by their core values of decency, respect for human rights and professionalism, they are working hard to make the world a more secure place for us all. We can rightly be proud of their efforts on our behalf. This House should speak with one voice and let them know that we give them our full support.

3.48 pm

Mr. Keith Simpson (Mid-Norfolk) (Con): I begin by turning the attention of the House back to the points raised by the Minister at the beginning of his speech, particularly his mini statement on what now appear to be the faked photographs produced by the Daily Mail. [Hon. Members: "Daily Mirror."] I mean the Daily Mirror. I think that the whole House recognises that those who connived with their production and those who published them did a great wrong. As the Minister said, they tainted the reputation, abiding humanity and decency of the British armed forces and their families that has been so successfully sustained over many years. Their good name and, as the Minister said, possibly their lives have been traded for what now appear to be cheap news headlines. As my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Defence said in the House on 4 May, the allegations made by the Daily Mirror must of course be thoroughly investigated. We look to the Daily Mirror board to take appropriate action.

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