Counter-ISIL Coalition Strategy
Kate Green Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Michael Fallon
I am afraid that I missed some of the hon. Gentleman’s question, but in relation to medical assistance we have been providing a series of training courses for members of the Iraqi army and the Kurdish forces, entailing, for instance, short infantry skills. If I may, I will write to the hon. Gentleman specifically about whether that includes the treatment of battlefield casualties.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
If the Secretary of State intends to return to the House at some point to ask for an enlargement of our military engagement in Syria, does he not accept that Members and our constituents—especially our Muslim constituents —will now feel more sceptical about whether we are fully informed and able to take any such decision?
Michael Fallon
I do not accept that. If we are to come to this House to debate the matter and seek permission to carry out UK military strikes in Syria, of course we will provide all the information we can for hon. Members. What I have been describing today is the long-standing practice of placing embeds in the forces of other countries.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kate Green Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Michael Fallon
As I have made clear, it is ultimately for NATO to classify from each member’s return what properly counts as defence expenditure in the table that is published each year. As far as the Type 26 programme is concerned, my right hon. Friend will know that we have already committed nearly £1 billion to the design phase and to the purchase of some of the long-lead items for the first three frigates in the series.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
Bidders in my constituency report a worrying picture of the Crown Commercial Service’s handling of defence procurement contracts, with unreasonable timescales, inappropriate specification, and tenders being issued and then withdrawn. What steps are being taken to improve matters, especially for SME bidders?
Mr Dunne
The Crown Commercial Service is run through the Cabinet Office, and we are in a long series of discussions with it about transferring commodity-type procurement from Defence Equipment and Support to the CCS. I believe it currently has nine separate categories of activity accounting for over £1 billion of our spend. We are regularly in discussion with it to ensure that its processes are as smooth and efficient for the supply to our armed forces as they are for the contractors involved.
First World War (Commemoration)
Kate Green Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
It is a great privilege to speak in this debate, and I join colleagues who have welcomed the tone in which it was introduced by the Minister and my hon. Friend the shadow Minister. I also compliment right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to a powerful debate this afternoon. It has also been a pleasure to participate in a debate in which the hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) gave his maiden speech, and I look forward to hearing many more such articulate contributions from him in the months to come.
Last Saturday, I visited Imperial War Museum North, which is located in my constituency, and saw its exhibition “From Street to Trench”. The IWM North is at the heart of the world war one anniversary commemorations, with a programme of outreach and collaboration, which has enabled others across the region and beyond to mark and appreciate the significance of the anniversary. Some beautiful, moving and innovative projects are being sponsored under the auspices of the museum. There has been a creative response to the anniversary through Reactions 14, involving the English National Ballet, the BBC, local, national and international artists such as Bill Fontana, Mark Anstee and Jennifer Vickers, the Royal Northern College of Music, the BBC Philharmonic, the Lowry theatre, other museums across Greater Manchester, local councils across Greater Manchester and local libraries and archives. We are looking forward to “Honour” at the beginning of August, to the Asian art triennial in September and, of course, to “Lights Out” on 4 August.
It is important to note that the Imperial War Museum North is also at the heart of an important programme of educational outreach and engagement with young people. We have learning boxes, filled with world war one replica items for use in schools, particularly where children cannot come to visit the museum, and we have “Finding our first world war”. Of course, we hope that as many of our young people as possible from across the region and beyond will visit the museum, as I did last week.
“From Street to Trench” is a remarkable exhibition showing how world war one affected families from all walks of life across our region, and I encourage right hon. and hon. Members who are in the north to visit it. It includes footage of soldiers serving on the different battlefields and of workers in munitions factories as well as those dealing with foodstuffs, cotton and other textiles. As has been noted by other hon. Members, many of those factory workers were women, who filled the vacancies left by men serving at the front. It is possible to listen to recordings of the voices of veterans recounting their experiences first hand and to look at photographs, medals, uniforms and equipment. One can read letters, which other hon. Members have mentioned, including those from service personnel writing home to their families, which are very touching. There is a letter from Clement Attlee to his great-nephew, which I was particularly pleased to take a look at.
There are also, of course, poems—poems written from the heart by ordinary service people and their families, but also early versions of poems by some of our greatest war poets, including one of Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est”, a poem that I first read, as I am sure many colleagues did, at school and which some 40 years later still has the power to move and, I have to say, chill me with its words.
If I may say so, and I hope that I will not offend anyone in this House or outside it when I say this, what struck me most in the exhibition was how little happiness there was in the images that I saw. Faces were exhausted, demoralised and bleak. I do not say that for one moment to denigrate the courage, the comradeship and the pride that people clearly took in the work that they were doing in the factories and the fields, but what came across to me is that war is hell, and not just on the front line.
The day before I went to the exhibition, I was at Stretford high school in my constituency, and I was asked by one 15-year-old student why the UK is involved in so many wars. We discussed the significance of our imperial history and our notions of international justice and obligation to our neighbours in other countries. We talked about notions of power and economic self-interest and our international alliances and friendships and, in particular, how that had led to the domino effect of country after country collapsing into conflict that characterised the start of world war one. It was clear in the discussions with the young people in that class that they did not want that to happen in their generation. They see fighting as failure, and of course it is their lives—the lives of our young people—that are the first to be sacrificed. I wonder, as we consider the international challenges and tests that face us today, and the conflicts around us and the way in which we decide that we will or will not be drawn into them, whether we do enough to hear the voices and views of young people—the generation that we would, after all, send to fight.
I am very proud of our record in the north-west in the first world war and in other wars. Our region continues to contribute to this day; for example, through the volunteer 207 field hospital located in Old Trafford in my constituency, whose volunteers—reservists all of them—have recently returned from Afghanistan. I am also proud of our industrial contribution. Trafford Park was and remains the largest industrial estate in Europe, and much of the production and industry that went to support world war one and other wars took place there. That of course made it a magnet for enemy attack, including air attack, during those wars.
I am proud of our record of dissent in the north-west. “From Street to Trench” carries some testimony from conscientious objectors, some who contributed in other ways to the war effort, some who refused altogether and were imprisoned for their beliefs. It has testimony from religious dissenters and from political dissenters and, of course, as has been mentioned, it acknowledges the debate that began the first world war, continued through it and was, to a degree, starting to be concluded after it on the role of women and women’s suffrage. Perhaps this is the moment to put on record how pleased I am that Parliament is to commemorate women’s suffrage and the arrival of women here in this House through the work of Parliament’s artist in residence, Mary Branson. I know that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and other colleagues look forward to being closely involved in that work.
The final point I want to put on the record is that dissenting, resisting war, not being prepared necessarily to adopt the prevailing wisdom, takes great courage and bravery and is a form of contribution, too. Negotiating first and last, putting our efforts into diplomacy and building relationships, internationally through our membership of the European Union and other European bodies, and here at home in our diverse multicultural communities, where we must reach out to each community and hear their views—that is where I want us to use this anniversary period to concentrate our energies, because for me it is a tragedy that 100 years after the war that was described as the war to end all wars, we still cannot say with confidence, “Never again.”
Oral Answers to Questions
Kate Green Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Mr Reed
My hon. Friend is entirely right, and the Lords amendments will only make that situation worse.
Now, as this zombie Parliament limps towards the finishing line, we are asked to consider a Frankenstein Bill—a badly stitched together Bill—which began with good intentions, but which, for the most part, will not end well. The Care Bill should have remained just that. On the face of it, part 1, building on the work of the last Labour Government, makes some modest improvements which we welcome, but let us be under no illusions. For all the Government’s bold claims, this Bill is a modest Bill. We support the rights for carers and many of the provisions and principles contained in part 1. Even though we believe that these could have gone much further towards the creation of a properly integrated model of whole person care, the real issue is that the Government have hijacked the Bill to push through a back-door reconfiguration tool that undermines the principle of local commissioning by centralising hospital closure and service removal decisions. It exposes as a sham the Government’s rhetoric about local clinical commissioning over the last four years.
Before I address the trust special administrator clause in more detail, let me touch on Lords amendment 11B, relating to human rights. Hon. Members may remember this issue from our debates on Report. The amendment will ensure that all users of publicly funded or arranged care have direct protection under the Human Rights Act 1998. Under the law as it stands, the fundamental protection and access to individual redress offered by the Act are not applied equally in all care settings.
This measure has a long history. In the other place, Lord Low tabled and passed a new clause which sought to close the loophole. But the Government removed it in Committee in this House, and then voted down an Opposition amendment on Report that would have restored it. The Minister did, however, say that he would go away and look at the issue again. The result is the amendment that we have before us today. For our part, we welcome the Government’s U-turn on this. It is good that Ministers have seen the light, having voted against this kind of protection at every previous stage of the Bill’s passage.
The amendment is clear that any care that is paid for out of public money
“directly or indirectly, in whole or in part”,
or which is arranged by a public authority, will now be covered by the Human Rights Act. However, I have a couple of questions for the Minister. First, he knows that personal budgets are absolutely critical in giving people greater choice and control over their lives, and enabling people to make their own decisions about how their care is delivered. It is important that personal budgets are covered by the amendment. Will the Minister confirm that that is the case, and that social care provided by a regulated provider and paid for by direct payments is included?
Secondly, it would be good if the Minister could clarify for the House whether so-called non-personal care is covered by the amendment. The definition of care used in the Lords amendment is that used in the Health and Social Care Act 2008. This is quite a narrow definition, and it is possible that it could exclude some very important types of care for people with learning disabilities or mental health problems, such as assisting them to participate in activities or to get to appointments. The Opposition amendment tabled on Report, which was drafted by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, would have covered this non-personal care, but as the Government’s amendment contains a narrower definition, we are concerned that they may be excluding quite broad categories of publicly provided social care services that may not be defined as personal care. We would be grateful if the Minister could allay our fears on that point, and confirm that those extremely important types of care for some very vulnerable people will be covered by this amendment. I look forward to his reply.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
This is an important point for disabled adults in residential care, for example, who may receive care from one private provider, but access other services and facilities through another provider. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that all activities, including going out to participate in social and learning activities, need to be covered by the Lords amendment?
Mr Reed
Indeed. My hon. Friend knows about these issues in detail. That is why we have asked the questions that we asked and tabled our amendment on Report.
With reference to parts 2 and 3 of the Bill, the insertion of the hospital closure clause—the Lewisham clause, clause 119, formerly clause 118, call it what you like—is extremely regrettable. It is because of this that the comparison with Frankenstein’s monster has been made, and because of this that we have tabled further amendments today. This House, the people of this country and every hospital league of friends, local hospital action group or other such groups working for the benefit of health services local to their area—and I include in that the magnificent campaigners in Millom and around the West Cumberland hospital in Whitehaven —will never forget the genesis of the major policy change that this clause represents, namely Ministers’ attempts to close good services at a well performing hospital against the wishes of the locally affected public, patients and local clinical commissioners.
On attaining office, the Government made a series of grand promises about future changes to hospital services. The coalition agreement stated:
“We will stop the centrally dictated closure of A&E and maternity wards, so that people have better access to local services.”
GPs were meant to be placed in decision-making roles and given the power to shape local services. As with so much that this Government do, the rhetoric could not be further from the reality, and far from stopping centrally dictated closures, they are now legislating to make it easier to close local hospitals and remove hospital services.
Clearly, a failure regime is essential and when things go wrong, they must be put right, but to attempt to short-circuit the existing reconfiguration framework, and to actively seek to disfranchise patients and the public, is not the way to improve services. Riding roughshod over local commissioning in order to reconfigure an area’s health services is not the way to build support for change. Deliberately ignoring the voices of local patients is a recipe for more expense, uncertainty and delay.
Take the example of Lewisham. Much has been said in this place about the process, the legal judgments and the amazing work undertaken by local campaigners there, so I shall not go into too much detail. Suffice to say that the Government’s attempts to use the law for a purpose for which it was never designed were described as “strained and unnatural” by Lord Justice Sullivan when dismissing the Government’s appeal against their original defeat. I would be grateful if the Government could explain why they believe the most effective way to deal with a failing trust is to alienate local commissioners, the local community and local health professionals. Rather than bringing stakeholders to the table to form a solution with regard to Lewisham, the Secretary of State dragged them through the courts and lost, twice.
Having been beaten by the law, the Secretary of State has decided to change it. The simple truth of the Government’s hospital closure clause is that a successful local hospital, the type that the Secretary of State enjoys getting his photograph taken in, can be closed without due process, simply because the one down the road is in trouble. It is as logical as removing a patient’s leg to cure a headache. Despite their valiant defence of the clause as it stood on Second Reading, the Government have been forced to make what they call major concessions, which are in reality very minor concessions.
Lords amendments 40B to 40E seek to ensure that “essential services” are not harmed. We are told this would mean that if a local commissioner believed that the trust special administrator’s recommendations would harm essential services, they would not be implemented—unless, of course, NHS England overruled the local commissioner. Our amendments to Lords amendments 40B and 40C would ensure that any recommendations would not be able to go ahead if they in any way restricted access to services, and that all correspondence between commissioners and the trust special administrator would be made public. Making it harder to use services is the very antithesis of the principles underpinning the NHS, which the Government claim to support—but only when it suits them.
We should judge this Government not by their words, but by their actions. They promised no top-down reorganisation. They delivered the biggest, most wasteful, most expensive and chaotic reorganisation in the history of the service. They promised a bare knuckle fight to protect local services. They delivered a back-door reconfiguration tool that could facilitate the largest ever hospital closure programme. They promised that local decisions would be made by local commissioners. They delivered a power for the Secretary of State and NHS England to overrule local commissioner vetoes. All this was done against the advice of medical professionals, against the wishes of the public and against every pre-election promise, and therefore without a shred of legitimacy.
The TSA process was introduced in 2009 and was intended, as the High Court ruled, to be used to make quick changes to management structures in order to address financial failures, not to make widespread service reconfigurations possible without public input.
Defence Reform Bill
Kate Green Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Hammond
I suspect the hon. Gentleman is referring to figures that were put in the public domain last year before this process was fully under way. I have said to the House that I will be transparent about recruitment and trained-strength targets. Later this year we intend to begin publishing quarterly figures, and we will set out the expected forward trajectory at the same time. As I said the week before last, and will say again now, the path will not be smooth and there will be some lumpiness in it. The structural changes we are making in the regular Army and the Army Reserve will have an impact at the front end, but in the long run it will support the growth of reserves that we all seek.
Eliminating waste and inefficiency in our procurement systems, and making best use of the skills available, whether they are in the public or private sector, or indeed in the regular or reserve forces, are at the heart of our plan for sustainable and effective defence in times of austerity. The Government have set about transforming the way that defence is managed and delivered. Starting with the strategic defence and security review in 2010, we have looked hard at how we can carry out our activity to see whether it can be improved. As part of that process, my predecessor asked Lord Levene of Portsoken to conduct an in-depth review into every aspect of how we manage defence, and we are well advanced in implementing the changes he recommended.
Ensuring our forces have the right equipment, delivered on time, is essential if we are to maintain our capabilities in the future, and ensuring we do that cost-effectively is critical if we are to sustain them. Making full use of the expertise and skills of our reserve forces is crucial if we are to meet the security challenges that we face with smaller regular forces. In most areas, we are able to deliver defence transformation through changing the way we are organised and the way we do things in the Ministry of Defence. In two areas—procurement and the use of reserves—primary legislation is required to complete the programme.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I am glad that the Secretary of State is about to expand on procurement. Will he confirm that in securing a reliable and cost-effective supply of equipment, there will be open competition for a wide range of suppliers—including those such as Joseph Gleave & Son in my constituency, which has supplied the Department for many years—and that the Government procurement model will not squeeze out smaller businesses that have been supplying in the past.
Mr Hammond
The Government have a focused initiative to increase participation of small and medium-sized enterprises in the defence supply chain. Such businesses provide a tremendously important part of our defence resilience. Because they are often buried in complex supply chains led by a large prime contractor, their contribution is not always noticed as much as it should be, but they are an important part of the equation. I will come later to the balance between open competitive procurement and single-source procurement, which is at the heart of part 2.
The Bill has three main parts. Parts 1 and 2 deal with defence procurement and part 3 deals with our reserve forces. Turning first to procurement, I think that few in this House would not agree that the way in which we develop, specify, procure and support defence equipment can and must be improved. We have already made significant progress, but we recognise that fundamental change is needed if we are to sustain that progress and to deliver the equipment that the armed forces need and the value for money that the public are entitled to expect. Now is the time to make those changes.
For decades, our defence equipment programme has suffered from poor time and cost forecasting and poor project and programme management, leading to delays, cost overruns and specification failures. We have to address these issues by challenging the pattern of incentives and behaviours once and for all. That is why, after success on military operations, my priority as Defence Secretary has been to establish, for the first time, a fully costed and deliverable 10-year equipment plan. This has now been achieved and published. Our armed forces now have the certainty that the equipment they are expecting has been both planned for and is properly funded. However, if we are to deliver this programme consistently and to entrench a better method of working to provide a better service to the front line in future, we need fundamentally to reform our defence acquisition processes and structures.
The previous Government were of course aware of this problem. Towards the end of their time in office, they commissioned the independent report by Bernard Gray into the acquisition process. That report found serious structural and cultural problems in the way in which we procure defence equipment. We have considered carefully its analysis and the options available for reform of Defence Equipment and Support. My predecessor appointed its author as Chief of Defence Matériel, with a remit to take the reform agenda forward. The results of that work are set out in the White Paper, “Better defence acquisition”, which I published on 10 June this year.
Our preference is to transform the existing Defence Equipment and Support organisation into a Government-owned, contractor-operated organisation—a GoCo. We believe that this model is the one most likely to embed and sustain the significant behavioural change required to transform defence acquisition. However, belief alone is not enough, and we will test this proposition through a commercial competition and against a public sector comparator. If, at the end of this rigorous evaluation process, a GoCo is assessed to be the best-value-for-money option, a private sector partner will be appointed to manage DE&S on behalf of the Secretary of State. This will be a radical change, but not quite as radical as some of the more lurid headlines have suggested.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kate Green Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Hammond
As my hon. Friend will know, the Prime Minister and the Treasury have already confirmed that the equipment plan will increase in real terms plus 1% in the period from 2015 to 2020, and we are not looking at changes that will reduce military manpower. However, I have to say to him and to the House that efficiencies can always be found in any budget, and we will search for all the efficiencies that we can reasonably find and deliver.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I am pleased to hear the Secretary of State highlight the importance of efficiencies in considering the spending review. Will he meet me to discuss the deep concerns of Joseph Gleave & Son, which has been a long-standing supplier to the Ministry of Defence and employs approximately 80 people in my constituency, regarding inefficiencies in procurement following the shift to the Government Procurement Service and the establishment of Defence Equipment and Support operations?
Mr Hammond
I recognise that there may be a tension between our determination to drive more efficient procurement and some suppliers finding that to be a difficult experience, but I am sure that the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), who has responsibility for defence equipment support and technology, would be delighted to meet the hon. Lady.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kate Green Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Hammond
My hon. Friend is pointing out that there are complex capability traits to be looked at in considering the question of carrier strike—the capabilities of the two aircraft, but also the availability of carriers from which they can fly. All those things are being evaluated. When we have come to a clear conclusion, we will come back to the House.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
7. What steps his Department is taking to improve service accommodation; and if he will make a statement.
Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)
8. What steps his Department is taking to improve service accommodation; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Nick Harvey)
The Ministry of Defence is continuing to target efforts on the most pressing accommodation issues. For example, both this year and next, the MOD plans to spend around £75 million on upgrading single accommodation. Furthermore, some £44 million was allocated in financial year 2011-12, and £50.5 million in 2012-13, to upgrade service families’ accommodation to the top standard. In addition, the Government have just announced £100 million of further investment in financial year 2013-14. Around 650 service homes and 600 single accommodation units are expected to benefit from this substantial investment.
Kate Green
What steps are being taken to adapt service accommodation for servicemen or women who are injured or disabled in combat?
Nick Harvey
This is taken on a case-by-case basis. Accommodation will be adapted as necessary where a clear user is coming in and using a unit of accommodation. However, rather than trying to pre-empt or guess what will be required, we will continue to take an entirely pragmatic approach.