Andrew Gwynne
Main Page: Andrew Gwynne (Labour - Denton and Reddish)Department Debates - View all Andrew Gwynne's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(10 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hammond
That is precisely the purpose of the assessment phase: to explore the boundaries of how far we can take a wholly public sector DE&S-plus model as a benchmark against which we can score the bids we receive for the alternative GoCo proposal.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
15. What support his Department provides for veterans’ travel.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr Mark Francois)
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.
Andrew Gwynne
I am sure the whole House supports the need to do more to give our armed services personnel and veterans the ability to travel. It is commonplace in America for US personnel to get priority boarding at their airports. Would the Minister support a similar scheme here and encourage British airlines to offer Her Majesty’s armed services personnel priority boarding rights in British airports?
Mr Francois
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.