Strategic Defence Review

Calum Miller Excerpts

Monday 2nd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

We are totally committed to shipbuilding in Scotland. I pay tribute to the workers in his constituency in Rosyth for their pride, professionalism and sense of purpose, and the contribution that they make to our national security.

[Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)]

The service personnel and their families at Bicester garrison, in my constituency, are victims of the scandal of military family housing to which the Secretary of State referred. The investments highlighted today are therefore welcome, but to reassure my constituents, will the Secretary of State commit that military housing will reach the decent homes standard? Will he give the date by which the defence housing strategy will be published? And will he confirm that he has accepted the recommendation in the SDR that all proceeds from housing developments on Ministry of Defence land will be reinvested in military housing?

[John Healey]

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise this long-run scandal. I am sure he will recognise that we cannot turn this round overnight. I hope he will also recognise the steps that we have already taken this year—the 36,000 military homes brought back into public control and the plans we are putting in place for the future. That allows us in this Parliament finally to put an end to the scandal that we have seen of military families being forced to live in such substandard accommodation.