Ministry of Defence Future Accommodation Model

Debate between Jim Shannon and Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Trevelyan]

I recall our visit to RAF Odiham well; we were frightened nearly to death in a Chinook. Getting housing provision right—particularly behind the wire, as at Odiham—is critical to keeping those highly trained personnel. An ambitious young Army officer said to me just the other day:

“Is FAM aiming to encourage home ownership, with tools such as Help to Buy, or force personnel into home ownership? If it’s the latter, that just isn’t going to work.”

Let us turn to the FAM survey, which was apparently sent out to all serving personnel—some 190,000 men and women. First, I ask the Minister why that survey was not made mandatory, as surveys are a great deal of the time; there was a recent mandatory survey on the language skill sets of serving personnel. Anyone would think that the MOD was happy to mandate, where that suited its agenda, but that for the FAM, despite housing being a vital component of the offer for our armed forces and their families, a lower response rate better suited the MOD’s case for driving change, regardless of military families’ complex housing needs and views.

Moreover, more than 40,000 people have been excluded from answering the survey because they are deemed to be a member of a protected group, including the special forces, the military provost guard service, those based in Northern Ireland, those on full-time reserve service contracts, those under 18 and unspecified others working with those groups. Apparently the MOD will ask their opinion separately, but that has not yet happened, and those groups quite rightly feel more than a little aggrieved that their views have not yet been sought. Their families are living with uncertainty about the future of SFA, just like all the others. Will the Minister set on the record when those 40,000 or more personnel will get their chance to have their say?

Secondly, of those who received the survey, many were unable to access it because their service number, which was being used as their access token, failed to be recognised by the survey designers’ coding. Will the Minister confirm how many personnel fell through the cracks as a result of that failure? The message received by personnel was:

“If your service ID is rejected during login it means you will be unable to complete the FAM survey, because either it is not a valid armed forces service ID or you are part of a group that is not covered by the survey.”

Unsurprisingly, at that point many personnel stopped trying and simply gave up. I would find it quite insulting to be told that my service ID was not valid, and I know that many of those who put their life on the line for us all did, too. It would be helpful if the Minister clarified how many tried to access the survey but could not get in, and how many started it but failed to complete it because, as one engineer said to me,

“the whole survey just seemed like they had made up their minds that there will be change and we’ll have to lump it.”

Thirdly, many were put off from doing the survey because, as one nurse put it:

“‘This is a completely anonymous survey, please use your service number to log in’ doesn’t make me feel secure about speaking out.”

By my maths, if the Department has recorded 27,997 completed submissions, that is about a 14% return. If that is to be the basis of the evidence, we need to look closely at the questions that were and were not asked. Here we get to a key problem with the survey, and the Minister’s clarification on this point today would be helpful in reducing the sense of fait accompli that so many service families have shared with me. The survey that personnel saw on screen gave four choices; SFA remaining was not there as a fifth choice. Much later in the survey, question 24 asked:

“If SFA were available to you with the same cost as the renting package, would you want to live in SFA instead?”

That was not mandatory or part of the options offered for the FAM. As one pilot said to me,

“we were annoyed that there was no option to keep SFA, forcing us to tick another option. In a few years, when this goes ahead, they will say ‘you asked for this, look at the survey results’”.

It turns out that those who failed to get past the service ID challenge, but then nagged the team running the FAM survey, eventually received an email that asked

“which of the potential new options”

for the FAM

“do you think you would go for & why? Or would you still want to live in SFA? And why?”

If we are to give any credence to future decisions taken on a housing offer that moves away from SFA, it is vital that we are clear about who replied to which questions. A rifleman asked me whether the aim of the survey was simply to justify the dismantling of SFA, and said that to claim otherwise would be a lie, as the survey would have asked wider questions if its aim was not to justify the dismantling. Perhaps the Minister can reassure that young man and the other 196,000 personnel on that point and say that data from the survey will not be used as the basis for dismantling SFA, as so few serving personnel have been asked whether SFA is a model that they would like continued.

The Army Families Federation’s “Big Survey” report on the future of military housing highlights the critical importance of SFA in the offer; only 22% of those surveyed said that they would definitely remain in the Army if SFA was reduced and a rental allowance was offered in its place. How much has the MOD paid to Deloitte to create and manage the survey? Did Deloitte or the MOD design the impractical proposed solutions, which bear little relation to how most of the military family actually live? Will the Minister confirm whether any working group with representatives from family federations, service personnel, spouses from all ranks, SSAFA, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation and industry experts was set up? Is FAM and its four options—single living accommodation without family; renting near work; owning near work; or owning away from work, and therefore renting too—what such a broad group would have come up with?

As one naval wife said to me:

“Filling out the survey just feels like MOD justifying its forced changes and we are some part of sanctioning that. That’s why I haven’t filled it out”.

Although our Navy personnel are more likely to own their own home than those from the other services, because they are away from their families for six to nine months at a time, even the Naval Families Federation survey on FAM indicated clearly that more than 50% would prefer to live in SFA than receive a rental allowance.

An RAF wife who has moved her family seven times in 15 years highlighted just why the flexibility of SFA is so important to retention:

“Many occasions we have been posted with less than a month to move. With having to look for work, schools and everything else they want to put the pressure on me to look for a home? We don’t know the area and rely heavily on the knowledge that a quarter is in a good position with community support from other service families. The new FAM will isolate us all from that network, as well as putting strain on our family life. Seems as though the armed forces are losing the one thing that appealed to families and that was that they would look after us.”

The RAF Families Federation survey on FAM supports that family’s view, with 95% of those surveyed saying that being able to move with the serving person and live together as a family is important, and 63% highlighting the value of the accommodation being sourced and provided by their employer.

Another part of the jigsaw is the question of the footprint strategy that the MOD will publish shortly. Part of the DIO’s remit was to reduce the built footprint of MOD assets by 30% by 2020. That is 30% of all property by square footage. Although the SFA portfolio was sold off to Annington Homes back in 1996, the leaseback arrangement set in place means that the DIO keeps all the maintenance and improvement responsibility for as long as it keeps these properties on its books. The MOD negotiated with Annington Homes a 58% rent discount on all the properties, which will come to an end in 2021.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon]

Just very quickly.

[Mrs Trevelyan]

Go on then, as fast as you like.

[Jim Shannon]

I asked to intervene because I am concerned that in Northern Ireland the MOD might be demolishing some of its houses in Ballykinler. The hon. Lady is being very constructive in addressing the issue; we need to see the same in Northern Ireland. Instead of demolition, there should be retention for the future.

[Mrs Trevelyan]

We are looking at the issue in Northern Ireland as well.

Will the Minister give us details of any negotiations that have started with Annington Homes on a new rental framework, which would ensure that a continued level of subsidised rents could be provided to military families? My concern is that the MOD intends to hand back the bulk of the homes, and then allow Annington to rent them to service families on a private rental market arrangement, whether behind the wire or not. That would meet the 30% reduction target, but would no doubt do nothing to reduce the overall costs of subsidising housing—that is, if the MOD actually intends to price the FAM offer at a level that families find acceptable, and that allows them to choose to remain in the armed forces.

I hope that the Minister can persuade me that I am wrong, but my deep concern is that the DIO was set a financial rationalisation target without any reference to the retention risk to our human capital, and that no one in the MOD is balancing out the potential financial savings of bringing in FAM with losing the security and support of SFA. In my opinion, and that of many of our leading military leaders, our armed forces personnel are working at unsustainable levels of undermanning. If we reduce SFA—with its security, safety and community for families, and with the practicalities it offers, despite the shortcomings of the present maintenance contracts for short notice postings and so on—we risk losing many experienced personnel to the private sector, and we open up a long-term retention problem, thereby reducing the effectiveness, flexibility and world-renowned reputation of the British military.

Armed Forces Covenant Annual Report

Debate between Jim Shannon and Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Thursday 7th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Armed Forces Covenant Annual Report 2015.

I thank you, Mr Hanson, and the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the opportunity to hold this debate today. The armed forces military covenant report published in December by the Ministry of Defence is the fourth such document, and together the reports tell a story of growing efforts to meet the military covenant. I was surprised to discover that although four annual reports have now been presented to Parliament, none of them has been the subject of a parliamentary debate. This is therefore a wonderful opportunity for parliamentarians to reflect on the progress being made by Departments, devolved Administrations, local service providers and organisations in the commercial as well as the voluntary sector to meet the covenant’s pledge.

The term “military covenant” was coined in 2000 in an MOD booklet called “Soldiering—The Military Covenant”. It aimed to highlight the mutual obligations between our nation and its armed forces following years of decline in that relationship. Although the term “covenant” seems to imply some form of legal guarantee or contract, it is not enshrined in law. For more than 400 years, though, the state has recognised having some obligation towards its armed forces, with Queen Elizabeth I, for instance, providing by statute in 1593 a weekly parish tax to support disabled Army veterans returning to their homes. With British troops engaged in so many difficult military campaigns and new types of warfare over the last 20 years, our armed forces leaders, with a particularly strong voice from General Lord Dannatt, called on the nation to re-engage with its obligation to our soldiers, sailors and airmen. They all have to swear an oath of loyalty to their Queen and country when they join up, and the military covenant is or should be the nation’s reply to them for their commitment and sacrifice.

A series of legal judgments in the early 2000s led my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, while still in opposition, to set up the military covenant commission. Led by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), its report led to the coalition Government in 2011 deciding that the military covenant should be covered and monitored through provision of an annual report to Parliament. That decision was enshrined in the Armed Forces Act 2011.

I am not from a military family—well, not in recent times. My French great-great-uncle was killed in the opening weeks of world war one by German fire as he acted as a lookout for the French army on the Alsace-Lorraine front.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady mentions the first world war. Does she agree that given that 2016 is the centenary of the battle of the Somme, equality for Northern Ireland service personnel would be very fitting and is long overdue? It would be recognition that every person who serves in the British Army, within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, deserves the same opportunities under the covenant; we should have that in Northern Ireland as well.

[Mrs Trevelyan]

I thank my colleague for his intervention. I agree wholeheartedly and hope very much that in the months and years ahead we will be able to achieve that across the UK, including in Northern Ireland.

In world war one, my relation was acting as a lookout for the French army and he was sent up a church tower because he had great eyesight, but he was immediately spotted by German troops because he was wearing a very bright, shiny uniform—you have to wonder. That story has always stuck in my mind; I was first told it when I was four years old. The reality is that if all efforts at diplomacy have failed and war breaks out, we ask our young men, and now our young women too, to go into harm’s way to protect us, our country, our values, our families and our way of life. We ask our armed forces to defend their nation without regard to their own safety, and I am continually in awe of every one of those people who choose a military career.

I am involved in many ways as a campaigner, and now as the local MP in north Northumberland, with serving military personnel, their families and veterans of all ages, for whom the covenant’s pledge has not always been a reality. I am acutely conscious of the fact that although many citizens agree with the covenant’s ideals and direction, far too many are not really aware of it and do not consider how they can make it a reality in their working lives or how their local community might be able to support the needs of military people and their loved ones. I am also aware that many of our serving and veteran personnel are not fully apprised of the commitment that the covenant gives to them and their families.

The Government’s commitment to all who serve and have served in our armed forces is clear: they and their families should face no disadvantage compared with other citizens in the provision of public and commercial services. Special consideration is appropriate, especially for those who have given most, such as the injured and the bereaved. The covenant is clear about the areas in which it should apply. It covers healthcare, education, housing, deployment matters, family life, benefits and tax impacts, the responsibility of care, particularly during defence policy change periods, voting rights and support in transition and in life after service. It covers so many aspects of personnel’s lives, and every year since 2011 we have seen new projects and support being built to meet our covenant commitment and reported by the MOD to Parliament.