Military Covenant

John Glen Excerpts

Wednesday 21st November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his kind words. I have to report to the House that there has been a leak, because my speech says, “This has been an excellent example of practical co-operation between the Ministry of Defence, the national museum of the Royal Navy and the Northern Ireland Executive.” He also rightly mentioned the friends group. In all seriousness, this is one where everybody got it right. It is proper and appropriate that HMS Caroline remains in Belfast, and I hope to be able to visit her at some point in the near future. So I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his kind words and the spirit in which they are offered.

In more recent times, the contribution of those who served alongside the Army in the former Royal Ulster Constabulary has also been remembered, most notably through the awarding of the George Cross to the RUC. I also pay tribute today to the work of the Royal Ulster Constabulary George Cross Foundation and the Northern Ireland Police Fund, which look after former members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and current members of the Police Service of Northern Ireland so well. In the same vein, I should like to pay tribute to the veterans of the Royal Irish Regiment and its home service battalions and the Ulster Defence Regiment. It is for them that the bespoke Royal Irish aftercare service, to which the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson) rightly paid tribute, is in operation. Funded by the Ministry of Defence, that important organisation has supported a client population of up to 63,000 veterans in the delivery of psychiatry, physiotherapy and welfare casework. I will undertake to look at his suggestion as to whether that service could be extended to other members of the armed forces in Northern Ireland, but I must enter the obvious caveat that that is subject to resource constraints. So we will look at that, but standing at the Dispatch Box this evening I cannot guarantee a positive outcome.

Such proud traditions of service continue right up to the present generation. I, too, should mention the sad death of Corporal Channing Day, who grew up in Northern Ireland and joined the Army in 2005. Corporal Day, who served with 3 Medical Regiment, died alongside Corporal David O’Connor, of 40 Commando, after being injured on patrol in Helmand province on Wednesday 24 October. The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) had the privilege of attending her funeral service, which was said to have been the largest that the small church had seen in some 400 years. I pay tribute to Corporal Day and Corporal O’Connor this evening, and in doing so I echo a number of the tributes that have been paid by the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues tonight.

In terms of current operations, I should also like to mention the personnel of 204 field hospital, who are shortly about to deploy from Northern Ireland to Afghanistan to serve as part of the role 3 hospital at Camp Bastion and to provide other medical services to troops in theatre. I recently had the privilege of visiting Camp Bastion and the hospital, and I laid a wreath to commemorate those who had fallen in operations in Afghanistan.

I should now like to turn directly to the armed forces covenant. As the House knows, its key principles are enshrined in law in the Armed Forces Act 2011. I am proud to say that the Government published the covenant in May 2011. In essence, its principles are: that those who serve in the armed forces, whether regular or reserve, and those who have served in the past, and their families should face no disadvantage compared with other citizens in the provision of public and commercial services; and that special consideration is appropriate in some cases, especially for those who have given most, such as the injured and the bereaved. The covenant extends to the armed forces community, which is defined as serving personnel, including members of the reserve forces; veterans; and their families. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his generous tribute to the reserves as well as to the regulars.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Will the Minister take time to consider the interaction between the MOD and the Department for Work and Pensions on benefit payments and armed forces compensation scheme payments? The compensation scheme payments invalidate claimants’ eligibility for some DWP payments, which seems very wrong. Special consideration should be given in such circumstances.

[Mr Francois]

I am aware of the issue and pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his persistence on these and related matters. We had an Adjournment debate recently on a parallel issue, although not exactly the same one. I believe that we are doing what we can to try to solve the problem, but as it is quite technical, as he knows, if he wants to write to me on the specific points I would be happy to look into them and get back to him.

In common with other legislation, the provisions of the 2011 Act extend to Northern Ireland in the same way as they apply to all other parts of the United Kingdom. Those principles are important because they influence the formation of policy, but there are other sides to the covenant, too. One of those is the community covenant, which seeks to bring together local authorities and other local organisations with members of the armed forces community who live and serve in the area for which they are responsible. To date, more than 200 local authorities across the United Kingdom have signed a community covenant. I am proud to say that in Essex the other day, I signed that covenant on behalf of the Government in my own county, and some 13 local authorities signed one after the other.

We are clear that by forging such relationships the community covenant is starting to have a positive impact on the lives of the armed forces community and on the wider community. For example, in Gateshead the council is making arrangements, among many other measures, to explore opportunities for serving personnel and veterans to access leisure facilities to support their overall health and well-being needs, including their mental health needs.

In Oxfordshire, the county council, by working with the NHS and 145 (South) Brigade, has been able to help resolve problems of access to GPs and dentists for the families of serving personnel. Dental services have also been extended in some areas to address a shortfall and the referral process for primary care services has been made easier.

Also in Oxfordshire, the local authority has arranged for school places to be allocated to service families in advance of the family’s actual move, based on a letter from the relevant unit. That has been a long-standing problem when military units move from one location to another, but I understand that the Department for Education is now encouraging other local authorities to take a similar approach to try to alleviate the difficulty.

In the past, members of the armed forces could also be pushed towards the bottom of local housing waiting lists, as the need to move from base to base often meant they could not prove a local connection to the area in which they wanted to live, but, thanks again to the armed forces covenant, many local councils will now ensure that due consideration is given to service families so that they are not at a disadvantage when applying for a council home. That extends to serving people, families and, importantly, veterans.

One of the chief benefits of the community covenant is quite simply that people are now talking to one another in a way that they never did before. To some degree, we are doing that in the House this evening. Local authorities, which deliver many of the vital services at ground level, are being made aware of the needs of the armed forces community, which they might not have considered fully in the past. At the same time, it is fair to say that service personnel and their families are becoming increasingly aware of what life is like beyond the wire and how they can help their local communities.

As the House knows, the 2011 Act also places an obligation on the Secretary of State for Defence to report annually to Parliament on the state of the armed forces covenant. The first of these statutory reports will be published before Christmas and will set out in more detail what the Government are doing to deliver in the key areas that the covenant covers.

I now want to speak about extending the armed forces covenant to Northern Ireland. Hon. and right hon. Members from Northern Ireland will be aware that many of the main areas covered by the covenant, such as housing, health and education, all lie within the devolved field and that these services are provided by Northern Ireland Departments, which are answerable to Northern Ireland Ministers in the Executive, not all of whom currently support this agenda, as the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley intimated.

Northern Ireland Departments and other public authorities also need to give due regard to the statutory obligations placed on them by section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act to promote equality of opportunity in respect of all the functions they perform and the services they provide. Herein, as it were, lies the dilemma. It is not for Westminster to tell Stormont what it must do in respect of the covenant—it is for Northern Ireland Executive Ministers to debate and negotiate and agree how the armed forces covenant should apply in Northern Ireland to the extent permitted by law.

There are some who say that section 75 is a hindrance and should be amended to somehow allow the covenant to be applied. Of course we want to see the armed forces covenant principles applied right across the United Kingdom. However, if the Northern Ireland Executive decide not to proceed with the covenant, that does not justify amending section 75, which is one of the cornerstones in the architecture of the Belfast agreement that was endorsed in referendums in both Northern Ireland and the Republic.

I think it is fair to say that Northern Ireland has made great progress since the dark days of the troubles. This month we saw the Taoiseach lay a wreath at the war memorial in Enniskillen following on from the historic wreath layings—both at the garden of remembrance in Dublin and at the Irish war memorial at Islandbridge—by Her Majesty the Queen during her highly successful state visit last year. That, of course, built on the historic joint unveiling in 1998 by Her Majesty and the President of Ireland of the Messines peace tower on the site of the battle of Messines Ridge, to remember the Irish dead of the first world war—also mentioned earlier this evening—and to inaugurate the Island of Ireland peace park.

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[Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop), who has reminded me of something that happened eight or nine years ago when I was fishing in Robin Hood’s bay with my son, who was about 12 at the time. We were surrounded by a gang of lads who were watching us and what we were doing. I turned to them and said, “I imagine you’re joining the Army, aren’t you?” They said, “Not just that, but the Green Howards.” It is a wonderful regiment with wonderful recruits. What a curious decision to disband it.

I pay tribute to the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson) and to the service of Ulstermen and, indeed, men and women from the Republic in the armed forces. With your indulgence, Mr Speaker, I should like to add some comments of my own about the application of the military covenant in my own constituency of Newark.

I will not bore the House, but I spent a lot of time in Northern Ireland. I was a fighting soldier and spent my time in difficult areas. We were not thanked by the individuals there—on the contrary, they shot at us—but when we were outside of those areas, I was struck by the people of Ulster’s warmth and their admiration for and understanding of the military culture. That is not unique, but it is rare in England. I was terribly taken with it. I think that, given the pressures of operations such as those that took place in Iraq and those that continue on the Pakistan border in Afghanistan, we forget today the sorts of pressures that not just my colleagues in the regular Army, but Territorial soldiers and officers and men in the Ulster Defence Regiment, the Royal Irish Regiment, the Royal Ulster Constabulary reserves, the RUC and now the Police Service of Northern Ireland have faced and continue to face on a day-to-day basis.

Clearly, war is difficult. War is hell. It was all very well for a regular soldier such as I to have carried out a six-month or two-year tour in Northern Ireland and to then go home to sunny England, and it is all very well to serve in Afghanistan today—which is clearly immeasurably worse than anything I experienced—but we did not have to face the same sorts of pressures as these brave men and women who often lived cheek by jowl with individuals who were sympathetic to our enemies and who were, therefore, enemies themselves. It was hellishly difficult for those individuals. It imposed a toll and it continues to impose a toll, as the previous debate showed, on those who live in dangerous and difficult circumstances. The toll is not necessarily a physical one, but it is certainly a mental one.

Let us therefore make sure that the brave men and women who have served the Crown in Northern Ireland are looked after properly when their service finishes, and I mean not just soldiers, sailors and airmen, but police officers, prison officers and the whole gamut of those who are proud to wear the Crown on their uniforms.

I am amazed and dismayed by my right hon. Friend’s comments that respite care cannot—I think I am right in saying this—be carried out in Northern Ireland at the moment. That is a terribly important point. The Minister, who understands military affairs extremely well, knows that individuals who have served wish to recover among their comrades, if at all possible. With respect, I say to the Minister that if anything can be done for those brave men and women, I would be most grateful. I utterly endorse my right hon. Friend’s comments.

I also admire the conduct of Her Majesty the Queen. I admire it in every way, but particularly admired it during her recent visit to the Republic and what she did there. She laid wreaths not just for our own men who fell as a result of the difficulties in the Republic, but for those many men who fought for His Majesty at the time, as exemplified by the Royal Dublin Fusiliers memorial in Dublin, which is hideously known as “traitors gate” by some and admired by others. Her Majesty showed no prejudice in the way that she respected those dead. I hope that the Taoiseach will accept my invitation, at some stage, to visit the graves of the Sherwood Forester soldiers, from the Sherwood Forester Brigade, who were killed in Dublin in 1916 and who now rest in their native soil of Nottinghamshire. I do not know what the reaction will be; so far, it has not been positive, but in the future I hope it will be.

Moving on to the application of the military covenant in my constituency, I hope that I can suggest one or two things that the Minister might find useful. In 2007, a young man, Lance Corporal Davis of 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, lost a leg on operations in Afghanistan. I knew his family slightly, but did not know him at all. I went to see him at hospital in Selly Oak. We thought that he was going to die. Two of his colleagues in the team with which he was patrolling did die. Luckily, Lance Corporal Davis recovered.

That presented a problem in Newark, however. His father was not only having to take two children to school, but having to hold down his job as a lorry driver while his wife lived in Birmingham with their dangerously ill son, whom they thought was going to die. The road haulage company for which Mr Davis worked—which will remain nameless—was desperately unsympathetic to him. He was told that he had used his holiday and his leave, that he had no further opportunity to take time off work and that the mere loss of his son’s leg was no excuse.

In one of the very few moments as a Member of Parliament when I have known that I was 100% right and have operated in a completely uncompromising fashion, I rang the managing director of the firm and asked whether he would like some publicity. He said that he would love some. I asked whether he would like to be on the front of every national daily the following day. He said that he would love to be. I said, “Well, not for the reasons that I am about to outline.” It worked a treat. Mr Davis was helped and he got his time off. He was able to look after not only his other children but his hero son.

That case led us to establish the Newark Patriotic Fund. In the few years since, we have dealt with more than 12 amputees and a number of men and women who have presented—I think that is the word—with all sorts of mental difficulties. The earliest case with which we are dealing is a survivor from the Korean war. I am not here just to plug the Newark Patriotic Fund, although I will mention Mrs Susan Gray and Mrs Karen Grayson, who work tirelessly for it. I commend what it does to other Members. It raises large sums of money, principally to help the families.

There is a gap in the way that the Government honour the military covenant. It is a gap not of commission but of omission, and the situation is evolving. Some useful precedents were set after the first and second world wars in how we deal with such men. I hope that we will not have many more people with traumatic injuries coming back to the Newark constituency, but we might have. However, we will definitely have a wave of mental illness that presents itself over the next decade or so. We have to look after those men—they are mainly men, although there are one or two women.

I have a suggestion for the Minister, although I appreciate that it would involve expense. I believe that part of the military covenant should be that every soldier, sailor and airman, whether regular, reservist, territorial or whatever they are called in the future, should be offered medical screening on discharge. The medical services could advise on what the interval should be, but I would have thought that it should be about every three years. The individual should be looked at and given a chance to talk. Most people who are discharged are fit, but this would be an extremely useful way to monitor those who are concealing injuries, those who have injuries they do not know about and those who are in the developing stages of mental illness. It would not be cheap or easy to administer, but it might just prevent problems that could be nipped in the bud.

To give an example, I was seen by a doctor in Lincoln about five years ago because of the injuries that I received in Northern Ireland. She said that I not only had the problems with my wounds, but extensive frostbite in my right foot. She said that unless that was put right, I would develop a problem in the future. That is a simple illustration, but unless I had seen that doctor I would not have known about it. If no one had said to me, “Look Colonel Mercer, behave yourself. Own up to what has happened and we can help you.”, life would have been more difficult for me.

[John Glen]

Given my hon. Friend’s experience, is this more about somebody’s willingness to engage and open up about difficult mental health issues than the availability of screening and services? A physical injury is one thing, but is the real issue the barrier of people not wanting to own up to the fact that there might be a problem?

[Patrick Mercer]

I am grateful for that helpful intervention. My hon. Friend is absolutely right and he will probably face many cases in his constituency that are similar to those in Newark.

In another plug for the Newark Patriotic Fund—forgive me, Mr Speaker—one thing we find is that those who are without an arm or leg have probably come to terms with that. The groundswell of support and popularity—I do not quite use the word “glamour”, but I hope the House will understand what I mean—helps those individuals to come to terms with their situation. Those who are nursing, hiding or developing mental health problems find that much more difficult to talk about, but we find at our so-called drop-in centre that people are able and willing to talk in the company of other brave men and women who are empathetic and sympathetic.