Armed Forces Bill

Yes, quite right. We all welcome the good work of the Royal British Legion. The Bill is important for many reasons. I am pleased that the need to bolster the military covenant is recognised. For some years, I have campaigned for widespread recognition of the welfare needs of veterans of the armed forces. The Bill makes integral amendments to the way in which our armed forces function, especially in disciplinary matters. I will focus on veterans' welfare, which is principally the concern of clause 2, and outline some suggestions on how that clause can be improved. If I have time, I shall speak briefly about clauses 9 to 11, which concentrate on preliminary testing for alcohol and drugs in the forces. The Bill marks a significant breakthrough in the championing of veterans' rights. For several years, I have worked to raise awareness in this place and beyond of the ordeal suffered by many vulnerable members of the armed forces after they are discharged. I published a paper in January 2010 that recommended increasing the support available to veterans of the armed forces. I currently have the privilege of sitting on an inquiry panel commissioned by the Howard League for Penal Reform, which aims to uncover why a high percentage of veterans enter the penal system. The inquiry is chaired by Sir John Nutting QC, and will make recommendations to Government later this year on how to prevent further offending and to make improvements. I chair a parliamentary group that comprises representatives of the justice trade unions, relevant third sector organisations, parliamentarians and concerned individuals, which looks into the problem of veterans in prison. That group will publish a list of recommendations on tackling this mounting problem in the first quarter of this year. I will give voice to a number of its recommendations this evening. The reasons why veterans are over-represented in the criminal justice system are complex, but the root cause is often the social estrangement that is experienced by susceptible veterans when they lose the ready-made support network of their Army colleagues. Clause 2 unlocks the opportunity to discuss how we can improve the way in which public services are administered to veterans. As I shall argue, improving and streamlining the way in which such services are offered to veterans could drastically reduce the number who fall into difficulties later in life. As is clear, work is being done to promote this issue. The fact that we are discussing a Bill on the Floor of the House that touches on this concern confirms the traction that it has gained over the past 12 or 18 months. I was gladdened to see that the matter had gripped the political mindset enough to become a major manifesto issue for all parties at the last general election. Although forces charities such as Help for Heroes have generated massive public support, the ordeal faced by some veterans was not widely acknowledged until relatively recently. That ordeal deserves our attention. It is perhaps easy for us to disregard how difficult the transition must be from life in a combat zone to civvy street. Although the training received by personnel during military service allows the majority to readjust to life after discharge, a growing but unspecified number drop out of the welfare system altogether, and become homeless, disfranchised from mainstream services and socially isolated. Education, further training and employment are difficult to access, and such opportunities are not automatically advertised to personnel on leaving the forces. Veterans are over-represented in NHS emergency waiting rooms and in road traffic accidents. I do not know whether hon. Members are aware that veterans who have returned recently from a theatre of conflict are 50% more likely to be killed in a road traffic accident than ordinary members of the public. That point bolsters the need for a careful examination of this matter. As a result of what can be an acute social rupture, an alarming number of such young men and women fall foul of the criminal justice system. That is often prompted by substance misuse and mental health problems. I was first alerted to this problem when I appeared as a barrister in the Crown courts of north Wales, Cheshire and beyond. In the space of about a fortnight, I saw a huge number of young people newly returned from Afghanistan who had committed very serious offences, for which there was no reasonable explanation. That made me think that something was wrong in the system, because those people were as rational as any of us, but my God, the things that they had been through recently would have rocked any of us. On 5 March 2008, I tabled a written question to the then Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice, asking what percentage of the inmates in prison in England and Wales had served in either of the Gulf conflicts. I was informed that such information was ““not collected centrally””. I have since found out that at no point is it compulsory to ask someone who is accused of a crime whether they have a service history. That practice must surely be rectified, and some police forces are collecting that information.