Armed Forces Bill

I am grateful. Thank you. I would like to confine my remarks on this string of amendments to the narrow subject of housing and matters relating to the welfare of Army families. However, I hope that before we finish this evening the Minister will be able to assure the Committee that not a single penny will be cut from the wages of a single member of the Parachute Regiment or 16 Air Assault Brigade more widely. The last Government can take a lot of credit for things that they did. I hope that what happened previously, under the Veterans Minister and so on, will be built upon by the coalition Government. However, when it comes to the accommodation of the families of our military personnel, successive Governments have failed. The last Conservative and Labour Governments failed. When it comes to single people's accommodation, Merville barracks in Colchester is the best to be found anywhere in the country, but that only sharpens the contrast with the unacceptable housing for married families. Either Colchester garrison is unique or the accommodation there is typical of that which our military families are required to live in. What makes it worse, is that former Army housing in my constituency has rightly been modernised to a high standard through the Department for Communities and Local Government, while on the other side of the road Army families, looking out on these modern buildings, occupy what an Army wife described in a letter to the Essex County Standard on Friday as the worst in the country. That unnamed soldier's wife says:"““I have been married to a soldier for 20 years and lived throughout in services accommodation.""The married quarters in Colchester are the worst I have ever had to live in, and the system in place to rectify faults is laughable.""The direct line puts you through to a call centre in Liverpool, to talk to someone who has no idea of the conditions you live in or the stresses you endure while your husband's away. They will then expect you to take a day off work so a tradesman can turn up, and it's then a lottery as to the standard of the repair.””" The letter goes on at great length to describe the woeful inadequacies of the Defence Housing Executive. The soldier's wife says:"““We've given up complaining to the Defence Housing Executive, as all we get are curt replies, from staff who seemingly have never served or been married to a serving member. It is apparent they have never seen inside the properties.””" There is a critical suggestion that perhaps things have got worse since the Defence Housing Executive took over. We are talking here of the families of soldiers who only last week marched through the centre of Colchester in a welcome home parade and the next day had a thanksgiving and memorial service at Bury St. Edmunds cathedral. Yet we expect their families to live in accommodation that this soldier's wife described as the worst in the country. If the Government can rightly find money to modernise former Army housing to accommodate civilians, the same Government should be able to find the money to modernise housing fit for the heroes who have just returned from Helmand province. Allied to that, the armed forces covenant refers to education. I look at education in the broader sense—not just the education of serving military personnel but the education of the children of military personnel. Once the former Army houses are occupied by civilian families, the adjoining schools, the Montgomery infant and junior schools—that gives a clue to the military ethos—will be full up. There will not be room at the Army schools for the children of Army personnel. If anything, the armed forces covenant should look at the families of military personnel as well as the serving personnel.