It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) and an honour to speak in this debate in Armed Forces Week and on Reserves Day, especially because I am proud to have the Royal Marine Reserve headquarters in my constituency. Ahead of Reserves Day, I visited them last week and was able to thank them personally for their service. They put in a hard day’s work all over the country, then travel to their reservist centre to train for the Royal Marines, no less. They offer amazing service to our country, and I am very proud of them and grateful to them.
There is much to welcome in the Bill, which will support our armed forces personnel and their families. I echo the words of colleagues on both sides of the House in recognising and celebrating the work of our armed forces and their ongoing efforts to make our
country and the world safer. We cannot put a price on safety. Only when our own safety is compromised, or when we do not have it, do we realise how important it is to us every day. I worked with aid workers in Bosnia during the war, and I have seen the difference it can make to a whole community not to have that safety, so I value it very much.
Our armed forces have had to adapt all their work and all their training at speed during the pandemic, and I commend them for that. I am also thankful for the work they have done to support frontline efforts to tackle the pandemic. They really have stepped up when we have asked them to. It is for this reason that, while I support the aims of the Bill, I think it is a huge missed opportunity and could have gone further. It needs to go further if it is to deliver real improvements to the day-to-day lives of our service personnel and veterans and their families.