Families of Armed Forces Personnel: Support

What steps his Department is taking to support the families of armed forces personnel.

Service families are an integral part of the armed forces community. We want people in the armed forces to be able to sustain a family, but also a military career. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) for his critically important report “Living in our Shoes”. We look forward to taking the recommendations from his report into our armed forces families strategy as part of our efforts to ensure that defence people can sustain family life.

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. I think the Armed Forces Bill will be very helpful in ensuring that families receive the same level of consideration from public bodies wherever they live, but may I focus on education? Moving schools when moving postings is a regular part of service family life that can have a disruptive impact on a child’s education. As my hon. Friend takes forward his work, can I ask him to place a particular focus on education for service families’ children?

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. I am pleased to report that there are now changes to the school admissions code in place that will allow flexibility. This will allow service children to join a school during the school year, and I am delighted to be able to report that. As I have already mentioned, that, in tandem with wraparound childcare and the future accommodation model, demonstrates that we are committed to our forces families.