That this House has considered the adequacy of service accommodation.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Angela, not least because that means that I will not have at least one razor-sharp intervention where I would be blushing as I try to react in this, my maiden Westminster Hall debate. I am grateful to everyone who has taken the time to be here and that both the Minister and the shadow Minister are in their places. I reassure everyone that I do not intend to speak at great length because I am aware that colleagues also wish to contribute. I want to ensure that everyone gets an opportunity to speak on the issue of how service accommodation affects their constituents at the moment.
I begin by putting on record my heartfelt thanks to everyone who serves in our armed forces. They work tirelessly to keep our nation safe. I pay tribute to them and their families for the selfless sacrifice that they make on our behalf every day. With friends and families who serve and have served, I know all too well the pride that they take in the opportunity to serve our country and the seriousness with which they take their duties.
I am incredibly grateful to the many people in the services and their family members who have taken the time over the past few weeks and months to speak to me about forces accommodation, and to those who have taken the time to fill out the questionnaire prepared by the House before this debate. I know that this is not always an issue that feels particularly comfortable or easy to speak up on, and that it is not always felt to be the done thing. But it is so important that everyone in this place understands the issues that people in service accommodation face so that those can adequately be tackled. I am grateful to everyone who has taken the time to assist in preparing for today’s debate.
I am incredibly proud to stand here representing Mid Bedfordshire, which is home to not one but two forces bases, at Chicksands and Henlow. A great pleasure of my role has been getting out and about to speak to members of the armed forces community across Mid Bedfordshire—to their families, their friends and even existing servicemen. Regardless of whom I speak to, one thing is clear: the resolute pride they all feel in the opportunity to serve and their absolute commitment to doing their utmost to keep us all safe at home and abroad.
I think colleagues will share my sentiment that anyone who makes the decision to put on a uniform and step forward to serve should expect to live in dignity in decent housing, where they and their family can feel truly at home. For the families of loved ones living with our servicemen and women, moving into service accommodation is not simply a case of stepping into a new building. It often means upping sticks, moving to a completely unfamiliar place, sending children to new schools and getting their whole family used to a completely new environment. For service personnel, it can be so much more. Service duty can mean months spent away from home, family and friends, in tough and arduous settings that can test the physical and mental endurance of even the most resolute members of our services. After going through all that, the least we should be able to say to them and their families is that the state of their accommodation should not be a mental endurance test for them. Sadly, that is not currently the case for all of them.
My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech in his first, and hopefully not his last, Westminster Hall debate. Over the last couple of years, I have been fortunate enough to go to many different bases across the country to speak to servicemen and women. The overall concern that every single one has is the accommodation. I have seen some of that at first hand, and issues include mould and cracks in the walls. Why does he think that that main part of service life has been treated so poorly for so long?
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and for his work over many years to highlight this issue, and to speak to our servicemen to properly understand the challenges that they face in their accommodation. To me, it is clearly unacceptable to allow the situation to continue. We can all have an argument today about where we think the root cause of this issue lies. There is a fair amount of accountability to be had, but this has dragged over the last decade. I hope no one on either side of the House will feel that we can allow the situation to continue any longer. I look forward to discussing what we can all do in this House to ensure that it does not.
Few will forget the challenges we saw last winter. Service accommodation hit crisis point. Images flooded social media of decrepit flats, mould, flooding and people with water dripping through their ceiling in the midst of a freezing winter. Repairs had stagnated, and our armed forces personnel had been forced to take to social media to share their experiences, because they had lost faith that any other means of getting through was having an impact. Sadly, the few channels available to them were simply not working. They were not able to report with confidence that an issue would be tackled, or, once reported, followed up on with the desired urgency. Many had to wait hours on end on the Pinnacle helpline, if they got through at all, to be able to raise an issue. Even then, they could not have confidence that it would be managed with the urgency required.
It was good for all of us across the House to hear an acknowledgement from the Government that standards have fallen below what should be expected for our brave service personnel and their families, and a commitment from the then Defence Minister, the right hon. and learned Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk). He said that it was “unconscionable” that people were moving into properties with mould, and that going forward, there would be a
Having listened to my hon. Friend on the doorsteps in Mid Bedfordshire, I acknowledge that he is standing up for the issues that were raised now he is in this place. Does he agree that the litany of repairs and problems with housing have had a significant detrimental impact on service personnel’s morale? I am talking about not only those who have to live in that accommodation, but those serving elsewhere whose families remain in houses that are just not fit to live in.
My hon. Friend makes an incredibly powerful point. I know that she has been resolute in standing up not just for our service personnel, but for veterans in her previous job on the shadow Front Bench, and that she will continue to advocate for them passionately in her new roles. It is so important that we take this issue seriously. From speaking to servicemen and women and hearing from them through the survey that was carried out, it is so clear that allowing the issue to persist has a detrimental impact on their morale, their retention, and their sense of worth and value—something that should never be called into question for those who are putting themselves on the line on our behalf.
It is shameful that we have got to this point. Many will have seen the quotes from the survey that was carried out before today’s debate, and they should chill all of us. One mother reporting issues in her home told a story about her two-year-old daughter, who had
“been suffering from repeated chest infections and coughs”.
They had been getting worse month after month, exacerbated by the persistent, untreated mould in their home. Another person reported that the mould had affected their children’s health to the point where one of them had to be hospitalised with breathing difficulties. Those situations should shame us all. Living with a loved one in active service is tough enough. Our service families should not have the added anxiety of having to worry about the health impact that their home could be having on them and their loved ones.
Another key issue raised throughout the survey and throughout my conversations has been the impact of inadequate accommodation on morale, as my hon. Friend pointed out. It has driven personnel to despair and, in some cases, out of the service they had loved to serve. Stephen, who has served for 20 years in the armed forces, reported in the survey a “consistent” and constant
I thank my hon. Friend for kindly giving way a second time. The stats speak for themselves. Roughly one in three of our armed forces personnel are living in the poorest rated military accommodation, with a staggering 1,378 living in rental accommodation so poor that they do not have to pay any rent. That is a damning indictment of what is happening for, as my hon. Friend described it, our brave soldiers doing the right thing for our country. Does he not agree that we have been speaking about this for far too long, and that we need to change and address it now?
I know my hon. Friend has been campaigning passionately on that issue, and I wholeheartedly agree. I will touch on the damning statistics shortly. The brutal sadness is that in my Mid Bedfordshire constituency, the figures are even worse. It is clearly time for words to come to an end and for action to follow. I hope that, in response to my questions at the end of my speech, the Minister will clarify when action will be forthcoming.
Stephen and his family have been pushed to the limit and they want to know why they are being penalised. Service personnel are expected to live and nurture their families in substandard accommodation, and to continue serving at a time when they do not feel that they are being valued. Accommodation should be a safe haven for service personnel and their families to rest, recuperate and recharge, but as Stephen and many others have reported, that is simply not the reality at the moment.
I wish to share one further heartbreaking story from a serving soldier who contacted my office. He asked to remain anonymous. On one occasion while staying in single living accommodation, he had to put up with no running water for a number of weeks. Throughout that period, he and his regiment were expected to maintain a level of hygiene as part of the exercises, but that was impossible without running water. Ultimately, they had no choice but to fork out for bottled water out of their own pockets and to heat it up to bathe. We are surely better than that indignity.
The soldier told my office of the broken nights he spent in a sleeping bag due to a broken boiler in the accommodation and a lack of heating in the bedrooms. I am sad to say that he spoke about the persistent experience of human faeces rising up time and again in an officer’s sink. I am sure we would all agree that this is a disgrace. It is time that we collectively renew our efforts to stamp out these problems once and for all.
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dame Angela. I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) not only on his election, but on his first Westminster Hall debate. This is a really important topic and he has outlined the issues in an enormous amount of detail and very eloquently, and we are all grateful to him for that.
I have been campaigning on the issue of military accommodation since this time last year. North Shropshire is proud to be home to RAF Shawbury and the Clive barracks at Tern Hill. It came to light last year that there were two issues, which I will deal with in turn. The first is around the service maintenance contract—the way in which problems reported by families and individuals living in the accommodation are dealt with. The second is about the overall quality of the stock and how that can be addressed, because I think I am right in saying that we are struggling to maintain adequately a poor and deteriorating stock of housing.
I will start with the service maintenance contract. This time last year, it became evident that there was a huge problem with the recently renegotiated and reimplemented service maintenance contract. Initially, when a family had a problem with their accommodation, they contacted a single contractor—I think at the time that was Amey—which was responsible for handling that call and sending out a contractor to fix the problem, whether that was crows falling down the chimney, a broken boiler or whatever the problem might have been.
The renegotiated contract introduced two steps into that process. First, the service family contracted a company called Pinnacle, which then handed off that work to either Amey, in my area, or—I am afraid that, off the top of my head, I do not recall the other company that was involved in other parts of the country. Clearly, when data has to be handed off between two companies, it introduces a level of risk. Although there is no reason why that should not be done, it caused problems in that instance.
It is indeed a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Angela.
I thank the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) for setting the scene so very well in this, his first debate—the first of many, I am sure. And what a good choice for a first debate—well done. The fact that we are all here to contribute shows our concern for service personnel.
I am very pleased to see the Minister in his place. He has come straight from the main Chamber, as indeed have I and others. We look forward to a positive response. I also look forward to the contributions from the Scottish National party spokesperson, the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan), and especially from the Labour party shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard).
I declare an interest as a former soldier, Dame Angela. I served in the Ulster Defence Regiment for three years in an anti-terrorist role—not that I ever had the chance to pull the trigger of the gun. Maybe that was a good thing, although I did think about a few people who would have been better put in jail. In the Territorial Army, I served with the Royal Artillery for 11 and a half years. That was before the east-west border came down, so it was a long time ago, but it has given me an interest in service matters, and particularly accommodation.
The issue is important not only to me, but to many of my constituents who currently face poor accommodation choices. Through the armed forces parliamentary scheme, I had a chance to visit some of the accommodation overseas and on the mainland here in the UK. Cases brought to our attention clearly illustrated that while the accommodation in some cases was wonderful—marvellous—in others it was clearly not up to standard. That had an impact upon me. In 2016, the Public Accounts Committee said service families
Like the hon. Gentleman, I served, in my case as an infantry officer in the Territorial Army during the cold war. He knows that the House of Commons Defence Committee is in the middle of an inquiry into service accommodation. The Minister is to give evidence to us in the new year, and I will not pre-empt that, but I make one point: for over a year, a number of service families were living in quarters that did not have gas and/or electricity safety certificates. We put those people at risk. Does he agree that that is completely unacceptable?
Yes, and it is also disrespectful that there should be any safety issues. The Minister is listening, of course, and will undoubtedly take that on board. When someone serves their country in uniform, honourably and to the best of their ability, we have to look after them. That is what the hon. Gentleman is saying, that is what I think, and that is what we all think. Their service means something.
We can do much more collectively as a nation to support our ex-service personnel in terms of their housing. We cannot expect them to integrate back into society with no assistance, and the first part of that is ensuring that they have a safe and warm place to call home. That is exactly what the right hon. Gentleman is talking about. It is estimated that 4% of the homeless population are ex-service personnel. I think we all have a heart for them. I am convinced that everybody here has a heart for them and believes we must do our best for them.We are asking for a 100% response. To give the House some idea of the numbers, in 2019, the ex-service personnel homeless population was some 12,000. Although in recent years the figures have, I believe, been decreasing, much work is still to be done.
The Minister always tries to respond positively, and I know that he will do so today; I ask him to engage with the devolved nations, particularly Northern Ireland. I have highlighted a discrepancy that greatly annoys me and other elected representatives. We have people from both sides of the divide who serve in uniform; whether they are from a nationalist or a Unionist community, when they are in uniform, they serve King and country. That illustrates very clearly where we are.
What other steps can be taken to tackle this problem nationwide? I ask for the Minister’s direct involvement in relation to Northern Ireland. I know that, as he said in the Chamber today, he was over in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) on Armed Forces Day. I think that he has a heart for Northern Ireland. I ask him to let his heartstrings be tugged in relation to Northern Ireland and to ensure that we can participate—indeed, have the same system as service personnel have here for accommodation. Let us get it right for them.
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dame Angela. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern). He gave an excellent speech and asked some really good questions—some really inquiring, curious questions—of the Minister, and we look forward to hearing the answers.
I shall present two anecdotes and make one comment about some of the effects of what we have talked about today. One anecdote relates to a time during my service, and another relates to some correspondence that I have received much more recently. The hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire talked about the experiences of people who are serving in his constituency. I served at Army Training Regiment Bassingbourn in Hertfordshire, just over the county border from Bedfordshire, and I have very fond memories of the good-quality single living accommodation at ATR Bassingbourn.
Five or six years later, living with a family in service family accommodation, my experience again was a good one. On one occasion, we had water dripping through the ceiling of the family home; we rang up to try to get it solved and it was fixed within days. That was an excellent rapid turnaround time for the service family accommodation at Shrivenham when I was there in 2009.
In some ways, that made me slightly sceptical when I heard all of these stories about service family accommodation being in such a poor state, so I decided that I would have some conversations with people who are still serving to find out whether that was really the case. Somebody who I trust a great deal told me me that they had a baby last year, and they had no mould-free room in the house to put the baby in. We have to bear in mind when talking about armed forces personnel in service family accommodation that many are younger people, who are starting their family.
I was frustrated to learn over the summer that the Defence Committee’s Sub-Committee that is looking into service family accommodation will not be hearing evidence directly from service personnel. I do not know whether that has been put right since, but I read over the summer that the Defence Secretary was not permitting service personnel to give testimony directly to that Sub-Committee.
20 of 46 shown
“clear assurance from DIO that that will not happen again.”—[Official Report, 20 December 2022; Vol. 725, c. 145.]
Sadly, however, from speaking to servicemen and women in my constituency and across the country, we know that, year on year, the problems have remained: broken boilers, water pouring into homes, mould and an endless wait for basic repairs.
“erosion in the standard of family service accommodation”
over recent years.
Sadly, as those anecdotes have illuminated, and as colleagues’ testimony has shown, the issue is widespread. Across the country, more than 25,000 personnel—one in three—are living in grade 4 single living accommodation. Shockingly, the Government’s data shows that in my Mid Bedfordshire constituency, the number rises to 64% across the whole county—about double the national average. That cannot be good enough and it should bring shame on all of us. It certainly brings shame on me, as an MP entrusted to represent those servicemen and women, that too many of them—nearly two thirds—are currently residing in the worst-graded accommodation. We cannot allow that to continue. I would be grateful if the Minister outlined his plans to address it and set out how many service personnel in Bedfordshire he expects to remain in grade 4 accommodation by the end of next year.
Further analysis published last week found that mouldy military homes have increased by nearly 40%. After everything that happened last year, and the pledge to prepare for winter this year, the situation is sadly still getting worse. According to Ministry of Defence estimates, about 700 families promised mitigation work will not benefit from its completion until April 2024 at the earliest. That is far too long to wait, given the issues that we are talking about.
The standard of service accommodation has blatantly been neglected for too long, and it is sadly beginning to decline even further for some of the families I have been speaking to. Not enough has changed over the last 13 years. I would be grateful if the Minister gave us an update on the measures that he and his Department will take to ensure that contractors finally fulfil their duty to my families in Mid Bedfordshire. How many extra staff members have been recruited to ensure that emergency helplines are fully staffed this winter and to guarantee to all service personnel that there will be a response if they need one? How many fines have been handed out to contractors that have missed an emergency appointment to ensure that we are properly holding them to account? Will the Minister commit to ensuring that no serviceman or woman is forced out of their home over Christmas due to maintenance issues? How many service properties in Bedfordshire are still awaiting mitigation work for damp and mould this Christmas? Will the Minister give those families clarity about when the issue will be tackled?
It is paramount that those questions are answered. Colleagues from across the House will urge the Minister to act with the urgency that the situation requires. Those who step forward and serve deserve better. I know Members on both sides of the House would agree with that sentiment, but it is time for all of us, including the Minister, to commit to urgently finding a remedy to these problems.
I am proud that Labour has launched a campaign, “Homes Fit for Heroes”, to highlight some of the challenges and ensure that we remain absolutely, resolutely committed to addressing them if we are lucky enough to be in government. Labour will legislate to establish an armed forces commissioner who can act as a strong, independent voice for service personnel and their families and ensure that service accommodation finally feels like a priority for those who live in it. However, they should not have to wait for a change in Government to bring that about—that is why I am really happy to be having this debate.
I am glad that Members from across the House have joined us here to discuss this issue, which is really important to me, my constituents, my friends, my family and, most importantly, the brave men and women who serve this country. I look forward to discussing it more as the debate goes on.
I thank the former Minister, the right hon. and learned Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), who dealt with all our queries quickly and effectively. However, it was symptomatic of how badly the contract was operating that we had to hand off hundreds of pieces of casework directly to the Minister to get them resolved.
To give hon. Members some examples, we had families without hot water for weeks on end and broken pipes that were not dealt with. I mentioned crows falling down the chimney, because that was one of the instances that we dealt with, as well a number of cases of severe damp and mould and gas certificates not being completed on time. There are a number of issues around the maintenance of the housing.
We have not had a similar cold snap this year, so we have not had the same types of issues that we saw this time last year with frozen pipes, broken boilers and mould, but I am interested to hear from the Minister how the contract is performing and whether the remediation that we were promised over the summer has taken place. The compensation bill to the families involved was huge, and I wonder whether he can enlighten us on how much having an inefficient contract in place cost the taxpayer.
On top of the maintenance issues, there are all the empty properties around and about and the way in which they are not maintained once they are empty. As an add-on to the problem with the service contract, we had empty properties at Shawbury where the pipes froze, and there was a burst pipe. No one there reported that because no one was living there, and the person next door, who reported it, did not have the right authority to get a contractor out. There are issues with collapsed ceilings and a general worsening of the housing stock, which is already in short supply.
It is really important to think about service families, their peripatetic lives, and the fact that they may not have a community around them, unless they are living in a service family community. When housing stock falls into disrepair and their alternative is to rent in the private rented sector, not only might that be inconvenient due to the new accommodation’s distance from their location, but they will no longer be in that community of people who experience the same challenges in lifestyle. Service family accommodation is really important not just in terms of location and its convenience for the base, but for those families to be part of a community that understands what they go through daily.
Well before our time, in 1996, the Government sold military housing stock of 57,400 homes to Annington Homes. That contract did not cover maintenance, so the Government remain responsible for maintaining that housing. I believe that costs the taxpayer about £180 million a year in rent and £140 million a year in maintenance and upgrades. The National Audit Office has concluded that that deal was really poor value. We cannot revisit what happened in 1996, but I would be grateful if the Minister outlined what steps the Government are taking to improve that situation. We have read speculation in the press that they might be considering buying back some of those houses. Will he give us a general update on how that situation might be improved?
I also want to talk about maintenance issues—perhaps not the urgent ones that caused us so many difficulties this time last year, but the ongoing issues of damp, mould and generally poor-quality housing. The hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire gave some statistics showing how that has worsened over the course of the year. Earlier this year, the Government committed to deal with 60% of the properties that had damp and mould, but that begs the question: what about the other 40%? This is genuinely serious, because families are reporting health concerns as a result of living in mouldy properties. A constituent contacted me recently from Clive Barracks at Ternhill to say that their health has been worsening, but they do not seem to be able to meet the threshold to get what must be severe mould in their property dealt with. That is not acceptable.
We have talked a little bit about families, but obviously there are servicemen and women who go off on tours of duty and come back to service single accommodation. I raised a question about Ternhill at oral questions a couple of weeks ago. A constituent had reported rat-infested, crowded accommodation that was mouldy, as well as kit becoming mouldy and unfit for use, and the generally despicable situation there, which is being addressed by temporary accommodation pods popped into the car park. They are an improvement, and we should acknowledge that they are an attempt to resolve an urgent problem, but it is not okay for servicemen and women to be living in a temporary pod in a car park with no privacy, no rest and recuperation area, and just a bed and a bathroom. Will the Minister give us an update on that as well?
I echo the comments made by the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire. Servicemen and women make a huge sacrifice for us. They are prepared to put their lives on the line. They often have to move their families around to an extent that many people would not feel comfortable with. We have enormous respect for them, regardless of our background or political leaning. A warm and safe home to return to at the end of the day is the minimum that they should expect. It is not acceptable for us to stand here asking, “Well, can we fix the mould in the hundreds of affected properties?” We need a plan to resolve the issue not just of the maintenance contract but of the genuinely poor-quality stock that we expect people to live in. I will be grateful if the Minister updates us today on what that plan is and how quickly it will be executed.
“have been badly let down for many years”
and are not getting the accommodation service they
“have a right to expect”.
Why is that right to expect not being upheld? If they are being let down, they have a right to expect better. It is so important that we do all we can to ensure they are rewarded with good-quality accommodation.
The Governments of Wales and Scotland and the Northern Ireland Executive are responsible for delivering certain aspects of the armed forces covenant in their areas. The Welsh and Scottish Governments contribute to the armed forces covenant annual reports, but Northern Ireland does not. There is a reason for that. It is fair comment to say that back home in Northern Ireland, veterans do not generally attract priority for housing. To be fair, it is a devolved matter, so it is not the Minister’s responsibility directly, but I will outline a case later that makes my frustration with our system back home clear.
In addition to this, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive operate the housing system purely on a points system, with criteria that housing applicants must meet to be considered for a particular property. I would love it if it were the same for us in Northern Ireland as it is here for those who leave the Army after years of service. I have a case of a gentleman—I shall mention him again shortly—who left the Army after 20 years of service and has not been able to secure accommodation, despite the best efforts of charities and elected representatives to achieve that. There are real issues for us back home to ensure things can be done better.
Single men with no dependants are less likely to be rehoused quickly, even though they may have lengthy service as a veteran, or indeed not as a veteran. I am currently dealing with the case of a constituent in his 40s who was discharged from the Army in July this year after 20 years of honourable service. He is widowed and has no children. My office, along with other organisations, has been assisting him to be rehomed in the local area, via the Housing Executive. All he requires is a one-bed property, but he has only 60 points. I am not sure if that resonates with people here in the mainland, but for someone to get a property—even a one-bed—they need twice that number of points. It could be months—possibly years—before he is rehoused.
While others are talking about the state of accommodation, I am talking about people actually getting accommodation and our frustration with a system that just does not seem to be working. My constituent is currently residing with a charity that I have spoken of many times in Westminster Hall and in the main Chamber. Beyond the Battlefield is a wonderful charity which I have been involved with since its inception. With Government and charitable help, the charity has been able to open a centre in Portavogie, in my constituency of Strangford, where it has nine bedrooms to allocate. The charity is vastly oversubscribed and has applied for a central Government grant for an extension. The building has capacity for another nine bedrooms, which would be filled, such is the demand in Northern Ireland.
The charity goes the extra mile to support veterans who are simply discharged, with no thought given to how they will integrate into normal society. My and others’ frustration is that, when they leave, many are in a difficult position, whether because of trauma, post-traumatic stress, what they have seen when serving, or the life that they have led in the service of this country. Beyond the Battlefield helps to provide emergency accommodation, which is currently where my constituent is staying. Its volunteers provide instrumental support to veterans.
That is a classic example of how veterans in Northern Ireland are being let down in terms of their housing status: they have no other choice but to seek assistance from other organisations. On Remembrance Sunday, I saw a man, six foot, broad at the shoulders and tight at the hip; I knew just by looking that he was a soldier. He was doing his bit to remember all those friends and colleagues that he had lost over 20 years of service in Iraq, Afghanistan and some tours of duty in Northern Ireland. In my mind, the least we could do is support him, and many other like him, in his time of need, after decades of service to this nation.