Service Family Accommodation

Urgent Question: To ask the Secretary of State to make a statement on the maintenance and repair of service family accommodation.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his urgent question.

The provision of safe, good quality and well-maintained accommodation is an irreducible minimum when it comes to supporting our armed forces. It is essential to operational output, recruitment, retention, and morale, which is why providing such accommodation is a core priority of the Ministry of Defence.

More than 96% of the MOD service family accommodation of 46,000 properties meets or exceeds the Government’s Decent Homes Standard. Only those properties that meet this standard are allocated to service families. However, it is unacceptable that some of our personnel and their families are not receiving the level of accommodation services—in the form of maintenance standards—from our suppliers that they deserve and, in particular, are suffering from a lack of heating and hot water. I have spoken to a number of our personnel, from a range of ranks and circumstances, and I share their indignation. It is not acceptable.

MOD contractors are under a legal, but also a moral, duty to resolve heating and hot water problems. What are those duties? Emergency calls should be responded to, and the issue made safe within two hours. An emergency is an incident that threatens imminent risk of injury to persons, or that presents a high risk of extensive damage to property or the environment. Urgent calls should be responded to as soon as possible and within 48 hours. Those are the terms of the contract that were agreed, but our suppliers in too many cases are failing to meet those requirements. We expect and demand that our suppliers do better, and we will do everything we legally and properly can to force them to do so. Let me be clear: no home should be left without heating or hot water for more than 24 hours. Should it not be possible to resolve the issue quickly, alternative forms of heating and sources of hot water, or alternative accommodation, must be provided.

I thank the Minister for his response. There will be complete agreement, I am sure, on the importance of looking out for those amazing men and women who serve in our armed forces and, critically, their families as well. The Minister will be well aware—he alluded to this in his statement—of the volume of concerns about the state of service family accommodation and single living accommodation. It is particularly concerning given the recent freezing weather and proximity to Christmas, but it is also at a time when our armed forces continue to be busy, not least, potentially, with commitments to Military Aid to the Civil Authorities.

Some shocking recent accommodation cases include: recurring black mould causing viral infections in children; crumbling roofs leaving houses exposed to the elements; burst pipes flooding homes; and broken boilers in sub-zero temperatures. What is worse is that, currently, there is no reasonable way to report and resolve those problems, as there are waits of two hours on Pinnacle’s helpline, if callers can get through at all. Even when a report is lodged, there is no guarantee that a repair will happen urgently.

Such are the concerns that have been expressed about the inaction of various contractors, there is evidence of soldiers signing out sleeping bags. No single contractor is responsible for repairs and maintenance, meaning that there is no central responsibility. However, there is central accountability, and, ultimately, that lies with the MOD.

Those who step forward to serve deserve and expect better. I look to the Minister to act urgently, by which I mean today, to move heaven and earth to ensure that measures are being taken to alleviate this problem. Can I ask him to provide an update on whether the Secretary of State’s meetings with the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, Amey, Pinnacle and VIVO have taken place? If not, why not? Can he outline a plan for MOD intervention to ensure that the backlog of repairs is dealt with as a priority? Can he say more on how the Department will support service personnel and their families affected by these issues over the Christmas holidays?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for those remarks, many of which I completely agree with. He asks whether we will act today. I can say that the Secretary of State has met the DIO, Pinnacle, Amey and VIVO and that some of these issues were becoming apparent quite some time ago. In fact, a rectification plan was imposed in the middle of September. There were 480 or so elements of that plan, of which 200 have been complied with. That does not mean that the situation has been sorted—far from it—because when the cold snap came, we saw that it revealed more difficulties.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the backlog. I can say that the backlog of complaints peaked at a stunning 4,200 or so. That has come down to around 3,100, but I completely accept that that is far too many.

The real issue, it seems to me, is there must be prevention in the first place. In other words, the quality of accommodation must be good enough at the point that service personnel go into the properties in the first place. There are some indications of improvement in that regard. First, in addition to the standard £176 million for accommodation, the MOD has allocated £350 million over and above that annual sum to get on top of the maintenance issues. In July of this year, when 1,276 service personnel went into properties, 4% turned out on the day to have non-habitable failures; by December that figure had gone down to 0.6%. This is about ensuring that the properties are fit for purpose at the outset.

On the issue of mould, which the hon. Gentleman is right to raise, it is unconscionable to think that people should be moving into properties with any mould, and I am pleased to have had a clear assurance from DIO that that will not happen again. Now, if there is a report of mould, a fully qualified inspector should come in to do a proper report and alternative accommodation should be provided, if appropriate. I will end where he did: these are people who come to serve our country, and the least we can do is ensure that they have proper accommodation. I will do everything in my power to ensure that we honour that requirement.

I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

I welcome the Minister’s tone in wanting to grip this issue. I put in an urgent question for this yesterday, as Mr Speaker knows, and I am really pleased it is being discussed today. It is shocking state of affairs. We talk about having the most professional armed forces in the world, we give them excellent equipment and we train them well, but accommodation has constantly played second fiddle—

Order. I think it is rather naughty of you to say that. The fact is that if I were to see everybody who put in for urgent questions, I would spend all day doing that. Accept that you have the urgent question; we do not need to go over what you did or did not do, because you put in a lot of urgent questions and you get a lot.

I am grateful for that clarification, Mr Speaker; it was not in any way a complaint, but a confirmation. I am delighted that we are able to address this matter today. As I was saying, we have the most professional armed forces in the world, but I am afraid that accommodation plays second fiddle to the equipment and the training that we provide them. I ask the Minister what is going to happen in the integrated review, which is due for an update shortly. Will it identify funding to be put in place to make sure we can improve the accommodation? This problem did not happen in the last few days. Reports of heating and boilers not working, let alone the mould that he speaks about, need to be addressed, or the soldiers, sailors and air personnel will vote with their feet and depart the already overstretched armed forces.

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that this is an issue about ensuring retention in the armed forces. He asks about money going in: one positive thing, as I indicated, is the £350 million going in over two years, over and above the budget. However, I do not want to let the contractors off the hook. He is right that there is a backlog of work that needs to take place, and I have talked about the £350 million for that, but one of the most shocking things about this to me, as a new Minister coming in, is that it appears to have come as a surprise to Pinnacle, Amey and VIVO that their IT systems were not properly married up. Service personnel would pick up the phone to report a complaint to Pinnacle, but by the time it got VIVO or Amey, it was not necessarily the right contractor who turned up. That is an IT failure. They are grown-ups entering into a contract—caveat emptor and all that—and they should have known what the situation was and have made arrangements accordingly. As I said before, this is not any old contract. It is a contract to provide accommodation. People need to be sure of their ground before they take on one of these deals, and clearly they were not.

I call the shadow Minister.

Broken boilers, water pouring into homes, mould, vermin and painful waits for basic repairs—all while Ministers cancel troops’ Christmas leave. Our forces deserve so much better. It is a national scandal that the Government are leaving service personnel, their families and their children without heating and water during the coldest winter for more than a decade. Can the Minister say exactly how many forces homes are currently without heating or hot water, and what he is going to do about it? Can he guarantee here and now that no one in uniform or their family will be without heating or hot water this winter?

Although shocking, these reports are unfortunately not surprising. There are deep-seated problems with the Government’s handling of Defence housing, going back years. One third of our armed forces personnel are dissatisfied with the overall standard of their family accommodation and almost one in three service family homes are awaiting repair. Between June and October this year, more than 5,000 maintenance appointments were missed. Is the Minister confident that his contractors are meeting their mandated key performance indicators? It certainly does not look as though they are. The MOD paid £144 million to contractors to supposedly maintain service family accommodation this year. Is he satisfied that that represents value for taxpayers’ money?

These reports of dodgy accommodation not only are a breach of the contract the nation makes with those who serve, but pose a risk to recruitment and retention. More than one quarter of armed forces personnel said that poor accommodation increases their intention to leave the services. Decent accommodation is a fundamental part of our moral obligation to those who serve and their families. This Government are failing our armed forces when it comes to service accommodation and we need to see better from Ministers. In setting out what he has done, will the Minister now apologise to forces and their families, many of whom will be spending yet another Christmas in shoddy military accommodation?

The hon. Gentleman asks, quite fairly, whether I think that the contractors are meeting their requirements. We are absolutely clear that they are not meeting their requirements. Indeed, that is why a rectification plan was imposed as long ago as September; it was clear that there were some fundamental issues going wrong. I have spoken about the IT issues, but also, candidly, there were not enough people in the call centre. I think Pinnacle had 14 people, although that has now been increased to 60.

I get that there has been some snow and ice, but not biblical levels of snow and ice; these are things the contractors should have accounted for and prepared for. The hon. Gentleman asks whether the contract is value for money, and no, at the moment I do not think it is. If the contractors performed, it would be a perfectly sensible contract, but I reiterate: over and above the annual amount, we must ensure there is the £350 million of support to get ahead of this problem, so that we can have a well-maintained service family accommodation estate that does not run into problems in the first place. I am pleased to note that there is £76 million targeted towards improving thermal efficiency—to you and me, Mr Speaker, that means boilers, insulation and so on—which again will resolve some of these issues.

There are lessons to be learned, candidly, and I am clear about that. One thing that must be investigated is how this contract was entered into. Was it the case that some people were—how can I put it?—a little economical with the actualité when indicating what they could provide by way of support and IT? What did they say and when? We need—[Interruption.] Of course we should also look at the due diligence; that is a fair point as well.

The hon. Gentleman made a political point at the beginning, and I hope he will forgive me for saying this: it is true that a lot is being asked of our troops at Christmas, including to fill in for jobs that others are not doing. I urge him to join the Government in saying that those going on strike should call those strikes off so that our troops can get the Christmas they deserve.

In February 2020, I co-authored a report called “Stick or Twist?” for the Prime Minister, copied to the Defence Secretary, after a year-long study into why armed forces personnel leave. Poor standards of accommodation was one of the major factors why they decide to stop serving the Crown. In that report, we pleaded with Ministers not to go ahead with the Future Defence Infrastructure Services contract, but to look at better alternatives, such as a bespoke forces housing association instead. Nevertheless, they ploughed on. FDIS will never work. It is structurally dysfunctional. I say to the MOD: “Please, on behalf of service personnel and their families, rip off the plaster, admit you were wrong, create a workstream on accommodation as part of the integrated review, and do something better that actually works.”

As my right hon. Friend indicates, he has been assiduous in raising the issue of service family accommodation, and I commend him for doing so. There will have to be a long, hard look at FDIS, and I suspect—in fact, I know—that the MOD will look carefully at the points he made in his “Stick or Twist?” report. We will have to see what the lessons are from entering into contracts such as this, and it may be that he is absolutely right.

I call the SNP spokesperson.

Once again, we are debating with a Minister forced to atone for the appalling housing conditions inflicted upon our armed forces. This is, of course, a decades-long problem, which the MOD continues to show no strategy to resolve. Pinnacle was recently, in March, awarded a £144 million contract to manage these homes. This money has barely scratched the surface. It has been reported that families are still being issued with sleeping bags and are sleeping in their coats in mould-ridden houses, and some go weeks without heating. Some houses are so badly insulated that families cannot afford to turn the heating on. How can the Minister defend that enduring shame?

Senior officers and junior ranks alike are frustrated by an unresponsive private sector facilities management contractor. That is further compounded by the now demonstrably failing Defence Infrastructure Organisation. Is that failure in political leadership caused by a lack of funding, the DIO’s incompetence, a failure of the contractors, or all three? Can the Minister say specifically that he has full confidence in the executive officer team of the Defence Infrastructure Organisation?

On the plan, as I have been at pains to underscore, the MOD is specifically putting money into that area over and above the normal maintenance contract. That is absolutely critical. It is what the hon. Gentleman would do in his own house if he wanted to get on top on maintenance issues: if he were able to, he would invest in it to ensure that things do not go wrong in future. That is precisely what the MOD is doing by way of a plan. To put that into context, £350 million is around double what is paid annually to keep on top of the problem, so there is a plan.

On funding, lest we forget, in the spending review of 2020, a full £24 billion was released by the then Chancellor and now Prime Minister to show that this Government will always get behind funding our armed forces and ensuring that they have the resources they need to be lethal, agile, expeditionary and so on.

On confidence, at the moment, frankly we do not have confidence in Pinnacle, VIVO and Amey. I am very disappointed by the performance that has been discharged so far. The hon. Gentleman asks about DIO. I do not think I am betraying any confidence in saying that some exacting questions need to be asked about precisely how this contract was entered into. Those questions have started to be asked, and I can assure him that they will go in the direction of the evidence—I make that clear. I want to get to the bottom of who knew what and when, and how this was allowed to happen.