House of Commons Hansard Debates for 16 Jul 1996 (pt 14)

Mr. George: You would not get the contract; you are British.

Mr. Campbell: I am sure that I could call on some international support to assist me.

Purchasers can buy those properties and get a market rent for them with a review every five years. Furthermore, they will receive a guaranteed annual payment from the Government with a guaranteed annual release of properties. They also have the prospect each year of realising the development potential of the houses released to them. Can one conceive of a better scheme for

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purchasers? It is virtually risk free and, as a consequence, the Ministry of Defence will obtain an inadequate reward for the contract. The scheme is essentially wrong, but, if the Government want to adopt it, they should look for a much larger sum than £1.5 billion or £1.6 billion, because the nature of the contract that they will enter into is so favourable for the purchaser.

Two features of this tawdry proposal cause me particular offence. The first is the veiled threat that, if it does not go through, the defence budget will suffer directly. If that is so--there has been the usual heavy briefing of the standard Sunday newspapers--it is an eloquent demonstration that the proposal is about raising cash, not about raising standards of accommodation. The second is the assertion that the proposal has become a battleground for the supporters of the rival right-wing contenders for the leadership of the Conservative party.

Mr. Bowen Wells (Lord Commissioner to the Treasury): Rubbish.

Mr. Campbell: The hon. Gentleman says rubbish. I see that the right hon. Member for South Thanet (Mr. Aitken) has joined us. I heard him make that point about a fortnight ago. He is a man of considerable intelligence and judgment; I cannot imagine that he would have made that point if he did not think that there was substance in it.

Those two features unquestionably ensure that the conventional and customary expressions of support for the armed services and their families, which characterise debates of this kind and form part of the speeches of Conservative Members, have a distinctly hollow ring on this occasion.

The Government survived--perhaps that is an unfair way to put it; they triumphed--on this issue in another place. The trading rooms of the merchant banks must have been deserted. Indeed, the pheasant-rearing pens of the estates of England must have gone without proper supervision, because people who had been a long time deciding to vote came and voted. The issue for the House this evening is whether it is willing to try to stop this proposal in its tracks. Originally, 67 honourable and, in this context, gallant Members signed the early-day motion, the terms of which are precisely reproduced in the motion before the House. That number has decreased to 20. All that is necessary for the proposal to be killed off is for those brave boys to join the Opposition parties in supporting the motion. By their votes we shall know them.

5.33 pm

Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury): It is no secret that I have been and am profoundly opposed to the structure of this scheme, although it would be churlish not to acknowledge that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has announced some significant concessions today. They are concessions of substance, not just presentation.

The media are currently dominated by pictures of the unhappy situation in Northern Ireland. It is common for hon. Members on both sides of the House to pay tribute to the behaviour of the security forces. The armed forces are deployed much further afield, not least in the difficult and potentially dangerous conflict in Bosnia. It is easy for us to forget that our armed forces have been subject to an

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unparalleled--except in the immediate aftermath of war--series of changes. They have had "Options for Change"; a mass of regimental amalgamations; "Front-line First"; and, in the past decade, a halving of the fraction of gross domestic product allocated to defence. Obviously, some of those changes were necessary because of the end of the cold war, but as the list goes on and on--each change was to be the last--so we risk undermining the ethos at the heart of our armed forces.

Baroness Park said in another place that our armed forces were "becoming punch drunk". I remind my hon. Friends of the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Waterside (Mr. Colvin) last week about the threat of another set of defence cuts in the coming Budget. This debate is a timely reminder of the special duty that we owe not just to our armed forces but to their families. I feel that particularly strongly because I represent a garrison city. When I was canvassing for the 1992 general election, a little boy told me that that morning his father had been shot in the leg on the streets of Northern Ireland. The special duty that extends to our armed forces and their families is not just because they serve us in often dangerous and difficult conflicts but because they cannot speak for themselves. That gives us, as Members of Parliament, a special duty towards them.

As this matter has been discussed in the public arena--it has at last come to Parliament--the message that has come across again and again is that the scheme has been misunderstood. That is not altogether surprising because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Waterside and other members of the Select Committee said, the details have been slow in coming forth. Initially, members of the armed forces knew about what was happening only from a terse signal that went out through the channels of command one way, and from a letter from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

I received a letter from the honorary colonel of a Territorial Army unit about the fate of the regular members of that unit in the build-up to this scheme, with the repackaging of housing that will take place as a result in the next few weeks. It said:

"The Commanding Officer, half way through his tour, is being compelled to move to Biggin Hill to a quarter that just does not compare with one he lives in at present. This does at least allow his boy to remain on at the same school. The RSM has already been moved to Coulsdon to a very indifferent quarter. For a Warrant Officer the posting as RSM should be the peak of his career--this has been spoilt by this move. The Training Major is being short toured, partially to avoid a move of his family from Caterham."

People have always been moved, often frequently, between tours of duty, but it is new for large numbers of service personnel to be moved about in the middle of postings and, as in this case, dispersed to meet pressures for sales.

Built into the measure is a formula for the release of 600 houses a year--not automatically every year, but it must average 600 a year on a cumulative basis--which means that the process will continue, and will add to the turbulence experienced by armed forces personnel.

The programme of site exchanges has caused considerable worry in the armed forces. We have heard some worthwhile movement on that today, and the two concessions that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced will make a significant difference and go some way towards meeting the representations by the Army Families Federation.

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I remain, however, profoundly concerned about what happens at the 25-year mark. When we consider the idea of exercising a ministerial veto via a certificate, we should bear in mind the fact that, at the 25-year mark, the developers are not required to provide alternative accommodation, although they will now have to give four years' notice. The certificates would present a problem if the developers wanted to take a large number of their sites, as all the sites would come up together.