Member

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, asked me about accommodation. The starting point for that is that, yes, we are confident that we will be able to take that forward; it will obviously be a programme of investment over a period of time. But the fact that the accommodation has been taken back into government control means that we will be able to have a proper series of investments over time. I shall not reiterate the debate that will have gone on in the Chamber about the amendment that was put for the decent homes standard to apply. But there are real difficulties with applying that particular standard to the Armed Forces as the amendment suggested, not least that it does not apply to Scotland and Northern Ireland, because housing is devolved. So, there are particular issues with that, but that should not and does not detract from the point that the noble Baroness made, and which her colleagues will have made, about the need for us to improve service accommodation. We will do that; it is not in the state that it should be, and we will ensure that we invest in it to get it to the standard that it needs to be. It is important that we do that.