Luke Pollard

I am sure the House will agree that the right hon. Gentleman is by no means a poor substitute for the shadow Defence Secretary. We plan to publish our defence housing strategy later this year, which no doubt was not at all in the minds of the shadow Front-Bench team when they published their proposals ahead of time. I encourage the right hon. Gentleman to wait for the full work to be published in due course, but improving defence housing has to be a priority, because for many years as a nation, we have not delivered what our forces deserve—that will now change. This year, we extended the ability to reclaim the costs of wraparound childcare to many of those deployed overseas, and next year we will go further and cover all overseas areas to help make family life a little easier. We are legislating for an Armed Forces Commissioner—an independent voice to help improve service life. We made a manifesto commitment to bring the armed forces covenant fully into law—a promise made by the nation that those who defend it will be treated fairly and will not be disadvantaged because of their service. That includes, for example, ensuring that service children have the same access to education as other children. We are transforming recruitment, and hope that many young people will be inspired to join up after attending Armed Forces Day events this weekend. We are also overhauling access to care and support for veterans through the Valour programme. I turn to veterans because although Armed Forces Day is an opportunity to thank those people in uniform, we should also use it as an opportunity to thank those people who have served.