Chris McDonald

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland), not only on securing the debate but on his doughty championing of the armed forces in our region and around the UK. Armed forces recruitment in the north-east is of regional and national importance, and matters very deeply to my constituents in Stockton, Billingham and Norton. Our armed forces community is a great source of pride, as hon. Members will have seen if they were with me on Stockton High Street on Saturday, when we had a flag-raising ceremony for Armed Forces Week. There were representatives of our local regiment, the Royal Yorkshire Regiment; the Royal Military Police, which has a base in Norton in my constituency; and our cadets—the sea cadets and RAF cadets based in my constituency, and Royal Marine cadets too. Those brave members of the regulars and reserves deserve more than my words and the words of hon. Members in this Chamber; they deserve real action. As my hon. Friend pointed out, the reality is starkly different from some of those words. The British Army is now at its smallest size in 200 years. With due respect to the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), who I know is personally a strong supporter of the armed forces, the last decade did not cover his party or the previous Government in glory on this issue. The armed forces have been hollowed out. They have been underfunded, overstretched and undervalued. As we have heard, over the last decade the number of recruits in the north-east has fallen by a third. This in an area that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah) said, is proud of its commitment to the armed forces, and where people know that joining the armed forces provides a route of opportunity that is sadly lacking elsewhere in our economy.