Luke Pollard

The hon. Gentleman is right about the important role that families play in supporting not just serving personnel but veterans. I am grateful to him for mentioning families, and to a number of other Members who spoke passionately about that important role that they play and the need for the commissioner to be open to representations from family members. I am particularly grateful to the hon. Member for Slough, who spoke about bereaved families in an intervention during the Secretary of State’s speech. The Bill does not give an exact definition of family members; that will be included in secondary legislation that will be published between the House of Commons and House of Lords stages. I am glad that the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell talked about kinship carers, and I should be happy to discuss them with her. We want to get this right, and putting such a definition in the Bill will enable it to be locked in. I want Members on both sides of the House to feel empowered to challenge us and help us to provide that definition, so that the Bill is drafted adequately to help serving personnel and their families to deal with service life—and that must include all the shapes and sizes of families as they exist today. A number of Members mentioned the spending of 2.5% of GDP on defence, to which the Government are committed. The Bill states explicitly that the Armed Forces Commissioner will deal with general service welfare matters. I think it important for me to put that on record, because the commissioner will be dealing with the lived experience of those who serve and their families. This will not involve looking into “Secret Squirrel” operations or operational deployments, or the spending of 2.5%, 2.4% or any other figure; it will involve looking specifically at the welfare of those who serve. However, I realise that a number of Members want to make points about the 2.5%, and I will continue to encourage them to do so. I hope that they also welcome the extra £3 billion for defence that was announced in the Budget only a few weeks ago. Several Members spoke about the armed forces covenant and this new Government’s manifesto commitment to putting it fully into law. I reassure them that the determination to do that is strong in the ministerial team. The Defence Secretary himself has made it clear that he wants it to be included in the armed forces Bill, which is the next piece of legislation on which the MOD will be working. I am grateful to the Members who spoke so passionately about the importance of the covenant in their constituencies. My hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent Central and for Hartlepool in particular, as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester and my next-door neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth Moor View, spoke with passion about armed forces champions. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth Moor View and I share a brilliant armed forces champion in Councillor Pauline Murphy, and her determination and fierce approach to protecting and supporting the armed forces family are precisely what I hope to see in the Armed Forces Commissioner, because we need someone who will focus relentlessly on improving service life.