Contribution
On the local connection test, as with a lot of things, the previous Government talked a lot but we have got on and done a lot of those things, and the Bill takes that intent and determination several steps further.
Let me move on to housing, because behind many of the men and women who serve our country are husbands, wives, partners and children, who support them in their service, and who bear the weight of their absence during deployments. For those families, the nation has a moral duty to provide safe and decent housing. As recent Governments failed, satisfaction with military family homes fell in 2023 to its lowest level on record. I, and many other Members of the House have seen why: damp, mould, broken boilers, ill-fitting doors and windows, even a hole in the wall of a children’s bedroom. None of us would tolerate our families living in such conditions, and neither should those in our armed forces. It is a betrayal of service, and the crisis in defence housing tracks back directly to perhaps one of the worst ever privatisation deals.
Under the terms of the Annington sale in 1996, the taxpayer picked up all costs for maintenance, repairs and rent, but all the benefits of development opportunities or increases in property value were surrendered to a private equity fund. When I was appointed Defence Secretary 18 months ago, that deal was costing the taxpayer over £600,000 a day. Just six months after the election, our Government reversed that, bringing more than 36,000 military family homes back into public ownership so that we can now plan and invest in the future. Twelve months after the election, we delivered our consumer charter, guaranteeing what should never have been in question: higher move-in standards, quicker repairs, a named housing officer for every family, and renovations of the very worst homes, 1,000 of which were completed ahead of schedule before Christmas. Our charter also tore up rules that should never have been written, so that forces families now have freedom to decorate their own homes, and keep pets without seeking permission.
In November we published our defence housing strategy, and our plan for the wholesale renewal of service family estate, backed by a landmark 10-year investment programme, totalling over £9 billion. All told, nine in 10 of all forces family homes will be upgraded, renewed or rebuilt. Less than three months after the defence housing strategy was published, the Bill delivers a central recommendation of that strategy: the creation of a specialist arm’s length organisation, the Defence Housing Service. With the plan, the investment and now the Defence Housing Service, we will end the scandal of service families living in substandard housing, and we will deliver the homes the country needs. When Labour said at the election that we would stand on the side of our armed forces, this is what we meant.
All those who serve our country rightly expect to be able to do so with the fullest respect, and they must certainly be able to do so free from any fear or abuse. Last year we commissioned and published the UK’s first military-wide survey into sexual harassment. We did that to provide for the first time a no-holds-barred baseline to confront the problem fully. The results were sobering, concluding that two thirds of our servicewomen and one third of our servicemen experience some form of sexualised behaviour. Let me be clear: such behaviour has no place in our armed forces, just as it has no place in any workplace—not now, not ever.
The previous Government took steps to improve victim and witness care. We can see some of the benefits of those steps, but it is also clear that more must be done. We have established a new, single tri-service complaints team to take the most serious complaints out of the single-service chain of command for the first time. We have launched a pioneering new prevention programme in Catterick and Plymouth, working directly with young recruits on our bases, to prevent unacceptable behaviours. Through the Bill we go further to strengthen protections for our service personnel, and ensure that perpetrators have nowhere to hide.
Together, provisions in the Bill will make available in the service justice system a comprehensive range of protection orders, including for sexual harm, domestic abuse and stalking. It will strengthen supervision of offenders on release from prison, and ensure that service restraining orders are enforceable in the criminal justice system once a defendant has left the armed forces. It will place a duty on the Secretary of State to issue a code of practice, setting out the services that victims can expect to receive in the service justice system, and it will allow victims to choose whether they wish to have their case heard in a civil or military court, although the formal decision will be taken by the prosecutor.