Alex Baker

That is a fair point. I know that the Defence Committee will be holding Ministers to account on single living accommodation as much as we are on SFA. They both need to improve very quickly. The second and central point that I want to focus on is the covenant. It is absolutely right that it is strengthened and put on a clear legal footing. The covenant is the nation’s promise that those who serve and their families should not be disadvantaged because of service life. If that principle means anything, it must apply consistently across the whole of Government and the whole of the United Kingdom. The Defence Committee has heard powerful evidence of how inconsistent the covenant can be in practice and how families often feel they are left to fight their corner alone. I will give just one example. We heard evidence from someone serving who moved from Scotland to the south of England while waiting for an NHS specialist appointment. They had been told that their place on the waiting list would transfer under the covenant, but instead they were put to the end of the queue, with the local trust stating that it did not recognise or follow the covenant. That is just one story among hundreds. The Committee heard that significant proportions of serving personnel feel disadvantaged when trying to access healthcare, education and housing, and that challenge is not limited to service personnel themselves. We also heard how service life affects spouses and partners, from difficulties transferring professional roles to families being denied remote working arrangements when posted abroad. The most worrying conclusion the Defence Committee reached was not simply that disadvantage exists, but that there is no clear single shared understanding of what the covenant actually means on the ground, either among providers or within parts of our armed forces community itself. That gap in understanding is exactly where good intentions go to die. While I strongly support putting the covenant into law, I urge the Government to go a few steps further. If we are creating a stronger legal covenant, we should take the opportunity to set out a clear, positive, public commitment: what the armed forces community can expect, what “no disadvantage” actually means in practice, and what will be delivered consistently across the UK. It should include clear standards, practical guidance for those delivering services and proper mechanisms for accountability and learning so that best practice is shared and poor practice is tackled quickly. Legislation alone will not fix inconsistency if the people responsible for implementation do not know what is being asked of them or if families cannot see a straightforward route to challenge decisions that plainly ignore the covenant. Lastly, we should set out a clear vision for how the armed forces covenant is made real in communities across the UK. This really relates to our commitment to a total society approach to defence, particularly within the strategic defence review. That is why I am campaigning for Aldershot to be officially recognised as an armed forces covenant town. I want to create a national movement of covenant towns, cities and villages committed to delivering the covenant consistently across local services and organisations. I am working with the Royal British Legion on what that looks like. Towns like Aldershot, where civilian and military life are inseparable, already understand what it means in practice. By establishing places like ours as covenant towns, cities and villages, we can kick-start a national effort to ensure that respect and fairness for the armed forces community are not just a box-ticking exercise, but embedded in the beating heart of our communities. In Aldershot and Farnborough, families do not ask for special treatment. They ask for fair treatment and for a system that recognises the reality of service life. This Bill, with a renewed approach to housing and a stronger covenant, is a major step in the right direction. I welcome and support it and will keep pushing to ensure that its promise is felt by forces families not just in speeches this evening, but in their everyday lives.