Speaking in a debate on support for veterans, James Sunderland highlights help available from agencies, charities and organisations such as RBL and SSAFA and calls on the MOD to reach out more to those who have left with a single point of contact so people do not feel so isolated from the organisation they served.
James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)
I commend my right hon. Friend for her excellent speech. I am a serviceman. I left the Army in 2019 with no resettlement and no termination but through choice, to become a candidate for the Conservative party. I do not regret it, but having gone through that process and been left on a cliff edge with that immediate loss from the Department, I would say to my right hon. Friend that I empathise greatly with all the concerns raised by veterans. I am also chair of the all-party parliamentary group on veterans, and my experience of veterans, having left the Army myself, is that the issue in most cases is not that veterans once served, it is that they are no longer serving. There is a distinction.
We have highlighted a number of issues today, and I wish to make two points very quickly. First, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, there are a lot of agencies, charities and organisations that can help, such as RBL and SSAFA. I would urge everyone to make contact with them. I would also want to see the MOD, with the Minister in his place, doing a catch-up, reaching out a bit more to those who have left and having that single point of contact or repository, whereby people do not feel quite so isolated from the organisation they served. Yes, there is a plethora of support out there, but a bit more from the MOD for those who have left the forces would be welcome.
James Sunderland
The Minister will recall that we met earlier this year in the all-party parliamentary group on veterans and discussed the much-needed reform of Veterans UK. As part of his closing address, or perhaps in the near future, is he able to provide an update to the House on where we are with the review of Veterans UK and any subsequent work that needs to be done?
The Minister for Defence People, Veterans and Service Families (Dr Andrew Murrison)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He and I have discussed this before. I am afraid that I will not be able to show very much ankle on this occasion, but in my remarks I will certainly touch on where we are with the two commissioned reviews, which will improve matters as part of the process I described. In the meantime, we have invested £40 million to digitally transform veterans’ services and phase out paper, which is so much impeding the quality of the service we want to offer our veterans. We are introducing online verification, which will make it much quicker and easier to establish veteran status, and that is also why we have introduced the reviews to which my hon. Friend refers.