James Sunderland intervenes in a debate on the mental health of veterans and calls for legislation to improve on existing support for veterans.
James Sunderland
Thank you, Mr Stringer, and apologies for that. I was going to apologise for being late and not being here. I was at the Procedure Committee. My humble apologies. I know we are short of time, but I want to clarify with the Minister that there are an estimated 2.3 million veterans in the country at the moment and we have a fantastic framework already across the UK, through the armed forces champions and also through the fantastic civil military partnership boards. The framework is already there, but there is a bit of fine-tuning that we need to get this put into statute and therefore give the veterans the help they need.
Johnny Mercer
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that there are some areas in this country where mental health care works extremely well, and models of care that should be promulgated further and rolled out nationwide. The challenge is that we have perpetually judged ourselves by what we are putting into the machine in terms of money and organisation. We have an event in London and we say, “We are providing this for veterans’ mental health.”