Mr Mark Francois
MP for Rayleigh and Wickford · Conservative · United Kingdom
“When the Defence Secretary agreed the SDR, he also signed up with the Treasury for almost £11 billion of efficiency savings. This was a Labour deal—a Faustian pact—between two warring Government Departments, but the effect of those in-year efficiency savings, or “spending cuts” in pub English, is now proving debilitating for our armed for…”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We have said it in the House, and we will see it through.” That is completely unambiguous, so imagine our anger when we then saw a letter from the permanent secretary to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, dated 25 September, which said not only that some £850 million of that money will be deferred to the next Parliament, but that…”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister might intervene and chide me for discussing submarine movements on the Floor of the House, but I am not—I am discussing the absence of submarine movements on the Floor of the House. We have also seen Army exercises cancelled on Salisbury plain and flying hours reduced for some of our RAF pilots.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“No, I think it is because they are desperately trying to find someone—anyone—to go to one of their press conferences. Now, according to the Red Book, working-age welfare spending will increase to £221.5 billion in 2031-32. That is almost a quarter of a trillion pounds and an increase of over £57 billion since 2024-25.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Investment in our nation’s defence and security cannot be kicked into the long grass. Our adversaries are not bound by fiscal years and spending cycles.” He should know.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In other words, a man who seemingly resigned on a point of honour, when he had the perfect chance to put that problem right, completely ducked it. All that Labour has done is kick the can down the road for a third time.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
The complete record
4,590 held · 4,589 searchable for Mr Mark Francois. The searchable lines are below in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 9 of 10.
This is not an official version of UK Parliament proceedings. It reproduces the published record and links to it; the official version is the one UK Parliament publishes.
“Clause 3 sets out a number of objectives for the Defence Housing Service and its functions, including “(a) improving the supply and quality of defence housing, (b) managing land or other property used (or formerly used) for defence purposes, (c) securing the regeneration or development of such land or other property, and (d) supporting in other ways— (i) the creation, regeneration or development of service communities, and (ii) the continued wellbeing of those communities.” I am sure that no one on the Committee will object to any of those objectives.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It can also be seen in the ratings, which are recorded annually in the armed forces continuous attitude survey, or AFCAS, which allows us to track customer satisfaction with the quality of maintenance of SFA. There is a specific question on that every year. Again I give credit where it is due for the introduction of a charter for the homes of service personnel and their families. Of course, it is the families who have to put up with the frustration of any failures, particularly if their loved ones are deployed away from base for any operational reason for any period of time. The families back home have to deal with the problems on a day-to-day basis, so if it is getting better, that is clearly to be welcomed.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is probably fair to say that there were quite a number of teething problems when that contract went live. Indeed, I expressed a number of reservations about FDIS in the “Stick or Twist?” report before it came in. However, the information I have is that after persistent pressure from Ministers—initially Conservative Ministers, especially my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), and now Labour Ministers, including the Minister on the Committee, to give credit where it is due—the performance of contractors under the FDIS contract has improved. We heard as much from the families federations—from the customer side of the equation, as it were.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The purpose of amendment 14 is to make improving customer satisfaction a specific objective of the Defence Housing Service. I will attempt to give credit where it is due. For context, the quality of service quarters, and in particular the maintenance of those quarters—especially maintenance of boilers and heating, dealing with mould, and suchlike—has been a constant bugbear for many service personnel and their families for decades. It is something that I went into considerable detail about in the “Stick or Twist?” report in 2020, to which I shall refer in more detail later this morning. The previous Conservative Government entered into a new housing management contract—the future defence infrastructure services programme, or FDIS—prior to the last general election.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I declare an interest: in the 1990s, I was the acting chairman of housing on what was then Basildon district council—so I was a housing specialist, but admittedly back in the last century. Incidentally, Basildon was once described as the only local authority in Britain where, at council meetings, councillors actively heckled the public gallery. From serving on the council, I can say that it is half true. The hon. Gentleman mentioned a number of features of the decent homes standard. What in his opinion are the critical two or three parts that, if we were to support his amendment, he would have the Government and the Defence Housing Service ensure above any others? What are the key two or three bits that he would like to press the Government on this morning?”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This might seem like a point of detail, but it is important. I will come on to “Stick or Twist?” later, but one thing that came out very clearly is that many families wanted what used to be known in old money as “patch managers”, often a retired senior NCO who lived nearby, who knew the patch and all the quarters intimately. He knew that No. 23 had always had a slightly wonky boiler or whatever. He was someone that all the families knew, and who the wives could get hold of if their spouse was away on deployment. We have named housing officers, but at what level do they operate? Do we have one per patch, per garrison or per region? How close to ground level are these named housing officers?”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful for that detail. I agree that it is a step in the right direction, so it would be churlish not to welcome it. To give credit where it is due, when my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk was a Minister in the Department, he invested several hundred million pounds in what was known as the mould action plan. Its aim was to get after the problem not just with temporary fixes, but with long-term work on properties with a persistent mould problem. As I have tried to be fair to the Government this morning, I hope the Minister will acknowledge that my hon. Friend put quite a lot of effort into that issue in defence housing. There has subsequently been some success, has there not?”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I appreciate everything that the Minister has said. None the less, we feel strongly about amendment 14, so we will press it to a vote. Question put, That the amendment be made.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In practice, that usually means providing SFA quarters that are ringfenced specifically to allow serving personnel to hire them temporarily, for example so that children who do not ordinarily live with them can stay with them on camp during a contact visit. This is obviously still an issue. I recall it cropping up in conversation when the Committee visited Portsmouth. When we visited the patch, we were shown some houses that, from memory, still had diggers outside because they were about to be refurbished for exactly that purpose. That tells me that this is still a bit of a challenge even now. Incidentally, that example bears out the value of the Committee visiting to see and learn these things for ourselves. As the Minister reminded me, it was Napoleon who said that time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I beg to move amendment 15, in clause 3, page 7, line 26, at end insert— “(e) provide earmarked accommodation to facilitate “contact visits” for children of service personnel, who do not live with them (in accordance with any relevant court order).” This amendment would make the Defence Housing Service responsible for providing accommodation to facilitate “contact visits” for children of service personnel who have separated, in accordance with any relevant court order regarding access. My hon. Friends and I tabled this very specific amendment for two reasons. I remember that during my time as a Minister, which was more than a decade ago, when I visited Army garrisons, Navy facilities or RAF airbases and discussed service family accommodation, the issue often cropped up of providing accommodation for contact visits.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I appreciate the spirit in which the Minister is replying. I have learned to take his word. Just so he does not think that we have a blanket policy of voting on everything this morning, if he gives me his word that he will take the issue back to the Department and the people setting up the DHS and look very seriously at how we might do a bit better, in return I shall not press the amendment. Can he give me that comfort now?”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will not look a gift horse in the mouth. I thank the Minister for his kind offer, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It may assist the Committee to know that when I looked at this in “Stick or Twist?”, we realised that we were talking about two slightly different propositions, and that some of the challenges in single living accommodation are a bit different from those in SFA. For the record, in “Stick or Twist?” we said we would start with SFA—we were talking about a housing association—and learn lessons from that and then go on to SLA. We realised there is a bit of an air gap between the two, so our work was concentrated on one and then maybe moved on to the other. That is, in some ways, similar to the spirit of what the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells is saying, if the Minister will accept that.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We have the permanent secretary, with responsibility for MOD centre and administrative matters; the Chief of the Defence Staff, unsurprisingly responsible for specifically military matters; the National Armaments Director for matters relating to procurement and—dare I mention it—the defence equipment plan, which is part of the defence investment plan; and, lastly, the Chief of Defence Nuclear, for all aspects of the nuclear deterrent and the associated shore-based infrastructure, which is now, as the Minister will know, a very challenging area for the Department.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The new system in the MOD is part of what one might call the quadripartite arrangement in the post-Levene model of defence reform, and by that I mean the process not the party—in passing, of course, Reform Members are not on this Committee, but they hardly ever turn up during defence debates in the Commons anyway, so it is not much of a loss. We now have effectively four main pillars within the Ministry below ministerial level.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As a person who is primarily appointed to sort out the procurement challenges facing the Ministry of Defence, of which we all know there are many and about which I have railed for years, not least on the Defence Committee—it is all on the record—the NAD is not the most obvious choice to oversee an organisation designed to provide high-quality housing for service personnel and their families. It seems odd. In short, the NAD will have enough problems sorting out issues like Ajax— I refer the Minister to the answer I gave some moments ago about Ajax—and the propulsion systems of the Type 45 destroyer and so on, without having to worry about the challenges of defence housing as well.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The genesis of the amendment is that when we were taking further evidence on the proposals for the DHS a little over a week ago, there appeared to be some ambiguity about how exactly it will report to Ministers. As I recall, we were told that it will have a partial reporting line, or the equivalent, into DIO headquarters—to keep it in the loop, I think—but that it will also report to Ministers via the National Armaments Director. At first hearing, that is somewhat surprising.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I beg to move amendment 16, in clause 3, page 9, line 27, at end insert— “(4) The Chief Executive of the Defence Housing Service must report directly to the Minister of State for the Armed Forces regarding the performance of the Defence Housing Service.” This amendment requires the Chief Executive of the Defence Housing Service to report directly to the Minister of State for the Armed Forces regarding the performance of the Defence Housing Service. The amendment relates to the reporting chain of the proposed new Defence Housing Service. In essence, it means that once the Defence Housing Service is established, it should report directly to the Minister for the Armed Forces regarding the performance of that service.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Member for Tunbridge Wells is with me here—if the Defence Housing Service were to underperform, what would happen to the NAD’s base salary? Would it be docked? It is a really serious question. To summarise, could the Minister explain why the Department decided to manage it in this way? There must be a rationale, and the Committee would like to know what it is. Could he also explain how these bonus arrangements will work and how transparent all of it will be?”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Charles Woodburn is widely regarded in the industry as knowing what he is about, and is a highly professional leader of that company. None the less, I have sympathy with the question posed by the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells. If this is part of the bonus arrangements, what are the metrics? If he were to get a bonus for the performance of Defence Housing Service, how do we know how much he will get? And how would we judge whether it is value for money, not just for the taxpayer but for the rent payers—the customers—of the Defence Housing Service? I hope the Committee will understand there is a genuine point at issue here. We would be very interested to know what element, if any, of the NAD’s salary, and specifically the bonus payment, is related to the performance of the Defence Housing Service. By the same token—I hope the hon.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind comment—every dog has its day. Yes, I think it should, and that is partly the purpose for tabling the amendment. For the avoidance of doubt, I accept in principle that, given the very large amounts of money we spend on equipment procurement—potentially more than £0.25 trillion over the next decade—paying someone quite a lot of money to get it to work is inherently not an unreasonable thing to do. Nevertheless, the appointment did raise eyebrows across the civil service. To be fair, as I understand it, the chief executive of BAE Systems earns about £10 million a year—although if we look at what he has done to its share price, a shareholder might argue that it is a pretty good investment.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am so sorry; I have done it again. Mr Efford, I was not planning to press the amendment to a Division, but now I will—before I “retire”. Question put, That the amendment be made.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I note that the Minister never answered my previous inquiry about the bonus arrangements for the NAD. He is speaking to the clause standing part of the Bill, so perhaps he can tell me now—though he may need to seek inspiration. What are the bonus arrangements for the NAD relating to the DHS? What metrics will be applied?”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The rationale for it was to create a specific bespoke entity with the sole purpose—as established in its articles of association—to provide high-quality housing for armed forces personnel and their families while providing value for money, both for those families and for the taxpayer. The Minister will know that such an entity could be a retention aid because people often pay well below the market rate for a property that would cost them a lot more to rent in the civilian world. In some cases, service personnel value that, and in some cases it is one of the reasons they stick rather than twist, so it can work two ways. The idea is to create a bespoke housing association, chaired by a Minister and bringing in external expertise from the social rented sector.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The partners definitely wanted the patch managers back—I have gone on about it because that is what they kept telling us everywhere we went. Some of the junior ranks in single living accommodation wanted to have slightly better conditions, but some of them at least accepted that, while their conditions may not have been great, they paid virtually no rent for them. Bluntly, at the age of 19, they were slightly more concerned about having a bit of spare cash for Friday and Saturday night than they were about their rent, but that does not mean they do not deserve to live in good accommodation. So we got a variety of feedback. Based on the DIO at the time, we came up with an alternative solution that we called a forces housing association.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In 2012, when I came in and asked to visit the DIO’s headquarters, I was asked, “Which one do you want to visit, Minister?” I said, “What do you mean? There can be only one.” “No, sir. There are six.” We eventually decided that the principal headquarters was in Sutton Coldfield, but that gives some idea of how long it took that organisation to settle down. It was not given an abundance of resources with which to complete its task. In fairness to the DIO, which has come in for a lot of stick down the years, not least from me, it was set up in challenging circumstances and has had a difficult job to do for many years. If anyone from the DIO is listening, I hope they can appreciate the spirit of what I am trying to say. We found very clear themes from the focus groups.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“He said, “I was sat there with a laptop at 2 o’clock in the morning in the middle of BATUS”—this was some years ago, remember—“reading a cheap novel, when I could have been at my friend’s wedding.” So he came back from Canada and told the Army to stuff it. To my mind, such brainless decisions can bring very promising military careers to an end. When my team and I looked at the housing issue, I looked at the history of the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, which at that time, it has to be said, was not coming in for a lot of praise. In fairness to the DIO—I want to put this on record—it was created in 2010 in something of a shotgun marriage between up to 24 different entities. The old Defence Estates and lots of attachments and detachments, to use military language, were thrown together to create the DIO.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We were trying to reflect what the Minister would call ground truth. Sometimes there was just one thing—the straw that breaks the camel’s back. In some cases, it was that the partner in the services had been away on an unaccompanied tour and there had been failures with housing provision, and that did it. To give a completely contrary example, a captain in an armoured unit down on Salisbury plain said that he left because he had been looking forward for months to being the best man at his old university friend’s wedding, but he was picked up on a trawl and told that he had to be a watchkeeper in the British Army Training Unit Suffield. He pleaded with his CO. He wrote a letter to the brigadier, but the brigadier was unsympathetic. The captain missed his best mate’s wedding.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“One thing that came out of the report was that when people leave the armed forces—when they decide to twist—it is often for a combination of reasons. We gave the example of an Army corporal having a kitchen table conversation with his wife when their kids have gone to bed. He has been offered promotion, and he says, “Should I stick or twist?” They go through factor by factor: his likelihood for promotion, her likelihood of promotion in a civilian career, the education of their children—in this scenario, they have an education, health and care plan, so if they move, they might lose that—care for an elderly relative and availability of medical support. In the end, they come to an amalgamated decision about whether to carry on. We learned from the focus groups that this sort of stuff goes on all the time.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The quote relates to accommodation and came from an interview at Brize Norton with a Royal Air Force corporal: “We had an Air Vice Marshal visit us a few months ago to give us all a pep talk about how what we were doing was extremely important to Defence and how the nation greatly valued our contribution to National Security. While I was standing at the back, I couldn’t help thinking, well Sir, if that’s true, why are my kids showering in cold water—yet again?” We put that on the front page of the report—on its face, as it were—because we thought it encapsulated the problem. I encourage hon. Members at least to have a glance at the report if they have a spare minute, but I realise they all live very busy lives.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“While we were there, we conducted a series of panels—I suppose one might call them focus groups—with warrant officers, senior non-commissioned officers, junior ranks and partners thereof. We tried to get four different perspectives on the challenges facing retention in the armed forces. It was very interesting to see how different ranks sometimes saw issues differently. One quote struck us so much that we stuck it on the cover. This was under a Conservative Government—I have been called many things down the years, but never a toady.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We called it “Stick or Twist?” because that encapsulates the dilemma that service personnel often face at a particular junction in their career. Do they stick with their military service, or twist and go and do something else? We submitted that report in February 2020. It was commissioned by Theresa May, but by then Boris Johnson was the Prime Minister. We submitted it a month before the country went into lockdown, so it was written in a pre-covid context. The methodology was to make about a dozen visits to military establishments around the country, including Portsmouth for the Royal Navy, Catterick garrison for the Army and Brize Norton for the Royal Air Force.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As I am sure the Minister, with his experience, will know, there is no point widening the aperture of the recruitment tap, as it were, unless you can put a retention plug in the sink. If they are leaving faster than they are joining, we have a real problem. I had a very good team for the retention report. I place on record my thanks to Brigadier Simon Goldstein, a distinguished reservist who retired from the Army after many years as a brigadier, including in one or two regiments the Minister will be familiar with, and my then researcher, an extremely bright chap called Rory Boden who has now gone to the dark side and works in public affairs. The three of us, I hope, put together a credible document.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“For the record, the recommendation the Department did not adopt was that I pleaded with it to sack Capita— I nearly called it something else—as the contractor in charge of recruitment. I said in 2017, “Give them a year to fix it and if they don’t, they should go.” Capita did not fix it, and it stayed on. I understand that it was unsuccessful in bidding for the new trial service contract, so maybe it got its come-uppance after all. Some people thought that “Filling the Ranks” was not completely useless, so I was subsequently commissioned to do a report on retention. The reason for that was partly that as soon as we started talking about recruitment, we ended up having a discussion about retention within 15 minutes anyway.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“After I left government in 2016, when Theresa May became the new Prime Minister and I somehow did not end up in her Administration, I was commissioned by her as a former Minister—the Minister here today may one day, after he has retired, be commissioned to do something similar—to write a report about military recruitment. It was called “Filling the Ranks” and it took about a year to write; I submitted it in 2017. It covered a range of stuff, including trying to see past very minor medical ailments that were preventing people who desperately wanted to join the forces from doing so. All of the recommendations, bar one, were adopted by the Department and I think they have been worked on over the years, some of them more speedily than others.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The essence of new clause 7 is that the Government should prepare a feasibility study of the relative merits of introducing a forces housing association, as recommended in the “Stick or Twist?” report, versus continuing with the Defence Housing Service. I apologise to you, Mr Efford, and to members of the Committee: as the new clause relates specifically to that document, I should as a courtesy have sent a copy—or at least a link—to all members of the Committee before this sitting. No disrespect was intended, but perhaps I can atone for that by leaving a copy with the Clerk. If anybody wants to refer to it afterwards, they can go to him. I will explain the background to the report and why I believe its recommendations are powerful.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Having given the context, and having hopefully told the Committee where my heart lies on this matter, I will gladly give way to the hon. Member for South Ribble.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The idea was to bring in the expertise of people who had been managing public sector housing for decades, get a chief executive from that background and then create a board chaired by a Minister, so that Ministers would have real accountability, with representatives from forces families associations sitting as non-executive directors on the board, thus ensuring direct involvement from the customers themselves. There is more I could say on that, but I do not want to try the patience of the Committee. That was the rationale: bringing in external housing sector professionals and getting them to run a ringfenced entity. That is what we were advocating for in “Stick or Twist?” and it was the genesis of the policy we announced several months ago, I am pleased to say.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will finish this point, then of course I will give way. Some housing associations have been looking after public sector housing, which is effectively what forces housing is, for decades. In my experience as a constituency MP, such housing associations vary in quality. There are some poor ones and some very good ones. The main one operating in my constituency is Sanctuary. A few years ago it was pretty poor but it is now under new leadership, with a very good chief executive called Craig Moule. Five years ago he told me that he was going to turn around the supertanker; she is still turning, but she is now pretty much going in the opposite direction, so I have seen what good looks like.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I hope we have done our duty, and no doubt we will wish to return to some of these issues on Report, not least the prospective bonus for the National Armaments Director. I will conclude there, and I am genuinely interested to hear the Minister’s reply and the opinions of any other members of the Committee.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“One person then said something, and the dam broke: everybody wanted to pitch in, and everybody had a contribution to make. That taught me how powerful all of this is. We had a number of specific examples when people of varying ranks told us, “We are going to leave the service of the Crown, because of our concerns about housing.” I know from experience that this really matters to service personnel and their families. I apologise for trying the patience of the Committee this morning, Mr Efford—in all seriousness, you have everything in Greenwich, including your own barracks, so you will be very familiar with these matters yourself. I hope Members understand the spirit of what we are trying to do with new clause 7. On clause 3, I think we have had a good debate this morning, and we have tested some of the issues fairly well.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We were asking the Government to conduct a feasibility study, perhaps slightly more independently than the response that the hon. Member for South Ribble just cited, and to come back a year later, before the Defence Housing Service is fully up and running, to see whether there might be a better way of doing it or whether it could be tweaked. We might return to this on Report, but that is the background, the genesis and the stimuli of our proposal. When we did the visits—it was a former Minister, a politician in a suit, coming down to a military establishment—we sat 20 people down in a room and gave them the scenario of the corporal’s conversation at the kitchen table as a bit of an icebreaker. To begin with, everyone looked at everyone else, and they were all a bit nervous about saying something.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The purpose of tabling new clause 7 was so we could debate the relative merits of the two systems. If we think of this as a spectrum, the old DIO was at the most statist end, the Defence Housing Service as proposed is one notch further along to something more market-oriented, and we are proposing something another notch further along the spectrum. The Minister is listening intently; hopefully he understands the analogy. As I said at the beginning, I do not believe there is any violent disagreement, or indeed any disagreement at all, about what the Committee is trying to achieve. We all want service family accommodation of the best possible quality for our personnel and their families; the debate is about how we best get to that objective.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Yes, and in the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies, they would say that, wouldn’t they? We were proposing a slightly more market-oriented solution. Registered social landlords are somewhere between the public and private sector. They are not entirely private entities or entities of the state, but are, practically, somewhere in the middle. As I have already said from experience, they vary in quality, but to be fair, I have seen what good looks like. I appreciate the knowledge of the hon. Gentleman. He has a proud background of service in the Royal Engineers. He qualified as a clerk of works, which is no mean feat, so I appreciate that he knows his onions. None the less, the point he puts across came from the other side of the fence—no pun intended. Of course they would argue that.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“For the record, that was the one recommendation in the “Stick or Twist?” report that was not adopted. All the other recommendations were adopted, including spending a lot of money on wraparound childcare because, again, childcare was a very important point for retention. Ben Wallace told me that he used the report to get quite a bit of cash out of the Treasury, so that recommendation about childcare was one that we did manage to get through. For the record, this was the one recommendation that was too much for the system to bear.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am afraid that I cannot, standing at the Dispatch Box, make an immediate spending commitment on behalf of my party to satisfy the hon. Member—”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The traditional argument is that because most Gurkhas returned to Nepal on the conclusion of their service, where costs were lower, it was appropriate to pay them under the old arrangements. However, after the end of their basing in Hong Kong and the switch of the brigade to the United Kingdom—and, indeed, given that many Gurkhas now avail themselves of the option of settling in the UK with their immediate family following their period of service—the question arises of whether the pension arrangements should be altered, including for older Gurkha veterans. I commend the hon. Member for Tewkesbury for advancing their arguments in the way he has done this afternoon. He has been a strong advocate of their case.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“After 2009 and a sustained campaign led by, among others, Joanna Lumley—the daughter of a former Gurkha officer—the then Government amended the immigration rules, in essence to allow those who had served in the Brigade of Gurkhas for four years or more to settle themselves and their immediate families in the United Kingdom. That effectively remains the position today. As a result, there are now clusters of Gurkhas and their families living in the UK, mainly in current or former garrison areas, but some are dispersed further afield. For some time, there has been a campaign to amend the pensions of Gurkha veterans who served many years ago and still draw a pension, so that they are at the equivalent AFPS rate, rather than based on the comparable Indian army rate.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In 2007, the Labour Government introduced the Gurkha offer to transfer—or GOTT, as it was sometimes referred to—offering Gurkhas who served after July 1997 the option to transfer their eligible service into the United Kingdom’s armed forces pension scheme, or AFPS. I remember much debate about the AFPS when I was a Minister, and about the different benefits provided by the different generations of the scheme, whether it was AFPS 1975, 2005 or 2015—I see the Minister nodding in acknowledgement. Significantly in this context, following the handing back of Hong Kong in 1997, the Gurkhas transferred their main base from that former colony back to the United Kingdom, where they are mainly deployed today.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“However, in the post-war period, the basis of the Gurkhas’ service was the 1947 tripartite agreement between Nepal, the United Kingdom and India, which established terms and conditions of service for Gurkhas in the British armed forces. Under the arrangement, Gurkhas served in the British Army on distinct terms and conditions. They also had access to a Gurkha pension scheme, first introduced in 1948, which, in essence, followed the Indian army model. It provided Gurkha soldiers with an immediate pension after 15 years’ service, but, as has been pointed out, at equivalent Indian army rates.”
House of Commons26 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗