Dr Andrew Murrison
MP for South West Wiltshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“It is good to hear that the Government plan to replenish the dwindling stocks of Patriot missiles in Ukraine, which I suspect it will need this winter. However, Patriot is low volume and high cost. What the Ukrainians need is high volume and low cost.”
“Currently, the Royal Navy has an offshore patrol vessel permanently stationed in the Falkland Islands, but given the threat that is being faced and our need to demonstrate resolve—the sort of thing that, sadly, we did not demonstrate in the early 1980s, which led to miscalculation—will the Minister consider speaking to her MOD colleagues…”
“Since the Foreign Secretary is not going to get the co-operation, fulsome or otherwise, of the Israeli state in differentiating goods and services made in the settlements from those that are assembled, repackaged, produced and grown in Israel itself, how is he going to distinguish the one from the other?”
“The Government insisted on applying the social time preference rate to the disastrous Chagos deal to make an appalling deal look slightly better.”
“Will the First Secretary of State’s exercise in delivering democracy and local accountability and empowering local people include a look at large organisations that cannot be described as governmental or as quangos but that nevertheless exist firmly within the public domain, are established by statute, serve the public and are big employe…”
“I congratulate the Government on the hiring of Alistair Burt—he is a good hire and will do great things for some of these most complex of cases—but does the Minister agree that many of these cases are extremely difficult and exceptionally traumatic, and that it is far better to prevent them happening in the first place?”
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“The Secretary of State began to discuss public engagement, and engagement with stakeholders is important, but will he reassure us that there will be no more ridiculous, sham consultations on reorganising primary and intermediate health care? Such consultations happened in Wiltshire, where three of the four community hospitals closed, much against local people’s wishes.”
“I am sure that my hon. Friend, like me, listened with great interest to the Minister’s comments—all 16 minutes of them—so he will probably share my surprise that not once did she mention the contribution being made by Commonwealth citizens in Iraq and Afghanistan. I hope that he will join me in commending the fine work of those soldiers. He may also share my surprise that 635 Commonwealth citizens were serving in the British Army in 1998, but that today the number is 7,615. Although those soldiers are excellent, does he agree that it is surprising that the British Army has failed so badly in recruiting UK nationals to serve in our Army?”
“I agree. We owe a great debt of gratitude to Commonwealth citizens who serve in the armed forces. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to be a little bit careful? If there is a rich seam, so to speak, of potential recruits to the British Army, it is less imperative for the Government to make sure that the terms and conditions for indigenous recruits are good to the standard that will attract them into our armed forces?”
“I am interested to hear about the gatherings with which the hon. Gentleman is involved. When he has his symposium on climate change, will he be sure to invite the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which I visited on Tuesday and which told me that one of its chief problems at the moment with the many sites that it looks after around the globe is the issue of climate change, which rather surprised me? I am sure that it would make a sound contribution to the gathering that he describes on climate change.”
“Does the hon. Lady believe that the number of post offices we have now is about right and that they are based in approximately the right place? If not, what is her assessment of how many more post offices we would have in this ideal Liberal Democrat world? How would she determine where they should be and, more importantly, how would she pay for them?”
“One of the things that my hon. Friend’s constituents and mine are concerned about is maternity services. Has he seen the recent Healthcare Commission report, which commended both Chippenham and Trowbridge maternity units? Does he share my exasperation that the primary care trust that we unfortunately have in Wiltshire seems selective in the evidence that it uses to back up its position? It appears to ignore things such as the Healthcare Commission’s assertion that smaller is better when it comes to maternity services.”
“The Leader of the House spoke for 24 minutes, and during that time she did not once mention the women who serve on the front line in our armed forces; I am sure that my right hon. Friend will cover that point. Does my right hon. Friend not agree that women who are serving are probably as aghast as I am that the Government should have scheduled this debate on international women’s day, which as it has been running since the early 1900s can hardly be described as topical, when we have had so little time to debate the defence and security aspects of the Lisbon treaty, which is of great relevance to them, and to both men and women in general?”
“We Conservatives wish to be associated with the Minister’s message of condolence to the family of Sergeant Duane Barwood, who died serving our country. Parades and badges are important, but veterans are also looking for a more tangible recognition of their service and sacrifice. Will the Minister use the opportunity of Veterans day to announce, first, his plans to remedy the shortcomings in the management of post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans, highlighted last month by the Defence Committee? Secondly, will he announce his plans for ensuring that there is continuity of care throughout the UK for amputees who leave the defence services rehabilitation centre at Headley Court and become reliant on NHS limb centres, which are not as well resourced and may very well have competing clinical priorities?”
“Our defence and security industries are meant to be in some kind of partnership with Ministers as we face the various novel threats of today, yet here we have the Government establishing themselves as a somewhat unreliable customer who reneges on deals. That seems to be a strange way of approaching a partnership. We can be sure that the industry will have noted the way Avon Rubber has been treated by the Government, and that it will wish to amend any tenders that it makes for this kind of Government work accordingly. In the absence of a dedicated homeland security Minister, the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing is responsible for this matter, as he is responsible for preparedness. I have to say that this sorry episode makes me wonder what he is up to.”
“The Minister will remember that the wash-up from that incident seemed to suggest that the emergency services’ responses were somewhat lacking, and that the toll from the incident might possibly have been due in part to the failure to plan adequately for such eventualities. Such threats still stand, but where is the means of protecting escapees and first responders? The Minister needs to understand that there will be first responders at such scenes who will wish to go in and render assistance. What message does the Minister think his indecision and delay send to partners in the UK defence industry?”
“The tender was accepted by the Treasury and was subsequently reneged on by the Home Office, and yet the Scottish police and the English ambulance service have proceeded with it in full. Either they have got it right or the English police have got it right; they cannot both have got it right. At a time when we are supposed to be looking at a co-ordinated response to the threats we face, it strikes me as somewhat odd that we should be adopting such a mosaic response to threats of this kind—so much for a joined-up approach to homeland security. The EH20 escape hood is designed for escaping safely from a hazardous environment, and it is good for about 20 minutes. It was developed following the Tokyo subway disaster of 1995.”
“I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) for allowing me a couple of minutes to make a few supporting remarks. I am familiar with the Defence NBC school at Winterbourne Gunner where I have trained with my own trusty respirator, which was, of course, made at the excellent Avon Rubber in Melksham. The EH20 escape hood was developed jointly by Winterbourne Gunner and Avon Rubber. Subsequently, at the time of its relocation to Ryton, the Police National CBRN Centre appeared to change its mind on that piece of kit, which it had jointly brought to life with Avon Rubber. Such dither on something so important is cause for great concern, and I hope the Minister will comment on that.”
“Members have referred to those sentiments. In the context of current operations, it means that a clasp for Helmand and Kandahar would disappoint troops in service elsewhere in Afghanistan, many of whom will feel that they have been equally in the thick of it. Will the Army top brass, who were reported last month to be engineering a U-turn over the southern Afghanistan clasp, reflect on the six bars available to mark particular operations during the second Afghan war of 1878? Will the Minister update us on the skirmish that appears to have broken out between the Chief of the General Staff and the vice-chief of the defence staff on that issue?”
“The five-year rule ensures that we are contemporary in our recollection of events, but most of us will recall vividly those opening shots and the circumstances surrounding them. I wonder whether the five-year rule is far too prescriptive. I hope that if the Minister could agree to reconsider the rules governing the conduct of the HD committee, he will look at a 10-year rule, which I suggest would be very useful. It is important to consider equivalence in medalling. Winston Churchill appreciated that the award of medals is an inexact science. In March 1944, he said: “A medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow”. I am slightly surprised that that quote has not been used already here. I am rather pleased that it has not, because it means that I can introduce it. However, without articulating those words, a number of hon.”
“The Government resisted approval of the PJM medal when we debated it at great length in December. However, some who served between 1960 and 1962 did not receive the general service medal, including some naval personnel, even though they served afloat off Malaya, because the time qualification was more onerous for them. Thus the double-medalling rule is no ground for failing to approve the medal in their case. Some might say that approval of the PJM medal would circumvent the qualifying period set by the HD committee, but a row of medals reads like a CV and the appearance of the PJM medal, instead of the GSM with a Malaya clasp would tell its own story. The second rule is the five-year one, which is also curious. It is worth reflecting that we are rapidly approaching the fifth anniversary of the opening shots of Operation Telic 1.”
“The committee operates according to two principal rules: the first is the double-medalling rule, which is a curious thing, because it appears to rely on precedent that ignores precedent. I am reminded of the Khedive’s star and the Turkish Crimea medal. They are good examples from the distant past of where double-medalling has applied. I was interested in the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) on wound stripes. It is all very well for committees and politicians to say, “Well, we have not done this in the past,” but we have very short memories, do we not? I am sure that most of us are grateful to him for reminding us that in the not very distant past we provided the appropriate recognition of sacrifices made by our servicemen.”
“Much of this debate revolves around the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals, which was set up to determine whether medals should be awarded and under what circumstances. On 11 December, when we gathered to debate the Pingat Jasa Malaysia medal, some vitriol was heaped on that committee. However, we must understand that it is a creature of politicians and that those appointed to serve on it do so with the best will in the world according to rules that we give them. It is in our power to consider whether those rules are up-to-date or whether they need to be revised, and whether the committee’s membership needs to be reconsidered. If we do that, perhaps we will avoid the problems that we have unfortunately got ourselves into in recent years.”
“I draw the attention of the Chamber to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests. I am a serving officer in the reserve forces. There is a consensus, certainly in this gathering, on the need for a medal to recognise the particular sacrifices of those injured or killed in the service of their country. I cannot remember a more impassioned debate in Westminster Hall, which, frankly, is not known for its passion. I am sure that the Minister will leave this debate with much food for thought. We generally gather to debate past conflicts, so it is refreshing to be considering contemporary events and serving personnel. However, we need to consider the past as well and, perhaps, debate briefly problems with medals for previous conflicts.”
“I hope that when the Minister examines the rules that govern the HD committee, he will bear in mind whether it is appropriate to ordain whether civilians and veterans should be proscribed from wearing particular awards, if they view it as appropriate.”
“Finally, why does the Minister make a rod for his own back by getting involved terribly much in what civilians wear? Today’s debate is largely about those who are serving, but we must think about civilians, because all servicemen will ultimately become civilians. My guess is that liberalisation would mean that veterans emulated the practice of those still serving, which would in general be in accordance with uniform regulations. We think about the PJM, for example, in that respect. In any case, however, it would surely be expedient to leave such matters to the discretion of private citizens, and to spare Ministers a considerable amount of grief into the bargain.”
“It is vital to underscore the importance of impartiality among members of that committee, and their distance from politicians, because we all know what we are like, and the striking of a medal is relatively cheap and very appealing electorally. It is important that we keep our hands off the issue, and that those who are appointed to the task—officials—make a determination against, of course, the rules that we lay down. I am concerned about those rules, which were instituted in Foreign and Commonwealth Office orders in 1969, all those years ago, and govern what the committee does. I am not going to lay into members of the committee, who at the end of the day are simply tasked with carrying out the rules as best they can. I do not envy them; it must be an extremely difficult job to do.”
“I would be cautious, however, because most servicemen and their families want, above all else, a decent deal. We have heard a great deal from the Royal British Legion and others about the broken military covenant, and servicemen and their families will not, in any way, want any deal to be a substitute for proper welfare for them and their families, particularly when personnel are injured. Before giving the Minister fair time to respond to the many excellent contributions that have been made today, I should like to say a little about the HD committee because it lies at the heart of today’s discussion.”
“The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) has done a great job in prevailing on the Prime Minister and forming his views on the subject. I should be very interested to hear how the Minister feels about the issue, and how he might take forward the tricky and complicated matter of deciding who gets the medal. I ask only that he cracks on and does it quickly out of a sense of self-interest, because I fear that the exercise will be difficult, throw up perversities and certainly, in Winston Churchill’s words, cast some shadows. I should not particularly want to address the issue in office, because I suspect that it will make a determination on matters such as PJMs and Arctic stars seem a little like a walk in the park. That does not mean that the Minister should not attempt it.”
“In the 21st century, we need to mark the sacrifice of our troops in action. In many cases, they are in a fixed-bayonet situation that would not have been unfamiliar to those who fell in the great war. I agree with my hon. Friend that in the 21st century, it would be far preferable to strike a medal than to award wound stripes, and I hope that the Minister will give it serious consideration. I must mention mental health, because many of those who were vilified and punished during the great war for what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder or combat stress, would not have been eligible for any award at all; the reverse very much applied. It is important to put on record and recognise that many of the scars from which our servicemen and women suffer now are not physical but mental, and they must be recognised in exactly the same way.”
“However, we learned in November that he is taken by the idea of a British version of the purple heart for those who have been wounded or killed, and it is reasonable to be guided by the wishes, aspirations and feelings of servicemen and those excellent organisations that represent them. Precedent is important, and my hon. Friend and one or two other hon. Members mentioned that large brass plaques still exist in the possession of proud families, marking the ultimate sacrifice that so many made during the great war. The plaques are not pretty. My family has one, and by the standards of our day, perhaps they are not attractive items. However, the need for them was felt at the time, and I believe that they gave a great deal of comfort and pride to those who were bereaved.”
“Naval officers and, indeed, officers of all the regular forces, however, are left out. In Ministers’ half-baked attempt to address a particular issue in 1999, they left a great deal of unfinished business, so I hope that in the spirit of “all of one company”, they might like to look again at long service and good conduct medals. I turn to the main gist of today’s debate, which is the British purple heart. The Prime Minister is no numismatist, as we gathered from his confusion over badges, medals and the difference between the two at the Dispatch Box last Wednesday.”
“I suspect that my hon. Friend’s knowledge of such matters surpasses that of anyone else in the House. I am very grateful to him for adding to my knowledge of the second Afghan war of 1878. As we struggle to avoid the shadow that Churchill talked about, we might like to give some thought to the disparity in the award of various long service and good conduct medals, which was mentioned briefly earlier. One of the Government’s most vindictive acts was the immediate abolition of the reserve decoration, which several members of my family have been pleased to receive, and the territorial decoration, which several of my hon. Friends hold. Instead, there is the far less aspirational volunteer reserve medal, which has a qualifying period of 10 years, in contrast to the 15 years for long service and good conduct medal for naval ratings.”
“Is it the Minister’s judgment that there was more or less support for this measure than there was for the Wiltshire measure that we discussed a few days ago?”
“Does my hon. Friend share my disgust at Government sham consultations? We are hearing about one this evening, we heard about the Wiltshire one a few days ago, and we hear it constantly about Government consultation on the national health service. It hardly encourages public engagement with policy. People are rightly becoming cynical about the whole thing.”
“Has the Minister taken any account of the MORI poll conducted among Wiltshire residents in 2006? I suspect not, as there is no reference to it in his summary of consultations published in November last year. Does he not think that he should have taken account of that fairly objective assessment of opinion in Wiltshire?”
“The Minister appears to be waving this off as if the Government are not supposed to be taking any view on it and are just blithely accepting the say-so of the county council, yet they set the criteria against which these applications should be judged, and clearly criterion No. 2 falls almost by his own admission. He cannot wash his hands of this. At the end of the day, he is making the decision and needs to be responsible for it.”
“Will the Minister clarify that? I happen to be president of the Wiltshire association of local councils and I do not believe that that body has said any such thing. Perhaps he will be a little clearer.”
“In 1974, local government was paralysed by reorganisation for up to three years, and I have to say to the Minister that there is good evidence that we are seeing a repeat performance right now in Wiltshire. My constituents want local government to deliver quality services—which, by and large, it does. However, residents and council after council have responded to the Minister’s consultation by saying that they do not want this expensive, remote, self-licking lollipop that is threatening 1974-style paralysis for months on end. Even at this late stage, I urge the Minister to think again.”
“Will the Minister confirm that area governance under the proposals will be no more than an unfunded “selectocracy” with very little accountability? In July 2006, the former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government called local reorganisation “a great distraction”, and in March 2007, in the Government’s own review, Sir Michael Lyons criticised restructuring and recommended more joint working. That is precisely the solution that Wiltshire residents have said they want, and precisely what the MORI polling data confirmed that they wanted. The Local Government Chronicle in May 2007 reported the Treasury fear that unitary bids were a “waste of time” and that it “simply cannot afford to bear” the financial risks involved.”
“Will the Minister say why the estimates of costs and benefits have differed structurally from one unitary proposal to another, thus disallowing meaningful comparison? That is particularly important in the present context because Somerset, just across the border—a county that is in many ways similar to Wiltshire—has had a very different outcome from its unitary bid. Will the Minister tell us why the transition costs, recurrent costs and savings, pension liabilities and extra costs for area governance and pay harmonisation have not been included in the cost appraisal for Wiltshire? Given the absence of a budget for area governance, what did the Secretary of State have in mind when talking in July 2007 of a “real opportunity” for people to “shape their communities”?”
“Instead, a climate of cynicism has been engendered among the public, and who can blame them if they put a great deal of time and effort into responding to consultations in good faith, in the belief that those who make a decision at the end of the day will pay close attention to what they say and act upon it? Unfortunately, in the local government consultation, like others in Wiltshire, those who are entrusted with making policy sadly seem to bat away all the time any effort put in by our constituents. They should hang their heads in shame. Understandably, there has been considerable judicial interest in the matter. Will the Minister outline the possible outcomes of the Congleton and Shrewsbury judicial review and what implications various possible outcomes may have on the local government review process?”
“It is especially important in Wiltshire. Over the past months and years, and certainly since 2001 when I was elected, we have become accustomed to what might be called sham consultations. We have had them particularly in relation to local health care, where it appears that the results of the opinion survey have been more or less determined before the exercise started. That has led to the most disastrous consequences in respect of the scorched earth policy being conducted by Wiltshire primary care trust and, before that, by its predecessor bodies. This has taken place at a time when we are all trying to establish public confidence in democracy and engage people with politics and with the formulation of public policy in important areas such as local government, health care and practically every other arena.”
“Wiltshire county council misused the information in the same way as the Department for Communities and Local Government appears to have been creative in its interpretation. West Wiltshire district council referred the matter to the district auditor. On 30 July 2007 the district auditor stated in response: “I agree with you that it”— a press release issued by the county council— “represents a misinterpretation of the MORI findings. It is highly selective in its use of information from the poll and excludes information that would provide a more accurate representation. As such, I consider that it fails to comply with the Publicity Code in that it is not objective or balanced”, yet that is the body on which the Minister is relying almost wholly in making his assertions. The matter of consultation is by no means trivial.”
“May I challenge the Minister to say how he is able to draw the inferences presented in the November summary document from the responses that he received and I photocopied? If he cannot do so, the second criterion in the October 2006 invitation for unitary bids is not met. For a more reliable litmus test of public opinion, we must turn to the MORI polling data collected in June 2006. In his letter of 22 November 2007, the leader of West Wiltshire district council, Councillor Graham Payne, says: “I can see no reference in your report about the MORI poll that was undertaken to assess the views of the public in Wiltshire.” That is the case. I asked the Minister specifically about that and he seemed to be under the impression that in some way that poll was reflected, but in fact it is not.”
“Furthermore, the breezy assertion that there would be “some support from the general public” is true only in the most literal sense, with “some support” meaning more than no support. The November summary document continues in the same creative vein. Any reasonable comparison of the document with the raw data would reveal that there has been considerable licence in the interpretation and collation of material. I do not know whether the Minister has been through all the responses. The Department was good enough to allow me not only to read them, but to photocopy them, and I have been through them all. They confirm my belief, from what my constituents have been telling me for many months, that there is no significant body of support, however he defines it, for the proposals before us.”
“It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram). I cannot compete with 1265, but the battlefield site of Ethandune, near Edington, is in my constituency. That is where King Alfred defeated the Danes in 878 and set up the kingdom of Wessex. If anybody knew about local government reorganisation, it was King Alfred. Let us be clear: there is no support worthy of the name for the proposal in the county of Wiltshire. There are no grounds for the Minister’s opinion, which was given in his letter of 25 July 2007 to Wiltshire county council’s chief executive, that the proposals would “command a broad cross section of support from a range of stakeholders”.”
“The Minister will understand how important it is, in fulfilling our obligations under the military covenant, to ensure that service children are educated as well as possible. Does he agree that it would be helpful if the pupil level annual school census were able to identify service children? What measures is he taking to ensure that service children who join and leave within the academic year, and are therefore not counted, are enumerated for funding purposes?”
“Is it not the truth that the Government’s commitment to honouring the covenant does not extend to replacing clapped-out airframes, showing bargain-basement contract operators the door and coughing up the paltry runway dues or whatever else it takes to get our people home for Christmas? I look forward to hearing the fogbound Minister’s account of what on earth was happening on both those occasions and to listening to what he thinks they say about our commitment to the military covenant.”
“Fog at Brize was apparently also responsible for the diversion of 130 soldiers returning from Basra to Prestwick in a horrific 36-hour transit fiasco that got them back to their home base in Wiltshire at 5 am on Christmas day. Why were soldiers left stranded at Prestwick, armed only with a railway warrant? Why was the charter flight sent over dozens of fog-free English airports to dump those troops at Prestwick? On Christmas eve, why did somebody from Whitehall’s newly refurbished, incredibly plush MOD retirement home for the top brass not get their finger out to ensure that those boys and girls got home on time?”
“The new year has already brought us two bad weather stories that, in their own different ways, encapsulate the shoddy way in which the public and the Government deal with our troops. The first anecdote is about 200 homecoming soldiers who were apparently ordered to strip off their desert combats on freezing tarmac before entering the terminal building at Birmingham airport, to which they had been diverted because of fog at Brize Norton. An airport spokesman said that “certain airlines may refuse to accept personnel in military uniform.” Will the Minister clarify who told those soldiers to remove the Queen’s uniform and assure the House that whoever it was has been rigorously re-briefed? Will he also undertake to blacklist any airline that presumes to stipulate that our servicemen may not fly in rig?”
“All those are examples of how a mismatch between commitments and resources and the traditional grudging attitude of Labour Ministers to the military has fractured the covenant between the armed forces and the Government. The result is that people who can leave do leave, hence the Public Accounts Committee’s revelation in July that there are now more than 80 operational pinch points, from medics to aircrew. That is why 1,344 Army officers quit in the final six months of last year, which was twice the comparable six-month figure for 2005-06 and three times the figure for 2004-05. Unfortunately time is extremely limited, but I have two anecdotes that exemplify fairly well the problems that we face through the Government’s and the public’s attitude to our military.”
“We have seen harmony guidelines routinely breached, with 10 per cent. of the Army’s trained strength currently affected and dire consequences for mental, physical and domestic well-being, as we know from a recent study published in the British Medical Journal . We have seen delayed coroners’ inquests, as well as a gross shortage in medical staffing, including a monstrous 55 per cent. shortfall in trained doctors in the Defence Medical Services, and a Government unwilling to say whether increased spending on the NHS has been reflected in full by a commensurate uplift for defence medicine. We see compensation for wounds that looks tawdry when set against settlements for relatively minor industrial injuries.”
“Our troops put up with single accommodation for trained soldiers that first-year college students would laugh at. They put up with a gulf between social housing and homes apparently fit for heroes and with a Government who refuse to adopt even the minimal decent homes standards that apply elsewhere. As the Public Accounts Committee said in November, housing is viewed as low-hanging fruit when savings are required. Our soldiers put up with inequitable Government funding for Army schoolchildren in counties such as mine. In a letter to me this week, the Minister for Schools and Learners suggested that he would consider a revision to the funding formula to reflect forces children only in the context of people such as migrant workers, whose children also changed schools frequently. No special consideration—so much for the military covenant.”
“Understanding the public’s attitude to the military does not necessarily help us fix it. Tommy Atkins may simply have to put up with the cold shoulder of public opinion, but there is no excuse for the third party to the covenant, the Government, to mirror society in disregarding the Army and its veterans. It is odd that the Government should set up an inquiry into the relationship between the people and the military while apparently ignoring their part in the covenant. Given the unpopularity of their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this Government, more than any other, owe it to the armed forces to do the right thing. Who can doubt that overstretch and incompletely funded discretionary commitments lie at the heart of the current sad state of affairs? They run as a thread through everything that relates to the armed forces today.”
“We have heard about people being told to remove the Queen’s uniform in British hospitals, airports, even sports facilities and being refused service in retail outlets. The difference between then and now is that our society is less deferential, less civil and arguably less polite. People’s ire today is freely and frankly expressed. Disapproval of the military has been heightened by unpopular conflicts and the Government’s failure to win the British people’s support for them. The military covenant is a deal that is struck in recognition of our troops’ willingness to sacrifice everything. It is a tripartite deal, which involves, in equal measure, our armed forces, the people and the Government. According to ex-service chiefs and charities, two of those parties have reneged on the deal.”