A few weeks ago, I wrote about the current government’s failure to
keep to the spirit, let alone the letter, of the Armed Forces
Covenant.
Developed in 2000, the Covenant sets out the duties owed by government and society to those serving in our military services and to their families. When Secretary of State for Health, Alan Johnson – who has just announced his resignation from Parliament – ensured, for the first time, that veterans received priority treatment on the NHS on their return from active service.
I contrasted the excellent progress in implementing the Covenant by South Yorkshire councils, despite unprecedented budget cuts, with the position nationally. Last year, the Forces’ charity SSAFA found that just 16% of veterans thought that the Covenant was being implemented effectively.
I said that nothing better illustrated the government’s failure to implement the Covenant than the state of housing for forces’ families.
Just 50% of forces families are satisfied with the standards of management and maintenance of their homes. Satisfaction with the response to requests for repairs dropped 10 percent compared to the previous year and that 52% of personnel in SFA are dissatisfied with the quality of repairs. By contrast, the tenants of councils and other social housing providers typically report satisfaction levels over 85%.
Now, the all-party Defence Committee has concluded that, despite Conservative Ministerial promises about action and their intervention with an improvement plan, all the independent surveys and assessments confirm that service personnel are still dissatisfied with their housing.
But, what makes this all the more worse, is that the Ministry of Defence still won’t publish either the monthly performance data relating to repairs – for example, what proportion of repairs were completed satisfactorily in the target time – or information about the number and nature of complaints being received.
This is a disgrace. It’s bad enough that the performance is lousy, but to continue to try to cover up the scale of the problem is contemptible.
Developed in 2000, the Covenant sets out the duties owed by government and society to those serving in our military services and to their families. When Secretary of State for Health, Alan Johnson – who has just announced his resignation from Parliament – ensured, for the first time, that veterans received priority treatment on the NHS on their return from active service.
I contrasted the excellent progress in implementing the Covenant by South Yorkshire councils, despite unprecedented budget cuts, with the position nationally. Last year, the Forces’ charity SSAFA found that just 16% of veterans thought that the Covenant was being implemented effectively.
I said that nothing better illustrated the government’s failure to implement the Covenant than the state of housing for forces’ families.
Just 50% of forces families are satisfied with the standards of management and maintenance of their homes. Satisfaction with the response to requests for repairs dropped 10 percent compared to the previous year and that 52% of personnel in SFA are dissatisfied with the quality of repairs. By contrast, the tenants of councils and other social housing providers typically report satisfaction levels over 85%.
Now, the all-party Defence Committee has concluded that, despite Conservative Ministerial promises about action and their intervention with an improvement plan, all the independent surveys and assessments confirm that service personnel are still dissatisfied with their housing.
But, what makes this all the more worse, is that the Ministry of Defence still won’t publish either the monthly performance data relating to repairs – for example, what proportion of repairs were completed satisfactorily in the target time – or information about the number and nature of complaints being received.
This is a disgrace. It’s bad enough that the performance is lousy, but to continue to try to cover up the scale of the problem is contemptible.
If Mrs May can’t be trusted to do right by our service families, why should we trust her on anything else?
