It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan). In the role that I am privileged to hold as chair
of the all-party group on the armed forces covenant, I welcome the Bill’s key measures. However, as far as I am concerned, this is the just beginning of the process, not the end. There are four issues that we need to explore further, most of which have already been touched on by Members on both Front Benches. I am talking about recruitment, retention, family life and the development of female personnel.
A challenge lies ahead: we have a 5% deficit in our armed forces personnel and this Bill, while I welcome it wholeheartedly, will require us to appoint and recruit even more people to ensure that flexible working is more than just a phrase and that it is a reality. We will simply need to recruit more people to make this policy work, which, given where we are, will provide additional challenges.
On recruitment, a third of our armed forces cite flexible working as a reason why they will stay in the forces. Of great concern is the fact that, within the Royal Navy, 46% of service personnel cite the lack of flexible working as a reason why they would consider leaving. Those are not our figures, but their figures, which gives us cause for huge concern.
Then there is the issue of family life. None of us, especially those who serve in this House, operates without the support of others to enable us to do our job. That should be no less the case for those who are serving every day to keep us safe. We need to look not just at flexible working but at other issues, including the delivery of the covenant and making sure that it is tangible for our armed forces personnel. In the last Parliament, the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan), who was then chair of the all-party group, introduced the Children of Armed Services Personnel (Schools Admission) Bill, which focused on how children could get school places when families were redeployed very quickly. It is issues such as that which cause retention problems and which are the bread and butter to our families and our service personnel. Unless we make some significant changes—and even some minor ones—to how the system operates, we will continue to lose our armed forces personnel.
We also have the unfortunate reality of the service family accommodation model. I am talking about the reality of trying to get accommodation to work for personnel and their families; of trying to ensure that they can get the right property in the right place at the right time and in the right school district; and of trying to ensure that properties have boilers that work, hot water and all those other things that people require. We would not put up with not having those things, so why should those people who are keeping us safe and their families do so? The reality is that the contract with CarillionAmey needs to be greatly improved, otherwise the actions that we are calling for today become irrelevant and we will continue to have a recruitment and retention challenge in our military.