My Lords, I support all the amendments in the important group before us. There are clearly many issues around mental health support but I have an optimistic note. We heard contributions from very senior former military officers—not least the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, who moved the exceedingly important Amendment 48, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton, who supported it—and former Secretaries of State for Defence talking about mental health in a way that would not have happened 20 or 25 years ago. That is significant progress and we should all be proud of it.
Perhaps that stigma we all worry about is starting to lift. Is it good enough and are we there yet? No, but my noble friend Lord Robertson spoke movingly about his experiences, shocking as they were. I am certain that those officers who served in Northern Ireland, and elsewhere across the world, could recount their own stories of horror. Others of us could recount horrors that have occurred in our own lives: the right reverend Prelate may have had very distressing things to deal with in talking to people during his ministry. Within the context of the Armed Forces Bill, though, mental health is now something that we can talk about and discuss. That is why this amendment is so important, although maybe there are problems with it; the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster, pointed some out.
We can almost see in the drafting of Amendment 48 the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster. Yes, it refers to Afghanistan: proposed new subsection (1) talks about
“targeted support for serving Armed Forces personnel who have been affected by the United Kingdom’s withdrawal”
from Afghanistan, but before that it refers to
“additional mental health support for … Armed Forces personnel, including but not limited to”
that support. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, includes a recognition that Afghanistan may be on our minds, for obvious reasons, given the bravery of our service men and women there and the horror of what we have just witnessed, et cetera. But I suggest that, in drafting his amendment, he was very aware of the fact that there are people who have served, and are serving, in countless places across the world whose trauma could need additional support.
To be frank, the Minister may have some official statistics on this. I do not know the actual number of those affected, but it would be useful for the Committee to know from the Ministry of Defence its assessment of the level of need, if that is the right way of putting it, with respect to this provision. Perhaps I may tell her one thing that drives me absolutely insane: people know that I try to tell it as it is but, from the Government’s announcements over the last few months, I have no idea exactly what is happening to spending on mental health in terms of additional support for veterans or their families, both serving and in the future. There have been numerous announcements; I hope the Committee will bear with me if I refer to two or three.
At the end of August, the Government announced that Armed Forces veterans would benefit from extra support, including extra mental health services, thanks to a further £2.7 million in funding. Is that additional funding and what is it on top of? It would be helpful to know what the spending on mental health support was last year, is this year and will be next year. Resources are clearly an issue and it would be really good to know what the official level of spending is on mental health support for our serving personnel and veterans. What is it now and what is projected as we go forward?
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The situation was not helped by the noble Lord, Lord Kamall. The press release said:
“Dedicated care co-ordinators will be appointed to act as a single point of contact to better support veterans with complex mental and physical trauma.”
However, the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, said in a Written Answer that it remains unknown how many co-ordinators
“can be appointed and when this will take effect.”
That is a further point the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, is trying to make with his amendment to give some certainty about what is going on, rather than ad hoc announcements of additional money to unknown quantities of budget from the Ministry of Defence and now from the Department of Health and Social Care. We would all wish to see the co-ordination of that. Is that not the point of proposed new subsection (3) in Amendment 48, where, in order to give us some level of understanding of what is happening, we would get
“progress, monitoring and evaluation of this support”?
That is why I support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, like the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and many others who are here. It would be really helpful to the Committee in understanding where we are.
Just quickly on Amendment 66A and the duty of care, again, I am pleased that this has come back to us. The noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, the noble and gallant Lords, Lord Boyce, Lord Stirrup, Lord Houghton and Lord Craig, and others have talked about this duty of care. If it is not the right thing to do then what are we doing? That is the question: if there is no need for a duty of care in the way that is laid out in Amendment 66A, why not? What is actually happening to provide the level of care that people are concerned is not being provided?
I sometimes think that clear exposition of these things in a way that is understandable and makes sense of policy would be of benefit not only to our Armed Forces but to those of us seeking to scrutinise legislation and to make it in a way that helps and makes sense to people. In that way, we can turn to our Armed Forces, now and in the future, and say, “We recognise that mental health has been a problem and that duty of care is a problem. This is what is happening, this is the amount of money that is being spent and these will be the benefits of that.” I think that all of us would welcome some clarity about all that from the Minister in her response.