Events

Lord Patten's speech

09/06/2009

Lord Patten: My Lords, the phrase, "urgent operational requirement", is familiar to anyone who knows the terminology of defence procurement. I feel that there is an urgent post-operational requirement to get more help to those returning warriors to whom the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, has just referred. I agree with everything he says and will not attempt to echo it. However, I agree with him that people feel more and more strongly the need to support all our men and women who return from active service, and those who are injured most of all. I was much struck by the turnout to welcome back the recently returned Commando Helicopter Force from RNAS Yeovilton a couple of Fridays ago as they paraded through the west country town near our own home. It is not just a matter of a celebration; it was a matter of concern for those people who had suffered.

The noble Lord, Lord Burnett, is absolutely right that the Government and the taxpayer should do more to help those hurt returning warriors. The charitable and voluntary sectors have a very important role, too. The noble Lord, Lord Burnett, referred to the heroes' organisation. As always however, it seems that the more visible the need there is the relatively easier it is to raise funds. It is a truism of fundraising, I am told, that it is much easier to raise money - and I do not seek to be frivolous - for guide dogs than it is for Alzheimer's disease sufferers, let alone the carers of Alzheimer's disease sufferers.

I suspect that the same is true for injured warriors and the terrible loss of limbs from which many suffer. But for those with mental health problems - sometimes those who have sustained injury have sustained mental health problems as well - I suspect that it is much more challenging for voluntary organisations to raise the necessary funds. On my way home from your Lordships' House at night, I see in the doorways of shops opposite the New Scotland Yard building, that great fortified fortress, some of those who may fall into the returned servicemen category. I am not sure, but I suspect that some of them do.

Not long ago - the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, will probably be saddened to hear this, as I was to see it - I saw an ex-Royal Marine squatting on the pavement in Cheapside in the City of London, hard by St Paul's, begging. I thought that there must be something terribly wrong with the support structure that has allowed someone to end up doing that. I am sure from my observation, not from my discussion, that mental health problems were part of his problem. I suspect that; I do not know.
I know that organisations such as the Royal British Legion and Combat Stress do much, but we now have much larger numbers of individuals requiring help not just with physical injury but with stress and with coming to terms with returning to what is no longer normality for them - and at an earlier stage. The clear public policy benefit of an early "cause not symptom" approach is that it is likely to be quicker, more effective and cheaper. There is little merit in waiting until the returned warrior with those problems has gone all down the ladder to, say, begging on the pavement in Cheapside.

Some returning servicemen may have no physical but deep mental scars. I hope that various of our elite corps to whom the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, referred, would welcome them to come back to help in regimental headquarters, or wherever, with suitable training and help, just as much as those who suffered physical injury. Those mental scars make it difficult for them to cope in broader UK society following their removal from the services' structure, which has often been their family, as it were, since their teens. That is as true for those with mental problems as it is for those with physical problems. I echo everything that the noble Lord said about those with physical problems. On coming out of the armed services, that can be compounded by a lack of real perceived support, respect or appreciation for what has been done to those people while serving.

The consequences can be very difficult: broken family networks, unemployment and the homelessness to which I have already alluded. I am told that perhaps a quarter of London's homeless are ex-service. It is a deep stain on our nation - of how we have allowed them to fall through the net - for the need in all cases is to develop skills to cope. The noble Lord, Lord Burnett, was surely right to say that regimental headquarters and others welcoming back those who suffer physical disability, albeit for a transitional period of perhaps three or four years until others have moved on, as he illustrated, will help people who have come back with those injuries to cope and eventually to re-enter civilian life on a gentle glide path. We have the same need to help those with mental problems to cope better and to help them with alternative personal support networks to try to deal effectively with the emotional causes rather than the symptoms.

Whatever the case - I am manifestly not an expert in this - new organisations are springing up all the time. There are one or two very effective pioneering charities. I think of the newly formed Warrior Programme. It has already demonstrated significant success in a small number of cases in helping ex-service personnel with emotional and mental health issues. The Warrior organisation, which I commend to the Minister - and others like it - needs two things: first, a little support to trial its innovative programmes on a wider scale; and, secondly, help to make its interventions, along with more established organisations such as the Royal British Legion, available across the services. More money will help, but so will more co-ordination. Access for returning warriors - knowing where to turn at any stage - is very difficult. It needs to be integrated, because the current response, just because so many are trying to help, including of course the MoD, is often fragmented. It is difficult for individuals to find it when they come out. That is a task that we can reasonably ask the Ministry of Defence to turn to. I know that organisations such as Warrior want to work closely with the ministry.

We will, I suspect, see wars continuing. We will also, I am told, in these recessionary times, see more young men and young women joining up, for a whole host of reasons, to the armed services. They may have had an unstable childhood. They often want to escape poverty - they simply want a job. They want security; they want another family which, as the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, so clearly illustrated, the armed services - whether the Royal Marines or whomsoever else - so often provide. Sometimes they simply have a burning ambition.

It is clear to me that the problems to which the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, referred, in connection to physical disabilities, and in the area of mental problems, on which I have concentrated, are likely to multiply in future years. To take just one example, it is good that we have 15 military departments of community mental health across the country, but we need more than the bare, overstretched 13 triservice psychiatrists that we have in the United Kingdom to help those people who have returned from combat with serious mental problems and those derived from stress.
For those who have returned damaged, that sort of help is, to reuse for the second and last time the phrase borrowed from defence procurement, an urgent post-operational requirement.