Speeches by Roome.

“Thank you, Minister, for your attendance today and your service, and all the panel for the work that you do to support our service personnel and veterans. I want to get into the inconsistency around the covenant and how it is applied. We receive submissions from local authorities. One went top to bottom, thought out th…”

“Following on from that, some of the evidence that we have received as a Committee criticises the language of “due regard”. For example, Air Vice Marshal David McLoughlin stated that the legal duty of due regard was weak and could easily be ignored, explaining that, at the most flippant end, he had been told that due re…”

“I have been part of a local authority and leader of a local authority. For the actual meaning of what it means, it is very good to say, “We signed the armed forces covenant”, but putting it into action is a different thing. That is why I am asking whether it is inconsistent using the words “due regard” when it is sayin…”

“To finish off on this section, Minister, I have heard you say, particularly towards veterans, “Ensure that you tell your GP that you are a veteran”. Could you explain to the Committee what advantages there would be to that veteran telling their GP that they have served in the forces?”

“I will give you a live scenario here. I have been contacted by a defence company within my area that is quite concerned by some of the procurements that are coming out of MoD for an SME. It employs about 60 people. It is concerned that it is bidding for contracts, and the MoD is saying, “Eight companies have gone for t…”

“Coming back to what you just said, it would be interesting to know how many primes buy out SMEs. I do not know if there are any figures on how many SMEs get bought out to bring them into the prime industry, where they might lose those innovative ideas. The world has been moving quickly over the last couple of weeks and…”

“Right, okay. I am just wondering about innovation within procurement and industry. What do we need and what would you like to see come out of this new unit to create an effective and functioning innovation ecosystem within our defence industry in the United Kingdom?”

“Sadly, in the last week my constituency has suffered a spate of rural break-ins on the edge of Exmoor, and a quad bike and a chainsaw were also stolen from sheds in West Anstey earlier this month, in a pattern that we are very familiar with. Just this past week, South Molton and Umberleigh joined a string of other Devo…”

“Within your work, how involved are you with the third sector and charities? How important are they within the transition period of leaving the forces to becoming a veteran? What would you say about the third sector and its involvement?”

“You have answered a lot of the question on transition that I was going to ask, but what specifically would you like to see in the covenant, given that the Armed Forces Minister has said that he wants to put it fully into law? What would you want to see in the new, fully into law covenant, if you like, that would help s…”

“You have answered that for your colleagues as well. I know that we are short for time, and that was a really good answer. I do know that they do valuable work.”

“Does anyone have anything to add?”

“I am thinking of the issues with financial institutions.”

“One of the submissions that the Committee received was on the duty of due regard, specially relating to financial institutions. For example—I do not know how common this is, but perhaps you could tell the Committee—when a member of serving personnel has a mortgage in this country and they get posted abroad, the dilemma…”

“Do you think more could be done within the services on mandatory training? We heard earlier that 27% of serving personnel have never heard of it. Therefore, does it need to be mandatory that we tell serving personnel that this exists?”

“When it comes to awareness of the Covenant, what do you think we should be doing as a Government to ensure that the delivery of your services is promoted better at the service level?”

“Do you think that is to do with understanding within those Departments—that they have to sign up to the Covenant but don’t understand what it actually means? It is also about resourcing it, I suppose.”

“Are there any other remarks?”

“How well is the Covenant understood by the organisations that service families engage with?”

“I am very interested in the individual services—the Army, the Navy and the RAF. Within the three branches, how aware are personnel and their families of the Covenant and what it actually offers them?”