We must apply the fairness test to each department. Defence, often defined by machinery and conflict, is in fact just as much about the welfare and reward we give to those prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for our country and their dependents, and the government fails the test awfully.
Our armed forces do extremely dangerous and difficult work in conflict zones all over the globe. It places great strain on loved ones when their husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters spend many months at a time away from home. Dependents, the majority of whom are women, often make huge sacrifices to support those on the frontline and we owe them just as big a debt of gratitude as we do those in combat.
The most important thing we can do to go some way to repaying that debt is to make sure those in service and their families are looked after during and after their time in the forces – especially if their service is cut short because of injury or worse. That’s why the coalition government decision to massively reduce the value of pensions for soldiers and war widows has been met with such anger.
The government will link public sector pension rises to the consumer price index rather than the retail price index, a higher rate of inflation. While there is no question that in the current climate there is need for restraint in public sector pay and pensions, this permanent change will disproportionately affect members of the armed forces compared to people working in the rest of the public sector.
Many members of the armed forces are forced to leave the military by the time they are 40, or earlier if they are injured. Their pensions start to pay out at a much earlier age compared to other public sector workers and, as a result of the change, they will lose hundreds of thousands of pounds over the course of their lifetime. A corporal who has lost both legs in a bomb blast, for example, would miss out on about £500,000 in pension and benefit-related payments. War widows, disproportionately reliant on their pension scheme, will also lose out enormously – a 34-year-old wife of a staff sergeant killed in Afghanistan would be almost £750,000 worse off, according to the Forces Pension Society.
Ministers claim uprating by RPI rather than CPI is about deficit reduction, but the impact will be felt long after the deficit has been paid down. The government is committed to reducing the support given to forces and their dependents every year from now on, even when the economy has returned to strong growth. People will find it hard to understand why men and women serving in Afghanistan now will receive poorer pensions in future and why war widows will have their entitlements hit year on year.
A fairer alternative would be if the government were to propose a time-limited change, ensuring that benefits did not fall behind earnings in the next few years. As it stands, a permanent change is a breach of trust. Our military men and women deserve the very best treatment for the work they do. But on pensions they’re not demanding special treatment – they just want to be treated fairly.
The government is acting in the mistaken belief that they can ‘protect the frontline’ while cutting support to families and injured personnel – but you cannot separate the two. Confidence in post-combat support and the knowledge that families at home are taken care of sustains those on frontline operations. Armed forces need to know their government properly values and rewards them and their dependents. Without that morale is sapped, commitments will be questioned and the bond between society and serviceman weakened. I hope the government will listen. This is not a time for dogmatism, but time to start treating our forces with the fairness they deserve.
The Conservatives spent much of the run up to the election undermining Labour’s record on providing for soldiers and their families with wild exaggerations and the attempted monopoly of the concept of the Military Covenant. Having set up their own “military covenant commission”, which spent 2008 issuing interim and final reports – it is unsurprising given this current government’s record, to see that practically nothing was included in the SDR to further underpin and strengthen the rights of soldiers and their families to get what they have earned. Many of the recommendations from the Tory MCC were worthy of serious consideration regardless of party affiliation, some of which Labour had already done or were going about, such as a codified charter of soldiers rights. The Tories tugged on the heartstrings of soldiers and patriots alike at the election, and we now find them making our armed forces redundant, closing bases that are the heart of many civilian communities, risking domestic defence industrial capability, mothballing equipment and cutting pensions in treal terms under the guise of a ‘strategic’ defence review. We were not perfect in Government on defence policy, but our tradition is internationalist and we should not be ashamed of it, or what we achieved – many in the party also need to wake up to the fact that our armed forces, when they work at their best, are great institutions that can achieve huge social mobility. Something to be proud of.
I was really appalled that so many soldiers end up homeless and on the streets after they have been discharged. Labour should be emphasizing that the Ministry of Defence should be producing a real, effective care service that extends beyond a soldier’s service. Pressure for pensions is fine but many discharged because of injury or at an early age and are unable because of injury or trauma to find or keep a job. The Ministry seems to regard their duty as finished once a soldier is discharged.