PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Service Accommodation - 20 May 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

Currently, around 96% of service family accommodation meets or exceeds the Government’s decent homes standard. Only these properties should be allocated to our families.

As a base primarily for our Royal Marines, Chivenor in North Devon sees personnel stationed there for shorter periods of time than many other military bases. Will my hon. Friend consider additional support for high turnaround bases, perhaps including access to dental services for forces families where there are problems registering with local providers?

I very much enjoyed visiting RM Chivenor last summer and I congratulate my hon. Friend on being a consistent champion of the armed forces in her constituency. MOD dental healthcare provides dentistry for our armed forces personnel, ensuring that they are dentally fit and ready to deploy in the UK and overseas. The NHS provides dental care for civilians, which includes the families of armed forces personnel. I would be more than happy to arrange a meeting between my hon. Friend and MOD dental healthcare if she so wishes.

As the Department continues to sell off service accommodation for armed forces personnel, including at Whittington in my constituency, and has abandoned plans to allocate based on family size, does the Minister accept that this can contribute to lower recruitment and retention levels for the armed forces?

That is entirely why we are investing in our estate. I have mentioned the importance of the additional £400 million, and that is not abstract. It has enabled us to make a real difference to the accommodation of our armed forces by putting in thousands of treatments for damp and mould, and lots of homes are getting new doors, new boilers and so on. That is the difference the funding makes, and that is why our commitment to 2.5% is so important. It is not just about capability; it is about the homes of our armed forces personnel.

Last month, the landmark report into armed forces housing found that poor quality military accommodation had become

“a tax on the goodwill of service personnel and their families”.

Does the Minister agree?

The hon. Lady is welcome to send me a copy of that report, although I am not sure it is entirely impartial. I look forward to reading the conclusions—[Interruption.] Presumably it recognises that if we want better accommodation, we need to put the funding in, so I assume that its conclusions recommend that Labour commit to 2.5%.