On Armed Forces Day, Member of Parliament Stewart McDonald published a new paper which recognises the vital role the Armed Forces plays, sets out key policies to improve conditions, and which aims to act as a key cornerstone of Scotland’s approach to the Forces community.
The paper – ‘A Modern Armed Forces: A new offering for personnel, veterans and service families‘ – highlights the heroic effort of personnel over the past year in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccine rollout, calls out what the author calls the neglect with which successive UK governments have treated the Armed Forces with, and sets out a range of key policies to improve and strengthen the Forces community and make it fit for the modern age.
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The policies include recommendations around recruitment and retention, working conditions and pensions, housing, veteran affairs, education and health, and the establishment of an Armed Forces Representative Body.
Commenting, Scottish National Party Shadow Defence spokesperson Stewart McDonald MP, said:
“From assisting with the rollout of life-saving vaccines across Scotland to undertaking peacekeeping missions, members of the Armed Forces have quietly continued their vital work during this past unprecedented and difficult year. As we mark Armed Forces Day, we must go beyond the rhetoric and take steps to properly recognise the role and contribution of our Forces personnel, and to address the serious challenges facing them and their families.
For far too long, successive UK governments have failed our Armed Forces – with personnel expected to make enormous personal sacrifices in exchange for some of the worst pay and conditions offered by any European or NATO ally. On housing, pay, recruitment, retention, support for military families or those who leave the armed forces, the UK government has let too many people who have served in uniform down.
But it is incumbent on us to bring forward solutions and that is what I am pleased to be doing today. I hope the publication of this new report, which contains recommendations aimed at improving terms and conditions for those in the armed forces, is taken seriously by the UK government and acts as a catalyst to move us beyond the usual platitudes. Members of the armed forces want action now and that is what this report is about.”
That’s great and all… but since he’s not in government will this actually achieve anything?
Reading through the report:
How does raising the age of recruitment to 18 aid recruitment of the British Army? Combine this with the statement at the outset of the piece that he wants 12,000 personnel stationed in Scotland and it sets a bad tone that this is a personal wishlist not a serious look at what the Armed Forces need, which just makes it easier for it to be dismissed. A bad opening gambit I’d say. Plus, being an SNP minister he manages to omit mentioning once anything outside of Scotland, in fact reading the report you’d be forgiven for thinking he was talking about the Scottish Armed forces.
Which is a shame because some of his suggestions are quite good, but I recon this report will be too easy to ignore and sweep away.
Haven’t read it all Dern but personally I’m all for raising the age of recruitment to 18. Before that (might be 17 1/2) you can’t deploy them properly and there’s the duty of care element as they’re technically children. Its crap for the ‘kids’ too as their older mates can go to the pub, stay out all hours etc.
On a separate note, I’m glad (at least in England) that they’re looing at upping the age when people can get married to 18, apologies for going totally off topic.
The armed forces have been trying to align with civilian practice for years. Why now deviate and deny an army career to a 16 year old when all other employment is open to a 16-year old?
Recruiting in the army has been poor for years and the Service is under-recruited. Ending recruitment at 16 will worsen the situation.
No soldier is deployed operationally until they are 19 irrespective of the age at enlistment.
Tesco don’t send you away for several weeks at a time from your mum for starters. You do have to be 18 to be a firefighter or police offer though, maybe a better comparison.
I’ve given a logic to why I think it should be 18 above, I can expand on it and by all means disagree with it if you want but you don’t seem to have read it.
Age of recruitment is a moral/principle issue – not one of recruitment numbers.
The Army’s issues with recruitment are not related to age and should not be lumped in with this.
If anything, its issues need greater exposing in the hope they might actually be dealt with.
Agree mate, if the Army (or any of the Forces) have a problem with numbers then its retention they need to sort rather than recruitment.
Most people don’t join the Forces to become millionaires but if you feel respected and valued then you’re more likely to be happy and stay put.
Completely agree. The UK gets a lot of flack for “child soldiers” and its unnessecary bad PR. It makes it harder to criticise nations with actual child soliders as its just something that they can throw back.
They arent usable, come with an admin and supervision burden and frankly why are we morally happy doing this when just waiting a but puts them clearly and unambiguously in the adult category.
Iirc education is now mandatory to 18, voting is 18 and marriage may well be soon. That seems the appropriate line.
Erm, not really I joined at 15 1/2 and reported for duty on my 16th birthday, it was also the same day as my last O level and last day in school so I remember it very well. I went to the Army Aprrentice College in Harrogate. I look back on that time as some of the best years of my life. I don’t know what it was like for junior infantry but the tech schools was good fun. Not only that but we were better trained than then men that came from the Signals training unit we had civie quals such as HNC or ONC military qual as T3 and a lance jack strip on graduation for the techies. Yes we could go out to the pub when we were 18 but we were six miles outside Harrogate and had to be back by a certain time. By the time we got our work done after lessons such as homework, cleaning the room, pressing kit, hobbies and extra sports we mostly just wanted our pit. The three things I remember most from Harrogate was always being hungry even though we were well fed, and always wanting my pit, even in our NAAFI break I still managed ten minutes sleep and the Yorkshire Moors. Even now if someone asks me if I want to go to the moors camping daggers at dawn or the evil eye is the responce.
So I would say possibly for infantry and tank units 18 might be a good idea, but for the technical units such as Signals, REME, AAC Engineers etc 16 would be better with a three-four year apprenticeship.
So thats my response to the 18 year old starting age arguement. Now to the other things, Pay. Pay in the British armed forces is poor to say the least. It does not even meet the legal minimum pay laws of the country. The country want young fit inteligent men and women to become members of the armed forces, then they don’t equip them with the best equipment available, train the hell out of them, send them all over the world with the off chance of being shot at, possibly to be deployed somewhere else or the deployment is extended. Then give them poor accomadation or married quaters if they are available then when these people have done their duty for the country leave them to make there own way in a world that they don’t know and don’t always understand. Sometime it happens that people don’t get on, but in the field they still have your back, in the civvy world it is difficult to know who has your back and who doesn’t. The men and women in the servicies form a extended family when they leave they leave not only the service but the family as well. Thats what the government need to solve, more troop numbers so deployements are not more than six months, equipment that they can trust, accomadation that is reasonable, pay that is appropriate for the trade that they have; god the government must understand that serving personnel serve 24 hours a day 7 days a week, leave is a privlage not a right. When their job is done then after service care or support which here in the UK is p**s poor to say the least. If the government can solve those issues then people will join and stay.
Hi Ron, I’m not sure when you joined, I first joined in ’86 and its a very different society we live now. There’s been a few changes in the Forces too, leave is now a right and the goalposts have (fairly to an extent) been moved from ‘working’ 24/7. I’m not saying everything is peachy and the younger ones take a few years longer to get to a reasonable pay (which has become a barrier to slightly older folk with responsibilities joining).
I get what you’re saying about apprentices who may take longer to train, maybe some ‘sponsorship’ system similar to the chaps and chapesses who get sponsored through university before joining ??? Employing children isn’t the answer, at least for me.
Having now read it, and trying to put aside the political point scoring there is some decent stuff amongst the chaff. A Forces Federation is LONG overdue (in my view) and the resettlement package is pretty woeful. They’re also right about charity having to pick up the slack on what should be core government stuff like if you send guys to war and they break then the government picks up the tab. It might help stop governments being quick to send guys to war.
There is some point scoring and inspirational froth (and maybe a wee bit of pandering to current service people to vote SNP/Indy) but they’re all guilty of that. Hopefully it will never come to pass but I would guess the SNP would find it a lot trickier to tick all the boxes (and balance the books) if they’re in the big chair making the calls.
Agreed that there is some good stuff in there. But as I said, because it’s a SNP party piece that dooms it to be consigned to the waste paper bin in Westminster.
If he’s serious about helping the armed forces drop the Party Politics and help us, otherwise it’s about him, not about the armed forces.
You might as well wish for that large penis, 7 figures in the bank account and a Porsche (although either of the second would make up for the first) as wish for politicians to stop playing politics. 😂
I was rolling my eyes at the ‘virtue signalling’ guff at the start too (and further in) but they’re all as bad as each other for that. All the ‘rodent infested’ and ‘lowest paid’ stuff was pandering to the gallery, same as comparing the wages to firemen etc but wade through that pish and try and see past it. I agree that because its an opposition paper the government (any government) will use it to wipe their arses on.
I did find it interesting that the SNP are now showing/pretending to show an interest in the military, its been a real weakness of theirs over a number of years.
I’m not saying stop playing politics, I’m saying if he’s serious about wanting to reform the armed forces he needs too actually push for it. As it is it’s just transparant and will achieve nothing.
There have been one or two SNP politicians interested in the military, so I’m not sure that one SNP MP publishing a political piece mascerading behind the Armed Forces really indicates a policy shift for them IMO.
“really indicates a policy shift for them IMO.”
Fair dos, I’ve been looking at their policies since the 90’s, mostly in fascination at how wide of the mark they would be if the SNP got it’s way. It’s always been very much on the sidelines although as they’ve been in power for a while and need to have some better thought out policies then they probably have got a bit sharper about it.
The SNP pusing out a ‘wishlist’ is part of the shmooze, kudos to them for now trying to engage with the Forces, its never been a hunting ground for them before but its still a backwater for the SNP, at least for me.
Porsche ! Dear God.
Why does he want as many as 12,000 in Scotland? – that is disproportionately high for an army that is heading downwards to 70,000 troops.
Because he’s SNP, so anything to manufacture a grievence with Westminster…
Of course kind of at odds with the objective of improving retention when you want to base people in Scotland….
There are more than just soldiers in the Armed Forces. Not that you’d know it when you look at things like the news, you’d think only the army had been helping out with covid jabs.
To read the news you’d think the military had saved the vaccination programme when in reality it’s a couple of hundred medical personnel and about 50 planning staff in an overall workforce of 125,000 from NHS, charities and private sector.
I know what you’re saying, they have maybe had a disproportionate representation. That’s life, I was meaning that they weren’t all ‘soldiers’ though, I’ve got friends in FOSNNI’s marine band that have been doing it too and its all ‘soldiers’. Probably being pedantic.
The article is somewhat amiss by not pointing out it is a SNP document
Not only that it affords nothing but bluster, for example much is made of raising the age of recruitment to 18, yet nobody under the age of 18 deploys, those who join as juniors not only need the permission of their parents, but they can leave when they want whilst in training and finally and a big finally they cannot be deployed until they are 18. That is policy which has been extant for donkeys , finally and a big finally this from a political party which claims that people aged 16 are mature enough to vote for their future,
Another is the gripe about the Uk not relocating 12500 troops to Scotland, when BAOR was closing down and troops were getting sent back to the Uk, THE MOD wanted to relocate troops to Scotland. The SNP demanded that only Scottish unit be sent to Scotland and the only Scottish units were infantry , the same infantry which have borne the brunt of defense cuts these past 20 years So why would the SNP want British units to be based in Scotland seeing as they want independence, because they know that locations would have to be found elsewhere if they gain independence and whilst the English kept English troops in Scotland the SNP can demand payment in other words make money out of taxing the English.
Regards more more links between the NHS and the military. Isn’t that what is already in place. In fact I have been posted to small units where the dentist was a civy in town, troops of mine would have to touch base with the military wing in hospitals So again yet more bluster.
Education, lets be honest, the Military does not have a problem with you educating yourself , I myself did a degree, the only caveat being you pass before they pay for it, so again more bluster
What about allowing service personal to live off camp. Err sorry already happens, how do I know, because I moved out of the mess into my own house whist in uniform
I’m not sure of of affording foreign and commonwealth applicants to the military a fast route to British citizenship (with all costs paid for by the MOD) after 3 years, rather than the 5 year currently in place as i can see a lot of people leaving after 3 years.
Unions? I’ll let others expand on that
The doc is nothing but a huge smokescreen
Farouk, do you think the resettlement is currently any good ??? I was lucky enough that I didn’t really need a second career (and as it turned out a job after a bit of belt tightening) but the meagre money that was available to me was pretty limiting if I had wanted to retrain and I had transferable skills. The one week long ‘CV writing course’ was ok if you just needed a bit of a polish before heading off to be a civvy but if you were either too young to know anything else or basically ‘institutionalised’ (and I’ve still got mates who are too scared to leave because of it) then its woeful.
I’m no fan of the SNP and yes there is a big element of point scoring (and delusion) in their paper but they also hit some stuff that is on the money. As I’ve posted above, a Forces Federation is long overdue, they even namecheck the Bett Report which was full of great ideas but was a little ‘avant gard’ for the Forces and I suspect still is. Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water on this, if they can float some of this through (yeah, they’re pushing their own agenda and I suspect trying to soft soap current service people in Scotland or Jocks serving in England) then fair play.
When I did my resettlement, I did a 6 week computer course ,but for me it was just a stocking filler, as I already had things sorted. But going back to the 1 week CV course, the staff there actually turned around and stated that I didn’t need to be there as I had every planned . Yet on chatting to some of the others there I was shocked at how little some of the infantry lads on the cse had prepared. 1 lad hadn’t sorted out any accommodation for his family another couldn’t even drive. Ive always prepared for the future and used to bang it into my lads (and lasses) that they should always plan for the future. I am comfortable having sorted out my life early on. But then I always knew I would become a big fat hairy civy and the only person who could do anything about how I lived as a BFHC was me. The military does help, and some units are better than others in allowing you to prepare. (When I was in Cyprus, I was tasked to join an Infantry unit going to Jordan on exercise. The pay guy was in the midst of leaving the army (family back to England, packing quarter up and he was forced to deploy out to Jordan with them, he was not a happy teddy)
My mate has just recently left (He landed a FTRS job after leaving the army) anyway the camp he was on is scheduled to be closed soon and his job (bedding storeman) was put up for tender and he didnt get it, the bloke who did, when he realised the camp is closing down, rejected it, they offered it to the next bloke and he refused it, they then offered it back to my mate, he told them to stick it, and as an FTRS did a resettlement course (after doing his reg resettlement course a few years back) he did a bike maintenance course and has a little part time job fixing bikes for a small shop. hes happy as larry
There’s already plenty of orgs who help out servicemen and former service men, I have the defence discount card, cost me a £5 i think, (used it a lot) My local council offers a forces discount card which is free, and I might (once the world gets back to normal) purchase a forces vet rail card. (we used to pop into London for the shows and with my forces rail card I would purchase a First class ticket ) so I would at least get some use out of it. and then finally there are websites such as this:
https://jobs.forces.net
I agree its a lucky dip when leaving (as per your Writer getting deployed), a mate of mine got extended past his terminal leave to stay at sea and the Navy had to pay him past his leaving date to do his resettlement. Why ???? His boss thought he was swinging the lead with a bad back and was determined to take him to sea (I’m no doc but the guy was a good mate and if he was swinging the lead he’s a way better actor than I thought).
Like you I was pretty much sorted when leaving but there’s no point flagging up the ‘success stories’, there’s a whole load of guys who are failed by it, some their own fault, some the system. When the system is at fault then that’s a bigger problem. Trust me, I’m not a soft touch but the Forces are happy to hoover up guys with no qualifications but ‘potential’ and push them down paths (and tell them lies at the careers office) then at the end of it spit them out, there really should be more than a few hundred quid available to them to get themselves ‘sorted’ for the big changes between being in the Mob and being a civvy. For some, its a massive step, whether because they’ve left from School (or shortly after) and left after a few year or because they’ve done 22 years plus then left and the world has moved on then For example, nobody tells you about what benefits you’re due (maybe different if you’re injured, dunno) or how to get on a council house waiting list etc. I’ve known quite a few guys who have made a bit of an arse of things shortly after leaving, not stupid guys but they’ve done stupid things, things that could have been avoided. Some of course seem predisposed to making an arse of things but that’s life. A lot of these guys can be fish out of water though, I’ve helped a few mates over the years but then there’s the ‘charity from a mate’ angle that some, especially if they’ve gone up a rank or 3 that it won’t sit well with.
I’m an ‘outlier’ when it came to resettlement and you probably were too but its a big deal for a lot of people and I must admit that I expected more from it.
Sounds same ol, same old to me. The proof of the pudding and all that … It’s not even too little too late! The armed forces have been let down and neglected for way too long, on the simplest more basic levels.
If they really cared that much, they would listen to what serving soldiers are saying, before they are just about to sign off, and walk out ‘the gate’ for good.
There are all manner of issues that need to be addressed, and I am not talking about nice new shiny kit and equipment. The old adage used to be, best trained Army in the world, most poorly equipped, whilst being poorly looked after.
army should prepare their guys and girls for civilian life and continue support for those struggling to adapt.
The report fundamentally fails to understand how accommodation is delivered, making no differntation between Service Families Accommodation (SFA) housing and Single Living Accommodation (SLA). Great strides have been made in improving SFA (while there is till more to do), with continued annual investment of c£150M on improvements with funding managed outside the military chain of command, while conversely SLA is a sporadic mix and very good and very bad and funding is managed by the military commands. Though DIO did little better in SLA investment when they held the purse strings. FAM is not ‘the’ answer despite it’s sheer leaders in London as it is unaffordable, but it is one of a basket of delivery options to meet the accommodation requirement.
Outsourcing will continue because while civil servants in ‘in year’ cash terms may equate to outsourcing costs, pension laibilities against the capitation value for employment make it an unviable option, unless the pension terms of service are changed – and the Unions and current civil servants would not accept that.
Ah read this a little late, but pretty much SNP chuff. Getting his name in the limelight. Sounds like a paper for the possible future Scottish army (he hopes) as opposed to the AF in general. As for increasing the recruitment age to 18, more chuff. Some of the best tech schools for the young lads are available from16 and Junior soldiers/Leaders was where it was at. As an ex Junior Para, couldn’t fault it, gets you into the game early and gives you a decent lead time to grow up, mature somewhat and learn the skills. Plus it gets you some great mates and you develop together. The people who propose to end the under 18 recruitment seem to be the typical never served types who know sweet FA about soldiering and military life.
A number of points to raise:
That said, I wouldn’t change anything, I had a great time, met some wonderful people and it set my up for my second career in Industry, that I have been in for just over 20 years.