Hansard

I echo the welcome for the debate from members around the chamber.

As I prepared for the debate, my thoughts turned to my grandfather, who died just over a year and a half ago. He served in the RAF and spent the majority of his service in Fort William working with mountain rescue. That was at a critical time when the mountain rescue service was at a point of transition from being an exclusively military function, which was founded in order to rescue downed airmen during the second world war, to becoming the civilian service that we recognise today.

It made me think that direct experience of conflict or of service in the military is becoming less common. Twenty, 30 or 40 years ago, most of us would have had a family member who had either seen action in the second world war or, at the very least, had gone through national service in one of our armed services. As the number of people with direct experience of service diminishes, we need to take greater care to change our thoughts and views about what remembrance means. Remembrance must always be first and foremost about remembering those who served, fought to secure our freedoms and liberty, and paid the ultimate price, but it is incumbent on us also to ensure that remembrance is about a wider understanding of what service and the armed services mean. Serving in the armed services is sometimes about paying the ultimate sacrifice, but it is also about the wider, richer experience that is gained from the broad range of functions, such as mountain rescue, that the armed forces carry out.

I will address that in my speech, as well as some of the points that other members have made about transition. I am mindful that we are very lucky that the debate is being led by people such as Keith Brown, Maurice Corry and Edward Mountain who have seen that transition in action. I can only imagine what it must be like, but they can speak about it from direct experience.

Coming out of the armed forces is a significant issue for those who do so. For anyone changing jobs, there are a huge number of considerations such as what skills will be needed and what the differences are between the old and new jobs. However, when someone comes out of the armed forces, it is not just their tasks or responsibilities that change, but their whole way of life. Mark Griffin put it very well when he described transition as coming out of a family and into, potentially, a community of strangers.

We are right to praise the work of the veterans commissioner, Eric Fraser, who has done excellent work in highlighting the many transition issues that our veterans face, particularly with regard to skills. Many of our servicemen and women have highly relevant skills in a broad range of areas. We often hear that there are skills gaps in areas of our economy, so I urge the Government to ensure that we maximise the use of the skills of those who leave the armed forces. In my previous career, I worked alongside a number of people who had come from the RAF with extremely good and highly useful digital and IT skills and who were using them successfully. We often think of people in the armed forces as primarily combatants, but they are also highly skilled technicians and engineers. We must ensure that we use their skills when they return to civilian life.

Recommendation 11 in the commissioner’s report refers to a plan for early service leavers in particular. It is vital that we upskill those people and provide retraining possibilities for them. I very much welcome what Keith Brown said about apprenticeship week and the world of work website. However, the Scottish Government agreed to have a plan for early service leavers by May 2017, and I am not aware that such a plan has yet been produced. Can the minister clarify the status of that plan?

On a broader point, we need to ensure not only that people leaving the armed forces have information available to them but that, as far as possible, their transition is integrated and seamless. We must ensure that they start their skills journey before they leave the armed forces and that their learning experiences in the armed forces link directly to their opportunities afterwards. The issue is not necessarily just modern apprenticeships or the skills regime; we must also look at articulation and other education issues. The commissioner made that point. How people who are leaving the armed forces access different points in the education system and move between them is important. We need to ask how such educational matters are made relevant to people in the armed forces. Articulation and ensuring that people get credit for the skills and experience that they have from being in the armed forces is particularly important.

The provision of better information on housing to veterans and those who are about to leave the armed forces is welcome, but there are still issues. Certainly, I have dealt with casework involving people who are about to leave the armed forces and are looking for council housing. Often, the reality is that they have to move across the city where they live, which can rip up their family roots and present issues around schools and their families’ ability generally to get on with their lives. That is an issue for people who are in MOD housing that is just beyond my consistency boundary, but it is also an issue generally.

The issues around transition do not always happen at the point when someone leaves the armed forces. Bruce Crawford made a very good point about the shocking statistics, which we often hear about, regarding the proportion of armed forces leavers who end up in prison. Issues that arise from transition from the armed forces do not always happen immediately; often they happen further down the line. It is important that we ensure that we maintain on-going relationships and communication with armed services leavers so that we can catch those problems. However, I am not sure that we are doing that at the moment.

On my recent visits through the armed forces parliamentary visit programme, I was very taken by the rich variety of things that the armed forces do around health, emotional wellbeing and skills. This debate is about ensuring that we help people when they come out of the armed forces. However, with regard to co-operation and partnership, we can learn many things about our public policy from the armed forces because they do a great deal of work around such areas as health, emotional wellbeing and skills, and there are lessons for us to learn from that.