Meeting of the Parliament 09 December 2025
I was going to intervene on the minister on that. It is a question of making sure that general practitioners have the time to do that. There are a lot of things that we would love to learn and do, but we simply do not have the time, because we are firefighting all the time.
On mental health, the Government is keen to point to the forthcoming veterans mental health and wellbeing pathway. I welcome that work, but colleagues will understand the frustration that, in 2025, we are still talking about the phased launch of a pathway rather than veterans already receiving care through it. There are still too many who are bounced between services, who have to retell their story and fight for assessment and support that should be proactively offered.
Social care is another critical part of the covenant, and the level of delayed discharge remains far too high. We must remember that veterans include older veterans who are stuck on the wards, unable to go home. We can and must do better by them. The Royal British Legion and Poppyscotland’s “Keep the Covenant Promise” campaign reminds us how far we still have to go, highlights the gaps in the covenant duty in areas such as social care, early years support and further and higher education, and calls for the duty to be delivered consistently, properly funded and robustly measured across the UK.
We support the motion, but we say to ministers and other colleagues across the chamber that we should work together to make the covenant real. Let us improve access to primary care, ensuring that mental health pathways are delivered on time and that persistent problems in social care are tackled, so that hospitals are not the default of our older veterans. Our amendment is a practical example of that approach.
The armed forces kept their promise to us, so it is time that we kept our promise to them.
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