§ Mr. David Laws (Yeovil) (LD)I am pleased to have secured this short debate, and I welcome the Minister to it. You will be aware, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that we have discussed whether there should be medal to mark and reward the service of those in the armed forces in the canal zone conflict between 1951 and 1954. The subject has been debated in the House many times in the past few years.
I do not think that this is the place—or even that it is necessary—to go back over old arguments that have been debated many times before, given that last year the Government accepted the case for allowing the veterans from that conflict to be awarded the general service medal with a canal zone clasp; people who already had the general service medal were given the addition of a canal zone clasp.
I want to take the opportunity to pay tribute to all the veterans who served in the conflict on behalf of the United Kingdom, particularly those who campaigned so persistently for an award to mark the service of all members of the armed forces in the canal zone between 1951 and 1954. At times it must have seemed something of a hopeless and thankless campaign, as it continued for some 50 years after the conflict in Egypt had finished. We finally reached a positive conclusion last year, and the veterans are to be congratulated on their persistence.
I put on record our thanks to all the Members, from different political parties, who have campaigned for the award over the years, including, but not exclusively, my hon. Friends the Members for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow), for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke) and for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler), the hon. Members for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett) and for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard). and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. There are undoubtedly many others whom I have neglected to mention.
I also pay tribute to the sub-committee of the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals under Lord Guthrie, which was established in 2002 to report on the matter and whose conclusions paved the way for a change in the Government's position in 2003. Finally, I give credit to the Government for paying heed to the recommendations after a long time, and not merely sheltering behind the tempting argument that changing policy could set dangerous precedents and create future problems. If would have been easy for the Government to continue to shelter behind that argument, particularly considering the time that had elapsed, and they deserve credit for not having done so.
After the Prime Minister's announcement on 11 June 2003 that veterans of the service in the canal zone would receive the general service medal and clasp, many of us felt that the long-running campaign had come to a successful conclusion, and we could assume that the matter would be dealt with. I suspect that I was only one of many Members who, after the Prime Minister's statement, passed on representations to the Ministry of Defence giving details of those who had served in the canal zone, assuming that the medals would be issued shortly.
Although I became aware of some delays, it was not until this May that I realised how serious those delays were. I was canvassing for the European elections when I met a constituent called Mr. Ford in Chard. He said how pleased he was that the Government had finally given way on the issue, but that many veterans expected that it would be many years before the medals were issued. That is entirely unacceptable, given that the veterans have already waited for 50 years. Mr. Ford told me that he believed that only a couple of hundred medals were being processed each week and that it would therefore take years to clear the backlog. I had not been aware of that.
Mr. Ford wrote to the Army Medal Office earlier this year:
I am now in my seventy-sixth year and my brother who is also a veteran is seventy-eight and so in our case and that of many others I am sure time is important if we are to receive our awards before the Great Recruiting Sergeant in the sky calls us on parade.That is an issue. Many individuals are now well into their 70s or 80s, and they have waited 50 years already. Not only is that a very long time to have waited for this award in recognition of their service, but there is a real danger that some veterans will die before all the awards are issued, which must concern us all.
I am pleased to say that Mr. Ford has now received the clasp to his general service medal, because it means that I can demonstrate to the Minister that I am not citing only the gloomy cases in my constituency. However, over the past couple of days I have spoken to a number of veterans who are still waiting for their medals, despite my having written to the Secretary of State on their behalf on a number of occasions. They include Mr. Copley, who lives in Tintinhull just outside Yeovil, and served in the 41st Field Regiment Royal Artillery from 1953 to 1954 in the canal zone.
Written answers from the Minister over the past couple of weeks have indicated the scale of the problem relating to the issuance of the medal. In response to my written question of 21 June 2004, he said that as of 18 June, 39,666 applications had been received, in respect of which only 9,709 medals or clasps had been issued. There is therefore a backlog of some 30,000 medals, even assuming that no more applications come in, and there may well still be quite a few to come.
It appears from the Minister's answers that the longest delay is at the Army Medal Office, which apparently has nine staff processing claims and three people dealing with correspondence and dispatch. The office is still dealing with claims from 10 October 2003—almost nine months ago—which is worrying when we consider that it was only on 23 October last year that the detailed criteria relating to entitlement to the award were set out in Command Paper 5999.
The Royal Marines Medal Office seems to be performing rather better. There are no delays at that office, where there seem to be a much smaller number of applications. However, delays at the Royal Air Force Medal Office and the Royal Naval Medal Office date back to mid and late November 2003, which is a long time for people to be waiting. Many veterans hoped to receive their awards by Remembrance day this year, if not last year, so that they could wear the medals with pride and finally have some recognition of their service 129WH in the canal zone between 1951 and 1954. However, it now seems that many individuals may still wait as long as another two or even three years.
We need to remember that this delay is only one of the delays in the processing and awarding of the medals over the years. The first delay was the 50-year delay before approval of a medal in the first place. Then there were delays between Lord Guthrie's report being submitted and a conclusion being reached. He wrote to me at the time stating that he could not understand why the matter was taking so long to sort out. Then there were delays before the Prime Minister's statement. There were also delays, although they were short, before the criteria were set out in Command Paper 5999, and now there are further delays in processing claims.
We have always had an indication from the Minister that there would be some delays. Indeed, in a written answer of 3 July 2003, he said that
it is estimated that it could take a further two years to distribute the majority of medals to eligible applicants."—[Official Report, 3 July 2003; Vol. 408, c. 453W.]That is a year ago almost to the day, but the Government's estimate still seems to be that we are two years away from the distribution of the medals, so we seem to have lost a year despite the fact that the two-year delay was already at the boundaries of acceptability. The fact that only a couple of hundred medals and applications have been processed each week is extremely worrying.
Over the past couple of days since this debate was selected for Westminster Hall, I have received in my office many e-mails, letters and calls from veterans who are still awaiting their medals. A number have asked me to raise particular questions today. Mr. Duncan, an ex-paratrooper, e-mailed to say:
Can the Armed Services Minister be asked what is stopping the MoD from assigning more staff and resources to the four Medal Offices? So far, this has not been made clear. The question should be hard to duck.Mr. Duncan points out that although he has received the medal, he knows many other veterans who have yet to do so.
Mr. Rogers, an ex-corporal from the Royal Marines, also contacted us on behalf of the Suez veterans forum to point out that there is a two-month backlog in the Army Medal Office stamping department. Even when the searches have been completed and the issue instructions delivered there is still a further two-month wait to have the names stamped on the medals.
Other veterans have expressed concerns about the issuing of the medals, including Mr. Ford, the constituent whom I mentioned earlier, who was dissatisfied with the quality of the clasp. He compared it rather unfavourably with the medals and clasps struck when the general service medal was first issued. I hope that the Minister will acknowledge that the UK armed forces have had a proud record in striking good-quality medals. It would be a pity if, for financial reasons, the quality of those awards were diminished in any way.
§ Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East) (Con)What effect does the hon. Gentleman think the proposed closure of the Army Medal Office at Droitwich will 130WH have? My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr Luff), in whose constituency the Army Medal Office is located, has expressed the gravest concern that that can only add to the delays that he has so eloquently described.
§ Mr. LawsI am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. I am aware that the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire has raised his concerns about this. I do not pretend to be an expert in the reorganisation of the different medal offices within the armed forces. It would certainly be a. risk if the consolidation of those offices led to a significant reduction of staff. It could worsen the backlog in the issuance of these medals. On the other hand, I hope that the Minister will also think creatively about the deployment of staff across the different medal offices. The admittedly small office that handles the Royal Marines medals has no backlog at all. The staffing of that office, in terms of full-time equivalents, is only half a person—which suggests that it deals with a much smaller number of cases. I hope that the Minister can consider the situation imaginatively.
The solution seems pretty clear. More resources need to be put into the issuance of the medal. Other medals are being dealt with by the medals office at present, and I assume that everyone wants to get their awards quickly. But I am sure that the Minister would recognise that this is a particularly sensitive case: veterans have waited for such a long time already, and there is a real chance that some will die between the Prime Minister's announcement that the medal would be issued and the processing of the applications. I am sure that the Minister would feel as strongly as I would that that would be wholly unacceptable.
I hope that the Minister can therefore tell us today how he will speed up the processing of the medals in a fairly dramatic way within his Department. I hope that he can set a target for processing all of the existing outstanding claims—for example, by Remembrance day this year. That is an incredibly ambitious target given that the Ministry of Defence estimates that it will take another two years to clear the backlog. But the armed forces have dealt with worse crises than this. If they cannot organise themselves and put in some extra resources to get these medals to the veterans who deserve them pretty quickly, they are not rising to the standards that they have so consistently set over hundreds of years of service to this nation.
I hope that the Minister can tell us what measures he is taking to deal with the situation. In some of his comments in recent weeks on the Floor of the House and in other parliamentary answers he has acknowledged that the length of the delays is unacceptable. I hope that he can therefore set out minds at rest today. Before I conclude, perhaps I may cite one further comment from a veteran who has contacted me within the last 48 hours to set out his concerns:
The veterans have waited 53 years already, many will be dead before they get their medal Surely he"—the Minister—must realise that these are grandparents with many offspring who will be disenchanted with a Government who couldn't organize issuing issue Grandfather with his medal before he died.
This is an emotive issue. For many years, successive Governments resisted the award of this medal, and the Government deserve credit for making the award and 131WH not hiding behind precedence. It would be a great pity if they now undermined the progress that they have made by failing to act rapidly enough to make sure that the veterans get the medals within a limited time scale.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Ivor Caplin)I congratulate the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) on securing this debate. Virtually the whole of his list of the Members who had been involved in the campaign consisted of Liberal Democrats, so perhaps I can put the record straight by saying that a lot of credit should go to my hon. Friends the Economic Secretary to the Treasury and the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen), who were heavily involved in the campaign.
As the hon. Gentleman made clear, there has been much interest in the Suez medal, and the issuing of medals generally, of late. I take this opportunity to reaffirm my commitment to improving timeliness in issuing medals, but I note that medals can be issued only when policy, and the associated eligibility, have been established.
I want to put the whole question of the Suez medal into context. Campaigning for the medal and demands for recognition began in the mid-1970s and increased significantly during the 1990s. However, our predecessor Governments declined to consider the issue again, because the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals—the HD Committee—has a policy of not considering the institution of medals for service given more than five years earlier, because those who took decisions not to make an award at the time were in possession of contemporary evidence, and it would not be appropriate for the committee, at a much later date and probably with less evidence available to it, to second-guess why such decisions had been taken. That policy was strongly supported, particularly by the last Conservative Government, of whom the Leader of the Opposition was a very senior member. The claim for a medal was therefore resisted.
After further campaigning, and after our Government, who were aware of the circumstances, came to power in 1997, my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Defence requested a review of that policy in relation to the Suez medal. A small group was set up under the chairmanship of General Lord Guthrie, which took evidence from canal zone veterans and the relevant Government Departments. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, it reported to the HD Committee at the end of 2002.
As far as possible, the sub-committee tried to make a judgment on the case for a medal not against current standards but against those of the late 1950s. It concluded that a medal was justified, endorsed the HD Committee's non-retrospection rule but agreed that there were unique exceptional circumstances in this particular case. It had been established that the Commander-in-Chief at the time had requested the award of a medal, but there was no conclusive evidence that the case had ever been fully considered or a formal decision reached.
As I have said before in the House, I am pleased that the decision has been reached. There is no doubt that an injustice had been done to those men, the vast majority 132WH of whom were on national service, and that injustice has now been corrected. The HD Committee accepted the sub-committee's findings, and the Prime Minister made the announcement in June 2003. Applications for the medal and clasp started to come in immediately, but could not be dealt with, as the criteria for the award had yet to be agreed. I made that announcement on 23 October, at column 45WS of Hansard and in Command Paper 5999.
Where are we today? As of last Friday, 39,805 applications had been received by the four single-service medal offices, and 10,054 medals and clasps had been issued. I recognise that there is a backlog in assessing eligibility and in issuing the canal zone and some other medals. The reasons behind the current failure to match output to demand are complex, but in part it is due to increased demand arising from the recent operational tempo, in parallel with a surge in requests for the Suez medal. However, an additional factor is that there are four separate medal offices at different locations, with their own procedures. That is why I have decided that this cannot be allowed to continue. The introduction of joint personnel administration will improve the situation.
Joint personnel administration is a key defence modernisation project that will transform the delivery of personnel administration to the armed forces. The platform of old information technology systems will be replaced with new responsive and flexible systems. Disparate single-service processes will be harmonised and simplified. The formation of a joint personnel administration centre is central to the delivery of joint personnel administration and will provide a single organisation from which entitlement to, and delivery of, future campaign medals will be administered and supported by the centralised database of information held on the joint personnel computer system.
The medal process is part of the modernisation process. One strand of the major overall improvements is the formation of the new Ministry of Defence medal office, which will bring together the current four single-service medal offices at a single site at RAF Innsworth. That will allow us to spread best practice, make the best use of staff by flexing people into the areas where demand is highest, and remove the separation between some of the assessment teams and the engraving and dispatch organisation. It will also provide access to the joint personnel administration centre inquiry service, which will provide a new and effective means of handling inquiries. As I made it clear at Defence questions in the House last week, I am convinced that this provision will bring about substantial business improvements that will be to the ultimate benefit of veterans—and, of course, to today's serving personnel.
Although the new MOD medal office will be fully operational at Innsworth from early spring 2005, I have decided that all the medal offices will be under a single management structure in the near future. Of course, detailed discussions are taking place with our staff at the offices that will close. We had planned in the initial assessment for nine members of staff to transfer from Droitwich. In fact, 17 of the Droitwich staff have indicated that they wish to transfer to Innsworth. In addition, seven staff have yet to make a decision, and a further seven have recorded their desire to reserve the right to change their minds at some stage in the future.
Nine members of staff from the RAF Medal Office have indicated their wish to transfer, along with two staff members from the Royal Marines Medal Office. The Armed Forces Personnel Agency will recruit any additional staff who are required as soon as possible, which will allow them to be trained alongside the experienced medal office staff, so the risk of any adverse impact of the move on the existing medals backlog can be minimised. However, steps are also being taken to reduce the backlog by increasing medal engraving capacity though the establishment of a second production line at Innsworth, utilising laser engraving technology.
I am committed to improving the service provided to serving and former members of our armed forces, and to ensuring their more rapid receipt of the medals to which they are entitled. Clearly, that will not be achieved through the medal system as it is currently organised.
I shall now answer the direct questions asked by the hon. Member for Yeovil. He asked whether there were more staff. Yes, there are. There are already nine more staff at Droitwich, and they are effective. He also asked whether there was a backlog in the engraving department. Yes, there is, as I have just said, particularly in the Army Medal Office, which distributes all the medals. Even when assessments are done elsewhere in the RAF or the Navy, the Army Medal Office at Droitwich is responsible for engraving and dispatch. I was sorry to hear about the quality of the medal. Of the 10,000 or so medals that we have issued so far I have only heard one or two people talk about that. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will accept that that is a low percentage. Finally, the Army Medal Office has about two thirds of the total applications for all the medals requested for Suez.
I can update the House on the latest dates on which assessment is taking place. For the Navy, it is 3 December, for the Royal Air Force 18 November and for the Army 17 October. Nobody is happy with the figures, and that is why I outlined in detail how we intend to progress from this point.
§ Mr. LawsI am grateful to the Minister for outlining some of the measures intended to speed up the process. 134WH Even from his recent comment about the current situation, it seems that there is a tremendous delay, particularly in the Army Medal Office. Will the measures that he is putting in place reduce that delay rapidly? In particular, is the two-year estimate that he made a few weeks ago about the time taken to clear the backlog still correct. or is he planning to bring that down significantly?
§ Mr. CaplinI very much hope that we will reduce that figure. The aim of the changes that I outlined—both in the written statements that I made to the House and the questions that I have answered orally, in writing and in today's debate—are all about reducing the backlog and getting medals to veterans, particularly Suez veterans, much more quickly. The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not put a timetable on that. I always think that it is probably best not to do that in such circumstances.
I am convinced that developing the new MOD medal office is the only sensible and practical way forward in both the short and the long term. I see it as the solution rather than the problem. I appreciate that forming a Ministry of Defence medal office will not allow us to accommodate the wishes of every individual in the dedicated work force, which I pay tribute to. They have been tremendous. Every effort will be made to handle the impact on our staff as sensitively and flexibly as possible, as befits a good employer such as the Ministry of Defence.
I conclude this short debate by paying tribute to all those who served in the Suez canal zone in the 1950s. I am sure that everyone in the House would echo those words. Those who served were national servicemen who campaigned for more than 30 years to have an injustice put right. It has been put right by this Government. I am grateful for the remarks of the hon. Member for Yeovil and the veterans that he has met that recognise that point. We need to match it with the determination to see through real reform of the medal offices so that delivery of all medals, not just those relating to Suez, can be speedy and efficient. I know that the House expects nothing less, and that is what the new MOD medal office will deliver.
§ Sitting suspended.