UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 922-iv HOUSE OF COMMONS ORAL EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE THE NORTHERN IRELAND AFFAIRS COMMITTEE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ARMED FORCES COVENANT IN NORTHERN IRELAND WEDNESDAY 24 APRIL 2013 NELSON MCCAUSLAND MLA AND EDWIN POOTS MLA Evidence heard in Public Questions 129-194 USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT 1. This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others. 2. Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings. 3. Members who receive this for the purpose of correcting questions addressed by them to witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Committee Assistant. 4. Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee. 1 Oral Evidence Taken before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on Wednesday 24 April 2013 Members present: Mr Laurence Robertson (Chair) Mr David Anderson Mr Stephen Hepburn Lady Hermon Kate Hoey Naomi Long Dr Alasdair McDonnell Nigel Mills Ian Paisley David Simpson ________________ Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Nelson McCausland MLA, Minister of the Department for Social Development NI, and Edwin Poots MLA, Minister of the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety NI, gave evidence. Q129 Chair: Ministers, you are very welcome; thank you for joining us. As you know, we are looking into the Armed Forces Covenant and its application in particular in Northern Ireland, so we are very grateful to you for coming here to talk to us and give us the benefit of your experience. It is possible there will be a vote at some stage. If there is, I will have to suspend the Committee for 15 minutes and then reconvene. It may or may not happen; I do not know. May I invite you to make very brief opening statements, if you wish? Nelson McCausland: Thank you, Chairman, for the opportunity to speak to the Committee about the Armed Forces Covenant. Ex-service personnel and their families can face housing challenges in particular. Having lived in service accommodation in a variety of locations during their career, they may not have a strong connection with any particular area. They may be leaving the services because of illness or disability and they will probably be facing a drop in income. It is my intention that, where service personnel and their families have to vacate military-provided housing, they are not placed at a disadvantage compared with other applicants. Personnel returning to Northern Ireland after several years of service in Great Britain or elsewhere should be treated on the same basis as any other local person. Ex-service applicants who are not originally from Northern Ireland but wish to settle there, after being based in the Province, should be able to do so. Service personnel who are leaving the forces because of serious injury or disability and who need access to adapted social housing must have their applications assessed as quickly as possible and can expect to receive an appropriate level of priority under the rules for the allocation of social housing in Northern Ireland. I am also anxious to ensure that providers of social housing in Northern Ireland give sympathetic treatment to surviving partners of former service personnel who have been killed in action. Where such family members have had service accommodation made available to 2 them on a temporary basis, this should not disadvantage them if they apply for social housing. I know that ex-service personnel, in common with others with an institutional background, are at particular risk of homelessness and rough sleeping. For this reason, housing providers must give careful consideration to the potential vulnerability of ex-service applicants and bear in mind that some injuries, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, may not be apparent at the date of discharge but can lead to problems in sustaining housing at a later stage. I appreciate that in putting the needs of the nation, the armed forces and other people before their own, service men and women forgo some of the rights enjoyed by civilians. They are therefore entitled, at the very least, to be treated fairly and with respect. That is the basis of my Department’s approach to the provision of housing services to ex-service personnel. Chair: Thank you very much. Mr Poots? Edwin Poots: The armed forces are a more significant issue in Northern Ireland than perhaps anywhere else given the circumstances that exist in Northern Ireland, where armed forces personnel can still come under threat at a local level. Therefore, whenever armed forces personnel come back to Northern Ireland they are operating in different circumstances than in other parts of the United Kingdom, and the consequences can be very dangerous for them. We do have a huge number of people who have taken up the load, particularly in the reservists, and Northern Ireland is contributing twice as many reservists per head of population than elsewhere. The task of ensuring that we do provide appropriate care for them is a very important one. That is also something we have to do with discrete care, given what I outlined at the very outset. So in all that we have done, in the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, we have sought to provide the high standards that have been outlined within the Army Covenant without its actual implementation. We are looking for outcomes here, as opposed to means, in our delivery of service. I am very happy to take questions as to how we seek to do that. Q130 Ian Paisley: You are both very welcome, gentlemen. Could I ask something just off the back of that? This flows from what Mr Poots has just told the Committee. There will be many people within the Department of Health who are, and potentially in the future will be, reservists in the new arrangements that are in place for our Ministry of Defence. Are you going to put anything in place to allow those reservists to get time off to do their duty for their nation and also to go to camps and enjoy and participate in the work that they are volunteering to do? Edwin Poots: That already is in place. We currently have 30 reservists in the hospital in Helmand, which is one sixth of the total personnel that exist in that facility. They are out there serving and supporting all of the troops who are out there from the allied forces. So there is a significant contribution made by the Northern Ireland armed forces already in Afghanistan through the health service. We are delighted to do that because, first of all, our staff want to do it and we want to support them in doing it. Secondly, there are huge benefits for the Northern Ireland health service in that the levels of trauma that will be witnessed in Afghanistan will allow them to maximise their expertise and will give them real life experiences of how to deal with some of the most critical and difficult situations, which can then be applied at home to other trauma situations that arise. Q131 David Simpson: You are very welcome, gentlemen, to the Committee. I have what is surely a twofold question but will deal with the first point. Has there been, up to date, a collective decision within the Executive of how to implement the Covenant in Northern Ireland? 3 Nelson McCausland: There has not been. I think Members will be aware of the reasons for that. Q132 Lady Hermon: It would be helpful for all the Committee Members for you to elaborate a little bit upon what you actually mean. Nelson McCausland: The difficulty is that in Northern Ireland we have a five-party mandatory coalition. I know Members here will have some knowledge of the difficulties of a two-party coalition; a five-party one is somewhat more problematic. There are people within that Executive who would have a very, very different view from the one that I hold regarding the armed forces. They would have a very negative view about the British Army and therefore, for that particular reason, refuse almost to engage on these issues. That is regrettable because, as my colleague has already pointed out, members of the armed forces provide—at great personal sacrifice, I believe—a wonderful service for our country. That view is not shared by some other members of the Executive from an Irish Republican background. Therefore, there is difficulty in getting agreement. Personally, I think that the way forward on this is much more through individual Departments delivering for ex-service personnel, rather than trying to resolve something that I do not think will be resolved, as those who hold a different view will not change that view. Therefore, the relevant Departments, whether in regard to housing or in regard to health, should move forward on that basis. It is regrettable that it has to be done on that basis, but in practical terms that is where we are. Q133 David Simpson: I have a follow up that maybe Edwin can take. It is interesting that you mentioned dealing with it on an individual basis. Being diligent Ministers and having very diligent staff, you will of course have read the minutes from our last meeting, where we had evidence from the British Legion and from SSAFA.