We need a better deal for ex-servicemen

Next year is the centenary of the start of World War I, a catastrophe that saw 37 million people slaughtered in one of the deadliest conflicts in history.   What better time to reflect on how we support today’s servicemen and women once their military service comes to an end?

It’s a shameful fact that Britain’s ex-service personnel are more likely to be homeless, suffer from depression, misuse alcohol, or end up in prison than the rest of the population.  What way is this to treat the men and women we hail as heroes when they put themselves in harm’s way on our behalf?

The homeless charity Crisis estimate that one in ten rough sleepers are former soldiers, sailors or airmen, while a recent report by the campaign group No Offence estimates that 10% of prisoners are former service personnel.  Several reports identify a significantly higher level of alcohol misuse by veterans than in the general population.  Much of the trouble stems from a failure to help people leaving the military to reintegrate into civilian life, and the problem is set to get worse as Government cuts create a further 20,000 redundancies in the armed forces by 2017.

The Government’s Armed Forces Covenant is supposed to guarantee appropriate support for people leaving military service.  But many forces leavers speak of a sense of betrayal that too little is done to provide housing, a new job, or to train people to live independently outside the institutionalised life of military service.

Labour must offer Britain’s former servicemen and women a better deal.  People who risk their lives in the service of their country should not be abandoned at the time they need help themselves.  People in the armed forces understand mutual support; it’s fundamental to creating an effective military unit.  Setting up a mutual organisation open to every person leaving the forces would offer the reassurance of being part of a large and mutually supportive organisation – a concept familiar to ex-forces staff from their time in military service.

Importantly, a mutual for ex-service personnel could guarantee the kind of support that service leavers currently feel is lacking.  Because it would be jointly owned by every one of its members it would have a direct incentive to provide the things its members really need.  That would reduce the number of ex-service personnel struggling with civilian life, delivering cost savings as well as social benefits.

The mutual would be funded by pooling the fragmented budgets spent on veterans across various central government departments, local government, the NHS and other agencies.  The savings made by reducing the high cost of dealing with disproportionate numbers of service leavers becoming homeless, depressed, unemployed, imprisoned, or misusing alcohol would help fund the mutual longer term as well as producing a net saving for the Exchequer.

Service leavers, operating through the mutual, would steer resources to where they are most effective.  This would ensure that different public services worked together more closely, make those services directly accountable to veterans, and demonstrate a real commitment to empowering ex-service personnel.

The benefit of a mutual organisation is that it can involve its members directly in choosing what help they need.  Who better understands the problems service leavers face in finding a home, a job or learning how to manage personal budgets than the service-leavers themselves?  By involving them directly in designing or even delivering more effective services we can harness the service leavers’ own insights and experience of the problems of readjustment.

Most of the men and women serving in the military are working class people from communities that traditionally identify with Labour.  The centenary of World War I is the right time for Labour to engage our co-operative traditions to guarantee service leavers the better chance they deserve of a successful return to civilian life.

Steve Reed OBE is the Member of Parliament for Croydon North.