MINISTER ACCEPTS CHALLENGE TO IMPROVE
SERVICES TO VETERANS
With the welfare of those injured or bereaved through
Service very much in the media spotlight, Veterans WORLD has interviewed
Under Secretary of State for Defence and Minister for Veterans, Derek Twigg
MP, about the challenges that lie ahead…
“I
was delighted to be appointed Veterans Minister. I consider it a real privilege
and an honour to be given responsibility for the recognition and support
for those who have given service in the cause of their country. At the
same time, I have no illusions about the challenges that the job brings
with it.
Of paramount importance is providing support for those whose lives have been adversely affected by their Service – whether this is because of physical injury on operations or because the strains of conflict have effected their mental health. Again there is much that my predecessors have already done – new pension and compensation schemes giving better focused benefits, improvements to health care and handover to civilian carers on discharge and extension of resettlement arrangements to vulnerable Service leavers.
But this is an area of real challenge where we need to look at what more we can do to help. Nobody denies that there are improvements that we must make here. That is a key part of the task that I have set myself and we are in the process of reviewing the welfare and wider support that we provide to identify and remedy the areas where the system is not currently working, as it should.
The other area central to my agenda is the delivery
of customer service improvements to veterans. The Veterans Agency has now
come together with the Armed Forces Personnel Administration Agency to form
the new Service Personnel and Veterans Agency. This is not a piece of bureaucratic
re-arrangement of organisational deck chairs. It is a measure to improve
service delivery by allowing the support to veterans to be seen – properly – as
one integrated activity. We owe veterans a clear simple-to-understand service
and the merged Agency together with our move towards a unified service for
veterans - “Veterans-UK” - will
help deliver this.
My responsibilities as Veterans Minister are wide and varied.
This includes helping the country to understand and celebrate the achievements
of its veterans; it is not just that we should recognise them for what they
have done but also that the commitment and sacrifice that they have shown should
be taken as a model for society more widely; these are the qualities that the
country should be asking of all its citizens.
The institution of the UK Armed Forces Veterans Badge and Veterans Day are important markers of the value that we place on the service given but we will only have succeeded if this is underpinned by popular public recognition. This again will come into sharp focus this year as we commemorate the 25th Anniversary of the Falklands Conflict. It is perhapseasier for the public to accept this in relation to the older WWII generation; but, if our work here is to be good for the longer term, we need to get younger people to recognise that there are veterans among them of their own ages.
Finally, let me say that this cannot just be a matter of the Ministry of Defence working in isolation. The veterans agenda is a matter for the whole of Government. It is also something that requires an effective partnership with the ex-Service organisations, other public sector bodies and the voluntary sector. In short – people like YOU. If we operate in isolation, if our services are not joined up to deliver a coherent response to the full range of veterans needs, then we are failing the people who depend on us for their future wellbeing. This is another area where I amdetermined we should make progress.”
