David Cameron yesterday accused the Government of breaking the military covenant and announced the launch of a Tory Commission to advise him on how to repair it.

The Commission, chaired by the uthor Frederick Forsyth and including Falklands hero Simon Weston and historian Sir John Keegan, will look at how the Government and society can better fulfil their obligations to the servicemen and women who put their lives on the line for Britain.

Speaking at a London press conference, Mr Cameron said more needed to be done to ensure that troops got the right equipment, better telephone and email links with family when serving abroad and the best health treatment when they are wounded.

He said: “I believe the military covenant is well and truly broken, and I am determined that the Conservative Party will fix it.”

The commission will look at all the issues that affect the Armed Forces, from training and recuperation, the welfare of their families and their wider relationship with society.

Mr Cameron was critical of the practice of treating soldiers wounded on the frontline alongside civilians in NHS hospitals.

“When our soldiers are wounded, they want to come home to a great British hospital, and in Birmingham Selly Oak they do,” he said.

“But when they are injured on Monday they don’t want to end up on a public ward by Wednesday. They want to recuperate next to their comrades and that must mean having genuinely separate military wards.”

Mr Cameron warned that the covenant had been broken not just by the Government but by society as a whole, citing an “ugly incident” where a Surrey petrol station refused to serve a soldier because he was in uniform.

He said businesses like mobile phone companies could do more to provide cheaper services to deployed personnel.

Mr Cameron described the covenant as “the agreement which lays out the sacrifices – including the ultimate sacrifice – that we expect our troops to make on our behalf, and our duties and obligations towards them.”

He went on: “If you sit in the back of a Hercules at Kandahar air base as I have done, you will realise that our soldiers don’t ask for much.

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