Service personnel who leave the Armed Forces with long-term mental illnesses after suffering traumatic experiences in war are not being properly cared for in the NHS, the Commons Defence Committee said yesterday.

The MPs said that the Ministry of Defence was providing adequate mental healthcare for serving members of the Forces, but once they had given up their military careers there was no system for ensuring that their specific needs were understood by civilian doctors.

The committee was told during its inquiry into medical care for the Armed Forces that a veteran who had undergone a traumatic experience in battle could find himself referred to a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) support group “with people who had suffered traumatic childbirths”.

Commodore Toby Elliott, chief executive of Combat Stress, a charitable organisation that helps ex-Service personnel, told the committee that this was inappropriate: “When it comes for him to talk about his experience, either he bottles out and leaves the group or reduces the group, including the therapist, to tears.”

In their report published yesterday, the MPs on the Defence Committee said: “We are concerned that the identification and treatment of veterans with mental health needs relies as much on good intentions and good luck as on robust tracking and detailed understanding of their problems.”

Major-General Robin Short, former Director-General of Army Medical Services, told the committee in a memorandum that PTSD was a considerable problem and that it was likely to grow because of the high tempo of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that the MoD had failed to learn from the way in which the American military had improved the treatment of PTSD.

The MPs said that the NHS had to bear much of the burden in providing treatment for ex-personnel suffering from PTSD because mental illness could take years to emerge. Combat Stress told the committee that the average period between leaving the Services and developing mental health problems was about 15 years.

Derek Twigg, a junior Defence Minister, said of the report: “The MoD has worked with other departments to improve the care that veterans receive, including for mental disorders.”

This week the Defence Management Board, chaired by Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, is expected to start discussing ways of axeing part of the Armed Forces’ equipment programme to keep within the budget set by the Treasury for the next three years. A senior MoD source said that, with the agreement of the Service chiefs, £500 million was being “ring-fenced” to improve Forces’ accommodation, which meant that cuts would have to be made elsewhere.

The MoD refused to comment on a The Sunday Timesreport that quoted a defence official as saying that the Armed Forces were heading for a “train crash” because of the lack of funds for key equipment programmes.

Defence sources said that final decisions on how the MoD was going to spend its budget for the next three years were “a few weeks away”, but they admitted that some equipment projects were going to be affected.

The Government has repeatedly declared that since Labour came to power in 1997 the defence budget will have gone up by £7.7 billion in real terms by 2010. But with the proposed two large aircraft carriers costing nearly £4 billion, and the planned purchase of 232 Eurofighter/Typhoon combat aircraft for more than £20 billion, orders for more destroyers, armoured personnel carriers and refuelling tankers now look vulnerable.

The MoD confirmed yesterday that eight Chinook helicopters that were bought from the US in 1995 as special forces aircraft, and are now being converted into ordinary transport helicopters, would not be in service until next year.

A report by the Royal United Services Institute warned the Government last week that it was starving the Armed Forces of funds, leaving them in a state of “chronic disrepair”.

A document being drawn up by the Cabinet Office that will outline the Government’s priorities on national security issues, is not expected to focus in any detail on the Armed Forces’ capability to fight several wars simultaneously. Nor is it expected to pledge to spend more on defence to provide the right equipment.

The national security strategy document, to which Gordon Brown is contributing, will focus instead on international terrorism, climate change, crime and mass migration. It is expected to be published next month.

Meanwhile, the MoD has announced that every combat soldier serving in Afghanistan has been issued with a new doit-yourself tourniquet to apply immediately to serious battle wounds. The elasticised tourniquet with a Vel- cro strap can be applied with one hand, and has already proved to be a breakthrough in instant life-saving techniques.

— David Cameron will this week call for the creation of a US-style National Security Council to oversee security aspects of foreign and defence policy.

Battles with stress

30 Service personnel discharged with PTSD each year

1,000 Veterans seeking help from Combat Stress each year

Source: Commons Defence Committee

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