Veterans Affairs Committee on June 19th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Good morning, everybody. I'd like to call the meeting to order.

This is meeting number 60, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), a comparative study of services to veterans in other jurisdictions.

We'll start with the first panel here and then we'll go into questioning. First, I'd like to introduce Rob Rowntree, who is deputy head of welfare and support. I will call on him to start and introduce the panel. When asked questions, would each panel member state their name so we can get it on record here?

Good morning, Rob. I'll turn the meeting over to you for your statement. Thank you.

[Rob Rowntree, Deputy Head, Welfare and Support, Veterans UK]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

My name is Rob Rowntree and I work within Veterans UK, which is the part of the Ministry of Defence that delivers care and support for veterans. We're hoping that colleagues from London will join us shortly. Those are the individuals who set the policy, but the colleagues you have with you just at the moment—along with my colleagues in Blackpool, whom I will introduce to you shortly, and me—are the ones who deliver the work. I'm hoping that even if London doesn't join, we'll be able to talk to you about what we deliver.

I'll ask the team at Norcross to introduce themselves to you.

[Carolyn Short, Assistant Head, War Pensions Scheme and Armed Forces Compensation Scheme, Veterans UK]

Good morning.

I am Carolyn Short and I am the assistant head of the teams that manage the armed forces compensation scheme and war pensions.

[Yvonne Sanderson, Assistant Head, Operational Policy, Planning and Training, Veterans UK]

Good morning.

I am Yvonne Sanderson, and I am the assistant head who leads on the operational policy delivery aspects.

[Paul Kingham, Chair of Chairs, Veterans Advisory and Pensions Committees, Veterans UK]

Good morning.

I am Paul Kingham. I am the chair of the veterans advisory and pensions committees. We're an independent public body that monitors the delivery and does what we can with both local and national government to improve facilities for veterans.

[Rob Rowntree]

So that's the team you have.

In looking at the email that I had from Patrick, you seem to be interested in compensation for pain and suffering. We have two schemes in this country that we run for our veterans. One is the armed forces compensation scheme, which is run for people who are currently serving and those who have left for incidents or things that happened after 2005, and something called the war pension scheme, which is also a compensation scheme but for those incidents that happened prior to 2005. The big difference between the two is that the war pension scheme can only be claimed when somebody leaves the military and has to be certified by a medical adviser, whereas the armed forces compensation scheme can be claimed by those who have left or are leaving, but also those who currently serve. When set up, the scheme is very much a lay scheme, so it's tariff-based. The idea is that we should be able to give clearer, quicker judgments. Maybe we can discuss, as you talk about our various schemes, and we can explain how those work.

In terms of a pension scheme, we have an armed forces pension scheme that we run in Scotland, in Glasgow, and that deals with all our armed forces personnel. We have several schemes running at the same time, depending on when people joined and when they left, so that's constantly evolving.

Certainly, in general terms of looking after veterans in this country, we have obviously, unfortunately—as you've experienced—had service in Iraq and Afghanistan. The focus on veterans and veterans' care and some of the challenges that have arisen from those two specific conflicts has meant that we have very much been evolving support and care for veterans, and trying to also evolve our schemes to support them. As you can imagine, it's growing all the time. Political awareness in this country with regard to veterans' affairs remains very high. It keeps us busy.

Certainly, in terms of the mental health provision, it's something that is very much coming to the fore in this country. I always say to people that looking after veterans is a team affair. We work with colleagues, not only in the sense of who develops the policy for us but also colleagues in the third sector, the charity sector, who do an awful lot of invaluable work for us. For instance, there's a charity that deals specifically with blind veterans. What we try to make sure is that we generate a culture or an atmosphere whereby among us all, among all the various organizations, we provide the best care that we can for veterans.

Very importantly, you asked to speak to an ombudsman equivalent. Paul's role is very much key to what we do. Our veterans' minister independently appoints 13 regional chairmen for the various regions within the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland to look after veterans' awareness, raise issues of veterans' awareness within the regions, but because they're independently appointed by a minister, all the chairs have access to the minister to talk about how we're doing as an organization. Paul, in fact, is the chair of all the chairs, so Paul is here today to talk about how complaints, issues, or ombudsman issues are looked after. If need be, Yvonne, Carolyn and I can leave him, so he can talk freely about how he thinks we're doing.

I'm seeing him on Wednesday in London, so it had better not be too bad, Paul.

I will hand the floor back to you, but that's an introduction to what we do. It's very much a case of our paying the right person the right amount at the right time to enable personal recovery as best we can.

In terms of Veterans UK, I see colleagues from London have joined us now, which is great. I'll ask them to introduce themselves.

[Group Captain Mark Heffron, Deputy Head, Service Personnel Support, Welfare, Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom]

Good afternoon. Apologies. It's taken us a while to come through.

I am Group Captain Mark Heffron and I'm head of welfare policy.

[Beryl Preston, Assistant Head, Service Personnel Support, Compensation, Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom]

I'm Beryl Preston. I'm assistant head of the armed forces compensation scheme insurance.

[Martin Goudie, Business Development Manager, Veterans Welfare Service, Veterans UK]

I'm Martin Goudie. I am the strategic business development manager for the veterans welfare service.

[Rob Rowntree]

Mr. Chairman, you have our team. You have all your speakers, so it's over to you. What would you like to know?

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Excellent. We'll start our six-minute rounds of questioning with Mr. Kitchen.

Mr. Kitchen, you're up.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon to you. It's good morning to us, and we thank you very much for being here today. I really appreciate the short synopsis of what goes on.

You may or may not be aware, but we have just finished a study on mental health. It's an issue that's important to all of us here, and I have a couple of questions along those lines. I've noticed that you're basically providing a hub for veterans in terms of mental health. I'm wondering if you could expand upon that a bit more, if possible, on exactly what that entails, specifically for the mental health services that you provide for your veterans.

[Rob Rowntree]

In terms of hubs, we probably only have four regional welfare centres throughout the U.K. In terms of the provision of mental health care. That's certainly provided in the first instance by clinicians within the National Health Service. We also work closely with a charity called Combat Stress, which specifically looks after issues of mental health for veterans, and they have a number of facilities throughout the U.K. I don't know if colleagues elsewhere are aware of specific hubs, whether we're talking about the personnel recovery units or the personnel recovery centres.

Martin, can you help us?

[Martin Goudie]

Within the single services for the military, we have what are called personnel recovery units and departments of community mental health, which are run by the military. They are where mental health support would be provided in service, and for up to six months post-discharge.

After that, it would become the responsibility of the National Health Service in line with—as Rob rightly says—Combat Stress as one of our charitable partners, and a couple of others that are in Wales, devolved for the Department of Health there. There is a specific mental health hub run there, and in Scotland there is another charitable support partner in line with the Scottish government and the NHS in Scotland, called Veterans First Point. As the MOD representatives, we are closely partnered with them to ensure that correct transition to veterans, and to allow them to receive the correct level of support.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you.

Do you have a centre of excellence at all? Are you entertaining that concept in dealing with mental health?

[Martin Goudie]

We do not at present have anything along those lines that would be equivalent to what we do for physical injuries at Headley Court. We rely on funded support into a charitable body called Forces in Mind Trust, who are within the U.K. and perform lots of research in differing areas, specifically focused on health and well-being and mental health. They then present recommendations to the different governing departments, including the Ministry of Defence, for future support of armed forces members and veterans who may be suffering from mental health issues.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you.

I was born in Poole and went to prep school in Cirencester, so I have a little recollection of my days in England, but right now I live in Saskatchewan and my riding is 46,000 square kilometres in size. It's often difficult for our veterans to get access to services. What I think I'm hearing from you is that even though everything is so compact in my eyes, in England, you still have those same issues as to how your veterans access services. I'm wondering if you could comment on that.

[Martin Goudie]

You would be correct in that it is a continued issue for individuals, and specifically veterans. However, the veterans welfare service provides support in what we class as surgeries, which will be in local communities. Rather than expecting a veteran to travel to us, we will send one of our welfare services managers to that area and potentially be a stronger hub, allowing veterans to come and mix with each other there. This creates a bit more of a surgery-type atmosphere and allows 10 to 14 veterans to be seen in one day, rather than having each and every one of them travel a long distance to see one of our welfare managers.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Do you utilize robo-health, robotics, in any manner for your veterans' access?

[Martin Goudie]

We don't within the veterans welfare service, no.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Mr. Eyolfson.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for meeting with us today.

In general, on our trends in veterans transitioning, in Canada about 77% of our veterans transition well to their post-military life, so we have 23% of veterans who report difficulties and not all of those are ill or injured physically. Some of them have no acute mental health issues but aren't doing well for various reasons.

How would you compare these trends with the U.K.?

[Gp Capt Mark Heffron]

I can probably take this question. We only heard half of your statement because you cut out on us, but I can state that, of all personnel who leave the armed forces, only around 16,000 a year, about 80% transition well. Of the others, 10% or maybe slightly higher than that are individuals who, after a six-month period, are still in forms of education or training or, indeed, have retired and are not intending to earn. Therefore, I can say that under 10% of those who transition out of the armed forces have an issue with regard to anything.

I can't break that down as to what is mental health and what isn't. One of the things we are able to talk about is homelessness, if that is of interest to you. There has been a study undertaken in the last few years, only available for London, where we see as few as 3% of all those who are homeless in the London area being ex-armed forces, and indeed they may come from armed forces of different nations. It is a very small number who have problems there. A very small number have difficulty transitioning.

I'm not sure if Rob, in his remarks to your earlier—we were waiting to come in—gave you overall figures. Stop me if he did, but we're talking of the veteran population in the U.K. being about 2.56 million. That's the number we're talking of. Over 50% of them are aged 75 or over, the results of the Second World War and the U.K. national service around to the end of the 1950s. We expect that, in the coming two to three years, the number should drop away to around 1.5 million veterans and will probably will flatline. Those are the kinds of figures we're dealing with: 1.5 million from that point on, about 16,000 leaving the services, and those sort of percentages of how well they're doing.

I hope that helps.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you. That was exactly the information I was looking for there.

Among those who are having difficulty transitioning, would you have an estimation as to what the common factors are that lead to difficulty in transitioning?