Ministers plan better healthcare and housing for ex-soldiers

FORMER soldiers are to receive better healthcare and housing under a strategy paper expected to be unveiled by ministers this week.

The Ministry of Defence is to unveil a Green Paper on veterans' care which is expected to discuss placing those injured at the front at the top of NHS waiting lists and putting homeless former soldiers near the front of queues for social housing.

Ministers have been criticised for the treatment of former soldiers, who have found themselves struggling to get medical care, housing and mental health treatment.

Veterans' groups have warned ministers that the new policies will have to be backed with Government cash.

The MoD has been consulting with veterans' associations in order to improve services. More than 400 UK soldiers have been wounded in Iraq and another 350 have been hurt in action in Afghanistan.

The policy paper will consider giving Gurkha soldiers, as well as those from other Commonwealth countries, the right to receive UK citizenship along with their families. In addition, the proposals will look at education for soldiers to help them get jobs after leaving the military as well as education for their spouses and children.

One issue which the paper will have to address will be co-operation between the UK Government and the Scottish Government.

Although defence is a matter reserved to Westminster and to the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall, the services which organise care for veterans, such as health and housing, are devolved to Holyrood.

One veterans' insider said: "There are a lot of high hopes for this paper. We are expecting to see a lot of progress, such as getting to the front, or at least near to the front, of waiting lists for things like medical care and housing.

"Some of them need help with all kinds of things. The big drinking culture in the army can mean that they find themselves with alcohol problems when they come out."

Colonel Martin Gibson, the chief executive of the veterans' charity Erskine, said: "We very much look forward to seeing what will emerge from this, but we are clear that it will have to be properly funded in order to succeed.

"It is also clear that there is great public support for veterans, and the public want to see them properly cared for.

"Of course, the vast majority are able to do well without any help and make their own way on civvy street, applying their skills in the workplace. But there are those who do need help and it's important that the services are there for them."

Last year, the NHS launched an inquiry into the treatment of troops following complaints about the treatment of wounded British troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The complaints alleged that soldiers were deprived of adequate pain relief and emotional support, and in some cases were unable to sleep because of night-time noise in the NHS facilities caring for them.

It emerged that one British soldier wounded in Iraq was forced to spend a night lying in his own faeces after staff allowed his colostomy bag to overflow.

Another complaint alleged that a serviceman suffered more than 14 hours in agony without pain relief because no relevant staff were on duty.

Another 200 to Afghanistan

Another 200 UK troops are to be sent to Afghanistan, it has been reported.

The reinforcements are to be deployed as British forces face fierce resistance from the Taliban. Five men from the Parachute Regiment have been killed in Afghanistan in the past week, taking the UK death toll in the country to 102.

Britain already has 7,800 troops in Afghanistan and Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, is expected to tell MPs tomorrow at least 200 more are to be deployed.

Ministers, who initially claimed that British troops might not ever need to fire a shot during the deployment, have rejected suggestions that the British mission lacks a clear strategy.

Browne is expected to tell MPs that progress is being made in Afghanistan.

The 200-man reinforcement is smaller than that first recommended by an MoD review of British force levels in Afghanistan.

At a Cabinet sub-committee meeting in March, ministers had agreed to send as many as 450 extra troops.