The Report of the Iraq Inquiry

184. Mr Bob Ainsworth, the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, described the

production of the Command Paper to the Inquiry as an:

“… opportunity … to get for the first time at every single area of Government

and deal with the things that had never been given the importance that they had

been given before. There are lots of ways in which Government accidentally, local

Government and central Government, discriminates against our Armed Forces

because of the juxtaposition of the way that services are delivered and the way that

we make them work and the way that we keep moving them around … So in the

Services Personnel Command Paper what I wanted to try to do was sweep up as

many of those complaints as there were, analyse them, see whether or not there

was a reality to them and have them dealt with as a one-off process, but set up an

ongoing process.”119

185. Mr Ainsworth went on to describe how the Command Paper was used to

co‑ordinate the Government’s response to veterans’ needs, including on issues which

had not been explicitly considered in the paper:

“We had the Prime Minister’s stamp on the Service Personnel Command Paper.

We were able to use that as we went round different departments and say ‘This

is the Government’s intent’ …

“I had problems from different Departments, but that’s understandable …

Government tends to work in silos … So you have to go political in order to get those

things sorted out.”120

186. VAdm Wilkinson told the Inquiry that the implementation of the Command Paper

had been challenging, but that progress had been made:

“The challenges were that there was very little new money attached to the proposals

and therefore, to gain the support of other Government departments was very

difficult … the second challenge was to make the gains made enduring. I think we

have achieved both of those, in that other Government departments were made to

change their plans and programmes to take account of the Command Paper …”121

187. In May 2010, the new Government committed to “work to rebuild the Military

Covenant”.122

188. An independent Task Force on the Military Covenant, chaired by Professor

Hew Strachan, was established in summer 2010 to inform that work.123 The Terms of

119 Public hearing, 6 July 2010, pages 5-6.

120 Public hearing, 6 July 2010, pages 24-25.

121 Public hearing, 19 July 2010, page 100.

122 HM Government, The Coalition: our programme for government, May 2010.

123 Task Force on the Military Covenant, September 2010, Report of the Task Force on the

Military Covenant.

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