Mark Francois – 2022 Comments on Service Family Accommodation

The comments made by Mark Francois, the Conservative MP for Rayleigh and Wickford, in the House of Commons on 20 December 2022.

Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)

In February 2020, I co-authored a report called “Stick or Twist?” for the Prime Minister, copied to the Defence Secretary, after a year-long study into why armed forces personnel leave. Poor standards of accommodation was one of the major factors why they decide to stop serving the Crown. In that report, we pleaded with Ministers not to go ahead with the Future Defence Infrastructure Services contract, but to look at better alternatives, such as a bespoke forces housing association instead. Nevertheless, they ploughed on. FDIS will never work. It is structurally dysfunctional. I say to the MOD: “Please, on behalf of service personnel and their families, rip off the plaster, admit you were wrong, create a workstream on accommodation as part of the integrated review, and do something better that actually works.”

Alex Chalk

As my right hon. Friend indicates, he has been assiduous in raising the issue of service family accommodation, and I commend him for doing so. There will have to be a long, hard look at FDIS, and I suspect—in fact, I know—that the MOD will look carefully at the points he made in his “Stick or Twist?” report. We will have to see what the lessons are from entering into contracts such as this, and it may be that he is absolutely right.