Personnel serving on eligible operations for two months or more are entitled to 30 minutes of free telephone time per week to any location worldwide, including mobile telephones. Earlier this month, we increased the allowance for personnel deployed for nine months to one hour, and personnel deployed on 12-month tours are entitled to two hours per week. We have also rationalised charges for additional call time to a flat rate of 11p per minute.
I thank my hon. Friend for that very positive response and for the allowance increases that have been announced. He will be aware of their importance, not only to the troops, but to their families and friends back here in the United Kingdom. May I encourage him to assure us that he will continue to keep this matter under review? He will be aware of the importance of communication, be it postal or telephone, to the troops and their families and friends, so may I suggest that at some future point he could be even more generous than he has been?
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Of course, we always keep these things under review. Whenever I visit Iraq or Afghanistan, I ensure that I talk to service personnel about the welfare package to get their views, and I do the same when I see families back in the UK and elsewhere.
May I give credit where it is due to the communications teams in Her Majesty’s forces, especially the Army, for the substantial improvement in the welfare package, particularly on communication with families? I used to receive regular complaints from my constituents about that, but I have not received any such complaint for a long time. Credit should be given for the way in which free e-mails are available—free webcams are usually available too—for the fantastic job that the British Forces Broadcasting Service is doing and for the fact that newspapers are often available in the major centres in Iraq and Afghanistan within 24 hours of their publication in London.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman.
Nevertheless, some constituents serving in the armed forces—[Interruption.] I shall have to put this one slightly differently. Some constituents, including some of mine, who are serving in Helmand province complain that when they have tried to use the telephone helpline to find out about problems accessing their wages—money to which they are entitled—they have been told that that time ought to come out of their time for telephoning relatives. Does the Minister agree that anyone who has a legitimate complaint to the forces helpline that deals with wages should be able to access that without it cutting into other telephone time?
We are working very hard to ensure that our armed forces personnel access such services. We are aware of some of the difficulties—I assume that the hon. Gentleman is talking about the Joint Personnel Administration—and we keep them under review. As I have said, we are making improvements all the time.