David Cameron military covenant press conference

David Cameron military covenant press conference; Military Covenant It is in this context that today, I want to talk about something I feel incredibly strongly about. It's the agreement which lays out the sacrifices - including the ultimate sacrifice - that we expect our troops to make on our behalf, and our duties and obligations towards them. It's the Military Covenant and I believe this Government has broken it. If you sit in the back of a Hercules at Camp Bastion,Kandahar air base or Basra as I have done, you will realise that our soldiers don't ask for much. They want more contact time with home via telephone and e-mail. And leave that starts the moment they step foot on British soil rather than when they actually leave the middle of Afghanistan. Any government that values our armed forces and respects the military covenant shouldn't sit on it hands and say there's nothing we can do it should roll up sleeves and work day and night to make sure they happen. There are, of course, bigger examples of how this Government has failed our military. We're fighting a major counter-insurgency operation in Afghanistan. Yet our troops are around 5,500 under strength and they are regularly sent into action without necessary equipment like night vision goggles and armoured vehicles. All this, at a time when the MoD is spending over £2 billion on refurbishing its Whitehall Headquarters. We have to spend our money more wisely and get more of it to the frontline. But the Military Covenant isn't just about our responsibilities and obligations to our troops on the frontline. It's about our responsibilities and obligations to them back in Britain too. When our soldiers are wounded they want to come home to a great British hospital - and in Birmingham Selly Oak they do. But when they are injured on Monday they don't want to end up in a public ward by Wednesday. They want to recuperate next to their comrades and that must mean having genuinely separ...