Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2009 | Page 11

ANDREW TURNER MP Andrew Turner MP 24 The Mall, Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight PO30 1BW Tel: [phone] email: [email protected] BY - ANDREW TURNER MP Honouring our debt to our fighting forces I’m writing this on the day we hear that Taliban prisoners are being treated in the same wards as our wounded soldiers in Afghanistan. Serving personnel have contacted the BBC saying that injured British soldiers are waking up in hospital finding they are next to somebody who may have been responsible for their own injury or the death of their comrades. The Ministry of Defence have spoken out saying it is “standard practice” for all patients to be treated together during conflicts. They point out that we have a binding obligation to provide medical treatment for foreign prisoners. I understand that, and also that doctors and nurses have a duty to treat all patients according to medical need. All those things may be true, but nonetheless this story concerns me. I am not suggesting we shouldn’t treat wounded enemy combatants. Some people have pointed out that the Taliban don’t recognise the Geneva Convention and wouldn’t treat our boys in the same way. I agree they wouldn’t. But the fact that we do is what makes us civilised. I do believe, though, that we should listen to our forces in the field and act on their concerns. After all it is they who have had to leave their homes and their families and risk their lives daily for our country. The argument should not be about how you, I or the chap in the pub feels about this – it should be about how our troops view it. And let’s face it; we would be horrified if a pensioner who was mugged was in a hospital bed next to their attacker. This failure to listen to our troops seems to me to be an undermining of the Military Covenant. There is an unwritten contract that obliges the British Government, and indeed all of us, to show proper care to those who are called upon to make personal sacrifices, sometimes the ultimate sacrifice, in the service of our nation. There are other examples of the Military Covenant being broken. They include verbal abuse of RAF personnel in uniform walking F