A soldier is pictured wearing a ‘Help for Heroes’ charity band on his wrist during desert training in Jordan. Photograph by Defence Imagery
Help for Heroes has come under fire from some of Britain’s most seriously wounded troops – including one of its own patrons – and their relatives for the way it spends the money it raises.
They complain the military charity is subsidising multimillion-pound Ministry of Defence (MoD) building projects rather than spending the money on practical, everyday help for injured service personnel and veterans.
The criticism was uncovered by a joint investigation by BBC Newsnight and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism into state and charity provision for injured British troops.
Recently discharged and serving wounded troops and their families said that despite extra government money and hundreds of millions of pounds raised by military charities every year, they are still not getting the help they need.
The investigation has uncovered examples of wounded veterans having to pay for physiotherapy and prosthetic limbs that meet their requirements, and reports of amputees with ill-fitting prostheses being told to pad their stumps with multiple pairs of socks.
Many of those that Newsnight and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism spoke to paid tribute to Help for Heroes’ good intentions and fundraising efforts, which have pulled in £141m since it was founded in 2007.
However, they complain that the charity has been overly reliant on the MoD for advice on where to allocate funds.
Former Marine Ben McBean
Former Royal Marine Ben McBean, a double amputee and one of the charity’s patrons, said Help for Heroes and other military charities have been ‘getting cosy with the MoD’.
‘What’s going wrong is they are asking the MoD, they are asking the officers, and not the guys that need the help,’ he said. ‘When the MoD say, ‘Right, we know what is best for the lads, you don’t we do, build this massive building, do this, do that,’ they are going, ‘Right, OK let’s do it’.’
McBean paid £7,000 of his own money for a prosthetic arm after the NHS limb he was offered failed to meet his expectations. The MoD originally issued him with a white arm. McBean is black.
He said he has defended Help for Heroes in the past when other troops have criticised it, but had now decided to speak out because he is ‘fed up’ with the situation.
Help for Heroes is planning to spend £153m on constructing and servicing five regional MoD Personnel Recovery Centres (PRCs).
The centres in Plymouth, Colchester, Catterick, Edinburgh and Tidworth in Wiltshire are part of the government’s Defence Recovery Capability, providing training and resources to injured personnel to help them return to duty or prepare for life outside the armed forces.
They are primarily for serving personnel. Veterans can only return on a priority case-by-case basis.
‘Rather than £100m being spent on limbs for every single guy who has been injured, and the future, instead the MoD somehow managed to get all these Gucci buildings out of it,’ he said.
Diane Dernie, the mother of Lance Bombardier Ben Parkinson, a double amputee who recently carried the Olympic torch in Doncaster, also questions why charity money is being spent on bricks and mortar for MoD building works.
‘We find it difficult to see these buildings, these edifices that are being paid for by charity… if there’s building work, if there’s need for a location then that should be the MoD’s responsibility.
‘Charities should be there, we think to support these guys, to support their families,’ she said.
Refurbishing Tedworth House
The Help for Heroes flagship project is Tedworth House in Tidworth, Wiltshire, a 18th-century Grade II listed former stately home.
Its refurbishment has cost in excess of £20m, with reconstruction work including the renovation of intricate plaster work, an orangery, re-laying cobbles and stone floors, and cleaning and polishing stained glass windows, chandeliers and statues.
When challenged about the findings, Help for Heroes founder Bryn Parry told Newsnight and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism: ’The prosthetic legs that the MoD are providing are top class so that every single serviceman who needs a prosthetic limb is getting it through the MoD and we’re not in the business of providing prosthetic limbs.’
He said the recovery centres are desperately needed, and without the charity they would not have been built. He also defended the opulence of Tedworth House.
‘I think we want to do the best,’ he told Newsnight and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. ‘I have an image of a mother or a wife, coming down that drive to the best house in Tidworth, and knowing that it’s not as an officers’ mess, it’s not full of privileged people, it’s full of the rank and file, and I know that that mother will know that her boy has been appreciated.’
Access denied
However, wounded veterans have complained that following their discharge from the forces they have been denied access to the recovery centres.
It is the MoD, not Help for Heroes, that is the gatekeeper. Three out of the five recovery centres are on military bases – only Tedworth House and Edinburgh lie ‘outside the wire’.
Newsnight and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism spoke to other wounded soldiers, recently discharged from the forces.
Former Marine Harris Tatakis
Harris Tatakis, a former corporal in the Royal Marines, received multiple injuries in an IED blast. He was discharged just over a year ago and tried to get back into his Personnel Recovery Centre in Plymouth after months without treatment, but says he was turned away by the MoD.
Help for Heroes is currently funding a £22m building project on the site.
‘I’m on the doorstep of the recovery centre and it’s a shut door… Once you’re discharged, they’re not there for you any more; they’re there for the next injured serviceman coming in,’ he said.
Tatakis ended up having to pay for his own twice-weekly physiotherapy sessions, but said after a year he could no longer afford it.
‘I gave 13 years of my life to serving and I just feel like the moment you’re injured that’s it you’re seen as a burden… You feel throughout you’re having to beg to get what you want, or to get fixed. It’s a very degrading process to go through,’ he said.
Heathy balance sheets
Lack of money is not the problem; our investigation has conducted the first accurate assessment of the worth of military charities across England, Wales and Scotland.
Across the board they raise just under £700m a year. Military charities in England and Wales have more than £1.1bn sitting in the bank.
A year ago, following a raft of critical stories over provision for wounded servicemen and women, the military covenant – Britain’s traditional duty of care to its armed forces – was enshrined in law by the Coalition. It sets out the state’s legal responsibilities to wounded service personnel and veterans.
Veteran wounded and injured troops should now receive priority NHS treatment and local authority provision.
And following the Murrison Review into the prosthetic services offered to veterans by the NHS, in October 2011 the government announced an extra £15m investment in services to help veterans who have lost a limb while serving their country.
But seriously injured soldiers and their families say they are still not getting the help they need.
‘We know many who’ve struggled with sockets,’ said Ben Parkinson’s mother Diane Dernie, who is in regular contact with the families of other amputee soldiers.
‘The NHS thinking is that it’s acceptable to pad the stump and put up to 11 layers of socks on the stump to actually make it fit. When you get your sockets, you get a bag with your socks in to pad your stumps,’ she added.
In response to the findings of the joint report by Newsnight and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the MoD issued the following statement:
<blockquote>‘Those who put their lives on the line and make sacrifices for this country deserve all the financial support and medical care we can give them, which is why the MoD has planned spend £226m over the next 10 years on the Defence Recovery Capability in addition to providing military and civilian personnel in Personnel Recovery Centres….
‘The MoD and the Department of Health have been working closely on enhancing the transition arrangements to ensure a seamless handover of medical and social care provision for those who require it. This includes ensuring that veterans have the same levels of access to prosthetic limbs and specialist care from the NHS as they did at Headley Court.
‘Our Personnel Recovery Centres remain open to wounded, injured and sick veterans. Working with our charity partners we assess each case individually and prioritise individuals that would benefit most from the Centres.’</blockquote>
General Lord Richard Dannatt, former head of the Army, was instrumental in establishing Help for Heroes and the momentum behind the PRCs.
He believes a more co-ordinated, independent approach is needed and is calling for a Veterans’ Tsar.
‘I think someone that stands independent of government to keep government up to the mark to make sure to the covenant is observed and to keep charities up to the mark. I think there’s a strong case for that,’ he told Newsnight and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
Help for Heroes responded to the accusations made in this piece with a statement
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