As with the other recommendations in this report, this role has been supported and endorsed by the armed forces community and armed service heads. The report calls for the Welsh Government to establish key performance indicators for devolved public sector organisations in Wales to monitor adherence to the covenant; to supplement its Welcome to Wales initiative with a single national armed forces helpline for service personnel, veterans and their families; to work with a ministerial expert group to identify priority projects and co-ordinate funding bids at an all-Wales level; and work with the third sector to deliver a compulsory public sector e-learning module to support awareness of the armed forces covenant.

The report recommends that the Welsh Government should continue to work with both the UK Government and the Office for National Statistics to ensure that the questions in the 2021 census are sufficient to identify both the size and needs of the armed forces and veteran community in Wales.

It calls on the Welsh Government to establish a Welsh armed forces privilege card scheme. Given the concerns over the capacity of Veterans NHS Wales to meet the demands of patients and its variable waiting times, the report recommended that funding for the service should be reviewed and increased; targets for access to the service should be established, and performance against the targets should be regularly published. 

Waiting lists for Veterans NHS Wales are nine months in the Swansea area and average five to six months elsewhere. Although they've secured three years' extra funding from Help for Heroes to employ three full-time therapists to bring waiting lists down, they expect waiting times to rise again without additional investment. Although the Welsh Government has announced £100,000 additional funding, Veterans NHS Wales told the cross-party group last year that they need £1 million annually to meet the mental health needs of the armed forces community in Wales, and therefore reduce pressure and cost on other services.

When Andrew R. T. Davies and I met a group of women veterans earlier this year, all of whom had suffered injuries on service, and all of whom told us that they were also dealing with mental health issues as a consequence of their service, they told us that, quote, 'It's now taking three months to get an appointment with Veterans NHS Wales, and then three to six months to see a specialist, who can then only deal with mild to medium trauma, because there are no acute services.' And they're having to travel to England for treatment for their mental health and rely on charities.

The report also called on the Welsh Government to develop an action plan to promote greater awareness of priority NHS treatment for service-related injuries and illnesses amongst health service staff; to ensure that family members of service personnel posted to Wales who are on an NHS waiting list are not disadvantaged by having to wait longer for treatment than they would prior to being posted to Wales; to review and update the 'A guide to improving the health and well-being of prisoners in Wales who are veterans' document; and to provide core funding to third sector partners delivering peer mentoring schemes.

Although Change Step, led by the charity Cais, has secured 12 months' funding from Help for Heroes to embed a peer mentor into each Welsh health board, Veterans NHS Wales highlights the need for additional funding to keep the peer mentors in post as part of their core team, to mirror the Scottish veteran model.

In 2007, the Legion's Honour the Covenant campaign already noted that veterans who are not assisted by Ministry of Defence-supported Combat Stress, or another specialist organisation, need to be able to access mental health care and receive priority treatment. With the announcement that Combat Stress is scrapping residential care at its Audley Court centre in Shropshire, we must also address concerns that Welsh veterans will now be forced to travel across the UK for residential care, because there is no provision in Wales.

In recognition of the specific challenges faced by children from service families, and in order to address the disadvantage compared to other parts of the UK, the report recommended that the Welsh Government should consider the introduction of a service pupil premium. As the Royal British Legion states, in England, this has provided important practical support to service children in education. Schools in Wales should have access to a similar fund for the approximately 2,500 children who currently attend schools in Wales.

The report also calls for regional education consortia to appoint armed forces champions; flexibility for Welsh secondary schools to allow the children of service personnel to be enrolled mid term, as is already the case for infant classes; and more schools to participate in the cadet expansion programme. The report recommends extension of the successful Cymru'n Cofio Wales Remembers first world war project to enable other important military anniversaries to be marked. And it calls on the Welsh Government to work with the Welsh Local Government Association to ensure that all of Wales's civic war memorials are adequately maintained, and with Wales's military museums to establish travelling exhibitions.

The report calls for development of further partnerships between registered social landlords and the third sector to support additional supported housing accommodation for vulnerable veterans in Wales, and for registered social landlords to waive local connection requirements for former partners of service personnel leaving service family accommodation.

Finally, the report calls for the Welsh Government to establish an employment scheme to assist service leavers, veterans and reservists, and support the partners of service personnel when their partners are posted to Wales. For the second year running, the Welsh Government has said that it is developing an employment pathway, but Veterans NHS Wales figures show that only a third are employed. One hundred years after the signing of the treaty that led to the end of the first world war, this is a covenant that must endure.