Corrie star Antony Cotton backs Armed Forces champion plan – ‘they don’t have a union’

Coronation Street legend Antony Cotton said he had “thousands” of stories of brave soldiers and families living in crumbling, inadequate housing

Armed forces personnel deserve to have someone “in their corner”, Corrie star Antony Cotton said as MPs prepare to vote on a new ‘squaddies’ champion.’

MPs are expected to vote through plans this week to create an Armed Forces Commissioner – an independent watchdog to hold the military and Ministry of Defence (MoD) to account on behalf of serving personnel.

The MoD say the new post will provide a “strong, independent voice that can hold government and the Army, Royal Navy, and Royal Air Force to account.”

They will be a direct point of contact for serving personnel and their families to raise issues that impact service life, including housing and equipment. And they will have powers to perform unannounced inspections, reporting to Parliament once a year and through one-off reports.

Speaking to the Sunday Mirror ahead of a vote on Tuesday, Mr Cotton – who plays barman Sean Tully on the long-running soap and has become a champion and campaigner for members of the armed forces – said the new job was a “brilliant idea.”

“We’ve had 14 years of our armed forces being basically decimated,” he said.

“Our armed forces don’t have a union, so [it will be brilliant] to have somebody that is independent – and I must stress that whoever this person is has got to be independent.”

He added: “I think the armed forces deserve to have somebody to be in their corner with things like service family accommodation.”

Mr Cotton said in 14 years of campaigning, Labour ’s John Healey had been the first Defence Secretary to speak to him – and took him to see the conditions some personnel have had to live in.

“I call it the four seasons of housing,” he explained. “You have the spring and summer stuff, which is the nice stuff, to the deepest darkest winter stuff – which is void housing, and is uninhabitable. It’s got holes in the walls, literally where the house is falling to the ground.”

He said he had “thousands” of stories of brave soldiers and families living in crumbling housing.

He said: “I met somebody that was about to give birth in two weeks, and there was a hole in the wall and winter was pouring into it. She was out of her mind with worry that she was having to bring a newborn baby into a house that wasn’t sealed.”

He said the house was at RAF Northolt, and also had problems with asbestos in a shed, a falling down fence and a dangerous path at the front. He visited the woman while touring accommodation with Mr Healey – but said the situation had since been “sorted out.”

Mr Cotton is also calling for free train travel for serving personnel – who can be stung for up to £400 in train tickets to travel home to see family, even after current armed forces discounts.

“Soldiers clock off times are not like everybody else’s,” he said. “You might think you’re going to finish an exercise on Salisbury Plain at 2pm on Friday, and you actually finish at 9pm on Thursday. So you can’t lan your journey home.

“You get ‘home pay’ …but it doesn’t even amount for a lot of things. It doesn’t even cover one journey home a month. I have mums and dads messaging me saying ‘I have not seen my son, my daughter for six months because they can’t afford to come home.’”

Mr Cotton said he got involved in advocating for service personnel because he felt it was his “duty.”

“It’s my way of contributing,” he said. “And I do it in all of my friends names. I do it in my grandfather’s name. He was rescued at Dunkirk and who I never met, he died before I was born. I never got to meet him. But had he not been rescued from Dunkirk, I wouldn’t have been born. So my mum was born in 1944, and so I do it in his name.

“But mainly I do it in my mate’s names. And for every one of them that came back from Iraq that wasn’t looked after properly, I do it in their names.

“It’s my duty and I feel like it’s my civic duty.”

Luke Pollard MP, Labour’s Minister for the Armed Forces, said: “Our Labour government is on a drive to lift military morale, which fell to record lows after years of Tory hollowing out.

“National security is the foundation of our Plan for Change, and we have deep respect for the service men and women who keep Britain safe. Our new Armed Forces Commissioner will be a strong voice for our forces, and their families.

“Coming alongside a record pay rise for our forces, it’s an important step towards turning around the shocking decline in military morale we saw under the Conservatives.”