We attempt to treat the wives and ex-wives of service men living illegally in some of our properties as sympathetically as we can and that is why the 1,600 to whom the hon. Gentleman referred live in service accommodation.

The figure of 40,000 redundancies is not right. For the Army we are talking about in excess of 10,000 redundancies and much of the other reductions will occur through natural wastage. A housing task force has been set up under my noble Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces and he is considering how we can use the existing housing stock to alleviate problems. In particular, he will consider the problems faced by those who come back from Germany who may be made redundant and ensure that they have somewhere to live while they are looking for a job. We are addressing that issue now. However, the number of vacant dwellings will probably increase while the running down of the Army continues.