Armed Forces Commissioner Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Smith of Newnham

Committee stage
Wednesday 19th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

Yes. For the purposes of this I am making a verbal amendment to what is on the page; I am not proposing to bring back an amendment like Amendment 2 that would bring in hundreds of thousands of other people. I do not think that was ever the intention; the drafting was not as clear as it might have been. The amendment laid in the Commons and re-laid here was broader than it should have been.

Having listened to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, my sense is that we should not only be looking at women, LGBT groups, BAME people, non-UK citizens and disabled people in the Armed Forces. We should also be thinking that this might be the time to think about the Armed Forces commissioner not just being available for those going through training, but it might be sensible to make sure that the communications are made to them.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. I apologise to the noble Baroness and the Committee more broadly for not being here when my name was attached to earlier amendments. I am not going to complain much about my latest train delays, but I will warn anyone heading on the east coast main line tonight that there are overhead wire problems.

I will speak specifically to Amendment 11 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, to which I have attached my name. I will also speak to my Amendment 12. I apologise for jumping on the back of the noble Baroness’s excellently drafted amendment but I thought there was one element missing, which is what I have added here. This proposed new clause is headed:

“Commissioner support for minority groups within service personnel”.


The Committee will be familiar with my long-term concerns about service personnel who were recruited under the age of 18 and those in the services under the age of 18, which my amendment addresses. I think the way the noble Baroness constructed Amendment 11 set out very well the reasons why and how this should be done. Proposed new subsection 3 in my amendment says that the commissioner must

“maintain up-to-date evidence on the experiences of these groups of service personnel and develop robust community engagement mechanisms”.

To address the first point about evidence, I think we are all very aware of this. I know about the situation of recruits under 18 because of the work of the Child Rights International Network and a series of reports it produced. We are aware of cases of women in the military. We can think back to the situation where we saw a big national campaign about Gurkha veterans a few years ago. We often find out about these issues as they are drawn to our attention through the efforts of NGOs, campaign groups and the work of the affected personnel themselves—and then it is splashed all over the media.

That is not the way in which the Government and Parliament should be made aware of what is happening. We need a regular, steady, reporting record that enables political direction to come from both Parliament and Ministers towards the military, saying, “There’s a problem here; something needs to be done about it”. Keeping up-to-date evidence and not relying on the efforts of volunteers and the personnel themselves is very much addressed by this.

I have put this on the record before, but I have to note the way in which the situation of recruits under 18 has drawn the attention of the United Nations. We referred at Second Reading to one tragic suicide case but of course there are many. CRIN tells us that recruits under 18 are tragically three times more likely to die by suicide than their peers of the same age and two times more likely to die from suicide as adult joiners of the military. We have heard complaints about the Harrogate college and 13 reports of sexual assault cases in a year. I think I can probably guess what the Minister will say—that we have to leave this to the Armed Forces commissioner to decide for themselves.

Armed Forces (Court Martial) (Amendment No. 2) Rules 2024

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Smith of Newnham

Monday 3rd February 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his clear and comprehensive introduction to this statutory instrument, which makes, as he said, a small change to the existing system. However, the fact that this statutory instrument comes before your Lordships’ Committee today provokes me to rise with a single question for the Minister: does not the fact that this small change is being brought here today mean that the Government are prepared to look at bigger changes in future and are looking at the entire system of military justice?

I ask that specific question because, earlier today, I was at an event with the Child Rights International Network, the Centre for Military Justice and Salute Her UK. The Child Rights International Network was expressing great concern about events at the Army Foundation College and the level of offences, particularly sexual offences, there. More broadly, there was a sense at the meeting that the service complaints and justice systems in the military are broken; that units are marking their own homework; and that there are serious problems with the investigation of rape and sexual assault cases, as well as with the experiences of black and racially minoritised personnel.

I have no objection to the statutory instrument before us but, at that meeting, something was said that I found very disturbing. A representative of female personnel serving in the military and veterans said that they felt as though they had gone back to 2015 in terms of the attitude of military justice, particularly towards female victims of potential abuses in the military. Can the Minister assure me that the Government are prepared to, and will, look much more broadly at the whole system?

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, when we get to questions of military justice, I normally rely on my good friend, my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford, to speak on these matters because he is far more expert than me. So, I am grateful that the Minister gave us the background to this case. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, I suggest that we accept this amendment as it stands, clearly, but I have a couple of questions, one of which is quite close to the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. Is there a danger that officers of a certain rank will feel unable to act as robustly as they might otherwise do if the officer at the court martial is senior to them?

There is a real question around whether service justice is doing what it needs to do. Clearly, the person facing the court martial needs to be treated fairly, but the Armed Forces still have questions to answer. If we look back to the Atherton report in the previous Parliament, when Sarah Atherton serving personnel and former personnel to come and give evidence—very much with the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie—we see that that was important. If courts martial are being populated by serving personnel, will people feel that they can really act as judge and jury in the way they need to be able to do?

I have another related question. It is noted, in the Explanatory Notes, that part of the issue is a lack of senior officers. As His Majesty’s Armed Forces shrink—the size of the Army, in particular, has shrunk—will the problem get worse rather than better? Do we need to think about how to reform military justice, in a wider sense, to ensure that the best practices are in place?