Armed Forces: Redundancies

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Touhig for tabling this debate. He has followed and pressed this issue assiduously and he is to be congratulated on that. It is not a closed book as far as he, and indeed a number of us, are concerned. I listened with shock to the two quotations he repeated from the memo from the Ministry of Defence, which I have not seen. However, equally shocking was a response given by the Minister on 22 July, a response that I would not normally associate with him, given his commitment to our Armed Forces. He said that no consideration was given to the proximity of the immediate pension point, as referred to by my noble friend Lord Touhig.

I worked in industrial relations for many years, and apart from Robert Maxwell, who I regarded as a crook—I certainly would not put the MoD in the same tent, I would hope—I never came across a situation of compulsory redundancy, as opposed to voluntary redundancy, where there was a complete disregard for the impact on the individual. That has not been taken into account and pragmatically applied. What makes it worse is that we are not talking about an individual employee in a company who can stay in their own home and who have not been prepared to give their life for their country. Armed Forces personnel generally do not own their homes and commit their lives to military service. What has been done by the MoD to a small number of people in this case has not been done in my name as a citizen of this country. It is not something that I can condone in any way.

It has been criticised by members of the coalition in both Houses and by the commission that reviewed the military covenant—a covenant that this House put into law not too long ago. Last December the commission, in looking at how the covenant was being applied, asked the Government to review their approach to compulsory redundancies and how they were treating the personnel who were affected. The words “a feeling of betrayal” were used by members of the Armed Forces, who also asked for a review. However, the Government chose to ignore that request.

Who speaks for Armed Forces personnel? They cannot join a trade union or federation that has any authority to negotiate for them. Although we have the Armed Forces Pay Review Body, it is not its position to deal with situations like this. It therefore has to come down to the Ministry of Defence and the Government. The Government have a responsibility in this. I want to ask the Minister: are the Government prepared to review their position? We have heard that more redundancies may be declared in January of next year. Will the Government’s position be the same as it was on this redundancy round? We are told that the new reserves need to be up to number by 2018 because it is a five-year policy, yet the redundancies will be completed by 2015. I accept that people have to be recruited into the Armed Forces even at a time when redundancies are being made because you want to be sure that you have people in place for the officer cadre at the appropriate time. In my view, you would not go about making a big change such as this in any business in Britain. First, you would not get away with it and, more importantly, you would want to make sure that you could deliver on your operational requirements, whether for a company making products or for the Armed Forces. This has not been staged in a way that you would expect: “We will make so many redundancies, then let’s get up to the requirement we need, and then take it to the next stage”.

The whole exercise will leave a very bad taste among members of the Armed Forces. It will affect recruitment and it will certainly affect morale. Last year, for the first time that I can remember, the Armed Forces Pay Review Body referred to the issue of low morale as a result of the questions that had been put to its members when it went out to meet personnel. I have the utmost respect for the Minister, but I ask him this: will the Government please review their position? It is not something that any of us who are concerned about this issue either feel contented about or are prepared to leave where it is.