Armed Forces Commissioner Bill

Lord Beamish Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 5th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Bill and add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Carberry, on her maiden speech. I look forward to many more contributions.

I have been involved in welfare and redress for Armed Forces personnel for over 20 years. I was a member of the House of Commons Defence Committee and a Minister in the Ministry of Defence. I think I have also sat on every single Armed Forces Bill over the last 20 years. It is worth reading the conclusion from a House of Commons Defence Committee report, Duty of Care, from 2005. The 20th anniversary of it was Monday this week. It says:

“We … recommend that an independent military complaints commission be established. It would have the authority and capability to make recommendations which would be binding on the Armed Forces. It would also have a research capacity that would enable it to examine trends that it had identified … It would be for the commission itself to decide whether to undertake an investigation, but we would expect it to take into account the seriousness of the allegation. The commission should have the authority to consider past cases … The primary goal of the commission would be to resolve complaints made to it. If the commission decided to pursue a complaint, it would have the right of access to all documentation, and to Service personnel, in order to enable it to establish whether the correct procedures had been followed and whether there were matters that required criminal investigation … The commission should be required to make an annual report to Parliament … We recommend that the commission be established in such a way as to assure both complainants and the public of its independence from the Armed Forces. We believe that the commission would help MoD identify lessons that need to be learned. We also believe that a truly independent scrutiny mechanism would contribute to bolstering public confidence in the Services”.


One could argue that it has taken us only 20 years to get to that point. In its response to that report, the Government noted that recommendation. They were forced to bring in the independent complaints commissioner following the Blake report into the Deepcut incidents in 2006. It was quite clear from very early on that Susan Atkins, the first commissioner, did not have the powers or abilities to make real change. Then, under the 2015 Act—I think the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster, might have been involved in that—we got the Armed Forces ombudsman, which did have powers to investigate but, again, did not have the real power to make the real change that was needed.

It is worth looking at another House of Commons Select Committee report from 2019—one that I was not involved in—entitled Fairness Without Fear: The Work of the Service Complaints Ombudsman. It gives a litany of failures for that organisation, not because of a lack of dedication on the part of the staff but because of cuts in staff, the negative attitude that still existed towards the institution and the delay in implementing recommendations. That has been quite clear as, over the past few years, the slow drum beat of scandals has not really gone down. We had the issues around the Wigston report, which was referred to earlier. In 2019 we had another excellent report—I served on that committee—on women in the Armed Forces. The way in which women were still being treated was absolutely appalling. We have had the issue around the Red Arrows, and we have had women being abused in the Submarine Service—it has been constant. Have we failed over the past 20 years? Yes, we have.

This is possibly an opportunity to change that, but I think we are hanging a lot on this Bill. We might think that, somehow, by changing the name and changing it slightly, things will improve—I am not sure that they will. I think the Minister should take on board some changes. For example, I am concerned about the length of the commissioner’s term. The Bill says that he or she will be there for five years, and the term could be extended for possibly another two years. I want to probe why that has come about. I know that one of the past ombudsmen made a suggestion about the length of the term, but if you are to have somebody build up the knowledge, this is important.

Another thing is the independence of the commissioner, because they will have to rely on finance from the MoD. I would like a mechanism set up whereby this body is not under the remit of the MoD if it is to be completely independent. Time and again, we have seen organisations having to fight for resources—we heard that about the Victims’ Commissioner, for example. There are models we could set up whereby it falls outside the MoD and the budget is not in danger of being raided.

We also need a mechanism by which the recommendations are implemented. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, said, it is great to identify them, but these reports need to lead to reaction.

I warn my noble friend that I am minded to put down some amendments that I think are needed to strengthen the Bill. The intentions are good but, if we are to emulate the German model, which I have studied previously, I am not sure that just changing the title and changing what we have will actually do that. I welcome the Bill, but there is a lot more work to be done on it yet.