Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Beamish and Andrew Murrison

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

T3. I do not know whether the Minister has seen the article by the Daily Mail defence editor, Mark Nicol, about the lack of transparency on pinch points in the armed forces personnel workforce. Figures on that used to be produced regularly. When was the decision taken to no longer produce them, and will the Minister commit today to producing them in the interest of transparency?

[The Minister for Defence People and Families (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

I cannot give the right hon. Gentleman a straight answer to that because I cannot remember when the figures were withdrawn, but I can certainly look into it and write to him. On pinch points, he will be aware that, through Haythornthwaite-type processes, we are incentivising people to join parts of defence that are underpopulated at the moment, such as chefs and—

LGBT Veterans Independent Review

Debate between Lord Beamish and Andrew Murrison

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

My hon. Friend will know full well that we cannot write a blank cheque. It is just not possible to do that. Lord Etherton came up with £50 million, which is a significant amount of money. He will have been mindful of other schemes, albeit not directly comparable, in this country and overseas. That is why, I believe, the figure of £50 million was arrived at.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his statement. Recommendation 16 of the report references pensions. In his statement, he said that people can apply for pension that had been accrued, but some individuals will have expected a pension for longer service but been dismissed before they could accrue it. Will that be taken into account, and will next of kin be able to access those pension benefits?

On the £50 million compensation, which is recommendation 28 of the report, I am a little lost to understand how that will be distributed. If the Minister is going to come up with a scheme, I suggest that he looks at the Post Office Horizon compensation scheme, of which I have been on the advisory board for the last year, helping to develop it. We are going to have to look at what elements are taken into account before we get to an accrued sum. Setting up an advisory board or some steering group to work up the scheme would be a good idea—and let me say that I do not think £50 million will even touch the sides.

[Dr Murrison]

There is precedent for such a scheme, as I say—I hope the right hon. Gentleman will be aware of the Canadian scheme—so we are not starting with a blank sheet of paper, and neither was Lord Etherton.

On pensions, it is important that those who thought they did not have an entitlement to pensions look again, because accrued pensions are accrued pensions and were not forfeit. I take the right hon. Gentleman’s point about pensions that might have been accrued after the point at which individuals left the service. There is no way of restoring those pensions, and I hope he will understand that. It would be incredibly difficult to do that, so I am not going to give him any encouragement that that will form any part of our deliberations in relation to the financial award.

Veterans Advisory and Pensions Committees Bill

Debate between Lord Beamish and Andrew Murrison

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th March 2023 Public Bill Committees

[The Minister for Defence People, Veterans and Service Families (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

What a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy for his remarks, and the hon. Member for Midlothian for his amendments, which are thoughtful. I rise, really, just to support my hon. Friend’s response to those amendments, and I urge the Committee to politely reject them. My hon. Friend has laid out the reasons for that elegantly.

Regarding amendment 2, I must say that I would prefer to have the flexibility in appointing Members of VAPCs. During my time as a Minister, I have seen how that process works. It is robust and credible, and, looking at the people who populate VAPCs—all 12 of them—it seems to me that the veteran community is heavily represented. They are the sort of people who are likely to be drawn to that job, so I think, perhaps, the practicality of it is that the voice of veterans is already loud and clear. Indeed, I would say that the value of VAPCs is very much that they are rooted in the veteran community.

On amendment 1, the mechanism cited is certainly worthy of consideration, but, again, I urge the Committee to resist the function the amendment proposes. This is quite a robust piece of legislation, which has its origin in amendments tabled in the Lords in response to the Armed Forces Act 2021. For that I am grateful to my noble Friend Lord Lancaster, whose amendments at that juncture were rejected by the Government on the promise that we would facilitate a Bill of this sort. Many of the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Midlothian were addressed at that time, so I would resist amendments 1 and 2.

Amendment 4 states:

“The regulations must specify that the committees’ functions apply to British Armed Forces veterans who are resident overseas.”

I understand it and I get it, but the 2021 Act talks about people who are

“ordinarily resident in the UK”,

and for rather boring technical reasons it would be very difficult indeed to extend that to veterans who live overseas. I am sorry that that is slightly unsatisfactory, but I am confident that VAPCs will cover much of the ground and material that would be germane to people serving overseas.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I see the logic of the Minister’s argument, but can he clarify the pensions issue? Can the many veterans who retire to live abroad still raise issues with the pensions advisory board?

[Dr Murrison]

That is an interesting point. Like me, the right hon. Gentleman will get correspondence all the time from people who live overseas. I do not know what his practice is, but mine is to engage with their inquiries and where it is clear that people have a strong connection with my area or have lived there for a reasonable period, I take those up on their behalf. I will not lay down here that VAPCs should do so, but it is more than likely that those issues would be covered in any event. I hope that is a comfort to the right hon. Gentleman.

I thank the hon. Member for Midlothian for tabling the amendments and I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy for addressing them. I hope the hon. Member for Midlothian is content.

Royal Navy: Conduct towards Women

Debate between Lord Beamish and Andrew Murrison

Monday 31st October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

Bullying and harassment of women is particularly appalling, but we have to understand and be honest with ourselves that it has historically been a feature of service life more generally. I suspect the behaviour that my hon. Friend has just described has been a feature of the retention issue for many years. It is wasteful, it is wrong, and it has to stop. We hope that 30% of our service personnel will be women by 2030, so the issue is quite a big deal in terms of the whole force. Although we are dealing with the issue in relation specifically to women in the armed forces today, it is applicable right across Defence. It is wrong for the organisation, and it is wrong for the individuals and their families.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Minister, this has to stop. As the Chair of the Defence Committee said, we have had the Wigston report and the report from the House of Commons Select Committee, ably chaired by the hon. Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton). May I say that her sacking does not fill me with a great deal of confidence that these things are going to be taken seriously? What evidence does the Ministry of Defence need for change? Without an independent process, either in investigations or prosecutions, which the MOD resisted fiercely in the Armed Forces Bill, things will not change, Minister.

[Dr Murrison]

The right hon. Gentleman is correct to put me on the spot on this. I would, however, cite some of the evidence. I mentioned earlier the sexual harassment survey, which is an important survey. It is conducted rigorously, it has been conducted longer for the Army than for the other two forces, but its conclusions are fairly clear: while there are no grounds for complacency at all in this, things are improving. As to what is being done, tackling sexual offending in Defence was the biggest part of the response to the report, to which we referred earlier. The great majority of its recommendations have been accepted and they are being rolled out at pace. The survey was published only in summer 2021 and already in summer this year we have had this major contribution that accepts most of the report and says how it is being rolled out.