Armed Forces Bill

Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Con)]

My Lords, I too welcome the Bill and of course start by declaring my interest as a serving member of the Armed Forces, and so subject to it. I also fear I am a veteran of this process, having served on the 2006 committee and the 2010 committee, and been the Minister responsible in the House of Commons for taking an Armed Forces Bill through in 2016. Of course, the star turn of this Bill is the enshrining of the Armed Forces covenant into law. That is most welcome, although it brought a slight wry smile as I recall saying something similar before, when we were simply enshrining the requirement for the Secretary of State to report to Parliament each year. None the less, this is welcome. Like other noble Lords, however, I wonder whether it goes far enough.

I understand absolutely the Government’s argument when it comes to local authorities; they certainly want to hold them to account while not necessarily restraining them in how they should enforce the covenant. Focusing on healthcare, housing and education is the right thing to do but, at the same time, if I am true to myself, I recall slightly irritating my noble friend Lord Robathan when he was the Minister back in 2011 by proposing a Back-Bench Conservative amendment in Committee that pensions should be added. At the very least, I feel that a role for this House as the Bill progresses will be to explore to what should be included in the military covenant.

Linked to that, since a Second Reading is about what should be in the Bill, there is also potentially a missed opportunity here with the Veterans Advisory and Pensions Committees. As noble Lords know, these are 13 regional committees which advise, advocate and assist. They are very much a conduit between the MoD and helping veterans in the regions, but their role is very much governed by law. There has been talk for some time about whether we should be updating their role, yet we have not done it. As we bring the Armed Forces covenant into law, why are we not looking at those committees? They are desperate to do more. Why are we not allowing them to do more, when it would help us as the Armed Forces covenant is enshrined in law?

It would be wrong, however, not to recognise the progress that has been made in recent years in the world of veterans. Not least, there is the creation of the veterans’ gateway and the one-stop shop of the Office for Veterans’ Affairs. Even last year, we saw for the first time in the census the question about whether or not veterans should be included.

I too want to say a couple of words about indefinite leave to remain. I declare my interest as colonel commandant of the Brigade of Gurkhas. I have lobbied the Government on this issue and know that it was out to public consultation, but I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could update us on that. I urge a word of caution to the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, when it comes to Gurkha pensions. We are comparing apples and pears. The Gurkha pension from 1948 enabled a Gurkha soldier to receive an immediate pension after just 15 years’ service, meaning many Gurkhas received a pension from their early 30s for life. A British soldier at that time had to serve 22 years; had they served 21 years, they would get not a penny. Be very careful when calling for equivalence between those two schemes: they are quite different.

I am particularly pleased about Clause 9, which brings in continuous service for the Reserve Forces. I declare my interest as over the last year, I have been chairman of the Reserve Forces review. The headmark is the integration of the reserve and regular forces. We have a vision of a spectrum of service whereby, on the right of the arc, we have a civilian working in industry and we can bring their skills through reserve service into the military. On the left of the arc is full-time service in the Armed Forces, and we enable the individual through their service career to move along that spectrum. This clause removes some of the obstacles preventing that. Terms and conditions of service for both regular and reserves are quite different. In the same way that the 2006 Act brought together the three single service Acts, there are some who call—and I am probably one of them—for the bringing together of the Armed Forces Act and the Reserve Forces Act into a single piece of legislation, as that will enable further integration.

Finally, I want to offer one word of caution, which I have mentioned before. I declare another interest—this is a very happy interest—as colonel commandant of the Cayman Islands Regiment; I look forward to going to visit them soon. I fear we made a mistake last time by excluding Gibraltar from the Act, and it is excluded again from this Bill. Shortly after excluding it, we had the airport incident in Gibraltar and, because of a misunderstanding about whether this Act applied, three members of the Armed Forces were arrested and there is still rancour there. Yes, Gibraltar has now passed its own Armed Forces Act, but as soon as we pass this Bill, Gibraltar will be out of kilter again. I simply do not understand why it, like other overseas territories, cannot be included in this Bill.