Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton and Lord Mackay of Clashfern

Report stage
Tuesday 23rd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Con)]

My Lords, I have much sympathy with these amendments. Back in 2010, when I served in the Committee on the Bill, I proposed similar amendments, so noble Lords may ask why I now express some hesitancy about extending the remit. I suppose it comes from my experience as Minister for the Armed Forces and Minister for Defence Veterans, Reserves and Personnel. When we roll back the clock, if I am entirely honest, in the early days of implementing the Armed Forces covenant we struggled to get traction. It took some time to convince all the local authorities within the United Kingdom to sign up and indeed to get employers to sign up. I am delighted that now we have close to 2,000 signatories to the Armed Forces covenant.

My concern really lies around the fact that, as we continue to extend the width, we may struggle to get buy-in into this if we create yet more of a burden for local authorities in particular. Especially after Covid, as they have had a difficult couple of years, they might not see the benefit of this if we simply overburden them with yet more categories. My suggestion in Committee was not that we should not extend the categories but that we should do it incrementally over a period of time. In many ways, had that been suggested today, I would have been happy to accept this amendment, but that is not the case, which is a shame. During that early stage of the process, we also struggled to demonstrate the benefits of this to veterans.

It is a shame that we have an Armed Forces Bill only once every five years because I do not want to have to wait another five years to slowly extend the remit of the covenant. However, I simply feel that at this stage such a step would be a bit too much too soon, for the reasons that I have tried to explain.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, I think it might be convenient for me to speak to my amendments in this group, Amendments 17 and 4. Something about Amendment 4 has been said already and I will not repeat that, but I shall attempt to elaborate on it somewhat.

On Amendment 17, when I was trying to consider this issue more carefully after the Minister’s argument in Committee, I happened to notice that this clause has a curious provision at the beginning: it is the same as the opening clause that was in the 2011 Bill on the Armed Forces covenant report. The only reference to “Armed Forces covenant” here is by dropping the word “report”. That struck me as rather strange in a Bill dealing with the Armed Forces covenant.

My noble friend may be able to put me right on this, but I have not found a definition of that covenant in the Bill. It is true that there is a definition on the website, but the website is not yet by law an Act of Parliament. We have to distinguish between these two. I am happy to think that what I have proposed in Amendment 17 is not very different from what is on the website, but it would at least be in the statute—in the part on definitions and principles that apply to England—and would apply through it.

My main argument, of course, is in relation to Amendment 4. It is right that central government in the form of the Secretary of State, who is responsible to Parliament for the Armed Forces, should be responsible for respecting the Armed Forces covenant. If he does not have a duty to respect it, it is difficult to put that duty on local authorities, health authorities and so on. In Committee, I referred to what I regard as an important example of where this was really necessary. In the first Gulf War, there was a feeling early on—of course, I have no detail on this that I could go into—that there might be poison gas coming from the opposition in Iraq. A possible protection against that gas was provided to some of our Armed Forces. Needless to say, I do not know what it contained, and I do not think local or health authorities knew either. Importantly, therefore, the illnesses of a neurological character contracted by some veterans were thought to be possibly connected to the protection against the poison gas.

As it happened, I do not think the poison gas ever emerged, but some veterans had had this protection and there was a question about that. I sent the Minister a copy of the Library report on this; there was an inquiry into it by one of my judicial colleagues. The eventual opinion expressed by Her Majesty’s Government was that the illness was not sufficiently definite to be called Gulf War syndrome—it was probable that it was due to a variety of things and, therefore, it was not to be classified in that way.

I cannot see how anybody other than the Secretary of State could be responsible for carrying out an investigation of that kind. It is therefore vital that he should have regard to the principles; of course, the areas that he has to have regard to are in the Bill now and not subject to the extensions of Amendment 3 and the other extensions that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, referred to. It is a simple case of three zones, as it were, in which the Secretary of State has to have regard to the principles. If anybody has to have regard to the principles of the Armed Forces covenant, I should have thought that the Secretary of State responsible to Parliament for the Armed Forces would be the leading person in that capacity.

It is for this reason that I tabled Amendment 4—having benefited from the copyright very kindly given. I look forward to what my noble friend the Minister has to say. I am sure she will have a good answer which will not be good enough. Unless this is accepted by the Government, or some provisional point of view for the future is accepted, I therefore intend to test the opinion of the House on this matter.