Armed Forces (Service Complaints and Financial Assistance) Bill [HL]

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

My Lords, while we support the Bill, a number of points have been and will be raised in this debate which will require either a response from the Government or probing further as we progress through the different stages of the parliamentary process. My noble friend Lady Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, in particular, has already raised a number of points which I wish to re-emphasise.

The key feature of the Bill is the intention to replace the existing Service Complaints Commissioner with a Service Complaints Ombudsman. We have been calling for an Armed Forces ombudsman for more than a year to strengthen independent scrutiny of service complaints following a number of frank reports from the Service Complaints Commissioner, including in 2011 when she described the system as,

“not efficient, effective or fair”.

The system has not improved since then. We promised that we would introduce a cost-neutral reform through simplification of the present system to create a more powerful ombudsman. Following this pressure from ourselves and others, including the Commons Defence Select Committee and the commissioner—who has rightly been complimented today on the invaluable work that she has done—the Government finally announced that they would introduce a Service Complaints Ombudsman, and today’s Bill is the result.

We have also been campaigning strongly for the protection and promotion of our Armed Forces community inside and outside their service. For example, we campaigned for the military covenant to become part of UK law, giving members of the Armed Forces legal rights and entitlements. We have announced that we will increase protections against discrimination of the Armed Forces community in public through the Armed Forces (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill, and we have continually pushed the Government to tackle bullying, harassment and sexual assault in the armed services.

The Bill also includes a power to make payments to charities, benevolent organisations and others for the benefit of the Armed Forces community. This raises questions about how the current LIBOR funding has been allocated and spent, and therefore how any future funding would be allocated, and whether or not those in receipt of LIBOR funding have had to meet specific criteria, including on levels of performance. These are points on which we would welcome a response from the Minister and which we will be pursuing in more detail during the consideration of the Bill.

The Service Complaints Commissioner was established in 2008 by the previous Government under the provisions of the Armed Forces Act 2006 following, in particular, the concerns arising from the Deepcut review by Nicholas Blake QC into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of four trainees at an army training establishment. The current role of the Service Complaints Commissioner is to refer complaints received direct into the system and to make inquiries if a complaint is not resolved within 24 weeks. The Service Complaints Commissioner also provides an annual assurance of the complaints system to the Secretary of State for Defence and Parliament but does not have the legal power to review the handling of individual cases.

However, the commissioner has been critical of the present arrangements and how in practice they work. Indeed, in her most recent annual report, the commissioner says that for the sixth year she is unable to give an assurance that the service complaints system is working efficiently, effectively or fairly and that delay remains the principal reason for unfairness in the system. Overall, the Navy resolved 78% of new 2013 service complaints within the 24 weeks target; the Army met the target of resolution of complaints within 24 weeks in only 25% of cases; and for the RAF the figure was 23%. The commissioner also stated that she was unable to provide an assurance that the data contained in her report provided by the Army and the RAF on how complaints were handled were reliable. She also stated that service personnel lacked confidence in the system.

The current system does not offer all complainants the assurance of an independent person overseeing their complaint outside the chain of command in any effective way. No one currently has powers to recommend necessary changes when a complaint has not been handled properly. Service personnel have no recourse to other ombudsmen on matters such as housing, medical care or police services where these are provided by the Armed Forces.

Under the terms of the Bill, the service complaints ombudsman will have the legal power to review individual cases where a serviceperson feels their complaint has not been handled properly and to report its findings with recommendations for correcting any default or maladministration found. What it appears the ombudsman, like the current commissioner, will not be able to do is instigate an investigation himself. The present commissioner has apparently never been asked by the Secretary of State to report on a particular area of concern she may have outside her normal annual reporting cycle. It is not apparently because the commissioner has no areas of concern. She told the Commons Defence Select Committee that she would look at,

“cases of bullying, which include assault, and the issues to do with mental health, access to services, race [...] and the handling of those cases”.

During visits to units, she had been informed of issues that would not come to her as complaints and thought that some work needed to be done on them. She told the Defence Select Committee that ombudsmen have this broader view, and:

“They can pull together in an informed and responsible way evidence across the piece and put it forward in a way that is very valuable to the organisation that they oversee”.

The comments and views of the commissioner, including on the failings of the current complaints system, are particularly pertinent in the light of sexual assault, rape and bullying in the Armed Forces hitting the headlines when Corporal Anne-Marie Ellement committed suicide after complaining of suffering from bullying following an allegation of rape against two male colleagues, a case to which the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, referred.

The 2013 Armed Forces Continuous Attitudes Survey found that 10% of those surveyed believed that they,

“have been the subject of discrimination, harassment and bullying”,

in a service environment in the past 12 months, but only 8% of them had made a formal complaint. The reasons given for not making a complaint included:

“I did not believe anything would be done if I did complain”.

That was given by 54%, while 52% gave the reason:

“I believe it might adversely affect my career or workplace”.

I believe that 28% cited being,

“worried there would be recriminations from the perpetrators”.

The Commons Defence Select Committee said that it believed there would be value in the commissioner being able to undertake research and to report on thematic issues in addition to her annual reports.

As the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, has also said, my understanding is that the Canadian forces ombudsman can initiate thematic inquiries into problems faced by sections of the Canadian armed services. Can the Minister say whether the Government have considered giving this power to the Service Complaints Ombudsman? If not, will they consider doing so, and if they have, what are the reasons for declining to go down this road?

A complaint will be considered in the first instance by the person in the chain of command who is able to decide the case and take action to put things right. There will be one level of appeal which will continue to include an independent element, as under the current system. If a complainant believes that his or her complaint has not been dealt with properly after the appeal, the complainant can ask the independent Service Complaints Ombudsman to review the case. The role of the ombudsman will be to consider whether there has been maladministration in the handling of a service complaint. This means that the ombudsman would consider whether there has been a failing in the process by which a decision has been made in the internal service complaints system, which has not been rectified, sufficient to result in an unjust outcome. A decision that the complainant dislikes, but where he or she cannot fault the process by which it has been reached, would not count as maladministration.

The Bill provides for time limits within which complaints must be raised. We will want to look at these to see whether they are reasonable and do not unfairly limit the ability of Armed Forces personnel to pursue a legitimate complaint. The Service Complaints Ombudsman’s recommendations will not be legally binding. It would be helpful if the Minister could set out why the Government believe that such recommendations will carry weight and what will happen if they are ignored, bearing in mind that the Service Complaints Commissioner in particular has not been impressed by the effectiveness of and respect for the current arrangements. It is difficult to understand why, if collectively those at the very highest levels had felt it a priority to ensure that the current arrangements worked much more effectively than they have, that would not have been the outcome.

Where are the teeth, or who will provide the teeth, to ensure that complaints are dealt with expeditiously and that recommendations made by the Service Complaints Ombudsman have some real bite and cannot be ignored without good reasons that are openly and transparently expressed? This is important. Service personnel have to obey legal commands. They do not have the rights of an employee. They are not employees with a contract of employment. They should be entitled to have access to an effective and independent means of redress against the possibility of any unacceptable and inappropriate use of power, and to have confidence in that process and procedure.

The Service Complaints Ombudsman will retain the ability to receive complaints and pass them on to the chain of command where a complainant is anxious about approaching the chain of command directly.

Service personnel will also be able to appeal to the ombudsman if their complaint is ruled to be an excluded matter or out of time. This is particularly important for people who have recently left the services but wish to complain about a wrong they feel was done during their service life. Under the current system, if the complaint is ruled excluded because it is out of time, they have no means of pursuing the matter if they are no longer serving at the time that the decision to exclude the complaint is made. In future, if the ombudsman rules that it should not have been excluded, the services will be obliged to consider it. Can the Minister say if this change would also apply in respect of a member of service personnel who had died by the time that the decision to exclude the complaint was made?

How well the Service Complaints Ombudsman system will work, only time will tell. If it is not supported by senior military personnel and Ministers, it will not secure the necessary changes and strengthened objectives that the current Service Complaints Commissioner clearly believes the new ombudsman, if provided with adequate numbers of staff, should be able to deliver. As the commissioner says in her 2013 annual report:

“Communicating the new system across the Services and educating NCOs and Officers in how to manage complaints will be key to success”.

I appreciate that these are early days, but I hope that the Minister will be able to say something today—or if not today, during the passage of the Bill—about how the new system will be communicated and what form the education in how to manage complaints, to which the commissioner referred, will take and how extensive it will be, bearing in mind that the education in managing the current arrangements does not appear to have been as successful as it might.

I note that the commissioner also said in her 2013 annual report that, while she hoped that the new system could be implemented early in 2015, in the mean time it was necessary to ensure that people with complaints to make still got the best possible treatment, with a complaint resolved within the current 24-week target. Can the Minister say, either today or subsequently, what progress is being made in increasing the percentage of complaints being resolved within the 24-week target, particularly in respect of the Army and the RAF? An improvement here might provide some positive evidence that the ombudsman will receive the support and backing to be able to deliver a new system that is of more benefit to both individual service personnel and the services themselves.

The Bill sets out the structure of the new system, including the relevant powers, role and functions of the Service Complaints Ombudsman, the Secretary of State and the Defence Council. However, it does not provide the details, which will be crucial since they could enhance or weaken the position of the ombudsman. These details will be set out in regulations. For example, Clause 2 refers to a person being able to make a complaint about,

“any matter relating to his or her service”,

but goes on to say:

“A person may not make a service complaint about a matter of a description specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State”.

Clause 2 also provides for the Defence Council to make regulations,

“about the procedure for making and dealing with a service complaint”.

These regulations, known as “service complaints regulations”, will be vital, even though the Bill covers a number of factors or issues for which they must make provision.

Clause 2 also provides for the Secretary of State to make regulations about persons and panels deciding service complaints and about the procedure to be followed in ombudsman investigations, both of which are matters that, once again, could be of considerable significance in relation to the independence of the complaints procedure and the exercise of the ombudsman’s powers. We need an opportunity to see the proposed regulations before we reach Committee in this House, since they are such an integral part of the Bill and whether it will achieve its objectives, and I hope that the Minister will be able to give an undertaking on behalf of the Government that this will be the case.

The hope and expectation is that under these new arrangements for a Service Complaints Ombudsman, our service personnel will benefit from a simpler and faster system for resolving complaints within the scope of the ombudsman’s remit, in which they can have confidence. They deserve nothing less.