Armed Forces Bill (Fifth sitting)
Al Carns Excerpts(1 day, 12 hours ago)
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The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)
I would like to make a correction to an earlier statement about new clause 12, before I continue to address amendment 9. I would like to clarify a point that arose in the debate on new clause 12 in relation to service protection orders. The powers in the Armed Forces Act 2006 create a time limit for charging former members and ex-regular reservists with a service offence committed while subject to service law of six months from the date they ceased to be subject to service law.
After a period of six months from the date on which they ceased to be subject to service law, a person may be charged with a service offence, committed while subject to service law, with the consent of the Attorney General. They do not remain subject to service law once they have left the armed forces, and the same time period also applies to civilians subject to service discipline. If there are any questions about the detail of that, I am happy to write to the Committee on anything specific that is required.
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
I will just pick up on a point I raised this morning, which I discussed with an hon. Friend who has experience in this space. Take, for example, a crime that is committed while a person is serving that is not serious enough to warrant their being remanded into custody—it goes over the six months because it is a knotty case. Because there is zero tolerance on drugs, someone might say, “Right, this is a knotty case. I am going to get into trouble for it, and I am going to get kicked out regardless, so I will just take some drugs. I will be kicked out within a very short space of time”. If they then let those six months elapse, what is the process for that?
Al Carns
I am always very reticent to get into the detail and legalities of the exacts, given there are multiple variables that we are discussing, whether it be drugs or whether it be a criminal offence. If a person is serving and a crime is committed, they will not be allowed to leave until the process for dealing with the justice of that case is well thought through, whether that be within the military system or transferred into the civilian justice system, because they cannot just leave the military while there is a case ongoing. However, if the hon. Member has a specific concern about a specific case with correct parameters, we will ensure we write to him on it and all of its different variables. It is quite difficult to provide the specifics on that now.
David Reed
I will make that intervention now, and then we can carry on that conversation. If there is zero tolerance of drugs, and if the person who has committed a crime knows they will be kicked out—as they should be—it would be good to hear from the Ministry of Defence if there is a loophole in which someone could say, “I will do this act knowing full well that I will be kicked out very quickly”. It would be good to understand what the process is. Does that person continue to be housed by the armed forces? Where do they stay? Are they still part of their unit? What happens to them?
Al Carns
The broader welfare of individuals who are dismissed for misuse of drugs is a separate issue to the original offence and the judicial system, which will be followed through whether they are serving or whether they have left or been removed from the armed forces. What I am specifically saying is that they can still be charged six months after. The Bill will ensure that any of those processes that are put in place for them while in the military can seamlessly transfer to the civilian justice system, so that justice can be carried through. However, if there is a specific issue, bracket it in parameters, give it to us and we will make sure that we respond.
Al Carns
Coming back to amendment 9, I agree that pulling together a court martial board to deal with senior officers poses more challenges than it does for junior personnel. Such cases are rare, and changes were made quite recently to address the issue. Changes were made in secondary legislation in 2024 to provide more flexibility in the formation of court martial boards for trials where the defendant is a senior officer, to address any potential difficulties in finding sufficiently senior personnel who do not know the defendant to sit on the board. Having boards that are tri-service has also helped assist with that. The changes ensure that the president of the board—the most senior person on the board—will be at least a one-star when the defendant is a one-star or above, and that practical attempts are always made to try to find a suitable two-star. When a two-star cannot be found, a one-star works. For defendants below one-star, the president of the board is always one rank higher.
We talked about capacity and the availability of ranks, and we will look into the detail of how we ensure that the Defence Serious Crime Command has the authority to leverage people to deliver the right consistency on boards. In terms of capacity in dealing with senior officer trials, there are around 200 one-stars in the armed forces and around 470 personnel at one star or above. There are sufficient personnel to meet the few occasions when senior personnel are tried. We keep those matters under review through the governance board of the service justice system, the service justice board and the service justice executive group, in which all key stakeholders are represented.
Clause 20 amends section 156 of the Armed Forces Act 2006, to correct an anomaly relating to those who are eligible to sit on a court martial board. The Armed Forces Act 2021 reduced qualification for those non-commissioned officers who were entitled to sit on a court martial board from a warrant officer to those of substantive OR-7 rank, for example a colour sergeant. However, a technical oversight meant that other subsections of section 156 were not also amended to reflect those changes. Consequently, only warrant officers and equivalent who became commissioned officers automatically qualified to sit on a court martial board, while OR-7s still had to undergo a three-year qualification period. Clause 20 simply enables those who receive their commission and were of former substantive OR-7 rank to automatically qualify to sit on the court martial board. I hope that provides the necessary reassurance to the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford on those grounds, and I ask him to withdraw his amendment.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
I do not think we need to have a debate on clause 20 stand part because we had a pretty thorough debate on the amendment, which covered most of the issues. I will seek the leave of the Committee to withdraw the amendment, but I would like to put down the marker that we have had an interesting debate and we might wish to return to this subject on Report. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 20 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 21
Power to impose post-charge conditions on persons not in service detention
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Al Carns
Clause 21 provides judge advocates with the power to impose post-charge conditions on adult defendants in the court martial or service civilian court, where the defendant is not held in service custody.
Currently, judge advocates can only set post-charge conditions on a defendant’s behaviour or movements if the defendant appears before them in service custody. If a defendant appears before them who is not in service custody, they are unable to set any conditions. That causes problems when risks occur, such as absconding, reoffending, or interfering with witnesses. The clause provides that the defendant must be informed in writing of the grounds for the application and be given notice of the hearing. The defendant will be able to attend the hearing, be legally represented and make representations to the judge advocate. Defendants will also have the right to apply for a variation or discharge of any conditions set.
Clause 21 provides commanding officers and the service police with arrest powers for breach of a condition. It also establishes a service offence of failing to attend a hearing concerning a judge advocate-imposed condition, without reasonable excuse, carrying a maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment.
Finally, clause 21 provides a judge advocate with the ability to impose urgent conditions where they consider it necessary, without the need for the defendant to have notice of the hearing or to be present. In that situation, the judge advocate must arrange for a hearing with the defendant present to take place as soon as practicable and the conditions will stop having an effect at the end of that hearing. By creating a new pathway for judicially imposed obligations with specific enforcement, the measure will contribute to ensuring attendance, preventing reoffending, protecting witnesses, and safeguarding defendants.
Clause 22 will enable a new procedure to be introduced into the court martial rules, allowing for the dismissal of a charge as well as a mechanism to enable a previously dismissed charge to be brought again under certain conditions. The clause simply enables court martial rules to replicate a procedure that currently exists in the criminal justice system, known as the voluntary bill procedure. Once updated, the court martial rules will allow the Director of Service Prosecutions, in exceptional circumstances, to seek the High Court’s consent to reinstate a charge previously dismissed where it is in the interests of justice to do so. While there is no exhaustive list of the circumstances in which the High Court can grant consent, case law provides some guidance. Cases where the voluntary procedure has been used are where there has been a substantive error of law that is clear or obvious; where new evidence has become available; or where there was a serious procedural irregularity.
Clause 23 will enable the courts martial to use mental health-related powers, equivalent to those already in the civilian system under the Mental Health Act 1983, which include the ability to make a hospital order on conviction as part of sentencing. Currently, in cases where the accused has been found not guilty by virtue of insanity or where the accused has been found unfit to stand trial and there is a finding that they did the act charged against them by the service court, a judge advocate is able to make a hospital order under the Mental Health Act 1983. A hospital order provides initial hospital treatment instead of imprisonment for a criminal offence.
However, there is no provision for cases where the accused is diagnosed as requiring mental health care while awaiting trial; before a finding of fitness to stand trial has been made; or the accused has been convicted of an offence and not yet sentenced. While the service justice system has very few cases where such a provision may be required, a recent case highlighted that these powers may be required when the accused is dealt with before a fitness to plead and/or a defence of insanity has not succeeded and the accused is found guilty.
The clause ensures that service personnel and civilians subject to service discipline receive safe, lawful and appropriate care, and that defence meets its legal and moral obligations to protect those experiencing serious mental health difficulties while in service.
I move on to clause 24. The Armed Forces Act 2021 introduced powers, known as slip rules, for commanding officers in summary hearings, the summary appeal court and the service civilian court, equivalent to the powers that already exist in the court martial. Slip rule powers simply enable punishments or activation orders made in error to be varied or rescinded quickly without the matter having to be referred to an appeal. Clause 24 addresses the error so that secondary legislation can implement the activation orders power for the service civilian court as originally intended.
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
It continues to be a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. Clauses 21 to 24 cover powers to impose post-charge conditions on persons not in service detention.
We welcome these clauses as sensible, technical enforcement improvements to the service justice system. They address a number of anomalies and gaps, and will help to ensure greater consistency, clarity and fairness in how the system operates. Taken together, the measures strengthen the ability of the service justice system to deal with cases effectively, while maintaining appropriate safeguards for those involved. They also bring aspects of the system more closely into line with civilian practices where that is appropriate. Overall, these are practical reforms that improve the functioning of the system and we are happy and content to support them.
Al Carns
These are technical changes to enhance the service justice system that deal with some of those knotty issues such as mental health. I recommend that the Committee fully support them.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 21 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 22 to 24 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 25
Guidance on exercise of criminal jurisdiction
Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 18, in clause 25, page 43, line 23, leave out paragraph (a) and insert—
“(a) must require that, before a victim is asked to express a preference regarding jurisdiction—
(i) the victim is provided with a standardised explanation of the service justice system and the civilian justice system,
(ii) such information is presented in a clear, accessible and neutral manner,
(iii) the information includes an explanation of the key features, processes, available support and potential outcomes of each system, sufficient to enable the victim to make an informed decision, and
(iv) the victim is informed of the availability of any independent legal advice or advocacy and how it may be accessed,
(b) must require that—
(i) a written record is made of the information provided to the victim, and
(ii) where a victim expresses a preference, a record is made of the reasons for that preference, so far as provided by the victim,
(c) must not present information in a way that is misleading or lacking appropriate context.”.
This amendment creates requirements for the information victims receive regarding both justice systems.
David Reed
My hon. Friend has again laid out the argument in an extremely comprehensive way, and it will be difficult to add anything new to the argument that he has put forward, but I will give it a go.
Ensuring that a victim is properly informed before being asked to state a preference on whether their case is heard in the service justice system or the civilian courts is essential, and I think we can all agree on that. The principle of concurrent jurisdiction allowing a victim to have a voice is a positive one.
However, a preference given without adequate understanding is not a meaningful choice; it becomes a procedural step rather than a genuine expression of agency. It is important to recognise that. The two systems differ in significant ways, and we have heard that in a lot of the evidence sessions and during our Committee trip down to Portsmouth.
These systems operate under distinct procedures, timelines and support arrangements and can lead to different outcomes. Many victims will have no prior experience of either system, and some may be asked to make this decision while in considerable distress. Without a clear, neutral explanation of what each system entails, the process does not empower victims but risks forcing them to make an uninformed decision or leaving them susceptible to undue influence. To reinforce that point, although it may be easy to make the decision when you have a clear head, if you have been the victim of a crime and your head is all over the place, having to make an informed decision when the information on the two systems is not clear and you have not encountered either system before makes the situation even more troubling.
The amendment would establish a basic standard to require that victims are given a clear, accessible and impartial explanation of both systems before any preference is sought. That explanation would cover how each process works, what support is available and the potential outcomes, and inform victims of the availability of independent legal advice or advocacy and how to access it. Crucially, it would introduce a requirement for a written record detailing the information provided and, where preference is expressed, the reasons given.
Al Carns
I thank the hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley for speaking to amendments 18 and 19. I acknowledge their sentiment, which is to ensure that the information provided to victims is appropriate and timely. The Government’s intention is to ensure that when a victim of an offence committed in the UK by a serviceperson is asked to indicate a preference on jurisdiction, they can do so in an informed way. The information provided must be accurate, helpful and, of course, objective, so I share the hon. Member’s objectives.
The Government have already begun work with the statutory consultees set out in clause 25 to understand what information should be provided to the victim, how and when it should be provided, and who should provide it. That complex, detailed work involves stakeholders from across the criminal justice systems of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, including the Victims’ Commissioners, and has so far highlighted the importance of seeking an informed view from the victim and that that information should be provided in a factual and impartial way. It has also highlighted that where a victim indicates a preference as to whom they wish to discuss jurisdiction with, it should be acted on, and that a record of the discussion of the victim’s preferred jurisdiction, and the reason given for it, must be kept.
Our work with stakeholders has also highlighted the importance of taking into account the needs and circumstances of the victim, and the circumstances of the offence, so the guidance must allow for a flexible, case-by-case approach. In some cases—as offences take place in different times and contexts—it may not be appropriate to confront a victim who only shortly before experienced a rape offence with many pages of written information to digest. In those cases, a more trauma-informed, verbal approach, under the statutory guidance and supported by a shorter leaflet or booklet, may work better.
In other cases, a victim may have a strong view from the outset that their case should be dealt with in the civilian criminal justice system. Asking that victim to go back through lots of information about the service justice system when it is already known that they have a strongly held preference would be unwelcome, and may prove counterproductive, as the civilian police investigator risks coming across as questioning or disbelieving the victim’s preference, undermining future co-operation with the victim and, ultimately, the successful investigation of the case. I absolutely understand the hon. Member’s intent, and I hope that I have provided some reassurance that guidance will facilitate access to support that is independent of the chain of command, policing and prosecutors.
Amendment 19 is, in some ways, linked to amendment 18, and seeks to ensure that victims have access to independent support before indicating a preference on jurisdiction. We have already begun work with the statutory consultees set out in clause 25 to understand who can support victims to reach a preference on jurisdiction, which will vary across the UK and across the service justice system. Where the victim indicates a preference on whom they wish to discuss jurisdiction with, it should be acted on. For example, when initial contact is made with service police, victims of serious sexual offences may choose to seek support from the Victim Witness Care Unit, which is independent of the chain of command and of service policing. Alternatively, they might wish to discuss the matter with the lead service police investigator. Crucially, the guidance will facilitate access to alternative support in response to the wishes of the victim.
In February 2026, the Government announced that we would launch the independent legal advocacy support programme pilot, which will provide impartial legal support to anyone aged 18 or over, irrespective of whether they are a serviceperson or a civilian. Anyone who reports a sexual offence that has been committed by a serviceperson subject to service law, or a civilian subject to service discipline, when that is being investigated by the service justice system, will qualify for support under the scheme.
Dr Shastri-Hurst
On the basis of the Minister’s clarification and reassurances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clauses 25 and 26 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 27
Driving disqualification orders: reduced disqualification period
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Al Carns
At present, service courts are empowered to make a driving disqualification order against an offender in proceedings for a service offence. However, there is no legal mechanism for service courts to reduce that period of disqualification from driving where the offender undertakes an approved course, unlike the civilian justice system. Clause 27 will enable the service courts—the court martial and the service civilian court—to make an order to reduce a period of disqualification from driving where the offender satisfactorily completes an approved course. This new power will be available to a service court where it convicts an offender of a certain road traffic offence, such as drink-driving, and imposes a driving prohibition of 12 months or more. These provisions address a gap in the existing legislation that has meant that the powers of service courts in relation to driving prohibitions are more limited than those of their civilian counterparts. It will ensure that the service courts have the same tools available to them as the civilian courts when dealing with these sorts of cases.
David Reed
Clause 27 aligns the service justice system with the civilian courts and introduces a constructive way for offenders to reduce their disqualification period through completion of an approved course. On our side of the Committee we see that as a practical and proportionate reform that supports rehabilitation, encourages personal responsibility and delivers greater consistency across both systems, and we are happy to support it.
Al Carns
I will begin with clause 28. The minor service sentences of reduction in rank or disrating, of forfeiture of a specified term of seniority or all seniority, and of service supervision and punishment orders all serve a useful purpose in punishing service personnel. However, these sentences are effectively made redundant by having no rehabilitation period. That undermines the purpose of the punishment, which by its nature is designed to have an impact on an individual’s career. The single services have no opportunity to consider whether administrative action should be taken against a serviceperson because the convictions are considered immediately spent. Administrative action has a range of options and may include assessing whether the nature of the conviction means that the individual is unsuitable for life in the service, or whether they are suitable for promotion during the period of rehabilitation. Considering these options following a conviction is vital to maintain operational effectiveness and the welfare and safety of others in the armed forces.
Clause 28 will establish rehabilitation periods of 12 months for these sentences. As a result, the rehabilitation periods will be harmonised with those for other minor service sentences: custody for one year or less, removal from His Majesty’s service, service detention, reprimand and severe reprimand and a fine. The clause also aligns the rehabilitation periods in Scotland with those in England and Wales. The required amendments relate to differences in terminology. Clause 28 will preserve the intended disciplinary effect within military administrative processes and maintain operational effectiveness and the welfare and safety of others in the armed forces.
I turn to clause 29. The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 prevents the single services from taking administrative action when a conviction becomes immediately spent. Increasingly, the civilian police in England and Wales issue simple cautions for a wide range of offences, and those cautions are treated as spent right away. As a result, the services are unable to take administrative action in response to conduct that may still be relevant to a role in the armed forces. A single lapse in conduct, however minor it may appear in civilian terms, can have serious consequences in a military environment, where values, standards and cohesion are not optional but fundamental to keeping our people and our nation safe. As we continue to professionalise the armed forces and rebalance the demographic representation, the current approach is increasingly inappropriate, especially where the conduct resulting in a caution is incompatible with the high values and standards expected of our armed forces.
Clause 29 will create an exemption from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act that enables the single services to place a disclosure obligation on serving members of the armed forces to report spent cautions. Once it is disclosed, the single services will be able to consider the caution and, if necessary, take an appropriate approach to conduct associated with it.
Clause 29 will enable the armed forces to maintain the highest standards, ensuring that every incident is addressed appropriately, that victims are supported, and that we can better retain and recruit our personnel. At a time when we are committed to halving violence against women and girls and to driving up the integrity and professionalisation of our armed forces, this change is not only timely but essential.
David Reed
Clauses 28 and 29 are practical and proportionate reforms. Clause 28 defines rehabilitation periods for certain service punishments under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. Sanctions such as reduction in rank, forfeiture of seniority and service supervision and punishment orders will no longer be treated as spent. Again, that is a good approach.
Clause 29 will enable the armed forces to require the disclosure of spent cautions issued to service personnel during their service period. I note the points that the Minister raised about the information that may be used by superior officers for administrative rather than disciplinary purposes or to support the maintenance of discipline, operational effectiveness and rehabilitation within the forces. The clause also provides clear definitions of “superior officer” and “administrative action” to ensure consistency in how the relevant provisions are applied. The Opposition support the clauses.
Al Carns
This is about improving our service justice system and, of course, the ability of our command chain to enact the highest standards. I commend clauses 28 and 29 to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 28 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 29 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 30
Commissioner’s functions in relation to Royal Fleet Auxiliary
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Al Carns
Clause 30, which introduces schedule 4, provides the statutory basis for extending the remit of the Armed Forces Commissioner to the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth for raising the issue in a ten-minute rule Bill and getting it the attention that it deserves.
Although the RFA is a civilian organisation, its personnel routinely operate alongside the Royal Navy. Indeed, they are essential to the Royal Navy. They face similar risks, pressures and, in many cases, operational demands. RFA personnel have distinct welfare needs shaped by long deployments, a demanding operational tempo and the challenges of supporting military operations. Bringing the RFA within the remit of the Armed Forces Commissioner will ensure that those issues are visible at the highest levels of defence oversight.
Clause 30 and schedule 4 will not alter the employment status of RFA personnel. They will remain civilian employees with full employment rights, including trade union representation. The extension to the Armed Forces Commissioner’s remit is designed to avoid interfering with existing statutory protections or established industrial relations frameworks and union representation.
Clause 30 will insert into the Armed Forces Act 2006 a new subsection that introduces schedule 14ZB to enable the commissioner to conduct thematic investigations into systemic RFA welfare concerns, such as those relating to accommodation, on-board facilities, training, welfare support, access to welfare services or the effects of extended time at sea, enabling wider patterns and areas requiring improvement to be identified. It will also strengthen accountability by giving the commissioner a clear mechanism to raise concerns directly with the Secretary of State. This will ensure that identified welfare themes, whether they are linked to operations, to support arrangements or to wider Ministry of Defence responsibilities, are formally captured and considered. While clause 30 and schedule 4 expand the commissioner’s remit, they also set clear boundaries. Individual employment disputes, civil proceedings, matters covered by collective agreements or complaints brought by unions will remain outside the scope, preserving clarity and the integrity of the existing processes.
Having served in the military for 24 years, I spent several months, if not years, on Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships, or working with it, and I hold it in the highest regard. The RFA underpins the Royal Navy’s deployable standards and capabilities. I think this is a fantastic move to ensure that it gets the representation it deserves. In practical terms, clause 30 and schedule 4 will provide an independent avenue through which RFA personnel can escalate systemic welfare issues. Over time, that will strengthen support to the RFA and ensure that its personnel’s welfare is considered alongside that of service personnel, while respecting their distinct civilian status. I commend clause 30 and schedule 4 to the Committee.
Al Carns
First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth. She generated this, and now it has come to fruition, so well done. The reality is that there is no Royal Navy without the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. The RFA does an exceptional job across everything from high-end technical to refuelling and enabling our carrier strike group.
When we talk about embarrassment and availability of capability, the unfortunate reality is that we have the cards that we have been dealt, after successive Governments under-invested in the significant hard capability that we require to deter hostile states. As a Minister in the previous Government, the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford owns an element of responsibility for that.
Mr Francois
For the record, whatever we did or did not do in Government, we did not bring in the £2.6 billion of operational spending cuts in the financial year just gone. That is why our availability is so poor, and that was a purely Labour decision, was it not?
The Chair
Order. We are getting off the subject again. Can we come back to the clause, please?
Al Carns
There is no Royal Navy without the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. Its personnel are the best of us. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 30 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Christian Wakeford.)
Armed Forces Bill (Fourth sitting)
Al Carns Excerpts(1 day, 12 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chair
We are now sitting in public and the proceedings are being broadcast. Before we continue line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill, I have a few reminders for Committee members. Please switch off or silence electronic devices. No food or drink, other than that provided, is permitted during our sittings. Hansard would be grateful if Members could email their speaking notes or hand them to the Hansard colleague in the room.
I remind Members to bob to catch my eye if they wish to speak in any debate. The selection list for today’s sitting, which is available in the room and on Parliament’s website, shows how the clauses, schedules and selected amendments have been grouped for debate.
Clause 4
Interference with uncrewed devices
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Efford. Defence needs to protect itself from crime with security measures that will deter, detect and defeat criminal activities, including those directed by hostile states, that threaten its critical sites or operations. Currently, the only authorisation process that enables interference with drones that might be used to commit crimes that threaten defence operations and assets is in part III of the Police Act 1997. Only the civilian police can obtain such an authorisation to deal with these threats.
The increase in drone activity around defence sites means that defence cannot rely on local police forces for its security requirements. The emergence, in Ukraine and elsewhere, of drones as a new frontier of warfare has brought into sharp focus the urgent need for defence to meet this rapidly developing threat, not only in operational theatres but here in the UK, to protect defence operations and bases. We must have ways to protect ourselves from the threats posed by drones, be they in the air, on land or on or under water.
Clause 4 will create a regime whereby defence personnel can obtain authorisation to use approved equipment to prevent drones from being used to commit criminal offences in relation to defence sites and property in the UK. The regime will consist of a two-stage approval process.
The first stage will consist of a senior person in defence—a two-star military officer or civil service equivalent—giving authorisation for the use of approved equipment to detect and prevent relevant offences. Applications for authorisations can be made only by defence personnel; before giving an authorisation, they will need to be satisfied that it is appropriate, in the interests of national security, that it be given. An authorisation can cover one or more defence areas, particular defence property or a description of property. This stage will ensure that appropriate areas and property can be protected using the appropriate equipment. Defence areas include sites in the UK used for the purpose of defence, as well as sites used by visiting forces. Defence property includes vehicles and vessels in the UK. It will be possible for an authorisation to cover a description of such property—royal naval vessels, for example—so that it is not necessary for each one to be individually identified.
To ensure that the new regime is agile, we have not specified the type of equipment that can be used under an authorisation, or taken a power to prescribe this in regulations. Instead, the Secretary of State will need to approve equipment before it can be used. This will allow new equipment to be used as swiftly as possible to protect defence interests. The approval process will be governed by defence policy, which will ensure that equipment is safe to use or test in the UK. An authorisation can last for up to 12 months and may be renewed; it can also be varied or revoked.
The second stage in the authorisation process involves a responsible person. Before approved equipment can be used, the responsible person must be satisfied that it will be used only in accordance with the authorisation that covers the area or property to which it relates. Furthermore, before equipment can be used to detect and defeat a drone, the responsible person must be satisfied that it is both reasonable and proportionate to do so. I commend the clause to the Committee.
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. As we all know, drones and other uncrewed systems are rapidly reshaping modern defence and are already central to surveillance, logistics and frontline operations. Their importance will only grow in the years ahead. For our armed forces, they offer speed, precision and flexibility; for our adversaries, they present new and evolving threats that we must be ready to counter. That is why the clause matters.
My own limited experience was back in the early 2010s, when I saw drones brought into military service in our operations in Afghanistan. Those pieces of kit were really expensive and large, but we could see how they were reshaping the modern battlefield. Looking at how the technology has evolved over the years, the first signs that I saw were in how prisoners were working with criminal networks on the outside to deliver drugs and other contraband into prisons. They were using cheap, commercial, off-the-shelf drones to carry out those illegal acts. The barrier to entry for such products has fallen significantly. Our military now has to contend with protecting military sites, bases and other critical assets from people who can buy cheap drones that have a big operational effect, so new powers need to be given to our armed forces people.
We will have more opportunities to strengthen these powers. We support what the Minister proposes, but we will discuss new clauses at a later sitting. The success of clause 4 will depend on whether the wider system supports it. We have heard repeatedly from colleagues across the House about regulation issues with testing autonomous systems in UK airspace or waters. Multi-departmental efforts will be required to take away some of the regulation, so that we can give defence manufacturing and our armed forces the ability to test the new technologies and implement them in their operational output.
Our armed forces must be equipped with not just the tools, but the doctrine and training to use them effectively. We have a clear opportunity for change. The United Kingdom has the expertise and the industrial base to lead in uncrewed systems, which is good for the export market. Clause 4 provides part of the foundation, but it must be matched by practical action to ensure that the capabilities can be delivered at scale. If we get it right, we will strengthen our national security, our defence industry and our critical national infrastructure; if we fall behind, others will set the pace. The choice is ours.
Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Efford, after the Easter recess. I believe that the Minister clarified this point, but I ask for confirmation: will the extension of anti-drone permissions extend to US bases such as RAF Croughton in my constituency?
Al Carns
The clause is exactly what we need. The explosion in drone systems across the world requires the proper legislation, and the clause will fit that purpose.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 4 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 5
Sexual harm prevention orders and sexual risk orders
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Schedule 2.
Clause 6 stand part.
Schedule 3.
Clauses 7 to 9 stand part.
New clause 12—Protective Orders: Persons No Longer Subject to Service Law—
“(1) This section applies where a person—
(a) is charged with, or has been convicted of, an offence within the service justice system, and
(b) was subject to service law either at the time of the alleged conduct or at the time of the charging decision, whether or not they remain subject to service law at the time of trial or sentencing.
(2) A service court may make any of the following orders in respect of a person as if they were still subject to service law—
(a) a sexual harm prevention order or interim sexual harm prevention order (see sections 103A to 103K of the Sexual Offences Act 2003);
(b) a sexual risk order or interim sexual risk order (see sections 122A to 122K of that Act);
(c) a service domestic abuse protection order;
(d) a service stalking protection order;
(e) a service restraining order (see section 229 of the Armed Forces Act 2006).
(3) An order made under subsection (2)—
(a) has effect as if made by a civilian court of equivalent jurisdiction, and
(b) is enforceable accordingly.
(4) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for the recognition, enforcement and variation of orders made under this section, including provision about which court has jurisdiction to vary or discharge such an order after it is made.”
This new clause ensures service courts can impose protective orders on individuals who leave service before trial, preventing avoidance of such orders simply by leaving service.
Al Carns
Clauses 5 to 7 and schedules 2 and 3 relate to protection orders. The Government are committed to providing safety, justice and real support for all in the defence community, both now and in future, which is why a particular focus of the Bill is on protecting victims of serious sexual and violent crimes.
Currently, the service justice system cannot impose the full suite of protection orders that are available in the civilian criminal justice system. That can create inconsistencies and critical gaps in victim safeguarding, particularly where cases are based overseas and are therefore under the jurisdiction of the service justice system. It means that there are key vulnerabilities, insufficient protection powers in the SJS in comparison with the civilian system and, as existing orders do not convert into civilian equivalents, gaps in protection when a subject leaves service. Those gaps place victims, both in defence and in the wider public, at risk of continued harm. They mean that victims in the service justice system do not always receive the level of protection to which they would be entitled in the criminal justice system.
Clauses 5 to 7 will address those inconsistencies and will be central to providing enduring protection for victims by enabling service courts to make interim and full protection orders and notices that are enforceable even after someone leaves the service. Those service orders include sexual harm prevention orders, sexual risk orders, domestic abuse protection notices and orders, stalking protection orders and restraining orders. The clauses will align the justice systems to ensure that no member of the defence community is left with lesser protections than their civilian counterparts. They will empower the service police to apply for interim and full orders and will empower the service courts to impose them, ensuring that victims receive enduring protection from further harm. The powers apply to service personnel and civilians subject to service law both in the UK and overseas, ensuring their worldwide application.
The service police are members of the armed forces who perform broadly the same role for the armed forces, wherever they are in the world, that their civilian counterparts perform in police forces across the UK. Although the service police currently operate in line with the principles of the guidance issued by the Home Office on disclosure of police information, the fact that they have no statutory duty to do so is a disparity with the civilian system. Clause 8 will therefore impose a requirement on the service police to have regard to existing statutory guidance about the disclosure of police information for the purposes of preventing domestic abuse, sexual offending and stalking. It will also amend section 77 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 to include the Ministry of Defence police in the list of police forces that need to have regard to the domestic violence disclosure system. This will better protect potential victims from the risks associated with domestic violence, sexual offending and stalking.
Clause 9 will ensure that offenders who have, for example, been sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment by a court martial for controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship are automatically supervised under multi-agency public protection agreements. Once those offenders are released from prison, they will be managed in the community in the same way as if they had been sentenced by the Crown court. If offenders under the scope of clause 9 are not managed under MAPPA when released on licence into the community, it may be harder for police, prisons and probation services to work together to protect the public and manage the risk that the offenders pose.
I will speak to new clause 12 in my closing remarks.
Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in support of new clause 12 and offer broader support for clauses 5 to 9, which represent a significant strengthening of the protective framework in the service justice system.
It is worth setting out the basic principle that the armed forces justice system must be capable not only of dealing fairly and effectively with wrongdoing, but of ensuring that the protection of victims and management of risk do not fall between institutional cracks. The credibility of the service justice system depends on continuity, coherence and, above all, confidence that protective measures will not be undermined by procedural happenstance.
Clauses 5 to 9 make important and welcome progress. They will extend the availability and operation of sexual harm prevention orders, sexual risk orders, domestic abuse protection orders, stalking protection orders and restraining orders in the service justice system. They make provision for enforcement, variation and guidance structures, including in respect of the important role of provost marshals and service police in the exercise of those functions. The clauses will modernise the service justice landscape in a way that recognises the reality of contemporary risk management. They will ensure that service personnel and civilians subject to service discipline are not operating in a parallel system that is less capable of protecting victims or managing dangerous individuals. In particular, the extension to the service courts of protections against domestic abuse and stalking is a welcome alignment with civilian criminal justice standards, ensuring consistency of safeguarding irrespective of jurisdiction.
However, as is often the case in the refinement of complex statutory schemes, there remains a narrow but important residual gap, which is precisely what new clause 12 seeks to address. The core issue is one of jurisdictional continuity. At present, protective orders in the service justice system are clearly available while an individual is subject to service law. Clauses 5 to 9 also go further by making provision for enforcement in certain circumstances in which the individual ceases to be subject to service discipline after an order has been made. A difficulty arises, however, in the transitional space where an individual is charged or even convicted while subject to service law, but ceases to be subject to service law before the protective order is imposed or finalised. Without express provision, there is a risk that such an individual, by virtue of leaving service, will fall outside the effective reach of the service court’s protective jurisdiction at precisely the point at which such orders are most necessary.
New clause 12 performs a simple but important function. It would provide that where a person is charged with or convicted of an offence in the service justice system and was subject to service law at the relevant time, the service court may impose specified protective orders as if the person remained subject to service law. It is, in effect, a statutory deeming provision, preserving jurisdiction for protective purposes notwithstanding the cessation of service status.
The legal merits of that approach are clear. First, it prevents what might properly be described as jurisdictional arbitrage. Without such a provision, there is a theoretical, though in practice very real, risk that individuals could seek to avoid the imposition of protective orders by leaving service prior to trial or sentencing. Even if such behaviour is not deliberately engineered, the mere existence of a gap creates inconsistency and undermines confidence in the system. The protective reach of the service justice system should not be rendered contingent on administrative status at a particular moment in time.
Secondly, the new clause reflects a well-established principle in criminal justice, which is that protective orders are ancillary to the underlying offence and risk posed by the offender, not merely to their procedural status. The civilian courts retain wide powers to impose protective orders at sentencing precisely because the assessment of risk is rooted in conduct, not institutional affiliation. New clause 12 would ensure that the service courts are placed in an equivalent position, recognising that the underlying risk does not evaporate simply because service status changes.
Thirdly, the new clause would promote legal certainty and coherence. Through clauses 5 to 9, the existing framework already recognises that certain orders may continue to have effect or be enforced after a person leaves service. However, enforcement is not the same as imposition. It is logically and legally cleaner to ensure that the court retains the power to make the order at the point of disposal, rather than relying on subsequent conversion or deeming mechanisms. The new clause therefore fills a structural gap and ensures that the life cycle of protective orders is not disrupted by jurisdictional transition.
Fourthly, the new clause is carefully drafted in respect of its propriety. It would not create an unfettered or novel category of punitive power. Rather, it would explicitly confine the service court’s ability to make orders to those that it would have been able to make had the individual remained subject to service law. It is, in essence, a continuity provision, not an expansion of jurisdiction.
Importantly, subsection (3) of the new clause would provide that such orders are to have effect
“as if made by a civilian court of equivalent jurisdiction”
and are “enforceable accordingly.” That is a critical safeguard. It would ensure interoperability between the service justice system and the civilian criminal justice system, avoiding the creation of parallel regimes that might otherwise give rise to confusion about enforcement authority.
Subsection (4) of the new clause, enabling the Secretary of State to make regulations regarding recognition, enforcement and variation, is also welcome. It would provide necessary flexibility in an area where procedural interfaces between service and civilian jurisdictions must be capable of adjustment over time. In particular, it would allow for clarity as to which court is best placed to vary or discharge orders once a person has fully transitioned out of service life. That is a sensible delegation of secondary rule-making power, consistent with the established constitutional practice in this field.
Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I welcome the clauses we are considering. This Government were elected to renew the nation’s contract with those who serve, and this Bill promises to do that. We cannot do it without ensuring that armed forces personnel are protected from sexual and violent behaviour, domestic abuse, stalking and harassment. We must ensure that, if such incidents do happen, justice is swift and victims are supported.
As far as possible, the service justice system reflects the provisions of the civilian justice system, and the Bill is modernising and improving victim support. It was extremely helpful to speak to those involved in the service justice process, and I thank the Chair for organising those visits, which helped to inform us all.
Among the key measures being introduced are the sexual harm prevention orders and the sexual risk orders, which can be issued in the service court in response to provost marshal. The Bill also allows for service domestic abuse protection notices to be issued by the service police, and for service domestic abuse protection orders and service stalking protection orders to be issued by the service courts. This will ensure better protection for personnel and civilians.
The Bill also solves the discrepancy that exists between service courts and civilian courts if an offender is sentenced by the service court when they have committed a serious offence. Currently, the transfer from the service courts to the civilian justice system is undertaken on a discretionary basis. The Bill will modernise that system, and bring offenders sentenced by the service courts into line with the civilian justice system. The Bill will better support victims of a service offence by streamlining the complaints procedure.
I have some sympathy with the arguments behind new clause 12 and a great deal of respect for the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford. However, in practice, individuals cannot simply leave the armed forces to avoid proceedings. A serviceperson will not be discharged or given a final leaving date until disciplinary or criminal proceedings have been properly concluded. Even after an individual has already left service, sections 57, 58 and 61 of the Armed Forces Act 2006 allow them to be charged with an offence committed while they were subject to service law. My argument in respect of new clause 12 is that it is simply not necessary. However, I think dialogue between the Minister and the right hon. Member would be welcome.
Al Carns
I thank the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford for tabling new clause 12, which seeks to ensure that service courts can impose protective orders on individuals who leave service before trial and preventing the avoidance of such orders simply by leaving the service. I recognise the good will and the sentiment behind new clause 12. However, it is not needed.
I want to be clear that individuals should not be able to evade accountability for their conduct and that safeguarding measures must not fall away simply by reason of service or leaving the armed forces. Protecting victims of domestic abuse, stalking and sexual harm is a clear priority of this Government. The reality is that individuals cannot simply leave the armed forces to avoid proceedings—they just cannot. It is actually relatively complicated to leave the armed forces. A serviceperson will not be discharged or given a final leaving date until disciplinary or criminal proceedings have been properly concluded.
Importantly, if for some reason an individual were to slip through the net and leave the service, sections 57, 58 and 61(2) of the Armed Forces Act 2006 allow them to be charged with an offence committed while they were subject to service law. Such a charge may be brought within six months of their leaving service, or after six months with the consent of the Attorney General, ensuring that service courts can still exercise that jurisdiction when necessary.
The Government have engaged with experts, including the Home Office, the Defence Serious Crime Command and safeguarding teams in the design and creation of service protection orders to ensure that they are robust and effective. That includes ensuring that service protection orders will be recognised and enforceable within civilian courts. That means that where a protection order is made, the Bill provides for those orders to transition to the civilian justice system once an individual leaves service and provides enduring protection for victim-survivors. The reality is that people cannot just leave the military, especially if they are under investigation. Secondly, if they do, they are still subject and can be pulled back for a minimum of six months. Taken together, that approach provides continuity, confidence and protection beyond service.
David Reed
The Minister is laying out a very well-structured argument, and I see many of the points, but I wonder about certain circumstances. For instance, if a serviceperson took drugs and was kicked out—they have to abide by those rules, which we all know about in the armed forces—what would then happen?
Al Carns
If there were criminal proceedings, he would be held to account in the service justice system for up to six months after the case. It is relatively simple. As we know, it is quite hard to leave the military, and when someone does, they are still subject to service law for six months after they have left.
The Government do not believe that new clause 12 is necessary and I therefore invite the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford not to press it. I also commend clauses 5 to 9 and schedules 2 and 3 to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 5 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 6 to 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 10
Victims of service offences
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Al Carns
Clause 10 places a duty on the Secretary of State for Defence to issue an updated code for victims in the service justice system. The existing armed forces code of practice, which identifies the services and support to be provided to victims in the service justice system itself, is set out in regulation and has not been substantively modified since it was introduced in 2015. Clause 10 revokes the 2015 regulations. Since 2015, we have continued to make improvements to the service justice system to provide a better service to victims and witnesses, such as with the creation of the Victim Witness Care Unit, which I think the Committee saw when they went down to Portsmouth.
This clause will introduce important legislative changes to the service justice system that were made to the civilian criminal justice system through the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024. The legislation will require those responsible for providing a service to victims of service offences in accordance with the code to do so unless there are good reasons not to; and the flexibility afforded by guidance will allow future modifications and improvements to the service justice system to be easily reflected in the contents of the new code. Clause 10 also places a duty on the Secretary of State to issue guidance about victim support roles, improving clarity and encouraging greater consistency, so that service providers will be held to similar standards as their equivalents in the civilian criminal justice system.
David Reed
Clause 10 is a necessary and proportionate step to ensure that victims of service offences are properly recognised and supported within the military justice system. Those affected by such offences often face distinct pressures linked to service life, including close living and working environments and concerns about reporting within the chain of command. Strengthening protections and support mechanisms helps to build confidence in the system, encourages reporting and reinforces the principle that service personnel are entitled to the same standards of justice and care as any civilian. This is an important measure in upholding both discipline and fairness across the armed forces.
Clause 11 strengthens the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration in a practical and necessary way. By allowing victims to bring complaints directly to the commissioner, it removes unnecessary barriers and ensures that their voices are heard more clearly and promptly. This change reflects a sensible and compassionate approach, particularly in cases involving service offences, where the experiences of victims must be treated with seriousness and respect. It reinforces accountability while improving access to justice.
Al Carns
Clauses 10 and 11, in reality, thicken out the service justice system and align it with the civilian justice system, providing greater freedoms and protections for anybody who is a victim within this system. I commend them to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 10 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 11 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 12
Service policing protocol
Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)
I beg to move amendment 6, in clause 12, page 29, line 6, at end insert—
“115C Duty to refer sexual offences and domestic abuse to civilian police
(1) This section applies where a service police force or the tri-service serious crime unit is made aware of an allegation that a person subject to service law, or a civilian subject to service discipline, has committed a relevant offence in the United Kingdom.
(2) The Provost Marshal of the relevant service police force, or the Provost Marshal for serious crime, must immediately refer the allegation and transfer the investigation to the relevant civilian police force.
(3) In this section—
“relevant civilian police force” means the civilian police force for the area in which the alleged offence took place;
“relevant offence” means—
(a) any offence under the Sexual Offences Act 2003,
(b) an offence involving domestic abuse within the meaning of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, or
(c) an offence of attempting or conspiring to commit an offence within sub-paragraph (a) or (b).
(4) The Secretary of State may by regulations specify further offences which are to be treated as a relevant offence for the purposes of this section.”
This amendment requires the Service Police and the Defence Serious Crime Command to refer all allegations of sexual offences and domestic violence to the civilian police forces for investigation and subsequent trial in the civilian justice system.
Al Carns
I thank the hon. Member for North Devon for his views on the Bill, but before providing comment on amendment 6, I will first speak to clause 12.
Currently, under section 115 of the Armed Forces Act 2006, there is a duty on individual provost marshals to seek to ensure that all investigations carried out by the service police are free from improper interference. Clause 12 provides a power to create a protocol that will support the provost marshal in complying with that duty, but it also goes further than that. It will set out how all members of defence can support such investigations and improve the working relationship between key stakeholders in support of service policing. That power is loosely based on the equivalent power under which the civilian Policing Protocol Order 2023 was created in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011. The civilian protocol sets out the operational independence and governance structure in civilian policing in England and Wales. There is currently no equivalent to that in defence and no clear articulation of investigative independence for service police to enable personnel in defence to ensure the support of investigations.
The effect of clause 12 is that, through the protocol that it provides for, it will be formally articulated to the whole of defence how people in defence should exercise, or refrain from exercising, functions in order to improve working relationships and ensure that investigations carried out by the service police are absolutely free from improper interference.
Amendment 6 seeks to amend clause 12 to override the victim’s preference. That is the key issue: to override the victim’s preference by making sure that all investigations and prosecutions take place in a relevant criminal justice system of the UK. That cannot be the right way forward. By overriding the victim’s preference, the amendment risks increasing the victim withdrawal rate. Noting the procedural differences between the two systems, 2024 administrative data on adult rape-flagged cases shows that the withdrawal rate from civilian police investigations is 59% compared with 24% from the Defence Serious Crime Command. We heard that from various witnesses in evidence sessions. The amendment potentially risks making the victim withdrawal rate even higher in the civilian criminal justice system.
David Reed
We have talked a lot about the UK, but can the Minister give some clarity on when those offences happen abroad? Say, for instance, someone was on an overseas base in Cyprus, and the Cypriot police were to be involved. What would happen at that point and how would that affect the equation?
Al Carns
The hon. Member raises a very important point. I will have to come back to him with specific details and statistics on that, and I will write to the Committee.
As mentioned before, the amendment potentially risks making the victim withdrawal rate even higher than in the criminal justice system. It also risks the loss or erosion of “golden hour” evidence and the safeguarding of victims in cases of sexual offending or domestic abuse. That is because the amendment does not place a duty on civilian police forces to accept the case. That could make delays in the civilian criminal justice system worse. In 2024, investigations of adult rape-flagged cases in the criminal justice system in England and Wales took 338 days. That is higher than the 148 days seen in the service justice system, even when taking into account the further 72 days until charge is directed.
To reassure the Committee, the Government are committed to making sure that each case, in particular those involving sexual offences or domestic abuse, is dealt with in the right jurisdiction. The prosecutors’ protocols therefore provide for decisions on jurisdiction to be made on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the views of the victim. That is one of the most important points—the views of the victim and their preference. In the event that agreement cannot be reached in England and Wales, for example, the ultimate decision on jurisdiction lies with the Director of Public Prosecutions in the civilian system, so there is a fall-back mechanism. It is a priority for us that decisions on jurisdiction are made in a timely way and take into account the victim’s preference. That is why clause 25 strengthens the provision of information and support to victims when they are asked their preference on jurisdiction.
There are two points I would like to come to. The first is the horrendous case of Gunner Jaysley Beck and what has been done since that incident, but also the Sarah Atherton review that took place in 2021. Since then, there has been a huge amount of work—under both the previous Government and this Government—to ensure that the service justice system, and indeed military culture, is transforming in the right direction. I will be really clear: when I joined, in 1999, LGBT individuals were still not allowed in the military. The culture has moved. It moved slowly, but it is moving faster, I think, in the last five years and in the last two years than I have seen it move in a long time.
There have been a couple of key milestones in that movement. The first one is zero tolerance to unacceptable sexual behaviour. That zero tolerance has trickled down to every rank in the military. I remember implementing that direction for my staff when I was the chief of staff for the UK carrier strike force. That took place across the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. The Raising our Standards programme is a commitment to tackle unacceptable behaviours and to drive lasting cultural change—again, to try and move in the right direction. Importantly, the violence against women and girls taskforce change programme is now running in Catterick and Plymouth, something I launched when I was the Veterans and People Minister. There is also the tri-service complaint system.
All of those programmes are moving in the right direction to ensure that if anyone is a victim of sexual violence or harassment, they have a place to go to express their concerns. It also ensures that it is dealt with independent of the chain of command and allows the victim to raise issues and get them dealt with in the most effective and appropriate manner.
We are currently working on a formal information sharing agreement. Currently, information is shared with civilian police forces through local engagement during investigations. I am happy to continue dialogue and take that forward to make sure that that is more solidified, clear and standardised across various civilian police and military police elements.
The reality is that clause 25 strengthens the provision of information and support to victims when they are asked for their preferred jurisdiction. Therefore, this Government maintain that case-by-case decisions taking into account the view of the victim—and that is critical, the view of the victim—is the best way forward. I hope that provides necessary reassurance to the hon. Member for North Devon, and on those grounds I ask him to withdraw the amendment. I commend clause 12 to the Committee.
Ian Roome
I will withdraw the amendment, but I ask that the Minister takes on board the comments made by the hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley in his powerful speech, so that this can come out on Report. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 12 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 13
Entry for purposes of obtaining evidence etc
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Al Carns
The purpose of clause 13 is to extend the powers of judge advocates to enable them to issue search warrants, which can include other premises that are occupied or controlled by a person subject to service law, or a civilian subject to service discipline, but are not necessarily occupied as a residence. Examples include vehicles, boats or storage containers. Clause 13 also aligns the definition of premises in the Armed Forces Act 2006 with that in section 23 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984—also known as PACE.
Turning to clause 14, under existing powers in section 314 of the 2006 Act, the UK civilian police can arrest a serviceperson reasonably suspected of committing the offences of desertion or absence without leave, commonly known as AWOL. Clause 14 extends those powers to include servicepersons reasonably suspected of committing the service offence, under section 12 of the 2006 Act, of disobedience to lawful commands.
A lawful command may be given by a commanding officer or the service police to protect victims from further harm, or indeed to prevent the risk of further offending by the suspect. Those may include restrictions on places that the suspect can visit, such as specific buildings or addresses, or people with whom they can have contact. By enabling the civilian police to arrest someone suspected of breaching such orders, their enforceability will be enhanced.
Turning to clause 15, the 2006 Act allows only the commanding officer of a suspect to authorise their pre-charge custody after arrest. This can sometimes create delays in the investigation process or risk further harm to victims or witnesses. Since the establishment of the Defence Serious Crime Command, the increased volume and complexity of its caseload have rendered the issue progressively more challenging.
Clause 15 creates a power for all the provost marshals to authorise pre-charge custody for service offences. This will apply to arrests for schedule 2 offences and offences that would attract a sentence of over two years’ imprisonment in the civilian criminal justice system. It will also apply to schedule 1, part 2 offences where permission has been refused for a commanding officer to deal with the matter summarily, and to attempted versions of the offences. Clause 15 will also apply where prescribed circumstances exist, such as repeated assaults on two or more occasions, or where a senior rank has inflicted serious injury on a service person.
Clause 15 also extends the existing powers for commanding officers, and the associated safeguards, to the four provost marshals. These safeguards include the 12-hour review period and the 48-hour time limit beyond which an extension must be approved by a judge advocate. Commanding officers must still be notified if a suspect is taken into custody, and that must take place within six hours of the arrest. In exceptional cases, commanding officers have the power to authorise custody, but they must notify the provost marshal for serious crime and the provost marshal of the service police force for the service of which the suspect is a member.
Clause 16 inserts new section 58A into the 2006 Act, imposing a time limit for charging summary offences under section 42. This clause reflects recommendation 35 of Sir Richard Henriques’s 2021 review: that the service justice system should follow the principle of the civilian justice system that minor matters, triable only in a magistrates court, have a six-month time limit imposed on them from the date the offence was committed. The clause therefore imposes a six-month time limit on summary-only offences in the service justice system. However, the clause will enable the Director of Service Prosecutions to determine whether such matters may be heard outside the six-month time limit. Such a pragmatic approach reflects the realities of service life, operational demands and the nature of deployments and operations, which may make a hard six-month time limit unworkable. I commend clauses 13 to 16 to the Committee.
David Reed
These clauses deal with entry for purposes of obtaining evidence, arrest and detention by civil authorities, pre-charge custody, and time limits for charging certain offences. It is right that service police are given clear and effective powers to obtain evidence, as the Minister has laid out clearly, and that such powers are subject to proper judicial oversight. The provision to allow a judge advocate to authorise entry and search of relevant premises seems sensible to modernise the system and to help investigations proceed efficiently and lawfully. I also welcome the clarification around arrest and detention by civil authorities, and the extension of pre-charge custody arrangements in serious cases. The changes should help to ensure that serious allegations are dealt with more consistently and with the necessary urgency.
Al Carns
The clauses will enhance the ability of our military police forces and our provost marshals to enact service justice. These measures will make the forces safer, enable them to look after the victims, and support their freedom to operate within the military system.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 13 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 14 to 16 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 17
Duty of commanding officers to report serious offences
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Al Carns
Clause 17 will strengthen the duty of commanding officers to report allegations of serious offences to the service police. It removes an existing limitation where a commanding officer is obliged to report only a suspected schedule 2 offence committed by someone under their command. Under clause 17, where a commanding officer becomes aware that a serious offence may have been committed by any
“person subject to service law”
they must promptly refer the matter to the service police. However, the duty does not apply if the commanding officer reasonably believes that the service police or Defence Serious Crime Unit is aware of the matter. This is not a new process but an improvement to the existing duty, which will ensure that all serious allegations, including of sexual offences, are reported to the service police as promptly as possible. I commend clause 17 to the Committee.
David Reed
I welcome the clause, which seems a sensible and practical strengthening of the duty of commanding officers to report serious offences. The Minister, as a former commanding officer, will have experienced this duty at first hand, so I respect his judgment and expertise on the matter.
It is right that responsibility should apply wherever a commanding officer becomes aware of allegations concerning any person subject to service law, not only those within the officer’s direct chain of command. A broader duty will help to ensure that serious matters are not missed simply because of the structure of a unit or the form of command. At the same time, the safeguards in subsection (4), which mean that no further report is needed where the service police or tri-service serious crime unit is already aware, is a sensible way to avoid duplication and unnecessary bureaucracy. Taken together, the clause is a balanced reform that strengthens accountability, improves consistency and supports the proper investigation of serious offences across the services.
Al Carns
Commanding officers should always report an issue if they see one. With this change, they will have to and will be held to account.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 17 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 18
Summary hearings: punishments available to commanding officers
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Al Carns
Clause 18 gives a commanding officer the power to award a punishment of service detention to a
“corporal, bombardier, lance sergeant or lance corporal of Horse in any of His Majesty’s military forces”.
Those are OR-4 ranks, according to the NATO military rank codes. The power may be used only by commanding officers with extended powers at summary hearing. Currently, commanding officers in the Army and the Royal Air Force Regiment cannot impose service detention on an OR-4 rank, whereas those in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force can. This variation in powers risks delay and unnecessary cost to the service justice system through trials potentially being heard at the court martial rather than being retained for summary hearing.
Allowing service detention to be imposed at summary hearing on corporals in the Army and the Royal Air Force Regiment is also in line with the operational reality that our military capabilities are becoming more integrated and joint. It is therefore increasingly likely that OR-4s from across the armed forces will be jointly deployed or even in joint units. As a result, it is more likely that commanding officers may face situations in which OR-4s from different services are defendants at summary hearing in a single case or in linked cases.
Clause 19 will give a commanding officer the power to impose a deprivation order in combination with a punishment of service detention, forfeiture of seniority or reduction in rank or disrating. Such punishments are used in more serious cases seen at summary hearings. At present, a commanding officer can impose a deprivation order only alongside a fine or “minor punishment” such as an admonition. Where a charge has been proven at summary hearing or a conviction obtained in a service court, they can be used to deprive the offender of any rights to certain property—this is property that has been lawfully seized from an offender or was in the offender’s possession or control when apprehended or charged with an offence. That might be, for example, tools used to commit the offence, offensive weapons or controlled drugs. In the more serious cases that might be dealt with at summary hearing, clause 19 will enable commanding officers to impose punishments that are just and proportionate and that protect the public and other service persons—for example, so that the property cannot be used again to commit the same or similar offences.
David Reed
We welcome clauses 18 and 19 on summary hearings and deprivation orders with the punishments available to commanding officers. They represent a serious aim and a proportionate update to the summary hearing powers available to commanding officers. Clause 18 would promote greater consistency across the services, by enabling service detention to be imposed on corporals, as the Minister said, and equivalent ranks, bringing the Army and the Royal Air Force Regiment into closer alignment with arrangements already in place elsewhere.
Clause 19 is likewise a practical step forward, as we heard in some of the evidence sessions. Permitting a deprivation order to be imposed alongside more serious summary punishments would give commanding officers a broader and more flexible set of options, while keeping matters within the summary system. That should help to ensure that sanctions are better tailored to the offence and the circumstances of the individual case. Taken together, the provisions enhance fairness, consistency and operational effectiveness, and we are pleased to support them.
Dr Shastri-Hurst
I welcome the clause. Will the Minister set out how there will be consistency in the use of these powers by commanding officers, to ensure that there is equality of justice across the board?
Al Carns
As someone goes across the single services and joint staff colleges, there will be different sections where they are trained on administering justice and the rights of a commanding officer. Importantly, there will be joint standing procedures produced around the clause, which everyone who becomes a commanding officer will have to read and ensure that they adhere to.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 18 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 19 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 20
Qualification for membership of the Court Martial
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 9, in clause 20, page 34, line 27, at end insert “or
(iii) a retired holder of such a rank.”
This amendment would add retired officers to those qualified for membership of the Court Martial.
Dr Shastri-Hurst
I welcome the hon. Member’s intervention. If he is suggesting that we should look at going wider than the confines of this specific amendment, I would welcome that conversation. It is about increasing the flexibility and agility of the court martial system so that it reflects the challenges for those who currently serve in uniform.
Dr Shastri-Hurst
The Minister is right to challenge me on the case that I am making. It is about competing challenges facing those in senior rank in the armed forces. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford gave the example of colonels or above. We have heard of very senior officers being brought before a court martial in cases that may involve, for instance, continuity of education allowance. These are senior individuals who then take out other senior individuals. They are often in a fairly small pool and have perhaps worked closely with one another during their service, but they also have increasing demands, given the global instability that we are currently facing.
It therefore makes logical sense to widen that pool and take the pressure off the shoulders of those who have operational responsibilities by allowing those who have served in the past, and hold those ranks by virtue of their service, to sit within the court martial system and increase capacity. I am not suggesting that there is an inefficiency in the service—everybody involved is doing the best job they can. It is about flexing resources so that they are used most appropriately to deliver the outcomes that we need not only from a national security and defence perspective, but to maintain the integrity and speed with which service justice is administered.
There is also a broader strategic point that we must not overlook, and it touches on the Minister’s point. We often speak about the importance of a whole-force concept and the idea that national defence is about not simply those currently in uniform but a wider ecosystem of reserve capability, which we will come on to later. It is also about veterans, institutional memory and those who can bring expertise from their time in service. We are, quite rightly, investing in the reserve forces. We are also increasingly recognising the value of civilian expertise in a variety of fields, such as cyber-intelligence or technology. In many respects, we are trying to build a much more flexible and adaptive defence structure, and yet, when it comes to the service justice system, we have not always applied the same logic with equal measure or consistency. We have in effect treated participation as something that must be narrowly confined to serving personnel, even when highly experienced retired officers could make a valuable contribution.
Sarah Bool
If there is one phrase my father always says to me, it is “Sarah, you can’t teach experience.” We have talked about bringing retired officers back into the justice system; this is a very good example of what we can do to call on their experience. With jury service and jury trials, we try to get a range of experience from all types of peers. I know that there is an argument to say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but we want to streamline and enhance our justice system to make it as effective as possible. I support amendment 9.
Al Carns
I thank the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford for tabling amendment 9, which seeks to add retired officers to those who are qualified for court martial membership. However, I believe that the amendment is unnecessary and most likely counterproductive.
The first argument made was about capacity and the lack of senior officers to sit on courts martial and hold people to account. As the Committee knows, we keep those things under constant review. The right hon. Member mentioned a case from several years ago that highlighted a lack of capacity to charge senior members. We pushed through secondary legislation in 2024 to amend two of the armed forces court martial rules so that if a defendant was at one star or above, the president of the board would be at one-star level; they did not need to be of higher rank. That was a significant change.
As for lack of capacity, I will throw out a question to the Committee: how many one-stars do we have in the military? We actually have 200 one-stars—let that sink in—and that does not include the reserves. There is no capacity issue here.
Secondly, the amendment could be counterproductive, because it is vital that the board members have up-to-date knowledge and real-time experience of the latest single-service policies. I say that from experience, because sentencing at court martial fulfils a number of purposes, including punishment, maintenance, discipline and deterrence.
Al Carns
As the hon. Member will know, trying to speak to people about whether they know other people is exceptionally difficult. Trying to capture that in a data record would be even more difficult. The 200 officers in service at the moment do not include the reservist pool, which is quite large—and that is just one-stars, not two-stars, three-stars or four-stars, so the pool is actually far larger.
I will go back to the purpose of sentencing at court martial, because it is an important point. As I say, it includes punishment, maintenance, discipline and deterrence. It must also take into account the best interests of the service and the maintenance of operational effectiveness. I completely agree that experience cannot be taught, but sometimes experience can wane over time. An appreciation of the relevant factors comes with experience, but also with the responsibilities of rank, as the veterans community will understand, and with the exercise of leadership and command over others. In some cases, that will not come with the most up-to-date operational context, which could cause an issue on the court martial board.
David Reed
We want to strengthen the Bill by working with the Government and taking a collaborative approach. Having a shared reality, in any aspect of life, is massively important. Among Opposition Members, there is alignment on the shared reality that we heard about, when we went down to Portsmouth, from the people we empower to run the service justice system. Does the Minister know of any of the cracks or weaknesses, as we heard about on our visit? Does he acknowledge that there may be issues to address?
Al Carns
Listening to evidence and acting on it is critical. Understanding the context in which it sits is equally important. Did that individual know that there are 200 one-stars within defence? Did they have the authority and responsibility to allocate individuals in a short, timely and effective manner to a court martial board? Probably not. The problem is not capacity. It is perhaps that the Defence Serious Crime Command needs greater authorities and programming to pool individuals in a timely and effective manner to sit on a court martial board and deliver justice.
Mr Francois
This is not a criticism of the Minister, because no doubt he had other important things to do, but he was not on that visit, as I recall. As Her late Majesty once said, recollections may vary, but this was a point raised with us by the people presenting to us on the operation of the system. We did not invent it. They made the point quite strongly that, for instance, if people had been on staff courses together—let us say that they had done the Royal College of Defence Studies course for a year together—that would sometimes rule them out. I must make the point to the Minister that we have not fabricated this; it is a problem that was raised with us by the experts who actually deal with the process day to day.
Al Carns
In no way, shape or form am I suggesting that this was fabricated, made up or a lie. What I am trying to say is that context is important. The statistics show that there are 200 one-stars in regular service, not including the reserve. That is a large pool of individuals, which reduces the right hon. Member’s argument about capacity. He talked about people knowing each other, but there are clear protocols in place to ensure that when the board is pulled together, the range of individuals on it is as broad as it is wide, and that there is at least one woman and one man on it. I think that that is adequate. The 2024 secondary legislation that amended the rules was brought in specifically in response to the case that was mentioned during the Committee’s visit—
North Atlantic Submarine Activity
Al Carns Excerpts(2 days, 12 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish to make a statement on north Atlantic activity. Let me begin by thanking the many members of our armed forces who are currently deployed in over 30 operations across the globe. Their efforts are often unseen by the British people, but they are always appreciated. They defend the very freedoms that we enjoy.
Last week, my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary revealed details of one such operation. While the focus of many has been drawn to the middle east, UK armed forces, in partnership with our allies, have been deployed to deter the increased Russian activity that we have witnessed in the Atlantic. The specific operation involved a Russian Akula-class submarine and a concurrent deployment of two specialist submarines from GUGI—Russia’s main directorate of deep-sea research.
Last November, the Defence Secretary outlined to the House how GUGI vessels, including the spy ship Yantar, are directed by President Putin to engage in hybrid warfare activities against the UK and its allies, specifically around critical undersea infrastructure. Their mission is to survey pipelines and cables during peacetime and then potentially, if required, sabotage them in conflict.
In response to the Russian subsurface activity, the Defence Secretary deployed a Royal Navy warship and a Royal Air Force P8 aircraft alongside allies and partners to ensure that the Russian vessel was monitored during every phase of the operation. The Akula subsequently retreated home, having been closely tracked throughout, and we continued to monitor the two GUGI submarines when they were in and around UK waters and, of course, beyond. Our armed forces left them in no doubt that they were being monitored, that their movements were not covert as planned, and that their attempted secret operation had been exposed. The two GUGI submarines have now left UK waters and headed back north, and this operation, which lasted more than a month, has now concluded.
In often treacherous conditions, our pilots racked up over 450 flying hours and our frigates sailed several thousand nautical miles. Some 500 British personnel were involved in the response. I know that the whole House will join me in paying tribute to every single person involved.
We exposed this military operation undertaken by Russia for three key reasons: first, to send a message to Putin that he failed to remain covert, and that any attempt to damage critical undersea infrastructure will not be tolerated and cannot be denied; secondly, to demonstrate that even with significant capabilities and personnel deployed in the middle east, we will always do what is necessary to protect our homeland; and thirdly, to highlight a significant operation carried out by our armed forces, who met this challenge with the characteristic determination and professionalism that we all know too well.
This operation reminds us why the seabed matters, especially for the island nation of Britain: it connects us to everything, and that connection is sustained beneath our waters without interruption through a vast network of cables and pipelines on which much of our way of life relies—much of the gas that heats our homes, 99% of international telecoms and data traffic, and trillions of pounds of global trade each day. Because the seabed matters to us, it is a prime target for our adversaries.
The UK’s undersea network is highly resilient, but the threats are increasing, so we are stepping up our action to defend it, including by providing an extra £100 million for our vital P8 submarine-hunting aircraft; launching our Atlantic Bastion programme to combine the latest autonomous technologies with the best warships and aircraft to create a British-built hybrid naval force; and making the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the cold war, after years of hollowing-out and underfunding by various Governments. The threat is clear, and our resolve to confront it is absolute. That is why this year we are deploying our carrier group where it is most needed—the north Atlantic and the High North—and supporting NATO’s new mission, Arctic Sentry.
I want to put on the record our thanks to our allies, with whom we have co-operated closely throughout this operation, including Norway. Our shared commitment to confront Russian aggression in the north Atlantic is at the heart of our Lunna House agreement, and together we are now building a combined fleet of new submarine-hunting frigates and new uncrewed systems.
Let me say a few words on Ukraine, from where I returned just last week. Today, two wars on two continents are being fought at the very same time. Putin wants us distracted while he steps up strikes on Ukraine relentlessly, and indeed at enormous scale, with around 7,000 attacks a day on the front line and 55,000 drone and missile strikes last year alone. We must always remember our duty to Ukraine and recognise that Russian aggression is growing across Europe once again.
Let me finish where I began, with praise for our people. We have the very finest armed forces that a nation could hope for. They are second to none. As I speak, we have personnel deployed across every domain, every moment of the day, in every part of the world. They are in constant confrontation with our adversaries, from the depths of the seabed to the reaches of space. When a crisis erupts, as it has done in the middle east, I understand people questioning why all UK military assets and personnel have not been sent to deal with it. But as demands on defence rise, we must deploy our resources to best effect across multiple priorities.
Because of our increase in defence investment, we will be able to call on more and more resources in the coming years. As we defend our interests and partners in the middle east, we will tackle increasing threats in the High North. We will stand with Ukraine. We will meet our NATO obligations. Above all, we will always fulfil the first duty of government: to protect our homeland and keep the British people safe. I commend this statement to the House.
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. With all eyes on the middle east, let us not forget that Russia remains the most acute, persistent and active threat to the United Kingdom. Putin’s goal of conquering Ukraine is unchanged, and that continues to place our entire European continent in jeopardy. His ongoing nefarious activity, most notably in our own territorial waters, should be a stark wake-up call. We must start acting on the threats that are visible and right in front of us.
We may be critical of the Government’s tortoise-like approach to giving defence what it needs—slow and steady does not win this race, and it certainly does not keep us safe—but what does unite us is the full-throated support for the men and women of the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force, who keep the wolf at bay in these dangerous times. I pay particular tribute to all those who are serving in the middle east at the moment, those who served in recent Atlantic operations, and especially those who crew our continuous at-sea deterrent patrols, 24/7, 365 days a year, every year.
When the Secretary of State came to this House last year to highlight the actions of the Russian spy vessel Yantar, he told Putin:
“we see you, we know what you are doing, and we will not shy away from robust action”—[Official Report, 22 January 2025; Vol. 760, c. 1016.]
That was the right message, but at some point simply saying “We see you” is not enough. Words must be backed by action.
This is not just a question of traditional defence. There is a growing and under-appreciated threat to our national resilience and our way of life. Just 65 undersea cables carry 99% of global communication, and a far smaller number of pipelines and interconnectors link our gas and electricity supplies to others. Can the Minister guarantee that there are no hostile devices, kinetic or otherwise, on, near or underneath any of those cables, pipelines or interconnectors? The reality is that he cannot. The Secretary of State said with confidence that there was no sabotage on this occasion, but what of the many other incidents in UK waters—in the Baltic, in the cables running to North America, west of the British Isles, where monitoring capacity is limited at best?
The truth is that we do not fully know how secure our critical underwater infrastructure is. That is why we are dismayed that the much-touted defence readiness Bill has been delayed by a full year. Worse still, at a time that demands cross-party unity, it was deeply disappointing to hear the Prime Minister flatly reject the Leader of the Opposition’s offer of greater engagement earlier today. That was the wrong call.
On Russia’s shadow fleet, when the Prime Minister announced on 25 March that British forces would be permitted to board sanctioned vessels transiting UK waters, we rightly supported that decision. The Chief of the Defence Staff, when asked at the recent London Defence Conference, said plainly, “We are ready”. Yet no action has been taken. We set a red line, and we have watched Russia repeatedly cross it. Worse, Russian military vessels are now accompanying shadow fleet ships, deliberately escalating the situation. This is deterrence in reverse.
The Minister and I know better than anyone else in this Chamber the very real challenges of boarding vessels at sea, and the serious legal questions surrounding what happens to a ship and its crew once the decision to seize them is made. These are the same challenges that I faced while serving in the Royal Marines and boarding pirate vessels off the coast of Somalia. Back then, those legal and logistical hurdles were just as real, but it was clear that the global economy was being directly impacted by piracy and that we had to act, so we found a lawful way to do so. Why can we not do that now, when the situation is far more grave?
It has been reported that the Attorney General has denied the legal basis for interdiction. If that is the case, let me ask the Minister this directly: what is the Government’s current position? Can he tell the House how many sanctioned vessels have transited UK waters unchecked? Russia is brazenly moving military supplies through our waters. That must be met with robust action, not statements.
Today’s statement is a start, but only a start. It is clear that the Government are not moving fast enough to deter our adversaries. Deterrence requires capability, and capability requires funding. I know that the Minister has not had sight of the defence investment plan, but can he at least tell the country when it will be published? Seven months delayed, it is simply becoming a farce. Does he agree with the Conservatives and the Defence Committee that the Government must commit to spending 3% of GDP on defence within this Parliament, not the next?
The Conservatives have already identified savings that would deliver over £20 billion in additional defence spending. We want to go further, and we renew our offer to work across the aisle to find savings. The choice is simple: if we are serious about deterring Russia and other hostile states from the High North or our overseas bases, we must reach 3% on defence now, not later, and give our armed forces the resources they need to keep us safe.
Al Carns
We can agree that no sabotage took place this time from the Russian sub-surface activity off the coast of the UK. We have backed our words with action when it comes to deterring Russia, with £4.5 billion in UK military support to Ukraine last year and a total of £21.8 billion. The Ukraine defence contact group just raised an astonishing $45 billion to buy weapons, munitions and capability for the Ukrainians. The Ministry of Defence stands ready to board any vessels that meet the criteria—there is a lot of misinformation out there. Having very expensive frigates escorting every vessel at such range is putting significant demands on the Russian fleet and degrading its capabilities. Let me add that we have spent £5 billion extra this year alone on the defence budget, and by 2028-29 we will spend around £73 billion on it.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his statement and the Defence Secretary for his public statement, which have increased public awareness about the growing threats that our nation faces. On behalf of the Defence Committee, I pay tribute to all our armed forces personnel involved in disrupting the Russian activity around our critical undersea infrastructure. This incident underscores the growing threat that Russia poses, and the need to increase defence investment now and finally to publish the defence investment plan.
Turning to the incident itself, I take on board the Minister’s words, but it has been widely reported, including publicly at the London defence conference, that Putin had explosives planted on our undersea cables. For the record, can he confirm whether Russians were involved in either sabotage or precursors to sabotage on or around our undersea cables?
Al Carns
The reality is that Russia failed on this occasion, and it failed because we exposed its activity, which meant that there was no way, shape or form that it could deny its activity in the first place. I was at the London defence conference and I heard certain discussions about undersea cables. I can confirm that no sabotage took place this time, but the Russians put a lot of effort into mapping and understanding our undersea critical national infrastructure, and we will do everything to map, track and expose it, should it take place.
Al Carns
I am glad that the Government took a defensive stance on Iran. We were clear that we did not have a legal mandate, there was not a plan and there was no clear end state, and if we are going to put people in harm’s way, we need those three things before we can do so.
While the defence investment plan not has not arrived yet, five classes of ship or submarine are on order or being built, including 13 frigates on order—eight Type 26s and five Type 31s—which is a collaborative effort to ensure that our maritime capability is fit for purpose as threats diversify and increase, in particular in the High North. We are learning the lessons from Ukraine and ensuring that we have the best autonomous capability, and our Atlantic Bastion platform is moving in the right direction. We have worked exceptionally hard, and the Foreign Office is pushing as well, to sanction thousands of Russian individuals, companies and, of course, vessels, to reduce the illegal flow of resource back into Russia, which is funding the illegal and brutal war waged by Putin on Ukraine.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for his statement. GUGI has been at work since the 1960s, as I understand it; it has been doing extensive mapping for quite some time. In our report on subsea cables, the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy came up with a great many recommendations, with which he will be more than familiar. When it comes to the defence investment plan, may I draw his focus to our recommendation on a sovereign capability in repair ships? Will he promise to look at that or agree to meet me to discuss it?
Al Carns
I thank my hon. Friend for his really focused question. We have been watching the underwater research programme for years now. We understand exactly what they are up to and why they are up to it. They understand some of the vulnerabilities—I would not say weaknesses—in the west, and they are trying to identify and, indeed, threaten them at a point in time of their choosing. I recognise the report’s recommendation on a sovereign capability to fix cables. We are working with industry and partners, and of course we have a multitude of capabilities within defence that can support the types of operations that may need to take place should anything happen to our undersea cables.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I am delighted that the Minister has made this statement, because I have raised this issue a number of times in this place. My constituency looks directly at the High North, and it is off the coast of my constituency that this Russian activity took place—let us make no mistake about it. My constituents find it deeply worrying.
As the Minister himself has admitted, we have only so many surface ships. They are based mostly in Devonport and Portsmouth. The sailing time from the south of England to Orkney, Shetland or my constituency is a matter of days, and we have to move very fast in this situation with Russia. Let us remember history: before the first world war, Winston Churchill and others took the decision to relocate part of the fleet to Invergordon and to Scapa Flow in the Orkneys. Are we quite certain that we are basing the surface ships that we have—we hope we will have more—in the position where they need to be to keep a close eye on the High North and protect our vital strategic interests?
Al Carns
I thank the hon. Member for a really focused question. Part of this problem set is about looking at early warning when systems appear, either in our waters or close to our waters, or indeed close to any critical national infrastructure. That is a multi-domain operation, ranging from space all the way down to other intelligence assets, which gives us very early warning of what is happening, where, when and why, and allows us to pre-position capabilities to meet them, or to ensure that we can understand exactly what they are up to and therefore put in an operation to deter that if required.
Derek Twigg (Widnes and Halewood) (Lab)
I was in Latvia at the weekend, where they very much know what the threat is from Putin and the Russians. I thank the Minister for his statement and the helpful way in which this has been described in public. It is clear that we need to do a lot more to explain to the British public what the threat is from the Russians and how it is getting worse—not least if we are to increase defence expenditure, as I have been advocating in this place for some time, and tough decisions have to be made. We need to have a better programme of education and information to demonstrate how serious a threat Putin and the Russians are to the security of this country.
Al Carns
I completely agree. A more effective and better understood communication and education plan about what those threats really mean to the population is essential. If I were to turn around to the population and say that there was a cyber-attack on Jaguar Land Rover, people in and around Jaguar Land Rover would be affected and would take notice. If I were to say that the cost of the attack on Jaguar Land Rover was half that of lifting the two-child benefit cap, that would resonate far more widely across the nation. If I were to say that cyber-attacks cost more than £10 billion last year alone, and that the MOD has seen a 50% increase in hostile state attacks, that would start to resonate. We need to ensure that we continue to communicate that narrative in the easiest way, but also that it resonates with every section of society. I could not agree more with my hon. Friend.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Over decades, the backbone of our ability to detect Russian submarines has been provided by our towed array patrol ships, from Leander right the way through to our increasingly decrepit Type 23. Does the Minister agree that the logic of what he has said, given that the threat has increased significantly over the past several months and over the past couple of years, is that we should be looking again at the orders for eight Type 26s with 2087 towed array on the back of them, and upgrade that to deal with the threat that we now face? Where we are now is not where we were a few short years ago, when that order book for eight Type 26s was constructed.
Al Carns
I recognise the right hon. Member’s experience in this space. I would say that eight Type 26 towed array frigates is the right level. I would like to see our ability to cover the ocean expanded through the use of autonomy and some of the lessons that we have learned from Ukraine. That is why I talk about the Atlantic Bastion; major capability platforms matched with mass uncrewed systems will provide us with a far more effective way to find, deter and neutralise subsurface threats in the future.
Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)
I join the Minister in thanking our armed forces personnel who identified this threat and allowed us to take the action he has described. I note that real-terms defence spending fell by 22% in the eight years or so prior to 2017. It is this Government that are turning that around with fresh investment and more co-operation with the sector. We know that our undersea infrastructure is vulnerable to a great many threats and, as we face threats on a number of different fronts, we must not lose sight of that. We have a job, however, to explain to the British public why we need this investment. Can I encourage him, when or if we face a similar threat in the future, to make sure that the public understand that? It is a choice that might mean that we do not have the opportunity to spend in other areas of public life.
Al Carns
We have a job to ensure that we communicate with and educate the population on the whole variety of threats, whether it is the threat posed by Russia in Ukraine or the threat emanating from the High North that comes into the Atlantic. A lot of people say that we do not have a frontline with the Russians. The reality is that we do; it sits in the north Atlantic. But those are not the only threats. There are also threats in the influence space and, of course, in cyber-space, which we must compete with while also responding to contingency operations in the middle east, as hon. Members have seen us do over the last seven weeks.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
The Prime Minister said, I think about three weeks ago, that the Royal Navy would go after sanctioned Russian tankers. Yet, if the press reports are to be believed, those very same sanctioned Russian tankers have sailed with impunity through the English channel. My question is this: why have we not done anything? Is there some legal bar, or is there a practical bar when it comes to Royal Navy resources to mount interdiction operations in the English channel?
Al Carns
I have a lot of experience, as does the shadow Minister, in boarding ships. The MOD is absolutely ready to go, but we must ensure that those ships meet certain criteria; as soon as they do, they will be boarded and deterred.
Chris Webb (Blackpool South) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that, while the Government rightly continue to defend our people, interests and allies in the middle east, we must never lose sight of the war in Europe and our determination to always stand with Ukraine during this conflict?
Al Carns
I completely agree, and the key phrase is “never lose sight”. There have been more than a million casualties—Russia has taken more casualties than America took in the entire second world war—55,000 drones and missiles have been fired in the last year, thousands of tanks have been destroyed, and cities have been plunged into poverty, into the cold, with no lights and no hospital services across an entire nation. Why? All to support an individual’s ambition to rewrite history and rewrite international borders through the use of brutal force. Unacceptable.
Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)
Back in February, former Royal Navy officers and other expert witnesses warned the Defence Committee that although tapping an undersea cable is very difficult, they are vulnerable to sabotage, and more than three quarters of the UK’s natural gas is imported via undersea pipelines from Norway. Given Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, does the UK not need to press ahead faster with the Atlantic Bastion initiative? In light of recent defence budget pressures, can the Minister confirm whether funding levels are adequate to maintain long-term submarine detection and tracking capabilities?
Al Carns
I respect the hon. Member’s insight into this issue, especially given his constituency. Atlantic Bastion is moving forward fast; we are using some of the requirements and the needs in the middle east to see what we can test and trial. We are pushing forward as fast as we can. Taking the lessons from Ukraine and ensuring that they are inculcated into what we are doing in the slightly rougher and bigger seas in the north Atlantic is an exceptional challenge, but we are moving forward as fast as we can to do it. When combined with our Type 26 fleet, between us, Norway and hopefully others we will have one of the most effective counter-submarine fleets in the world.
Alan Strickland (Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor) (Lab)
It was a privilege recently to spend a week at Camp Viking with our Royal Marines, seeing at first hand the work they are doing to defend the High North. Does the Minister agree that it is clear strategically that the security of the High North and of the north Atlantic are intrinsically linked because of the sea lanes, the data cables and the presence of the Russian northern fleet around the Kola peninsula? Alongside the carrier group, can he set out what else we will be doing as a nation to protect the Arctic and our interests and allied interests there, not only to diminish and constrain Putin’s war machine, but to protect access to the north Atlantic?
Al Carns
As my hon. Friend will know, we have the carrier group deploying up there. That will be a NATO exercise with a multitude of different assets attached, running through all sorts of mission rehearsals and deterrent operations. On top of that, we have had international engagement with our joint expeditionary force partners, and that will increase over time—and of course we have 1,500 exceptionally effective Marines deployed in the High North, protecting our NATO flank and our allies and partners.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
Can we be absolutely clear from this statement, which I very much commend for its candour and bluntness, that these two GUGI submarines have now left UK waters? They were carrying out hostile acts in UK waters, and I cannot believe that many people in the MOD are happy with the limp-wristed response of the rest of the Government to this episode. Has the ambassador been summoned for a public dressing down? Have we expelled any Russian diplomats in retaliation? Are we making it clear to our Russian adversaries that if they mess in our territorial waters, we will demand their immediate surrender, and that they should surface and be escorted to a British port or we will open fire, or at least fire a warning shot? Just saying, “We see you,” is not going to be enough. That is not going to bother President Putin one jot, and he will carry on doing exactly what he is doing until we are prepared to escalate this and show that we are prepared to deter what he is doing to our country.
Al Carns
I can confirm that the submarines were not within the 12 nautical miles of UK territorial waters, and the hon. Member will know that the rules of the sea have all sorts of rules and regulations around the use of force. We have been watching and observing those vessels, and calling this out and telling the world exactly what they are up to actually reduces their ability to do something and then deny it and blame it on someone else, which in itself is probably the most effective deterrence that we have done.
Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)
While the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) talks down our Royal Navy, I think the House is today united in praising it for its work to deter Russian activity at deep sea. Does my hon. and gallant Friend agree that, through Atlantic Bastion and the emerging defence SMEs, defence companies should get the finance they need to be able to thrive and protect our deep-sea assets?
Al Carns
I know that my hon. Friend is exceptionally passionate about this, as am I. I fully support our Royal Navy activity in the High North, and I also expect that as we move forward with big capability procurements, SMEs will get a fair showing to ensure that we can capitalise on the entrepreneurial spirit that is driving what is a technological revolution in Ukraine. We have done thousands of contracts, and there will be thousands more, but we also have a really difficult challenge on our hands. New technology in Ukraine is driving change faster than ever before. Capabilities that were ordered previously may have to have their roles changed or adapted. Indeed, some of the capability we have now is outdated and needs to be replaced. That complexity is why the defence investment plan is taking time, but it will come, and when it does, it will be fantastic.
Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)
I hope to give the Minister a focused question. He has rightly laid out the importance of the data cables to the UK as an island, and also highlighted Russia’s continued activity over many decades. The frigates that we have in the Royal Navy are really the centrepiece of the anti-submarine war, so my short, focused question is: how many frigates could we put to sea tomorrow?
Al Carns
Depending on the situation, we could put frigates to sea at any point in time. That comes down to the balance of risk around health and safety and operational readiness, depending on the threat.
Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)
Russia is in our seas and undermining our North sea cables. It is on social media spreading myths and disinformation. It is even in our politics: we must remember that the former Reform leader in Wales is currently serving time in prison for accepting Russian bribes. Members across the House recognise the ever-present threat that Russia poses to this country, but I am not sure that the public are always quite as aware of the scale and presence of Russia as it affects our society at every level. I thank the Minister for coming to the House today and updating us on what has been going on. It is really important that we expose what Russia is up to. Can I urge him to work with colleagues across Government to ensure that we continue to expose Russia wherever it is attacking us?
Al Carns
Yes, there is a physical threat from Russian submarines, Russian surface ships, bombers and the war in Ukraine, but there is actually a more subversive threat—one that is based on the influence on the hearts and minds of our nation and on the political divide of our nation. That is why we have seen members of some parties do over 10 years in prison because of their connections to the Russian regime. In some of those areas, I and my ministerial colleagues are now working exceptionally hard to quantify what that threat looks like from a cyber and influence perspective, and then to put measures in place to neutralise it, so that democracy can thrive.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
I join the hon. and gallant Minister in paying tribute to our armed forces. After the Defence Secretary gave a press conference calling out this operation, Russia said that it posed no threat to undersea infrastructure. I asked this question when the Minister responded to an urgent question back in November after lasers were fired at RAF pilots by Russia: why has the Russian ambassador not been summoned by the Foreign Office, given this clear threat to our national security?
Al Carns
We regularly make clear to our Russian counterparts what they are up to and what is happening, and ensure that the severity of their activities is explained to them. The idea that Russia poses no threat to our critical national infrastructure is fundamentally wrong. The reason for Russia’s mapping it and trying to understand it is to find a gap, develop capabilities and, at a time of its choosing, perhaps use them. We acknowledge that we are watching. We have clear indicators and warnings, and I have complete assurance in our armed forces’ ability to deter it.
Charlie Dewhirst (Bridlington and The Wolds) (Con)
The Minister may be aware that the RAF’s investment in the P-8 submarine hunting programme was made in 2015, at a time when Russian activity in the north Atlantic was much less of a threat to the UK. I welcome the £100 million announced just now, but that is less than one third of the cost of one of those aircraft, so can I ask him what assessment he has made of the P-8 submarine hunting capability in the light of the increased Russian activity? Will he assure the House that he will go further if the RAF needs him to?
Al Carns
That is a fantastic question. The Nimrod capability was taken out of service many years ago. The P-8 programme is a huge success. Many other allies and partners use those same aircraft. When we combine that with some of the best frigates and the best Navy personnel, and with our subsurface capability, that multi-domain spectrum of finding submarines and tracking them is second to none. A £100 million investment has gone into the P-8 programme. Of course we will ensure that that money is spent wisely on maintenance, and other gaps if required, and we will spend more if there are issues with the P-8 programme in the future. It is the frontline of our deterrence and indicator network.
Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
This incident highlights the need to move at pace to scale up our hybrid naval capabilities, so will the Minister commit to do so, drawing on the strengths of north-east industry?
Al Carns
A country without a navy has destroyed, or rendered irrelevant, one of the biggest fleets in the world, the Black sea fleet. The lessons that we can learn from the hybrid activity in Ukraine are some of the most important ones for our island nation, and we will ensure that they are inculcated and integrated into our major capability platforms to ensure that we have a high-low mix of hardware and sophisticated software combined into fantastic high-end systems such as the Type 26 frigate.
Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)
First, I pay tribute to the dedication and bravery of our armed forces, and in particular to the many members of our armed forces involved in this operation who are based at RAF Lossiemouth in the Poseidon fleet, and those in the Typhoons who provide quick reaction alert from Lossiemouth. They are on the frontline in our defensive operations and in protecting the integrity of our defence against Russia.
The point that the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) made about the threat of Russian vessels in the north Atlantic growing is really important. There is an advantage to basing more vessels in the north of these isles, and there are plenty of ports around Scotland that could accommodate that. Will the Minister give that serious consideration?
Al Carns
We have a multitude of indicators and warnings that highlight when threats come into our areas of interest. When they do, we make sure that we mobilise capability to meet and deter that threat. I think all parties realise the absolute centrality of Scotland within our defensive network, through its geographical position and the access and insight it gives us to the High North, which is critical to our defence.
Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
Building on the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes and Halewood (Derek Twigg), I commend my hon. and gallant Friend on his statement and encourage him to do all he can to continue to raise awareness of the subversive actions of Russia, whether in the grey zone or through hybrid activities. Does he agree that the recent success of our armed forces in the north Atlantic rebuffs the Leader of the Opposition’s recent remarks—which she has still failed to apologise for—about our armed forces simply “hanging around”? What we have seen is that, whether at sea, in the air or on land, our armed forces work day in, day out to keep our homeland safe, and we should be proud of all they do.
Al Carns
We have seen billions of pounds-worth of cyber-attacks in the UK and a 30% increase in Russian surface and subsurface capability in the High North. We have seen tactics and training cross-pollinated between Russia and Ukraine, and now Iran, across 10 different countries, with low and slow-flying drones and high-end ballistic missiles mixed into a very effective strike programme. On the other side, we have also seen the capabilities from Ukraine deploying into the middle east to defend against those very same tactics. It is clear for everyone to see that there are countries working together to undermine the west, not just in the physical domain, but in the cyber and influence domains. The quicker we push back against that, the better.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
It is clear that under the current leadership, the US is no longer a reliable ally, threatening European colleagues and Commonwealth nations and undermining the very purpose of NATO. As we face increasing threats from Russia, we are reliant on the US for our nuclear deterrent, for our kit and for technology. Will the Minister share his plans to increase the prioritisation of British and European partners’ equipment, so that we can have some independence from the US and also boost our domestic market?
Al Carns
We have a multitude of allies and partners. The US has been a partner for the last 20 years and will continue to be so for some time to come. We share a plethora of different capabilities and have done so for the last 20 years. We also do the same with our European allies. As the hon. Member will know, the Lunna House agreement with Norway has resulted in a frigate deal. Our Trinity House deal with the Germans and, of course, our capability and co-operation with Poland have resulted in millions of pounds of investment, but also thousands of skilled jobs, from Scotland and Cornwall to Ireland and Wales.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for his statement. I pay tribute to our incredibly brave naval personnel for the important work they do, often in difficult weather conditions, to keep us all safe. It strikes me that Harlow is quite a way from the Arctic circle and that the Arctic circle is considerably colder than Harlow, particularly at this time of year. Would he touch on the unique challenges that our naval fleet face in those conditions? Although it is hugely important that we support NATO with its Arctic Sentry mission, would he reflect on the challenges and reassure me and my constituents that our naval fleet are prepared for those challenges?
Al Carns
I am in no doubt, and am absolutely clear, that we have one of the best navies in the world. I have served in the Royal Navy for 24 years as a member of His Majesty’s Royal Marines. Operating in the High North is exceptionally difficult. I have only done a little bit of it in my time on the carrier strike group as the chief of staff, but when you are in Sea State 9 on a pointy frigate, yes, you need to have some mettle to continue doing your job, when it is day in, day out for weeks on end. What I can say is that the Royal Navy perseveres; it does a fantastic job. When that is combined with our P-8s in the sky and, of course, the silent service underneath the waves, I have no doubt that our nation is very well protected.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
The Minister may recall that back in November when we discussed the Yantar, I asked him about the circumstances under which the fleet contingency group would be given the green light to conduct a maritime interdiction operation. He responded that it would need to meet international law. I was pleased on 25 March when the Prime Minister put out a statement saying that the Royal Marines special forces would be given the opportunity to interdict Russian shadow fleet vessels, but subsequently, we have not seen any of that take place. The Minister mentioned that criteria would need to be met. There are 544 sanctioned Russian shadow fleet vessels. Can he confirm whether all of them—by virtue of being sanctioned—meet the criteria for being interdicted, or are there vessels in that list of 544 that are in scope, but have not yet transited through our waters?
Al Carns
As is absolutely clear, the maritime interdiction of a Russian-flagged vessel such as the Yantar is very different from one where the vessel either does not have a flag or changes its flag regularly. The criteria must be met to enable those boardings. The MOD is absolutely ready to go, but unfortunately I will not go through the detail here, because it may allow some of those vessels to put in place the mitigations that would reduce our ability to board them.
Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)
With the Russian navy now escorting shadow fleet vessels down through the English channel, could a mitigation or a blocker for interdicting one of those vessels be a naval vessel with them? Was it an error of judgment by the Government to put them on notice that we were about to start those interdictions?
Al Carns
We had already supported a US boarding of a sanctioned vessel and, of course, multiple other allies as well. Russian naval escorts do escort some of these vessels. When they do, that is also putting a considerable strain on the Russian fleet, which is relatively limited when combined with its subsurface capability, and this is having an effect. What I can say is that the MOD is absolutely ready to board any ship that meets the parameters, and will do so if that happens.
Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Reform)
I pay tribute to the Royal Navy and echo the point made by the Minister in respect of our brave personnel. I agree with him that we have the best Navy in the world—I just wish it were larger. I am unclear from what the Minister has said about whether we have had more than a narrative of what has happened over the last month and of our capabilities in respect of these events. What has actually changed in the Government’s planning with respect to defending our undersea infrastructure from Russia, in terms of either the disposition of our forces or procurement, perhaps? Also, he mentions the resilience of our undersea infrastructure. Can he tell the House a little about what plans we have to cope with an attack on undersea cables and how quickly we could recover from one?
Al Carns
It is a delight to see a Member from the hon. Member’s party sat in the Chamber during a statement on a defence subject—it is a first. I remind him of the capability that we have seen as this Russian operation takes place. The UK has deployed assets to map and track it, and then expose it. That, in fact, is one of the best deterrents, because no longer can Russia or indeed Putin claim that an operation or sabotage that took place was not them. That was the whole purpose of that operation, which has been fantastically conducted by the best Royal Navy in the world. Remember, it is not just the ship or the aircraft; a whole plethora of individuals—in fact, 500 people—sat behind this operation, conducting it, and it was successfully prosecuted.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
I would like to return to the issue of UK maritime services facilitating the export of Russian energy, which I raised in this Chamber three months ago. Does the Minister not see the irony that, at a time when we are all grappling with how we fund our own defence, the Government are still letting UK plc bankroll Putin’s war machine—a war machine that is mapping our infrastructure? What action do the Government plan to take to stop it?
Al Carns
We have taken some of the most extensive action on sanctions of any country, sanctioning thousands of individuals and enterprises, and we will continue to do so as long as that money is fuelled into the illegal and barbaric war in Ukraine.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
A recent Policy Exchange document entitled, “Closing the Back Door” highlighted that, as a result of the Irish Government freeloading on the UK and NATO, they were increasingly reliant on the UK for security, particularly regarding air defence and maritime security, resulting in an inability to protect their own airspace and territorial waters, including crucial transatlantic cables. That has created a back-door vulnerability for the UK and NATO. What discussions has the Minister had with the Irish Government to up their game and provide for some security measures? Does he have any concerns that a future Irish Government that included Sinn Féin could lead to any co-operation breaking down?
Al Carns
We need to accept that Ireland in itself is exceptionally close to the mainland and we therefore have shared security interests. The Prime Minister has had constructive conversations with his Irish counterparts to ensure that, where applicable, we share those resources and protect both Ireland and, of course, Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)
The Minister talked about Government investment to deter adversaries in the north Atlantic, the Atlantic Bastion programme, extra money for P-8 aircraft and the additional service vessels on order, but unless I missed it, he did not say anything about plans for the AUKUS submarines that are in development with the United States. Will he comment on the future of the AUKUS programme?
Al Carns
The AUKUS programme is not in question; it continues at full strength. It is a fantastic trilateral partnership between us, the Australians and the Americans.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
Given Northern Ireland’s geographical position, it occupies a geo-security location of increasing significance, particularly with regard to transatlantic undersea cables. I am disappointed, then, that there are still only five Royal Navy personnel based in Northern Ireland. Last month, there was a memorandum of understanding between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland on providing sea and naval cover for the entire British Isles. That is particularly important to the Republic, given that its cyber-economy relies on those cables. It has been reported in the press that that cover is being provided free of charge to the Republic of Ireland. Is that correct? Surely not.
Al Carns
Northern Ireland’s essential role in our transatlantic relationship, and in the security of our great isle, is not lost on me—nor indeed is the essential role that Northern Ireland played in world war two. If I can—if it is within the operational parameter—I will write back to the hon. and learned Gentleman with the details on the numbers in Northern Ireland. Any discussions taking place with another country, in the diplomatic space, usually involve bilateral benefits.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. and gallant Member for his statement—no one inside or outside this House doubts his commitment. The Chair of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy made a statement to the House about six weeks ago. I asked him then about the very issue that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) just mentioned. As the Minister is aware, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force protect not only the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but the Republic of Ireland. Pipelines and undersea cables go from the United Kingdom to the Republic of Ireland and then into the Atlantic ocean. Can the Minister confirm that Russian submarines have not been active in the soft underbelly of the Republic of Ireland, which is a back door to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
Al Carns
I will not go into specific detail on the geographical movement of submarines, but I can say that there are interdependencies between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Ireland and a multitude of other European nations in relation to undersea cables. We are working with our allies and partners, and will continue to do so, to ensure that those cables are absolutely protected and that, if any threat appears, it is mapped, tracked and deterred.
Armed Forces Bill (Third sitting)
Al Carns ExcerptsThursday 26th March 2026
(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Armed Forces Bill 2024-26 View all Armed Forces Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Select Committee Amendments as at 26 March 2026 - (26 Mar 2026)
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I wish to add some points to bolster the argument of my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford.
We were promised the DIP before Christmas, but right hon. and hon. Members do not need me to tell them that it is now the end of March and we still do not have it. It is all well and good talking about a 25% reduction in delivery costs and about improved military housing, but until those promises are reflected in a clear, costed defence investment plan, they will remain words, not guarantees.
That is precisely why my right hon. Friend’s amendment 17 is so important. It states that if the Government are serious about defence housing, the Defence Housing Service’s budget must be set out in the DIP. It would tie the rhetoric on forces housing, new helicopters and new military hardware to an actual budget line. If Ministers truly intend to deliver what they have promised, they should have no difficulty in writing it into a plan.
Let us be clear with our service personnel and their families. We welcome investment when it is real, but we will not pretend that an uncosted statement is the same as a funded commitment. Until the Government publish the defence investment plan and the DHS budget is there in black and white, this House is being asked to take it on trust. That is not good enough.
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I put on record my thanks to the DIO team, Natalie Elphicke Ross and the collective armed forces for helping us to design this well-thought-through and very effective defence housing strategy. I thank the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford for his amendment concerning the Defence Housing Service budget, and for his interest, as always, in the defence investment plan.
The defence housing strategy will be backed by £9 billion of funding to deliver a decade of renewal for defence family housing. Previously, military housing was subject to insufficient, stop-start funding that did not deliver value for money for the taxpayer or the improvements that service families deserve. I have lived in service family accommodation, as I am sure other hon. Members have. We have seen the oscillating budgets. We have seen, in some cases, the lack of value for money.
When this Government came in, one thing we said we would absolutely do was ensure that people can have safe, secure, dry homes to live in if their loved ones go overseas to protect the freedoms we enjoy. That is why we set out the defence housing strategy. We liaised with a plethora of individuals, from the families federations to housing associations, to ensure that we came up with a well-thought-through plan that is funded and looks at the medium and long term as well as the short term.
The Defence Housing Service budget will be clearly set out. It will account for its spending to Parliament via an annual report, so there will be accountability. As the Committee heard during the evidence sessions, there is nothing in the defence investment plan process that is stopping the Department getting work under way now. The Defence Housing Service can be up and running from April 2027, and the work of renewing the estate can continue.
David Reed
We have heard these arguments in Committee, we have had experts come in and we have visited defence housing. We need to get to the nub of this. The wording being used today is that there will be £9 billion in the budget and that we know it will be in the defence investment plan. As it is reported that the defence investment plan is sat on the Prime Minister’s desk at the moment, and I am sure the Minister will have seen the defence investment plan, can he confirm today that he has seen that £9 billion in the defence investment plan, and that it will be signed off with that £9 billion for housing?
Al Carns
I can confirm that £9 billion will be secured to ensure that we get the defence housing strategy and the Defence Housing Service up and running. We have said that in Parliament previously, and I reiterate it here.
It is worth noting the need for a Defence Housing Service and the professionalisation of our service as a whole, because some of the stats and facts from the time we came into Government were, I can only say, nothing short of shocking. In November 2023, there was a high of 4,200 complaints. Where is it in 2026? It is 400. We have already made improvements, we are heading in the right direction and we will continue to deliver in due course. We are getting on with the job of making improvements now for service families and preparing for the launch of the new Defence Housing Service so that we can go even further and faster to fix defence homes.
Setting a requirement in legislation, in the way that the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford suggests, is not only unnecessary but risks frustrating the vital work of the Defence Housing Service. His amendment 17, which specifies that the Defence Housing Service must operate within a budget set out in the DIP, risks constraining the service in the scenario in which investment is set in the defence investment plan but then has to rise thereafter. That could happen, for example, in the case of additional increases in personnel, or a change in the international situation that could require additional housing. Any additional spending would risk being in breach of the requirement unless and until a new defence investment plan is published. That would undoubtedly constrain the service’s ability to respond swiftly and appropriately to changing requirements. I hope that provides the necessary reassurance to the right hon. Member.
Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I understand what the Minister says—that there may be extenuating circumstances where there may need to be flex within the budget—but the most important thing that we are trying to establish is that this money is absolutely guaranteed.
At the Defence statement the other day, I asked what “flat out” meant when the Secretary of State was talking about finalising the defence investment plan. I was told it meant that they were “working flat out”, so the Minister will forgive me for seeking further reassurances. I would also be very interested to know whether he has indeed seen the defence investment plan, with this budget line item in it.
Al Carns
I can say that we are working flat out on the absolute shambles we were left by the Conservative party. I can also say, as the Defence Secretary said in the House, that £9 billion will be allocated to the Defence Housing Service. The study has been completed. It is a very effective strategy. It has taken into account a lot of the other details that were excluded in the past. It has pulled them all together and has put in place a comprehensive strategy that will be funded.
Mr Francois
I am not saying that in 14 years we got everything right, but we never ended up in a situation in which we could not put a destroyer to sea, to a NATO exercise, with three months’ warning. It was never that bad.
I was told at a dinner last night that the Secretary of State or other Ministers have not allowed this Minister to see the defence investment plan. Surely that cannot be right: he must have seen it. For the avoidance of doubt, could he just pop up and tell us that of course he has seen it, and he has seen the detail of it?
Al Carns
My role, when it comes to defence investment, is primarily linked to uncrewed systems. I have been pushing as hard as I can to ensure that there is significant resource and consideration of not just the delivery of capability, but training, tactics and procedures, and the inculcation of drones and autonomous systems into our armed forces.
Mr Francois
We all know how this works. That was what, in “All the President’s Men”, they would have called a non-denial denial. I am afraid we have had no satisfaction, so we will press amendment 17 to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Al Carns
I believe that amendment 14, moved by the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford, is unnecessary. It is clear that the Defence Housing Service will have a service ethos at its heart, and we are already way ahead on that. The Committee heard from representatives of the families federations during the evidence sessions, in which Cat Calder from the Army Families Federation said that during the course of the defence housing strategy review, it was
“very much engaged with, listened to and questioned”,
and its views “taken into consideration.” That will continue as the defence housing strategy turns to the Defence Housing Service and the implementation of changes across the entire estate.
I welcome the right hon. Member’s comments about the FDIS statistical change. When I first took over this job, I visited multiple defence housing providers and, indeed, the houses themselves. I line-by-lined the cost of everything from a plunger to the taps to make sure we were extracting the best value for money from those contractual services. The trend was already moving, and I believe it has moved in the right direction. There is always work to do, but we have our foot on that pressure point and will ensure we extract best value for money and best time when it comes to the delivery of services for our families in service housing.
Importantly, throughout the development of the defence housing strategy, families have been at the very heart of the discussion to ensure that their views are considered, along with the differences between the way of life and operational priorities of the Army, RAF and Navy. That is why we have set up a new customer service committee with representatives from all three forces’ families as members. The Defence Housing Service will have a service family representative on its independent board.
We are already making rapid improvements after many years of ebbing and flowing standards and service in military accommodation, and we have delivered our consumer charter commitments to improve our families’ experiences. That includes transforming 1,000 of the worst homes by Christmas with new kitchens, bathrooms and floors, which the Committee will know from its visits were previously in a shoddy state. Some are still in that space, but we are moving rapidly to change it.
We are modernising outdated policies, giving families greater freedom to improve their homes, and streamlining processes for those who wish to run businesses from home or simply have a pet. We are also delivering named housing officers, as it is critical to have a central point of contact to make complaints to, or to demand better services, as well as delivering photos, floor plans and a new online repair service.
Mr Francois
This might seem like a point of detail, but it is important. I will come on to “Stick or Twist?” later, but one thing that came out very clearly is that many families wanted what used to be known in old money as “patch managers”, often a retired senior NCO who lived nearby, who knew the patch and all the quarters intimately. He knew that No. 23 had always had a slightly wonky boiler or whatever. He was someone that all the families knew, and who the wives could get hold of if their spouse was away on deployment. We have named housing officers, but at what level do they operate? Do we have one per patch, per garrison or per region? How close to ground level are these named housing officers?
Al Carns
I will get back to the right hon. Member with the exact numbers of housing officers and how much patch they will oversee and manage, depending on the different service contracts. As he will be aware, the Army, Navy and Air Force approach it in different ways. Some have retired officers in a Reserve billet, looking after everything from welfare to housing. Others have specific housing officers, and some have none at all. There is a requirement to standardise that, hence the reason for housing officers coming in. I believe that housing officers work most effectively when they have either served or have an understanding of service. We are seeking to replace the single point of contact for families to go to should they have a problem with their housing or the facilities provided by the contractual arrangements.
On the promises that were made to families, it is worth noting that work is fully under way to deliver them under the consumer charter. We are also seeing results. Satisfaction in defence homes is rising: rates are now at 51%, their highest level since 2021. I would argue that that has resulted in an increase in both retention and recruitment, pulling more people into the military. We have seen a 13% increase in recruitment and an 8% reduction in outflow.
I have always been really honest that, in the short term, we are getting after this with 1,000 homes and the consumer charter, but that we will really see the benefits over the medium to longer term, with a complete rejuvenation of the estate. Satisfaction with repairs has increased steadily, from a low of 23% in January 2023 to 66% in 2025. In February 2026, we received 400 complaints, compared with a high of 4,200 complaints in November 2023, so we are making progress. We want to get that 400 figure down even further and will continue to endeavour to do so.
Amendments 3 and 4 propose to specify further in legislation the standards that accommodation should meet. I thank the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells for his service and for his attention to ensuring that service family accommodation meets the standards that families rightly expect. The conduct and the candour of this debate have shown that we all want the same thing.
As part of the generational renewal set out in the defence housing strategy, we are already making rapid improvements, including through the new consumer charter for service family accommodation, which the Secretary of State announced last year, with the first set of those commitments delivered way ahead of Christmas. Through the wider plan set out under the defence housing strategy, we will be delivering improvements to nine in 10 defence family homes over a decade of renewal, delivering on the opportunity presented by the buy-back of the estate in January 2025.
In relation to the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells, the MOD is already committed to meeting and publishing compliance with the standard. The defence housing strategy specifically addresses the issue and sets out that the housing standard should keep pace not only with the decent homes standard, but with wider housing safety requirements such as Awaab’s law.
Al Carns
If the hon. Member will let me, I will come back to him with a specific timeline for the process.
In reply to an earlier question, there are 122 housing officers in total, and the figure will increase over time. Each housing officer is responsible for 300 to 400 homes. Although the housing officer will be a specific individual in place, a lot of armed forces also have other welfare officers and facilities. However, this is a step in the right direction to providing a single point of contact.
Mr Francois
I am grateful for that detail. I agree that it is a step in the right direction, so it would be churlish not to welcome it. To give credit where it is due, when my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk was a Minister in the Department, he invested several hundred million pounds in what was known as the mould action plan. Its aim was to get after the problem not just with temporary fixes, but with long-term work on properties with a persistent mould problem. As I have tried to be fair to the Government this morning, I hope the Minister will acknowledge that my hon. Friend put quite a lot of effort into that issue in defence housing. There has subsequently been some success, has there not?
Al Carns
I agree. The mould action plan got after a large chunk of the problem. I know there was work that went on previously, including “Stick or Twist?” and other reviews, but now that we have got rid of the Annington deal and got control of our estate, we can take a far more strategic outlook. That is what the defence housing strategy is all about, so that we ensure that we get best value for money over a longer period and do not have to spend huge amounts in a short time, which unfortunately can result in poor contractual agreements and not the best value for money.
The mechanism for embedding the standards, as well as Awaab’s law, including any changes over time, has already been included in the Bill. It has been deliberately drafted in that way to provide a mechanism for capturing future changes to policy without requiring legislative change. As a case in point, the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells specified the 2006 decent homes standard in amendment 3, but he will be aware that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is already in the process of introducing a revised decent homes standard. The amendment, although absolutely well intentioned, is too specific. It would set in stone a policy position that would rapidly become redundant. Further mechanisms will ensure that we keep in line with the decent homes standard, such as providing a report into the system on, I think, a yearly basis—I will clarify that point in due course.
I reassure the hon. Member that in practice the Ministry of Defence already uses the 2006 decent homes standard as a benchmark for service family accommodation and will work to meet the new decent homes standard as it is introduced. The same applies to Awaab’s law, which is being taken forward through the consumer charter. As the generational renewal set out in the defence housing strategy progresses, we will aim not just to meet minimum standards, but to provide homes that any of us would be proud to live in.
The scale of the problem should not be underestimated. The defence housing estate was built at any time from the 1960s all the way up to the early 2000s, with single-skin walls and a plethora of issues. It will take a medium to long-term strategy to deliver real, meaningful change over time. The messaging to the armed forces and their families is that we are on this: we have assured the money and we will head in the right direction to improve defence housing over the medium to longer term.
I hope that the points that I have set out provide the necessary reassurance as to why amendments 14, 3 and 4 are not necessary and can be withdrawn.
Mr Francois
I appreciate everything that the Minister has said. None the less, we feel strongly about amendment 14, so we will press it to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Mike Martin
I would like to make some brief comments in support of amendment 15. We should reflect on how the divorce rate is much higher for service personnel because of the vagaries of service life and the stress under which it can put relationships. A measure like this is the least we can do to mitigate the worst excesses that result from service life. As hon. Members will know, court orders often come with specifications that appropriate surroundings be available for contact visits. By agreeing to this amendment, we would ensure that provision is available to facilitate such orders.
Al Carns
I thank the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford for tabling the amendment. I absolutely recognise the importance of facilitating contact visits between service personnel and their families; there are people here with experience of that.
The reality is that as we have come into government, we have the wrong houses in the wrong place in the wrong amount. That requires a whole restructuring of our defence housing estate to ensure that it matches and moulds itself to varying requirements across the population.
I was a base commander, and we had several welfare houses. There is a joint service publication in MOD policy, JSP 770, that designates service family accommodation as welfare support accommodation. This is a joint process with local military commands and welfare services to provide housing for welfare requirements. It cannot simply be met with the responsibilities that the amendment seeks to set for the Defence Housing Service.
Moreover, there has to be flexibility in the use of welfare support accommodation to ensure that it can respond to local needs and local requirements, including other important welfare uses such as those relating to domestic abuse and safeguarding. It would be far too inflexible for it to be earmarked as accommodation solely for contact visits, as the amendment sets out. That would limit our ability to respond to urgent needs of other kinds.
More generally, the issue that hon. Members have highlighted is only one part of a much bigger issue that the Defence Housing Service is being set up to address, which is that the defence estate is wrongly configured as a result of the legacy of Annington and years of under-investment, with not enough homes in the right places to meet the requirements of service personnel.
The focus of the Defence Housing Service is to improve existing homes and create thousands more, including by delivering widened access to accommodation for modern families. Its progress against that will be set out for Parliament to scrutinise through the annual reporting process. The defence housing strategy team looked at the issue as part of its review. An important conclusion of the review was a recognition of the important role that local welfare-based discretion plays in managing service personnel’s housing needs, which cannot always be planned from the centre.
The reality is that welfare houses provide a capability for a plethora of needs, from supporting individuals who have been subject to abuse all the way through to providing a comforting environment for families who have broken up or separated and need a place to live and thrive with their children. To narrow them down to one use may not meet the local requirement, but I absolutely support the premise and the positivity behind the amendment. Given the clear and comprehensive arrangements that are already in place, I see the amendment as unnecessary.
Mr Francois
I appreciate the spirit in which the Minister is replying. I have learned to take his word. Just so he does not think that we have a blanket policy of voting on everything this morning, if he gives me his word that he will take the issue back to the Department and the people setting up the DHS and look very seriously at how we might do a bit better, in return I shall not press the amendment. Can he give me that comfort now?
Al Carns
It is absolutely right and proper that we do that. I would like to go a step further: we could probably organise a sit-down with Natalie Elphicke Ross and the team at the Defence Housing Service. It has already been thought through, but they can explain it. If the right hon. Gentleman has any insight into how he would improve it, or indeed any reflections from his own experience of the defence estate, we will take that forward. I therefore ask him to withdraw the amendment.
Mr Francois
I will not look a gift horse in the mouth. I thank the Minister for his kind offer, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Al Carns
I shall speak first to amendment 2. I thank the hon. Member for his engagement.
The measures in the Bill build on 18 months of work to stop the rot in defence housing and build for the future. We are buying back 36,000 military family houses from Annington and delivering a new consumer charter. We have already got after the first 1,000 homes, published the defence housing strategy and, importantly, we have launched the new single living accommodation review. That is important because there is a separation.
What the hon. Member is getting at is where, in some cases, we have Defence Housing Service family accommodation that is repurposed for single living accommodation because we have excess housing or a lack of single living accommodation on the base. Therefore, we must include both elements in bits of the Bill, but not all of the Bill, because SLA is subject to a completely separate review.
Mike Martin
I know of what the Minister speaks. A four-bedroom house may have four servicepeople living in it as single living accommodation—the defence equivalent of a house in multiple occupation—but does that not speak to the point that SLA and SFA should be treated under the same standards?
Al Carns
I fundamentally disagree. The review of single living accommodation will describe the complexity of the problems we have across the entire estate with both the shape and size of our single living accommodation, the requirements of a changing population, and how best to manage them. To combine the two would detract in particular from the defence housing strategy because of the funding mechanisms, ownership and oversight of single living accommodation.
Amendment 2 would have the effect of broadening the Defence Housing Service’s responsibility for the standard of housing to include single living accommodation as well as service family accommodation, which the Government do not believe is appropriate in any shape or form. Single living accommodation operates in a fundamentally different way from service family accommodation, and the two must therefore be separated. SLA is housing provided for individual service personnel living without families, typically on military bases behind the wire, with the primary responsibility sitting with frontline commands and the demand signal set by their operational requirements. Recognising the difference, the defence housing strategy, which sets out the basis for the Defence Housing Service, did not recommend that the Defence Housing Service is responsible for all single living accommodation, but recognised the need for dedicated, focused attention on service families that the new organisation will provide.
We are committed to driving up standards in single living accommodation, just as we are with service family accommodation. A separate, dedicated review of single living accommodation is already under way and should be complete in the summer. The Minister for Veterans and People is leading that, and pushing forward on it hard and fast.
Mike Martin
The Minister is being very generous with his time. Could he state precisely the difference between SLA and SFA that means we cannot bring them together?
Al Carns
Single living accommodation is often hundreds of rooms—think student accommodation—in barrack blocks behind the wire. Service family accommodation is often on the other side of the wire, out in the local population. Single living accommodation houses individuals rather than families. The whole set-up is completely different—some have cooking facilities and some do not. To balance the two on the same standards would completely skew the system.
I assure the hon. Member that the single living accommodation review is fully under way. It will look into this separately and deliver a strategy that is similar to the defence housing strategy, but it will look specifically at the nuances of single living accommodation. I think that many of the points the hon. Member is getting at will be included in that review and be open to scrutiny.
Mike Martin
If I understand the Minister correctly, he is saying that we are going to take different routes but get to the same place. If he could give me assurances that we are going to see the same standards reflected in SFA as SLA, but they are going to be managed through separate processes, I would be happy to withdraw the amendment.
Al Carns
The requirements are different for SLA and family accommodation, but we both want the same thing: the best accommodation, whether for a family or a single person living on base, either separated from their family or single. What I can offer the hon. Member is to engage and talk him through the single living accommodation strategy as it builds, so he can ensure his points are included and we either fill the knowledge gap or make the strategy reflect the intent of providing the best accommodation for single individuals outside the family setting.
Mr Francois
It may assist the Committee to know that when I looked at this in “Stick or Twist?”, we realised that we were talking about two slightly different propositions, and that some of the challenges in single living accommodation are a bit different from those in SFA. For the record, in “Stick or Twist?” we said we would start with SFA—we were talking about a housing association—and learn lessons from that and then go on to SLA. We realised there is a bit of an air gap between the two, so our work was concentrated on one and then maybe moved on to the other. That is, in some ways, similar to the spirit of what the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells is saying, if the Minister will accept that.
Al Carns
I completely accept that. There are just nuances and differences in the requirements, and that will be reflected in the outcomes of both reviews. Again, I offer that engagement—if the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells would like to get involved and ensure that his points are made as the strategy is built, he can affect the output as required.
The Government believe that a dedicated focus on the Defence Housing Service and family accommodation is the best way to achieve the step change needed for defence, specifically on family homes. We will continue simultaneously to drive up the standard of single living accommodation, and further detail will be set out in the next steps following the ongoing SLA review. If it is any consolation, I lived in single living accommodation for a large chunk of my life and have seen the good, the bad and the ugly, so I will personally be behind that work to ensure we get the best standards.
New clause 1 is designed to include single living accommodation within section 101 of the Renters’ Rights Act. It would require the Ministry of Defence to report annually to Parliament on the extent to which such accommodation meets the decent homes standard. As someone who has lived in single living accommodation for a huge chunk of my life, I appreciate the sentiment behind the new clause, but the Government do not believe it is the right way to drive up standards in single living accommodation.
As Members may recall, this matter was debated during the passage of the Renters’ Rights Act, and Ministers at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government set out why the decent homes standard cannot sensibly be applied to single living accommodation. Such accommodation exists to support operational readiness and cannot be treated in the same way as social housing or other forms of civilian housing.
Single living accommodation spans a huge range of types, many with shared facilities, and therefore, by definition, some parts of the decent homes standard would be difficult to meet. For example, the standard requires each unit to have adequate kitchen facilities, but single living accommodation units do not necessarily all have their own kitchens, because full professional subsidised catering is provided on defence bases or sites. For that very reason, civilian housing with shared facilities, such as purpose-built student accommodation, is typically not covered by the 2006 decent homes standard.
Mike Martin
That is not what new clause 1 seeks to do. It is about amending the Renters’ Rights Act so that defence housing standards cover both service family accommodation and single living accommodation, rather than applying the decent homes standard, as in the previous amendments we discussed.
Al Carns
I make it clear that we are not talking about amending the Renters’ Rights Act; we are talking about the Armed Forces Bill, but I am happy to take this offline and talk about the nuance between the two if required. We need to be clear that this does not mean we are complacent about the condition of single living accommodation—far from it. We are committed to driving up the quality of single living accommodation across the entire estate and ensuring that people get the experience they deserve if they are to serve on the frontline.
The Minister for Veterans and People has commissioned an independent review and is working on it now, and the single living accommodation piece should be complete by the summer. I will strongly recommend that she engage with the hon. Gentleman to talk through how we can work collaboratively towards the best solution for defence personnel. The review is the right vehicle for this work; it is targeted, expert-led and focused on the specific needs of those who serve.
Our commitment is simple: we will deliver safe, comfortable and well-maintained accommodation for our service personnel, taking into account the unique nature of service as a whole. I hope that reassures the Committee. On that basis, I ask the hon. Gentleman not to press amendment 2 or new clause 1.
Mike Martin
In the light of the Minister’s words— I know him well from before we came into politics—I am happy to take him up on his offer, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 3, in clause 3, page 8, line 16, at end insert—
“(6A) The standards in subsection (6) must at a minimum meet the 2006 decent homes standard.”—(Mike Martin.)
This amendment requires that the framework agreement governing the new Defence Housing Service must at a minimum meet the 2006 decent homes standard.
Al Carns
Amendment 16 would require that the chief executive of the Defence Housing Service reports directly to the Minister for the Armed Forces, which is my current role. In the way it is written, it would confuse accountability in the Defence Housing Service, undermine the role of the board in particular, including the role of the family representatives, and risk duplicating lines of ministerial accountability that are already set out in the Bill.
From my perspective, when we have an issue, in defence or in any organisation, it is down to either a lack of understanding, command or control or a lack of accountability. I want to ensure, and reassure, that when the board reports on the Defence Housing Service and its deliverables, it is unfiltered and untainted as it hits ministerial offices. The governance of the Defence Housing Service has been carefully set out to provide the right balance between independence, accountability and ministerial oversight.
For the organisation to deliver its objectives, it must operate alongside strategic oversight by the Department, including accountability to Ministers and Parliament as a whole. Under established arrangements for arm’s length bodies, arrangements that operate across Government, responsibility for overseeing performance sits with the body’s board, with the chair acting as the principal interface with Ministers. It is critical that the chair is the principal interface with Ministers, reducing the ability of anyone to filter or taint any reports as they come up and through.
The Defence Housing Service will remain accountable to Ministers through that board and via departmental sponsorship and arrangements, alongside increased reporting to Parliament on its performance, as set out in the Bill. The DHS will continue to work closely with departmental teams, which will be covered in the MOD framework document in the usual way. It will be operationally independent, within the scope of the framework document and the legal powers in the Bill.
Critically, for its day-to-day activities, the organisation will be accountable to an expert, independent board, which will be appointed by the Secretary of State. The board will include a family representative, alongside the service family involvement in the wider governance, to ensure that the Defence Housing Service is held to account by not only those with appropriate expertise but the families that it has been set up to serve. Given its importance, it is right that ministerial reporting be held at Secretary of State level, rather than with the Minister for the Armed Forces. I was responsible for the delivery of the strategy, but housing is not necessarily within my portfolio.
Given the clear and comprehensive arrangements I have outlined, the amendment is unnecessary and I urge the right hon. Member to withdraw it.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Schedule 1 stand part.
New clause 7—Feasibility study on a Forces Housing Association—
“(1) Within 12 months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State shall publish a detailed feasibility study into the possibility of establishing a Forces Housing Association (FHA).
(2) The Study must examine the proposals in Chapter 5 of the 2020 Report ‘Stick or Twist – A Report for The Prime Minister into Retention in HM Armed Forces – and how to improve it’.
(3) The Secretary of State must lay a copy of the study before each House of Parliament.”
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to conduct a feasibility study into the merits of establishing a Forces Housing Association (FHA) as opposed to the proposed Defence Housing Service.
Al Carns
Clause 3, together with schedule 1, creates the Defence Housing Service, a new public body dedicated to improving the supply and quality of defence housing and spearheading the regeneration of defence communities. Our Defence Housing Service sets out a vision for the future transformation of military homes, 90% of which will be upgraded, renewed or rebuilt through a record £9 billion investment over a decade. The Defence Housing Service is the vehicle to drive that transformation.
The clause confers on the Defence Housing Service the functions of
“improving the supply and quality of defence housing,”
the management, regeneration or development of land used for defence purposes and
“supporting in other ways—
(i) the creation, regeneration or development of service communities, and
(ii) the continued wellbeing of those communities.”
To fulfil those functions, the Defence Housing Service will be empowered to generate income from property and to manage land on behalf of the Secretary of State and others. It may enter into contracts, buy and sell property, borrow money with Treasury approval, provide financial assistance and form partnerships or joint ventures. It will also have compulsory purchase powers to acquire land for any purpose connected with its functions. The Defence Housing Service will be accountable to Ministers. It must have regard to guidance issued by the Secretary of State and comply with the terms of the framework agreement entered into with the Secretary of State.
Forces families have previously been let down by homes that are not fit for purpose; we are determined and focused on delivering that. A new set of military housing standards that are fit for service family life will be established, including the decent homes standard, which the Defence Housing Service will be required to meet, under the terms of the framework agreement. The Defence Housing Service will lead the renewal and development of military homes across the United Kingdom, while unlocking the potential to deliver 100,000 homes of all types on developed MOD land.
Mr Francois
I note that the Minister never answered my previous inquiry about the bonus arrangements for the NAD. He is speaking to the clause standing part of the Bill, so perhaps he can tell me now—though he may need to seek inspiration. What are the bonus arrangements for the NAD relating to the DHS? What metrics will be applied?
Al Carns
The board of the Defence Housing Service will be accountable to the Secretary of State. I will not go into the detail of the NAD’s bonuses and how they are credited in the Bill, because they are not related.
That renewal will not only benefit the country as a whole in delivering against wider Government housing and economic growth targets but follow a “forces first” principle, prioritising current and former military personnel wherever possible. The Defence Housing Service will transform military housing, improve quality of life for service families and ensure that Defence housing is finally properly managed in a professional and efficient manner.
David Reed
Referring back to the intervention of my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford, the bonuses are an important part of the Bill. If accountability for housing is now going through the National Armaments Director, and we are seeking to increase visibility so that we can scrutinise what is happening in the Defence Housing Service, that bonus part is important. Maybe this is an area for the Committee of the whole House, but we have to dig into it.
Al Carns
On the question of accountability, the board will report directly to the Secretary of State. There will be no filtering and no taint on any information coming up. Therefore, I do not necessarily agree with the premise of the hon. Gentleman’s intervention.
I will address new clause 7 in my closing remarks.
Mr Francois
Yes, and in the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies, they would say that, wouldn’t they? We were proposing a slightly more market-oriented solution. Registered social landlords are somewhere between the public and private sector. They are not entirely private entities or entities of the state, but are, practically, somewhere in the middle. As I have already said from experience, they vary in quality, but to be fair, I have seen what good looks like. I appreciate the knowledge of the hon. Gentleman. He has a proud background of service in the Royal Engineers. He qualified as a clerk of works, which is no mean feat, so I appreciate that he knows his onions. None the less, the point he puts across came from the other side of the fence—no pun intended. Of course they would argue that.
The purpose of tabling new clause 7 was so we could debate the relative merits of the two systems. If we think of this as a spectrum, the old DIO was at the most statist end, the Defence Housing Service as proposed is one notch further along to something more market-oriented, and we are proposing something another notch further along the spectrum. The Minister is listening intently; hopefully he understands the analogy.
As I said at the beginning, I do not believe there is any violent disagreement, or indeed any disagreement at all, about what the Committee is trying to achieve. We all want service family accommodation of the best possible quality for our personnel and their families; the debate is about how we best get to that objective. We were asking the Government to conduct a feasibility study, perhaps slightly more independently than the response that the hon. Member for South Ribble just cited, and to come back a year later, before the Defence Housing Service is fully up and running, to see whether there might be a better way of doing it or whether it could be tweaked. We might return to this on Report, but that is the background, the genesis and the stimuli of our proposal.
When we did the visits—it was a former Minister, a politician in a suit, coming down to a military establishment—we sat 20 people down in a room and gave them the scenario of the corporal’s conversation at the kitchen table as a bit of an icebreaker. To begin with, everyone looked at everyone else, and they were all a bit nervous about saying something. One person then said something, and the dam broke: everybody wanted to pitch in, and everybody had a contribution to make. That taught me how powerful all of this is. We had a number of specific examples when people of varying ranks told us, “We are going to leave the service of the Crown, because of our concerns about housing.”
I know from experience that this really matters to service personnel and their families. I apologise for trying the patience of the Committee this morning, Mr Efford—in all seriousness, you have everything in Greenwich, including your own barracks, so you will be very familiar with these matters yourself. I hope Members understand the spirit of what we are trying to do with new clause 7.
On clause 3, I think we have had a good debate this morning, and we have tested some of the issues fairly well. I hope we have done our duty, and no doubt we will wish to return to some of these issues on Report, not least the prospective bonus for the National Armaments Director. I will conclude there, and I am genuinely interested to hear the Minister’s reply and the opinions of any other members of the Committee.
Al Carns
New clause 7 would require there to be a feasibility study when establishing a forces housing association, but before I go into the detail, I will reflect on some of the comments made by the right hon. Member.
Recruitment and retention are intrinsically linked, as both the Government and the Opposition acknowledge. We have introduced lots of changes in recruitment and retention over the last year and a half, but there is much more to do. While it differs across the services, overall we are seeing a 13% uptick in recruitment and an 8% reduction in outflow, which is the first time we have seen a change in direction for 14 years. There is much more to do, but we are heading in the right direction.
One of the reasons we are heading in the right direction is because I genuinely believe that our armed forces personnel can see that we are doing the right thing, particularly with accommodation. The right to a family life is one of the critical components of anyone serving, and that looks like safe, secure, warm and dry accommodation, whether single living or family accommodation. To give a small example, I went through marine training in 1999, and the accommodation in which I was housed was still in place in 2024, when I came back to be the unit’s commanding officer. In 1999 it was terrible, and in 2024 it was unworkable. We need to get after those accommodation issues and put them right. I am absolutely confident in the Defence Housing Service, and the strategy review comprehensively looked at single living accommodation and family accommodation, and we are putting them on the right track to deliver significant change.
It is not lost on me that the drafting system in the military can put an undue amount of pressure on individuals; I have been on a satellite phone to my children on their birthdays in the middle of all sorts of carnage, with helicopters burning and turning in the background, or with incoming rounds in Afghanistan. It puts exceptional pressure on families, so the ability to return to a safe and secure place is the least that we can provide.
The independent strategy produced prior to the establishment of the Defence Housing Service was exactly that: it was independent, and it took a huge amount of advice from a variety of people. Most importantly, the families federations fed into that process and ensured that their voices were heard. The quote highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble was only reinforced by the oral evidence given by Natalie Elphicke Ross OBE, when discussing the strategy review in response to the hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley. The view was firmly held throughout the entire review that the housing association model was not the right approach, and it was not included in its recommendations.
It is worth noting that, while there were a plethora of strategic issues during covid, the previous Conservative Government did not adopt the totality of the “Stick or Twist?” report produced by the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford, although it contained valuable points. A housing association model would jeopardise the close working with the military that is essential to ensuring appropriate operational capability. It would also put at risk the Crown basis on which personnel occupy their homes. Crown immunities allow the Ministry of Defence to move personnel at pace, without some of the regulatory constraint that we would have otherwise, which is vital for operational effectiveness. We must also bear in mind that we have more throughput in the armed forces than probably any other organisation or housing association in the country.
Mr Francois
For the record, that was the one recommendation in the “Stick or Twist?” report that was not adopted. All the other recommendations were adopted, including spending a lot of money on wraparound childcare because, again, childcare was a very important point for retention. Ben Wallace told me that he used the report to get quite a bit of cash out of the Treasury, so that recommendation about childcare was one that we did manage to get through. For the record, this was the one recommendation that was too much for the system to bear.
Al Carns
Perhaps that is why we are not taking it forward now.
Furthermore, the Ministry of Defence heavily subsidises rents. There have been suggestions that the Defence Housing Service could borrow private finance off the balance sheet if it was a housing association rather than a public body. However, expert advice from the Treasury, the Cabinet Office and others confirms that is not the case. The exclusivity of the defence housing purpose and the scale of MOD payments mean that such financial arrangements are not feasible.
Equally important, and close to my heart, is the welfare of service personnel and their families. Evidence presented to the defence housing strategy review team revealed that local commands exercised significant discretion to support personnel in a plethora of difficult circumstances, such as bereavement. That welfare-based discretion is a cornerstone of armed forces culture, and moving housing management to a third-party provider could put it at risk, undermining this vital welfare function. Finally, the planned housing renewal programme demands very close working relationships with military commands to ensure that it supports operational effectiveness rather than undermining it. Such close collaboration is not realistically achievable through a private or third sector body.
David Reed
I refer the Minister back to amendment 16 on the line of accountability. He makes the point about adding an extra layer and removing accountability from the Minister for the Armed Forces. Does he not see that that is the point that we are trying to make? Making the CEO for DHS report directly to the Minister for the Armed Forces would give him an unfiltered view, so that he can do this work on bereavement or the state of housing. This direct line of accountability would give him that power.
Al Carns
There is some confusion here. The Minister for the Armed Forces does not deal with the housing, the people or the welfare; he deals with the operation and policy output. There is a clear understanding of that. Amendment 16 refers to
“ the Minister of State for the Armed Forces”.
That is the wrong role, so the amendment is wrong.
Let us just stick to the point. The board itself will be accountable to the Secretary of State. That is the cleanest way to provide a sharp and crisp command and control model, and to allow the Secretary of State to make sure that the board, which has family members on it, provides the best service. Let us not misunderstand some of the ranks, roles and responsibilities within defence.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 3 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Christian Wakeford.)
Armed Forces Bill (Second sitting)
Al Carns ExcerptsTuesday 24th March 2026
(3 weeks, 1 day ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Armed Forces Bill 2024-26 View all Armed Forces Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Select Committee Amendments as at 24 March 2026 - (24 Mar 2026)
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 2—Veterans’ Mental Health Oversight Officer—
“(1) The Armed Forces Act 2006 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 343C (Establishment and functions of veterans advisory and pensions committees) insert—
‘343CA Establishment and functions of a Veterans’ Mental Health Oversight Officer
(1) The Secretary of State must appoint a person to be the Veterans’ Mental Health Oversight Officer.
(2) The general function of the Officer is to oversee the mental health care and treatment provided to veterans by the health bodies specified in section 343AZB.
(3) In exercising their function, the Officer must, in particular, monitor and assess the extent to which health bodies are complying with the duty imposed by section 343AZA (Duty to have due regard to the covenant) in relation to the mental health and well-being of veterans.
(4) The Officer may require a health body to provide such information as the Officer considers reasonably necessary to discharge their functions under this section.
(5) The Officer must prepare an annual report on the exercise of their functions and the general state of veterans’ mental health care and treatment in the United Kingdom.
(6) The Secretary of State must lay a copy of the Officer’s annual report before each House of Parliament.
(7) In this section, “veteran” means a person who has at any time been a service member.’”
This new clause establishes the statutory role of a Veterans’ Mental Health Oversight Officer.
New clause 6—National Veterans’ Commissioner (England)—
“After section 366 of the Armed Forces Act 2006 insert—
‘366A National Veterans’ Commissioner (England): establishment
(1) Within 12 months of the passing of the Armed Forces Act 2026, the Secretary of State must appoint a National Veterans’ Commissioner for England (“the Commissioner”).
(2) The Commissioner shall act independently in carrying out the functions of the office.
(3) The Commissioner shall, amongst others, perform the following functions—
(a) promote the interests of veterans in England;
(b) monitor the operation and effectiveness of the Armed Forces Covenant in England;
(c) review the effect of public policy and public services on veterans and their families;
(d) identify barriers faced by veterans in accessing housing, healthcare, employment, education, and other public services;
(e) make recommendations to the Secretary of State and to public authorities on improving support for veterans.
(4) In exercising these functions the Commissioner may—
(a) carry out reviews and investigations into matters affecting veterans;
(b) consult veterans, service charities, public authorities, and other relevant organisations;
(c) publish reports and recommendations.
(5) The Commissioner shall prepare an annual report on the exercise of the Commissioner’s functions.
(6) The Commissioner may at any time prepare a report on any matter relating to the interests of veterans in England.
(7) The Secretary of State shall lay any report prepared under this section before both Houses of Parliament.
(8) The Secretary of State must make arrangements for—
(a) the provision of such staff, accommodation, and other resources as they consider necessary for the Commissioner to carry out their functions;
(b) the publication of the Commissioner’s reports.
(9) The Commissioner is to be appointed for a term of three years and may be reappointed for a further term.
(10) The Secretary of State may remove the Commissioner from office only on grounds of—
(a) incapacity,
(b) misbehaviour, or
(c) failure to discharge the functions of the office.
(11) In this section—
“public authority” has the same meaning as in section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998;
“veteran” means a person who has served in His Majesty’s armed forces.’”
This new clause would require the Government to appoint a National Veterans’ Commissioner for England and sets out its functions.
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I thank everyone for our progressive and balanced debates so far.
I am delighted to introduce clause 2, which extends the armed forces covenant legal duty, delivering a manifesto commitment to strengthen support for our armed forces. The clause will amend part 16A of the Armed Forces Act 2006 by inserting two new sections that will extend the statutory duty to have due regard to the principles of the armed forces covenant. They will do so by applying the duty to public bodies across the UK and additional policy areas, as I shall explain.
Proposed new section 343AZA introduces the principles of the armed forces covenant. It states that bodies subject to the duty must have due regard to the unique obligations of, and the sacrifices made by, members of our armed forces. Those principles include the principle that it is desirable to remove disadvantage faced by servicepeople as a result of their current or former service, and the principle that in some cases special provisions may be justified for the armed forces community because of the impact of their service.
Proposed new section 343AZB will impose the duty on national authorities, local authorities, education bodies and health bodies across the United Kingdom. For the first time, in recognition of the breadth of the covenant, the devolved Governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and UK Government Departments will be subject to the duty. It applies when those bodies exercise public functions in relation to the following matters: childcare, education and training, employment, health and social care, housing, social security benefits, personal taxation, criminal justice, transport, pensions, immigration and citizenship, and armed forces compensation.
Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. New clause 6 would introduce a veterans commissioner for England. We have three excellent veterans commissioners —the commissioners for Northern Ireland, for Scotland and for Wales—but they represent just 15% of veterans living in the UK. Some 85% of veterans live in England, yet there is no equivalent dedicated commissioner. As Members will recall, when the Minister asked at our evidence session on 25 February whether there should be a veterans commissioner for England, the three commissioners all expressed their support for such an appointment.
This is not a new campaign or issue. On 1 May 2024, after a campaign by the Royal British Legion, which included a petition that received 1,400 signatures, the Office for Veterans’ Affairs under the last Conservative Government said that it would appoint a national veterans commissioner. It started recruiting for the role, and the job advert stated:
“This role will cover England and any veterans matters which are reserved to the UK Government and are not in the remit of the Devolved Administrations.”
At the time, the RBL was delighted that England would have the same key public role of an independent advocate and voice for the armed forces community as Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, which have had veterans commissioners since 2014, 2020 and 2022 respectively.
The national veterans commissioner was intended to replace the Government’s independent veterans adviser. The IVA was a UK-wide advisory role with informal influence; the national veterans commissioner, by contrast, was to be a public commissioner with formal oversight and scrutiny, looking at England and UK-wide reserved matters to improve veteran support and accountability. However, the post has never been filled.
Following the general election in July 2024, the new Labour Government moved the Office for Veterans’ Affairs from the Cabinet Office to the Ministry of Defence. The Prime Minister explained in a written statement that the change would
“enable the Minister for Veterans and People to have complete oversight for the entirety of service life; from training to veterans working with all government departments to deliver for our service personnel.”
In February 2025, at Defence questions, I asked the then Minister for Veterans and People whether he planned to appoint a veterans commissioner for England. His response was:
“I reassure the hon. Member that I work closely with my Northern Ireland, Welsh and Scottish commissioners. We are currently looking at the structures by which we support veterans across the whole tapestry of the United Kingdom, and we really want to put in place an institutional resilience system that gives the best care at the right time and in the right place to the right people. That primarily involves working with thousands of charities collaboratively and coherently to ensure that we can get the best bang for our buck from all the amazing volunteers and charitable services out there. A bigger review is going on. It is on hold at the moment, and we will let the House know more in due course.”—[Official Report, 10 February 2025; Vol. 762, c. 16.]
However, the new veterans strategy published in November 2025 made no reference or commitment to the creation of such a role.
I appreciate that Op Valour is ongoing. It was announced last year and was described as the first ever UK-wide, Government-led approach to veterans support. It is said that the programme, backed by £50 million of funding, will deliver easier access to care and support for our veterans, connecting housing, employment and health services across the UK. It has three parts: Valour-recognised support centres, Valour field officers and the Valour HQ. However, it does not provide the single point of overarching advocacy that a commissioner would provide. Neither would the Armed Forces Commissioner, which was established in legislation in 2025. I note that there has still not been an official announcement, nearly a year after the application deadline closed, of who that will be, but perhaps the Minister can provide an update.
The role of the Armed Forces Commissioner is to investigate general welfare matters in the armed forces. The office of the Service Complaints Ombudsman would be abolished, with its functions and responsibilities transferred to the newly established commissioner. A veteran would fall under the commissioner’s remit only where their complaint relates to their time in service when they were subject to civil law. There are time limits for submitting a complaint; only those veterans who recently left the armed forces will generally fall within the provision.
New clause 6 proposes that a veterans commissioner for England be appointed within 12 months of the passing of the Act. We have used the word “appoint”, because this is not a statutory role but a public appointment. That would mirror the position for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, which all have non-statutory commissioners. I note that the Scottish Veterans Commissioner, while technically non-statutory, operates much closer to the statutory model than those in Wales or Northern Ireland. It is treated like an arm’s length public body, with a defined budget, a permanent staff, a published governance framework and annual reporting requirements. Although that is not the exact model proposed here, perhaps it is one that the Minister might consider.
Proposed new section 366A(3) sets out the commissioner’s core functions, which are to
“promote the interests of veterans in England…monitor the operation and effectiveness of the Armed Forces Covenant in England…review the effect of public policy and public services on veterans and their families…identify barriers faced by veterans in accessing housing, healthcare, employment, education, and other public services…make recommendations to the Secretary of State and to public authorities on improving support for veterans.”
In doing so, the commissioner may
“carry out reviews and investigations into matters affecting veterans …consult veterans, service charities, public authorities, and other relevant organisations…publish reports and recommendations.”
Given the proposed extension of the armed forces covenant, and the issues and concerns that many people have, the oversight role of a commissioner is vital. To date, as the local government representatives indicated to us, the covenant has been delivered through enthusiasm, but we now need robust implementation.
Any report prepared by the veterans commissioner would be laid before Parliament. The role would operate for three years at a time, with a further chance to be reappointed.
I believe that all members of the Committee understand the value of a veterans commissioner for England. As the existing commissioners are calling for it, I implore everyone to consider carefully how vital it will be.
Mike Martin
I agree with the hon. Lady. In the spirit of cross-party working, I say that we all support our veterans, and I think that the strides that the Government have made are fantastic. The previous Government had a Minister who was passionate about this issue, and he also made strides in this area. We are all trying to move in the same direction; it is not either/or. We have used the phrase “postcode lottery”. We all accept that veterans or people with mental health injuries do not reach out—often people who are depressed or anxious retreat inside themselves—so it is a good thing to have somebody who is able to survey veterans, understand their concerns and see how well linked they are to the fantastic mental health services that are being rolled out by the Government.
Let me highlight a couple of statistics about veterans. Suicide rates are four times higher for veterans under the age of 25 than for the same group in the civilian population, and 52% of veterans have had a mental health problem compared with 45% in the general population. On the point about belonging that I mentioned, a third of veterans reported feeling loneliness compared with just 7% of the civilian population. Veterans experience PTSD at twice the rate of the civilian population. We do not have any figures for the moral injury concept that I spoke about because it is hard to define and band.
The particular case of veterans and mental health is a well-recognised problem—we do not need to over-make the case; we understand it. Veterans often do not reach out when they have mental health issues, so there is a case for a sort-of chief gardener to help us make sure that we all tend the garden of our mental health.
Al Carns
I thank hon. Members for their contributions on clause 2 and the new clauses. They are based on the right intent, and Members are trying to do the best by our serving and ex-serving population.
I will leave the script and step back to look at where we have come on this journey. Under the previous Government, the Office for Veterans’ Affairs sat outside the Ministry of Defence. I sort of understand why that happened in some cases. I analysed this to and fro for a long time before making the decision to bring it back in. With hindsight, after a year and a half, the ability to amalgamate all the different parts of the veterans portfolio, including pensions, injury claims, records and the resource that Defence brings, has brought us far further forward. Would that have happened if the OVA had not been outside in the first place? I cannot comment, but its position in Defence, where it is safeguarded as an organisation, means that it harnesses all the bureaucratic power that Defence can bring to move stuff forward.
I will come in a second to the issues of veterans’ mental health and having a veterans commissioner. But if we step back and look at Afghanistan—where some Committee members here served; I did five tours there—there was a palpable feel among the population that the Government were not doing enough, or that the system was not flat and fast enough to deal with the scale of the problem that Afghanistan was kicking out on rotations. We therefore saw an explosion in the number of veterans charities, and the reality is that we now have more than 1,000 veterans charities in the UK. That number is growing every day. Some are the best, most well-meaning people, doing an amazing job and dealing flat and fast with veterans in our communities at the grassroots level. They do an outstanding job, and we have to harness the best charities. Some big charities, too, do a fantastic job of analysing data and providing the Government with clear advice on how to support veterans. There is also everything in between. I will be clear: there are the most amazing charities, very good charities, average charities and a very small minority that do not deliver as efficiently as perhaps they should.
In the veterans portfolio, how do we help the charities cohere their capacity, the £1 billion market that is the veterans charity sector, to deliver it more effectively? And how do we do that in conjunction with local government, while understanding the good, the bad and the other group that sits to the right of that mark? That will stem from Valour. It has taken small steps, but it is moving forward relatively quickly. The first one was about the establishment of an OC—officer commanding—Valour, the head of Valour. Who will run this programme, which is not just about England, but about England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
The reason why we need one central point of contact is that we have devolved Administrations that do things differently. We have a plethora of datasets that sit within big charitable organisations, sometimes feeding the output of the charities and at other times providing us with good, balanced analysis. The trouble is that we do not have a collective dataset to give us a clear understanding of the various issues across our veterans space. In fact, the RBL did a fantastic study on perception versus reality, on the statistics and the view of the population versus the actual realities for veterans at the grassroots level. It pointed to one thing: with so many charities needing to generate and raise funds, in some cases they had to champion the requirement for money to go to the most needy or individuals in most need of support.
When we look at the realities, most veterans leave the military and do not have an issue. A proportion have medium-level needs, and a proportion have some really acute needs. The reality and the perception, however, are different. Some of that is skewed, because we have created a charitable sector network that must generate an income from championing or sometimes pushing the most injured and the individuals who need the most support to the very front of the limelight. That creates a national narrative that turns veterans into victims, and I tell the Committee now that it is 110% not the case. Some individuals need lots of support, some need some support and other people go on to contribute to society with no impact whatever.
Mr Francois
To reinforce what the Minister is saying, Lieutenant General Sir Andrew Gregory, who for many years was the controller of SSAFA, always used to make the point that while clearly some people suffer as a result of their military career, as the Minister admits, the vast bulk emerge in good shape, remain in good shape and benefit immensely from their time in service. I put on record what Lieutenant General Gregory, the head of SSAFA until recently, said, if only to back up absolutely everything the Minister is saying.
Al Carns
Sir Andrew is an exceptionally good man, and few are more knowledgeable than him on veterans matters. We have a position where, in some cases, veterans are seen as victims, but we have no central body that understands the totality of veterans issues across the United Kingdom. Head Valour is therefore coming into place in the next month or two, with a new headquarters. What does a headquarters mean? It means pulling in all the data sources to provide us with a comprehensive view of the issues that veterans face in this country—a balanced, analytical view, not one that is sometimes skewed by institutional organisations or other bodies. That is not because it is in their interests to do so, but it might be a passion project. It is about providing a balanced, analytical view, which must be data-led and have the horsepower to do that across all the devolved nations.
There is, of course, no point pooling data feeds if they come in all sorts of different forms. That brings in the Valour centres. The hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells talked about camaraderie. One of the issues at the moment is that when a veteran has a mental health issue, they have to go to eight different charities before they land on the right one. They usually start with family or a friend, and they will then go from one charity to another, having to bounce around, retelling the story, reliving the trauma. Sometimes, by the time they get three or four down the line, they give up. That is where we have some pretty catastrophic consequences.
The Valour centres are about taking some of the existing centres—we have more than 700, and growing, across the country—finding the very best ones, providing them with long-term Government funding, and standardising the services and engagement. We will ensure that they understand their local networks of the good, the bad and the ugly charities, and can then distribute resources down to them, to provide a set of standard-ish services as best we can—that goes back to the postcode issue. Secondly, we will ensure that the data flows back up to the headquarters in a manner that can be digested and analysed in the most effective way. On top of the Valour centres, field officers in local councils will help to control the centres, as well as to hold councils to account should they not fall in line with the covenant and some of the principles we have talked about today. We are in the foothills; in the future, we should have a far better, greater dataset for us collectively to analyse.
I do not believe that putting one individual in charge of veterans’ mental health would provide us with the systemic jump to deal effectively with that issue. Courage is a programme from the previous Government. We have taken it on and kept it going, because it is working well. For everything we have talked about today—mental health, housing, education, and special educational needs and disabilities—we need the data flowing in, proper analysis and then proper, comprehensive solutions flowing back down. That is one of the reasons why I cannot support new clause 2.
When I was Minister for Veterans and People and dealt with the veterans commissioners, I did not really know whether they were in the right place, in the wrong place or doing the right things. They were brought in from a devolved Government perspective to ensure that we could continue to check and balance the devolved Governments in line with central Westminster policy. Interestingly, 85% of all veterans, which equates to about 1.7 million people, live in England—a veterans commissioner for England would be a huge role.
I have been clear, I think on the record, that once Valour is up and running and we establish the framework for how the hubs will work, we then need to deal with whether we need a veterans commissioner for England. I would suggest that it may be positive, depending on the veterans architecture out there. Why do I say that? At the moment, we have armed forces champions, at different levels and with different terms of reference—some part time, some full time, some employed by councils and some not—and we have Valour field officers going into councils. We have veterans commissioners in the devolved Governments, and then we have the head of Valour, who will have a whole set of data, with the Valour centre network sitting below them. Throwing a commissioner on top of that, at the same time, would perhaps dilute the hierarchy and centralised control. I absolutely understand the utility of having a fourth commissioner in place over time and, although I have to oppose new clause 6, I would like to take on this discussion. I have a feeling that, in the next 24 months or so, we will be moving in the right direction with regard to the measure.
Mr Francois
The Minister has made a strong argument. I place on the record my admiration for the three veterans commissioners for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, all of whom are excellent at what they do. I seem to recall—I do not have the Hansard here—that when we were debating the Armed Forces Commissioner Act 2025, I asked the Minister when we would get an English veterans commissioner, and he was pretty clear that we would get one. The Minister today has intimated that we will probably still get one, so he is being consistent, but can he give us some idea of the timing?
Al Carns
Once we analyse the tapestry of veterans support, I would like to come to a solution on the English veterans commissioner to align with and amplify what we do on Valour. I think that Valour will take 36 months to be properly embedded in our local councils, with the structures and data network in place. It has taken us longer than I expected to get the Valour OC in place, but perhaps that is one for the bar downstairs.
Armed Forces Bill (First sitting)
Al Carns ExcerptsTuesday 24th March 2026
(3 weeks, 1 day ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Armed Forces Bill 2024-26 View all Armed Forces Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Select Committee Amendments as at 24 March 2026 - (24 Mar 2026)
The Chair
Before we start, I need to make a number of announcements. Will everyone ensure that their electronic devices are turned off or in silent mode?
We now begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill. The selection list for today’s sittings is available in the room and on the parliamentary website. It shows how clauses, schedules and selected amendments have been grouped together for debate. I remind the Committee that a Member who has put their name to the lead amendment in a group is called first or, in the case of a stand part debate, the Minister will be called to speak first. Other Members are then free to indicate that they wish to speak in the debate by bobbing. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members could email their speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk or, alternatively, pass their notes to the Hansard colleague in the room.
At the end of the debate on a group of amendments, new clauses and schedules, I shall call the Member who moved the amendment or new clause to speak again. Before they sit down, they will need to indicate whether they wish to withdraw the amendment or to seek a decision. If any Member wishes to press to a vote any other amendment—that includes grouped new clauses and schedules—in a group, they need to let me know. The order of decision follows the order in which amendments appear in the amendment paper. I hope that is helpful.
Clause 1
Duration of Armed Forces Act 2006
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. This clause is an essential part of each and every Armed Forces Bill, as it provides for the Armed Forces Act 2006 to be renewed for a further five-year period. Without it, the 2006 Act would expire on 14 December 2026.
For constitutional and legal reasons, an Armed Forces Act is required every five years. That requirement for Parliament’s agreement for continuation has its origin in the Bill of Rights of 1689, which provides that the raising of a standing army is against the law unless Parliament consents to it. Primary legislation, an Armed Forces Act, is therefore required every five years, this one to renew the 2006 Act to provide for the armed forces to be recruited and maintained as disciplined bodies. The most recent Armed Forces Act was the 2021 Act, which provided for annual continuation in force of the 2006 Act by an Order in Council, but not beyond the end of 2026. That means that this Armed Forces Bill must receive Royal Assent before 14 December 2026.
Clause 1 replaces section 382 of the 2006 Act with a proposed new section 382 that provides for the 2006 Act to be continued until the end of 2031. It provides specifically for the 2006 Act to expire one year after the Royal Assent of this Bill, but it also provides for it then to be continued annually—rather than expiring—by an Order in Council up to, but not beyond, the end of 2031. As a consequence of clause 1, section 1 of the Armed Forces Act 2021, which inserted existing section 382 and the expiry date of 2026 into the 2006 Act, is repealed.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
By way of some brief introductory remarks, Mr Offord—
Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)
In the same vein, we see the Bill as part of our constitutional duty, and one that will help us to deliver the best for our service personnel—an aim that we all share. I echo the shadow Minister’s thanks to the Clerks and you, Mr Efford. I, too, look forward to working collegially across the Committee to ensure that we get the best Bill possible.
Al Carns
I will triple down on what was said and say thank you very much to an amazing team, first, for putting together great evidence sessions and, secondly, for approaching this in a positive and pragmatic way. I also thank the Opposition parties for also being pragmatic in the way we move this forward in the best keeping of our armed forces.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Armed forces covenant
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 8, in clause 2, page 3, line 19, at end insert—
“‘due regard’ means that specified bodies should think about and place an appropriate amount of weight on the principles of the Armed Forces Covenant when they consider all the key factors relevant to how they carry out their functions.”
This amendment defines due regard for the purposes of interpreting section 2 of the Armed Forces Bill.
Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford.
I want to add further weight to the points that colleagues have already made. Service personnel themselves have said that the armed forces covenant, while incredibly well meaning, needs to be enacted and enforced properly. It also needs to be explained to the forces themselves what it means and what is on offer to them. With the duty’s extension going as far as it does, we must be absolutely clear what it means in practice, in order to ensure its enforcement. I speak as a lawyer, too, and the enforcement issue is always the biggest problem with any legislation that comes out of this place.
From the evidence sessions we know that the statutory guidance will be doing a lot of the heavy lifting, but we do not know what it will look like or what form it will take—that is not in front of us—so it is important that we discuss and consider the definition of due regard. Including a definition would bring more clarity to the Bill, as my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford said. During the evidence sessions, many Members questioned what due regard means, so it is really important that we ensure that our local bodies know, via a definition on the face of the Bill, what we are hoping and aiming for them to achieve.
Al Carns
I thank the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford and the hon. Members for Exmouth and Exeter East, for Solihull West and Shirley, and for South Northamptonshire, for amendment 8, which seeks to define “due regard” in the Bill. I recognise their intent, their positivity and their commitment to the covenant, but I cannot accept the amendment.
The amendment is unnecessary because due regard is a long-established legal concept that public bodies already understand and routinely apply in practice. The existing covenant duty of due regard is already driving positive change in its current areas of housing, healthcare and education.
Dr Shastri-Hurst
Does the Minister not accept that there is inconsistent application of the covenant across public bodies, and that to try to fix that, which all of us on the Committee are seeking to do, there is strength in codifying it in the Bill?
Al Carns
I absolutely agree, and I am one of the biggest champions for shouting about the postcode lottery in the delivery of the covenant. Putting that in the Bill would not change it. It requires education, communication and, in a lot of ways, internal support within local authorities to deliver it. The hon. Member for Exmouth and Exeter East mentioned the lack of skills at local council level—that is the problem. It is not necessary to amend the Bill; the statutory guidance will be absolutely clear and concise on what the covenant means.
Dr Shastri-Hurst
I am grateful to the Minister for indulging me. I do not disagree that, to a greater or lesser extent, this is a matter of education, but there is the issue of guidance being guidance and not being mandatory. If a definition were included in the Bill, it would provide a much stricter framework—alongside the education piece for local authorities—to ensure that we are getting this right. Does he agree?
Al Carns
I agree with the premise of the hon. Member’s point. Where I disagree is in how local authorities may view that and how it may restrict their ability to deliver services across other requirements, in line with local priorities. In my letter to the Committee, I wrote:
“When developing the Armed Forces Covenant Legal Duty, due regard was deliberately chosen to bring about lasting positive change…whilst at the same time retaining some flexibility for public bodies to make decisions that are right for their local context and circumstances.”
That is really important, because some of our constituencies will have different levels of need compared with others. Some may have large veteran populations; others may not. Some may have a large number of cancer patients, for example. Prioritising veterans in a very narrow, bounded line above those individuals may skew a whole list of requirements and needs across other public services, hence my point about communication and education, and then the yearly accountability in line with the covenant, which is critical to ensure a level of accountability.
Government Departments are also demonstrating how covenant considerations are driving change in practice. For example, this Government have gone further than before by removing local connection requirements for access to social housing for all veterans. I would be really interested if the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford has examples of where that local connection requirement has not been removed; if he does, I ask him, please, to highlight them to my office so that we can take them on and deal with them, because we removed the requirement last year.
Our experience of the public sector equality duty also shows that a duty of due regard, when properly supported, is sufficient to drive lasting cultural and organisational change, but I do accept that this is the first step to moving in that direction. In addition, the covenant’s statutory guidance, which we can scrutinise in due course, will include a dedicated section explaining what due regard means in practice, including the key issues faced by the armed forces community that bodies must consider. I would welcome the whole House’s view on how that can be improved—if, indeed, it thinks it should be.
Mr Francois
I do not think the Minister ever served in local government—he was serving his country in uniform, so I mean no slight by that comment—but I did for four years, albeit in the last century. I remember that primary legislation had more effect than guidance on councils, not least because even then we were drowning in such guidance—there is even more of it to drown in now. Would he accept that having something in primary legislation is more likely to get a councillor to do something about it than if it is included in reams of guidance, which they tend to drown in anyway on a weekly basis?
Al Carns
While I may not have served in local government, I absolutely acknowledge that we drown in bureaucracy across the UK. I would say that, compared with primary legislation, a councillor is far more likely to listen to and acknowledge an individual who has experience of armed forces service and who tries to enforce, educate and communicate the requirement to comply with the covenant.
There are two things that are going to bring about change. The first is armed forces champions across local councils, who do a fantastic job. They can be paid and there are no terms of reference; the role has not been standardised. The second thing, which will really change things over time, is the Valour programme, under which local field officers will help communicate and educate on compliance with the covenant over time, and help those councillors who perhaps do not understand it to deliver in line with it more effectively.
Ian Roome
I was a local armed forces champion. I was in local government for 22 years and ended up being council leader before entering this place. I can tell the Committee that, in practice, I was going around and screaming my head off to make sure that people were listening but, as it was not mandatory, they could just refer to due regard and make their interpretation of the guidance. I was a local armed forces champion for eight years, right up until I entered this place in July 2024, and I struggled to get veterans the help they needed. I just want the Minister to take that on board.
Al Carns
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his service, both in the military and in local government, and as an armed forces champion. The honest reality is that as the duty is broadened from three areas to 12 plus two, local councils will be held to account to deliver for the armed forces community—and not just for veterans, but for families and others. The statutory guidance will be really clear. Combine that with field officers, under Op Valour, holding councils to account, with clear terms of reference that are standardised across the UK, and I think we will see a massive improvement in services, not just for veterans but for the broader armed forces community.
Mr Francois
I do not want to labour the point, but in reality, a lot often comes down to the calibre of the armed forces champion in a particular council; I am sure that the hon. Member for North Devon was an excellent one. If such a champion were in a debate in full council—on how to amend housing policy to advantage veterans, say—it would be far more effective for them to be able to point to a section in an Act of Parliament than to paragraph 212B(III) of some Government circular. An argument is far more effective in a council chamber if a person can wave an Act of Parliament; I have seen people do it. Does the Minister not accept that if we are trying to empower armed forces champions to deliver at ground level, having a definition in the Bill would be very helpful?
Al Carns
Empowering armed forces champions is not necessarily the solution; unfortunately, whether we like it or not, armed forces champions differ between councils. I am not an expert, as some members of the Committee are, but I have travelled to many local councils and seen where it works exceptionally well. For example, in Manchester, armed forces champions are paid and employed by the council and have clear terms of reference. Other areas do not even have armed forces champions. To deliver the most consistent change, the solution is not necessarily to empower armed forces champions but to provide a set of terms of reference for the accountable individuals in councils to uphold the covenant and support veterans, across the entire nation, in line with the Valour programme.
Mr Foster
On this Committee, we have veterans and former council leaders, and I am both. One of the main reasons for all the changes being made in the Bill is a recognition that, historically, the covenant has not been delivered appropriately by local authorities. However, does the Minister agree that there is evidence that it has significantly improved recently, and that including Op Valour will take that improvement a step further?
Al Carns
I completely agree. The reality is that the implementation of the covenant has been really narrow, across three different Departments. The Bill will broaden the number of policy areas it covers to 12 plus two, which will put an onus on councils and allow people to hold them to account on delivering in line with the armed forces covenant. That is a positive step in the right direction. When we combine that with Valour over time, starting small and broadening out, we will end up with a data-based solution that ensures that councils can support their armed forces community in a more effective and balanced manner.
A definition of due regard in the Bill risks being overly narrow and could unintentionally limit how bodies apply it in practice.
Dr Shastri-Hurst
I promise the Minister that this will be the last time I intervene.
Dr Shastri-Hurst
That was a lawyer’s promise; the Minister can read it as he wills.
Does the Minister not think that having a definition of due regard in the Bill would assist the courts in interpreting its application in cases where a public body’s decision is challenged by a member of the armed forces community?
Al Carns
When it comes to the legal process, we must ensure that there is the flexibility in local councils to adhere to the covenant in line with the broader issues and capacity that they may have to deal with. Some council areas have a huge number of veterans, and others have very few. Many councils, including mine in Birmingham, have a huge housing problem. Should we prioritise a single mum with a child, or a veteran? If we made that too explicit, we would skew how local councils view veterans and the armed forces as a whole. That is quite dangerous.
Sarah Bool
The Minister talks about the definition being narrow, but it would actually be quite broad. The amendment says that
“‘due regard’ means that specified bodies should think about and place an appropriate amount of weight on the principles of the Armed Forces Covenant when they consider all the key factors”.
That definition sets out a framework, but it is not so narrow and specified as to be problematic. On the Minister’s point, we already have problems enforcing the covenant across three areas; now we are going to 12. Even the armed forces personnel I have been speaking to have said that they have severe concerns about that. Local councils also raised that issue in the evidence sessions. While the Bill is very well intentioned, I worry that we are setting up councils to struggle, and that the postcode lottery will get even worse.
Al Carns
I disagree—the postcode lottery will get better and start to standardise over time. There is a multitude of problems with the covenant that the Bill will try to solve, one of which is education, and communication to our own armed forces personnel about what it is and what it is not. That is a problem for the Ministry of Defence, which we are taking forward.
A definition of due regard in the Bill risks being overly narrow and could unintentionally limit how bodies apply it in practice. I talked in my letter about flexibility, which is critical. Due regard is about informed decision making. It may involve training staff and putting mechanisms in place to ensure that decision making includes concise analysis of how decisions might impact members of the armed forces community.
Rachel Taylor
The Minister has been extremely generous with his time. I want to come back to this definition and whether it will help us, because what the Minister is saying is that we need to educate, inform and work with the champions in local authorities, rather than set up a system that litigates the meaning of “an appropriate amount of weight”. I fail to see how a definition that talks about an appropriate amount of weight is any more helpful for someone interpreting it than the phrase “due regard”, which, from a lot of evidence, is well understood by most of the people delivering on the armed forces covenant.
Al Carns
The public sector equality duty has been in force for 15 years and its duty of due regard is working well; we seek to replicate that as we move forward. From my perspective, the amendment risks constraining rather than strengthening that approach. As I have said many times, this is a step in the right direction. It broadens the policy areas covered by the covenant, which is a fantastic step and should be seen very positively across the armed forces, their families, our veteran community and the bereaved.
I thank the hon. Members for North Devon and for Tunbridge Wells for amendment 5, which proposes a statutory requirement for the Secretary of State to
“prepare and publish a national protocol for consistent access to public services”
for personnel and their families. While I recognise the importance of consistent and reliable access to public services for the armed forces community, again I respectfully cannot accept the amendment. A national protocol setting out standardised procedures and expectations could create a minimal level of requirement that organisations might seek to meet without going any further. It therefore risks unintentionally limiting the steps taken by those organisations to support the armed forces.
Al Carns
The minimum requirement at the moment is to stay in line with the covenant principles. That needs to be balanced with the broader local issues that each local authority is facing. That will never be standardised because our local communities are different, from Cornwall to the north-east, Scotland and Northern Ireland. This is the harsh truth of the postcode lottery: the covenant will broaden out to a variety of policy areas but the way to solve its implementation is through communication and education, rather than tying ourselves up in bureaucracy and legislation.
Ian Roome
We heard in the Defence Committee that a lot of people currently serving in the armed forces have never even heard of the armed forces covenant; they do not know what it is. We are discussing how to educate the public, but a lot of people serving have never heard of the armed forces covenant. Does the Minister think that the education needs to start within the Ministry of Defence on how it handles the armed forces covenant?
Al Carns
I completely agree. I served for 24 years, and I did not know what the covenant was until I left and became the Minister for Veterans and People. That is the honest reality. I am sure that others who are serving also do not know what the covenant is. There is an educational requirement within the military, but also—I say this ever so gently—they are so focused on their operational roles and responsibilities that they are not necessarily interested in what comes next, or in understanding the benefits of the covenant to their families and loved ones while they are serving, which is a crying shame. I completely agree that we must make a more conscious effort to ensure that the covenant is understood by those serving, those who have left, and importantly—perhaps in some cases more so than for any other group—the families of veterans or of those serving. There is a huge amount of support out there, but it is often untapped because of the lack of education.
The legal duty is set up so that bodies can make decisions that are right for the local context and circumstances, including the devolved Governments. I would argue that a one-size-fits-all approach could inadvertently hinder tailored solutions that best meet the needs of armed forces personnel and their families. Instead, the covenant duty is supported by robust statutory guidance that acts as a clear point of reference for public bodies. Therefore, further expectations are unnecessary. This guidance ensures that the needs of the armed forces community are properly considered, while allowing for local discretion and responsiveness. Furthermore, transparency and accountability are maintained through the armed forces covenant annual report, which monitors progress and highlights areas for improvement.
In summary, mandating a national protocol risks imposing unnecessary rigidity and could limit the ability of public bodies to respond effectively to local circumstances—a point that I keep coming back to. We believe the current approach strikes the right balance between consistency, flexibility and accountability. I hope that reassures hon. Members, and I ask them not to press amendments 8 and 5.
David Reed
Given the strength of the argument this morning, I would like to test the will of the Committee and press amendment 8 to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Mr Francois
I did not want to push my luck, but briefly, amendment 12 is similar in spirit and relates to portability and adoption. In this instance, I want to raise a specific case of two serving officers. They asked not to be identified, but perhaps the Minister will take my word that it is a genuine case; if he wants me to provide the details privately afterwards, I am happy to do so.
This married couple, both serving majors based at Shrivenham, have been looking to adopt. They are both due to be posted to PJHQ—permanent joint headquarters —in Northwood at the conclusion of their course, in under six months. They reached out to their future local authority to start the adoption process, but they were told that they could not start the process unless they had been living in that local authority area for at least a year. Also, they would have to commit to staying in the new local authority area for a minimum of two to three years after they had adopted—a potential total of more than five years. That is clearly not feasible for a military family, used to two-year posting cycles.
Our amendment 12 would therefore simply give military families the same rights as civilian families, who do not have to move wherever the nation needs them. It is very similar in essence to the point about EHCPs, but representations have been made to me by that family and others, so I undertook to draft a parallel amendment that specifically covers fostering and adoption. I hope the Committee can understand the spirit of what I am trying to achieve. With that, I rest my case.
Al Carns
I begin by addressing amendment 10. I thank the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford for his views on the Bill, and for raising the important issue of continuity of NHS secondary care for armed forces families. Although the amendment is well-intentioned, the Government cannot support it, for a relatively simple reason.
Healthcare, education, adoption and fostering arrangements are devolved matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The amendment risks overstepping devolved powers, and could breach the Sewel convention by imposing UK-wide operational requirements from Westminster, potentially straining relationships within the devolved Governments. It is counterintuitive.
The amendment also raises significant concerns about clinical prioritisation and patient safety. Requiring patients to retain waiting-list positions regardless of clinical urgency risks distorting NHS prioritisation principles, which are based on clinical need, ensuring fairness and safety. Similarly, transferring care without appropriate referral processes could undermine clinical governance, particularly given variations in treatment pathways and IT systems across NHS regions. For a long time, we have known that that creates a set of complexities that is difficult to navigate.
The armed forces covenant already provides a strong, flexible framework for addressing those challenges. The NHS has embedded the covenant principles into its constitution. It delivers bespoke pathways for the armed forces community, such as Op Restore and Op Courage, and it has a central armed forces commissioning team, which works to retain NHS waiting-list positions where clinically appropriate. I have met them, and they are exceptionally proficient at what they do.
In addition, existing programmes and ongoing electronic record integration already address many of the challenges associated with frequent moves and continuity of care, without the need for additional statutory requirements. A clear example of that collaborative approach is the work that is under way with the devolved Administrations. Wales and Scotland have today confirmed that following the cross-border work that has been led by the Government, they are actively considering updating their policies to better reflect cross-border arrangements and the maintenance of waiting times.
The current approach is based on close co-operation between the MOD, NHS, devolved Governments and local health bodies, supported by the armed forces covenant duty, rather than by rigid primary legislation. That allows for locally tailored solutions that respect clinical priorities and patient safety and avoid unintended consequences, such as disruption and delay. Extensive consultation and co-operation with devolved Administrations and stakeholders is essential to maintaining effective healthcare provision, and that could be undermined by prescriptive regulation and unrealistic deadlines. The objectives of the amendment are therefore largely met through existing statutory guidance and NHS policies, which provide a more flexible and effective framework for supporting armed forces families.
Generally, the difficulties and complexity of triaging patients across devolved Governments, different NHS trusts and secondary care are not lost on me. Separately from discussing the amendment, I would welcome a discussion with the Minister for Veterans and People about how we can continue to improve the existing process. I understand the positive and forward-looking intent behind the amendment.
Amendment 11 seeks to mandate the transfer of special educational needs plans between the devolved Governments. While well-meaning, that approach is unlikely to work in practice. Each nation operates a distinct statutory system for identifying need, assessing children and delivering support. Imposing a legal requirement for portability across those frameworks risks creating delay, duplication and additional bureaucracy for some families.
The more effective route is continued joint working with bodies in scope, building on the existing protections that are already provided by the covenant. The duty requires public bodies to consider the specific impacts of service mobility, including for children with SEND, and to ensure that support remains responsive as families move.
The Government are already taking significant steps in this space. The Department for Education is consulting on SEND reforms that explicitly recognise the challenges faced by service children. A central part of this work is developing digital, streamlined plans that can be easily transferred, reducing delays during moves.
In England, local authorities already have a statutory duty to manage and transfer education, health and care plans when a child moves between areas. The Ministry of Defence has been fully engaged with the Department for Education’s consultation on SEND reform, highlighting the importance of minimising disruption to service personnel and families and ensuring quicker access to support in new locations. Reforms under consideration by this Government include digital EHCPs and individual support plans, which go a long way towards sorting out some of the bureaucracy, and are designed to support smoother transitions for highly mobile children. The MOD is also working with the Department for Education on the Best Start in Life programme and family hubs, providing integrated, accessible support from pregnancy onwards. Guidance to help the hubs to support service families effectively is expected this spring.
Mr Francois
I am not quite convinced by the Minister’s argument. I understand what he is saying, but if Corporal Tommy Atkins, his wife and their special needs child in Wiltshire are posted to Edinburgh castle, Fort George, Leuchars or wherever in Scotland, that is not their fault. The amendment would help to reduce bureaucracy by requiring the receiving LEA to take the EHCP. The fact that it was created in England does not mean that it should not be valid in Scotland. The currency we use is valid in both nations, so I am not quite convinced by the Minister’s argument—and either way, it does not help the service personnel or the child much, does it?
Al Carns
We continue to discuss with Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales how best to enhance the cross-pollination of EHCPs and individual support plans. We will continue to do so and, in particular, will try to speed up the transition and make it smoother for highly mobile children.
To legislate in the way the shadow Minister suggests, when a White Paper is already out and changes in legislation are coming, could result in the incorrect solution for armed forces families. What I would recommend is a discussion with the Minister for Veterans and People to update the right hon. Member in full and ensure that any ideas or insights that he has are pulled into that work, so that we come up with the best collaborative solution. The Government’s preferred approach is collaboration within existing frameworks, underpinned by the covenant duty, which will deliver the practical benefits without the unintended consequences.
Amendment 12, which seeks to continue adoption and fostering arrangements automatically across local authority boundaries, would raise significant practical difficulties. Each local authority operates with its own procedures, safeguarding requirements and legal frameworks. A single, one-size-fits-all statutory requirement risks creating confusion, administrative burden and potential delays, which is precisely the kind of disruption that the amendment seeks to avoid.
The Ministry of Defence already provides comprehensive guidance for service families through the adoption and fostering defence instruction notice, which embeds the MOD’s role firmly within existing civilian-led systems. These long-standing civilian frameworks already ensure continuity for families when they move. In combination with the strengthened covenant duty, they provide a far more practical and effective approach than the amendment process.
The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford raised a specific case. I am more than happy to take it offline. If we can help directly where the system has not worked, or help with the process, I will pass it on to the Minister for Veterans and People, and we will get after that problem set.
The covenant’s statutory guidance provides a flexible and practical framework that respects local authority responsibilities while directly addressing the challenges faced by service families. It ensures that individual circumstances can be properly considered without imposing rigid requirements that may not fit every complex case.
For those reasons, the Government consider the amendment unnecessary and duplicative. We remain fully committed to supporting healthcare needs for armed forces families, improving SEN provision and ensuring robust support for those involved in adoption and fostering. We will continue to work collaboratively with delivery partners and improve guidance where needed, rather than impose inflexible statutory mandates that risk unintended consequences. I hope that that provides reassurance. I ask hon. Members not to press amendments 10, 11 or 12.
Dr Shastri-Hurst
I am grateful to the Minister for setting out his broad support for the intent of my amendment, if not for its practical workings. I am grateful for the invitation to meet him and his ministerial colleague to see how we can reach a settlement to ensure equality for armed forces personnel on this issue. On the basis of his reassurances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
David Reed
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Looking across the Committee, I see Members who have served in local government, some of whom may have had military experience before doing so. They would have been able to apply their experience, and that of their families, to their work as elected councillors. However, that is not standard across the country, which takes us back to my central point: given the financial pressures and other statutory pressures, we can see why, without a requirement for a clear plan, implementation becomes difficult for a local authority that does not have experience.
The lack of comparability limits our ability to identify where approaches are working well and where improvements may be needed. It also makes it harder to share learning among areas. Amendment 13 seeks to address those points in a proportionate and practical way. It would not impose a detailed or overly prescriptive model, as it is not bureaucratic in nature, and it would not remove flexibility from local authorities; authorities that want to do a lot more could do so, which would perhaps be fed back into central Government. Instead, it would establish a clear expectation that each authority take a structured approach to delivering its covenant responsibilities.
It is important to be clear about what the amendment would not do. It would not impose a complex or resource-intensive new burden. Many local authorities are already undertaking elements of this work; the amendment would simply bring that activity into a clearer and more consistent framework. It would require local authorities to produce an armed forces covenant action plan, which I am sure would be developed in conjunction with the Ministry of Defence, bringing together experience from where it is being done well in local government. That plan would set out in clear terms the steps that the authority intends to take to meet its obligations. It would provide a more coherent framework for delivery, bringing together activity that might otherwise be spread across different services.
Importantly, amendment 13 would also require authorities to assess the level and nature of the need within their local armed forces community. This key element would ensure that planning is informed by evidence, rather than assumptions. It would also encourage engagement with those directly affected, including service personnel, veterans and their families, as well as the organisations that support them. In addition, the amendment would require authorities to set out how resources would be allocated to meet that identified need, helping to create a clearer link between assessment and delivery. It would support more transparent decision making and would help to ensure that commitments are reflected in practice.
The requirement to report on progress is another important part of the amendment. It would introduce greater transparency, allowing central Government, local partners and the armed forces community to understand how the covenant is being delivered in particular areas. That transparency would support activity and accountability; allow local authorities to demonstrate the work that they are undertaking, including where progress has been made and where further development is needed; and provide a basis for identifying effective approaches and sharing good practice.
I will wrap up, because I am conscious of time. Amendment 13 is an important amendment. It would give local authorities a framework to work with central Government to carry out their new statutory duties, while managing their workload across competing priorities.
Al Carns
Amendment 13 would require local authorities to prepare and publish detailed action plans within six months of the passing of the Act. The Government are fully committed to strengthening the delivery of the covenant at a local level. The Bill represents a significant step forward by placing the duty on an improved statutory footing, extending the policy areas that are in scope from three to 12.
Mandating detailed action plans risks imposing a rigid bureaucratic process that may not reflect the diverse circumstances of local government, geography or the composition of armed forces communities across the country. For example, mandating an action plan for areas with little to no armed forces footprint could divert valuable resources away from practical support and into compliance activity.
Delivery of the covenant at a local level is already supported through established mechanisms, including the Covenant Community Action Group, the annual covenant conference and a dedicated covenant website that promotes good practice, shared learning and engagement across the system, which are areas that the hon. Member for Exmouth and Exeter East mentioned. We are also investing in improved awareness and understanding of the covenant across both the armed forces and service providers, including through the new regional Valour centres and field officers.
Rather than mandating prescriptive local action plans, we are taking a proportionate and flexible approach, supporting bodies in scope with extensive guidance and practical tools aimed at improving outcomes for the armed forces community. My officials are creating a suite of materials for service providers to give clear guidance and practical support. The Valour regional officers will be able to provide tailored advice at a local level up and down the United Kingdom.
Al Carns
That is a really good question. I will come back to the Committee with the exact detail, but lots of councils have engaged and have gold, silver and bronze standards. Some of them are exceptional. Some of them—this goes back to the point about the postcode lottery—do not necessarily need to sign up, because their community does not have a huge number of veterans or armed forces. I will endeavour to come back to the Committee with the detail.
There is already an established statutory duty to report to Parliament on the delivery of the covenant. There is therefore no need to establish a new reporting mechanism. The hon. Member for Exmouth and Exeter East is welcome to come and have a discussion with the Minister for Veterans and People and me about what that report looks like so that we can move it in the right direction. However, we believe that a proportionate, flexible approach, supported by guidance and ongoing engagement, is the best way to ensure that local authorities deliver meaningful support to the armed forces community without unnecessary administrative burdens.
I hope I have clarified the situation, reassured the Committee and offered up a brief for the Minister for Veterans and People and me on the annual report and what it consists of. I ask the hon. Member for Exmouth and Exeter East to withdraw amendment 13.
David Reed
I thank the Minister for his wind-up. In the light of his answer, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Christian Wakeford.)
Defence
Al Carns Excerpts(3 weeks, 1 day ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)
I read the motion with a sense not of anger but of disappointment, because at a moment like this, when British armed forces are actively protecting our people and our interests in the middle east, intercepting drones, defending our bases, and preparing for further and potential escalation, I had hoped for a more well thought through and balanced motion to contribute to the debate.
Let me start by paying tribute to those who are serving today, at home and overseas, in the air, on land, at sea, and 24/7 beneath the waves, often in conditions of real danger, doing exactly what the country asks of them. This debate should have been about them. Instead, we have a motion that reads less like a serious contribution to defence policy, and more like an attempt to rewrite the record, and to whitewash what happened over the past 14 years. The House knows the record, and the public know it too. Importantly, the implications of 14 years have an impact on our armed forces, and they are bearing the brunt of it. Opposition Members cannot rewrite it, and they cannot run from it.
Let us be clear about the world we are now operating in. A major land war continues in Europe, where 55,000 drones and missiles have been fired by Russia into Ukraine, and there have been over 100,000 casualties on the Russian side alone—that is more casualties than America took in the entire second world war. Conflict is spreading across the middle east, and 10 countries have been struck by hundreds of ballistic missiles and thousands of drones. Authoritarian states are becoming more aggressive, and the way wars are fought is changing at pace. This is the most volatile security environment for a generation. This is not a moment for gestures or political point scoring; it is a moment for a serious decision.
James Cartlidge
When is the Minister going to publish the defence investment plan?
Al Carns
We will publish the defence investment plan as soon as is feasible. The hon. Gentleman will not find anyone who wants more than me more defence spending at a faster rate, but this is a moment for serious decisions to be taken in the national interest. We need to get ourselves back on track. There has been a whole plethora of funding decisions over the last 14 years, which I lived through, and I am sure some hon. and gallant Members present lived through, that in the current environment are no longer fit for purpose.
Dame Meg Hillier
I am sure my hon. Friend will remember that at one point when he was serving our country the last Government put an extra £4.5 billion into defence spending. However, time after time, every witness that came in front of the Public Accounts Committee told us how it was not solving their funding problem and was overspent many times. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need rigour in spending that actually delivers the kit to our men and women on the ground, in the air and at sea who are serving our country?
Al Carns
I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution. We have a large defence budget, and in the past it has not been spent effectively.
I think we can collectively agree, on both sides of the House, that huge procurement mistakes have been made in the past that have resulted in either the wrong equipment or the money going the wrong way. We therefore need to take our time to get this right. As Conservative Members will know, the other reason we need to take our time to get this right is that conflict is changing; in some cases, it overtakes some of the capability that was ordered years ago.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
I thoroughly enjoyed the Minister’s interview on Times Radio, in which he talked about his role in defence and his history and was asked about his leadership. I will not ask him about his leadership ambitions, but I would like to know where the DIP is stuck. Which Minister is it stuck with? Is it stuck with the Chancellor, or does the Ministry of Defence itself have a problem? I would be grateful if the Minister could elucidate a little.
Al Carns
Defence is very clear about what it requires. We are working collectively across Government to come to a joint decision on where that spending portfolio will fall.
There are points in this motion that are obvious. The world is more dangerous, and we are investing more in defence, but recognising that is the easy part; the real question is whether we are prepared to make the decisions required to deal with it. Defence is not a shopping list, and it must not be treated as such. It is not about picking a number of troops, as mentioned in the motion, and it is not about shifting money around on paper. It is about building a force that works—one that is properly equipped with the correct equipment, properly supported and able to operate alongside our allies. In my time in uniform and since coming into this role, I have spent time in multiple different operational theatres, and I know that this is not about the size of the armed forces; it is about the plan. This is about the purpose, the equipment and how people will be integrated. Simply stating that we should add 20,000 extra troops to the Army, with no clear or concise understanding of how they will be used, is not the way to go about business.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
The Minister is making a powerful case. A man with his record and history coming to this place is to be congratulated, and I am enthused to see him in his place today, as I think we all are.
We have talked about the non-appearance of the defence investment plan, but there is another review that has not appeared that has even more impact: the review on China and the threat that it poses to us. That was promised again by the Government. I raise this issue because under Conservative and Labour Governments, I have gone on constantly about the growing threat, and we have not faced up to it. China is critical to this matter; if we watch the tankers going into the strait of Hormuz and out again without any problems, we begin to realise the incredible links that China has with Iran, Russia and North Korea. Is the Ministry of Defence demanding that that review is handed to it and published, or has it forgotten about it?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. I do not require any correspondence from the Minister, although it is always welcome.
Al Carns
Let me go back to the point about the 20,000 troops. The motion calls for more troops, but it says nothing about how they would be recruited, trained, housed or equipped. It does not even begin to answer the most basic questions about what those troops would actually be used for. It proposes funding defence through unrelated policy changes, as if national security can be managed like a spreadsheet, and it pulls together issues that do not form a coherent strategy. That is not a defence plan—it is a list.
What is most revealing is the position of the Conservative party. One week, the Leader of the Opposition says that we should send jets “to the source” in Iran, and that we are in this war
“whether we like it or not”.
The following week, she says,
“I never said we should join”,
and when the shadow Defence Secretary, the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), is asked for a clear position, he says that there are no easy answers. Those are their words, and they tell us everything. They are armchair generals rushing to judgment one week and retreating from it the next—rushing towards escalation, then stepping back from it the next. That is not leadership, it is not judgment, and it is certainly not how to make decisions about putting British service personnel in harm’s way. Those decisions demand seriousness, not commentary or hyperbole from the sidelines.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I share the respect of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) for the Minister and his experience, but the two statements from the Leader of the Opposition that he read out are not incompatible. The fact is that we would not have joined in the military action that the Americans and the Israelis initiated, but it is undeniable that the war has now come to us. What does he think is happening in London? Did he not hear the deputy chief of the Metropolitan police on the radio this morning talking about the rising Iranian threat that is now domestic in our own capital? This war has come to us. As Leon Trotsky said, Madam Deputy Speaker,
“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”
Al Carns
I hope war is not interested in you personally, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The Iranian threat—Hezbollah, Hamas, lethal aid in Iraq and Afghanistan, and supporting terrorist organisations around the world—is not lost on me at all. However, I will be really clear: I have served in every staff college in the career structure of the British military, and I have always been taught that there are three key things. First, you have to have a legal mandate; secondly, you have to have a plan; and thirdly, you have to think to the end. If the Opposition think that we should be involved in the conflict, then by all means they should say so, but if they do not, they should be balanced.
Several hon. Members rose—
James Cartlidge
I believe that the Minister was giving way to me, and I am grateful to him for doing so.
To be clear, the Prime Minister and the Conservative party now have the same position. The Prime Minister would grant the US use of our bases—its bombers have been taking off from our bases. That was our position. The difference is that we have maintained that position from the beginning, 100% consistently, whereas the Prime Minister has U-turned repeatedly. We are the ones who have been consistent; Labour has been blowing all over the place.
Al Carns
The Opposition would have dragged us into this conflict quicker than we could possibly have imagined. We have made the difficult but correct decision to remain in a defensive posture. That is the right decision.
Let me deal directly with the record that we inherited. The shadow Defence Secretary himself admitted that defence spending reduced every year because, in his words, people thought we had peace. That assumption has left this country exposed. Ground-based air defence investment, which is now protecting our forces in the middle east with our allies and partners, was cut by around 70% in the Conservatives’ final year. Frigates and destroyers were reduced by a quarter, and minehunters were cut by more than a half. I was the chief of staff of our carrier strike force, which validates our minehunting capability that goes to the middle east. Interestingly, in the 2021 integrated review, the out of service date for minehunters was brought forward to 2026—good decision! Troop numbers were left at their lowest level in modern history. That is the reality, that is the legacy, and that is what we are trying to fix, and we are fixing it.
Several hon. Members rose—
Al Carns
I will continue and then give way in a minute.
We have taken more action in the past 20 months than the Conservatives managed in the 14 years before that, with more than 1,200 major defence contracts, 86% of which have been awarded to British-based businesses. The Conservatives argued that we should spend 2.5% of GDP on defence by 2030; we are delivering it by 2027.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. Let me just say to the Minister: no more “yous”.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I sense that this little fracas is something of a tautological tap dance. We are at war, and I do not think Iran cares whether we made the strike on it or not, because it still sees us as a target. We accept that, and that is the danger that our troops are in.
However, I want to ask the Minister about something else. I want to ask again the question that I asked the Defence Secretary yesterday. Is it not the reality that we are at war, and that Iran is an enemy of ours and has been for a considerable time? It has been carrying out operations here. It has been stirring up Islamic extremism, and we are seeing targeted antisemitism and hate marches. That is all part of Iran’s plan. Is it not time that the Government finally said “Enough is enough”, proscribed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and arrested the hell out of these people who are causing mayhem on our streets?
Al Carns
I thank the right hon. Member for his comments. I will raise them with the Security Minister, and push exceptionally hard.
The motion suggests that we are failing to learn lessons from Ukraine. Let me make it absolutely clear that these are two separate issues. This Government are leading. We committed £4.5 billion in military support last year, building on £3 billion annually. We have co-led the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, which has helped to secure over $45 billion of investment, and in February alone a further $35 billion was raised. However, we have not just provided funds; we have adapted.
At this point, I want to recall my own history. I left the military in 2024. I left because the Government and the military collectively were not learning the lessons from Ukraine. That is the very reason I left to come to this place. Labour was not in government at the time, and we were already years into the conflict. Opposition Members will recognise this as being one of my hobby horses since I have been in the Ministry of Defence.
There has been a tenfold increase in drone delivery, with a target of 100,000 this year. A new cyber and electromagnetic force has been built on lessons from the battlefield in Ukraine, and £4 billion has been committed to autonomous systems over time. We have seen Project Asgard, a hybrid Navy, a defence uncrewed centre of excellence in the SDR, a cultural change within the Army, Navy and Air Force in respect of uncrewed systems, an increase in uncrewed systems training, and cultural development in phase 1 and phase 2 training. I am therefore confused as to how no lessons are being learned. We must go faster, and we are pushing as hard as we can, but I want to be very clear about this, and I will bring you back to the first point. I left the military because your Government—[Interruption.] I left the military because the Conservative Government were not learning the lessons effectively from Ukraine.
Let me turn to the topic of Northern Ireland and morale. I do not recognise the argument advanced in the motion.
Dr Evans
The Minister gave us an extensive list of some of the spending commitments, but will he set out the exact spending commitments, and explain about the 1.5% required by NATO, which is not included in the defence spending? It was a great big list, but I have not heard the other side of it, and I should be grateful if he could provide those categories.
Matt Western
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. The 1.5% is, of course, about security-related initiatives, and it is important that we get to those soon. As for the wider defence investment plan, I would just say a word of caution: we must get it absolutely right. I have been trying to work with colleagues on both sides of the House since the start of the Ajax project in 2016 to find a resolution to some of these problems. We must take great care and be very clear-eyed about the procurement strategy that we follow.
Al Carns
I completely agree. We have to get the defence investment plan right, and we have to ensure that it balances all the different problems that we face, whether they relate to air defence in the middle east and the lessons identified there or, indeed, the lessons identified in Ukraine.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
One thing that we need to get right, and which we got wrong in the past, is this. When I was first elected in 2017, there were not Russian spy ships off the coast of my constituency, but now there are, and we detected a submarine before Christmas. I raised this issue with the Leader of the House last week and have been granted a ministerial meeting. Does the Minister agree that there is a Russian threat on our doorstep to vital strategic resources, including pipelines, interconnectors, our offshore wind, and our oil and gas? Look at what happened in the Baltic.
Al Carns
We often talk about not having a frontline with Russia, but the reality is that we do. It is in the north Atlantic and in maritime, where we are facing off against Russian capability on a daily basis. We have seen a 30% increase in surface and subsurface capability, which speaks to the complexity of the defence investment plan and to the requirement to balance our assets, given the crisis in the middle east and, of course, the continual and persistent threat from the Russians in the north.
Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)
I would like to take the gallant Minister back to his comments about when and why Britain should go to war. It is clear that the Conservatives have forgotten that the Leader of the Opposition made her comments during the offensive action, not the defensive action. Is the Minister concerned that we have a Leader of the Opposition and a leader of the Reform party who, when Donald Trump says, “Jump!”, say, “How high?”
Al Carns
I am going to make a bit of ground, and then I will come back to the right hon. Gentleman in due course.
Morale is built on leadership, clarity and trust, and the facts matter. Recruitment is up by 13%, and outflow is down by 8%. For the first time in over a decade, more people are joining the armed forces than leaving—that is the reality. Let us be clear about our responsibility to our veterans: there is no equivalence between those who served to protect life and those who sought to destroy it. This Government are putting in place proper protections for veterans following the legal uncertainty that was left behind, and we are backing that with action.
Actions talks. Op Valour is putting £50 million into our veterans programme—more than ever before. Op Ascend is helping veterans into meaningful employment, with funding to tackle veterans’ homelessness and to deliver real improvements in housing and pay. We have delivered the largest pay rise in two decades, including a 35% increase for new recruits. We have bought back 36,000 military homes and are investing £9 billion to improve them. We have funded 30 hours of free childcare for under-threes across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, saving forces families up to £6,000 a year. That is the difference that practical support makes, and it is why we are seeing a change in morale. If the Conservatives want a debate about who is delivering for our service personnel, I am more than happy to stand on our record and to compare theirs with ours.
Al Carns
I am going to a make a bit of ground, and then I will come back to the right hon. Gentleman.
We come to perhaps the most revealing part of the motion: the suggestion that defence should be funded through changes to the two-child benefit cap. Let me say this plainly: you do not strengthen national security by setting it against support for working families, you do not ask the country to choose between security abroad and stability at home, and you do not build credible defence policy on that basis. It is the job of the Government to make life easier for families, not harder.
I will say something else. I grew up in a family where decisions about money took place, and I see the same pressures on the communities that I now represent. Security is not just about what happens overseas; it is about whether families feel that they can cope, whether they feel stable and whether they feel that the system is working for them. The Conservatives’ motion is not a serious way to approach defence funding, because the strength of a country rests both on armed forces that can deter and defend, and on a society at home that is stable, resilient and confident. Pitting one against the other does not strengthen either; it weakens both.
This Government are taking a different approach. We are making decisions in the national interest, and we will not be pushed into those decisions by noise or pressure—we will take them carefully and responsibly. We are increasing defence spending, strengthening our forces—whether it be recruitment or outflow, or the morale component as a whole—and ensuring that our forces are ready to face threats both now and in the future. We will publish our defence investment plan, but we will not rush it for the sake of a headline. As has been demonstrated over the past 14 years, a plan that is not properly funded or deliverable does not strengthen our security, but weakens it.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I have listened carefully to this debate, which has been an interesting knockabout. On the question of what we are achieving, I refer the Minister back to the comments of the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), who was the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee when the Conservatives were in office, on the numerous wastage scandals in defence procurement. I was Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee during the Blair years; I go back so far that I remember Lord Levene being appointed by Michael Heseltine to get this right. We are never going to get anywhere until we stop the scandal of defence procurement. We have the sixth biggest defence budget in the world, but we do not get bang for our buck. I do not have any instant solutions, but is this not something we can all unite around? Can we not just insist that we stop these huge projects, which are not fit for modern warfare, and go back to actually being able to fight a war?
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. Before the Minister responds, I note that many colleagues wish to contribute; no doubt he is coming close to his conclusion.
Al Carns
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his contribution. We are moving in that direction; the national armaments director is providing professional oversight now and is looking at reviewing the system. I think we can all collectively agree on whether we have got value for money over the past 14 to 20 years. We need to make sure that we do get value for money in the future; if we had in the past, we would have a properly equipped armed forces at the present moment.
In closing, this motion asks the House to express regret about a Government who are delivering the largest increase in defence spending, leading on Ukraine, investing in our veterans and reversing the decline in recruitment and morale that we inherited. At a time when our armed forces are deployed to protect British lives, the Opposition offer a motion built on a record they would rather forget and a set of arguments that do not meet the test of seriousness. This is not a moment for point scoring but a time for leadership, and this Government are providing it. I urge the House to reject the motion.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
James MacCleary
I was actually going to talk about something completely different, but the question is a good one. I find it very disappointing that the Conservatives have so little faith in the ingenuity and industry of this country to produce its own independent deterrent. This is a multi-decade project. We understand that the Conservatives do not grasp fiscal responsibility—we saw that from the state they left our economy in—but a multi-decade project requires a serious commitment. In the short term, we should be looking to bring servicing and maintenance of the missiles into the UK to reduce our reliance on others. [Interruption.] Hon. Members are asking where. We will develop the capability. I understand that the Conservatives do not like investing in Britain’s skills, but we can develop the skills. I have complete confidence that we can do so.
The defining challenge for our nation is how to meet the unprecedented threat posed by an imperial Kremlin and an unreliable White House. It requires thinking about defence in a new way, because to stand up for values that we cherish, we must be strong enough to defend them. That means, at its core, rearming Britain. Meeting this challenge requires more than military hardware. It means a whole-of-society approach to national resilience. It means energy security, investing in renewables so that we are not dependent on fossil fuels from the very dictators we are standing up to. The Conservatives’ plan to raid investment in renewable energy investment undermines one element of UK security for another—it is robbing Peter to pay Paul. It means food security too. Biodiversity underpins our ability to feed ourselves. Declining ecosystems mean declining food production, and that is a national security risk that we ignore at our peril.
It also means the defence readiness Bill, which is currently held up by the Government’s own delays on the defence investment plan. We cannot afford this drift; there can be no delay in beginning that work. That is why the Liberal Democrats have argued that the defence investment plan must be accompanied by an immediate cash injection to support vital capital investment in our forces. We have detailed what this programme could look like, raising £20 billion in defence bonds over two years. [Hon. Members: “Yay!”] I am pleased that Conservative Members are so excited about the bonds idea—perhaps they have come around to it at last. [Interruption.]
It would be a fixed-term issuance, legally hypothecated to capital defence spending. The programme would be a secure way for people to invest their savings while helping to strengthen Britain’s national defence.
Al Carns
I thank the hon. Member for allowing the intervention. I cannot describe the laughing and bickering that is going on right now, when we have troops in harm’s way. There has to be a level of seriousness, whether we are discussing the nuclear deterrent or investment opportunities and mistakes made. We have troops in harm’s way, so I ask Members to provide an element of seriousness to the debate.
James MacCleary
I thank the Minister for his intervention.
It would be a chance to back our armed forces, our security and Britain. We know that properly funding our nation’s security is critical to meeting the threats of this new and unprecedented era, and we also need to ensure that defence funding can generate wider growth in our economy. That is exactly what those bonds would deliver, supporting jobs and an expansion of our defence industrial base across Britain.
Do not just take my word for it; we need to listen to the voice of British industry, academics and financial institutions. In the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ September 2025 green budget, it was clear that borrowing for defence could lead to higher growth, particularly when that additional defence spending is investment heavy. We also need to recognise that the long-term regeneration of our armed forces will require even higher and sustained increases to defence spending—up to 3%. The Liberal Democrats have called on the Government to commit to cross-party talks to agree a shared approach to achieve that. I hope that the Minister will be open-minded about those talks.
We must look to secure and expand the UK’s involvement with financial instruments that offer cheap, new access to defence finance. That is why the Government must re-examine the negotiations to enter the Security Action for Europe fund. I hope that the Prime Minister will take a direct role in getting British access to that. Will the Minister update us on negotiations for access to that fund?
Oral Answers to Questions
Al Carns Excerpts(4 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Patrick Hurley (Southport) (Lab)
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)
Alongside the conflict in the middle east, the war in Ukraine continues to rage. Russia is taking more than 1,000 casualties a day, and has launched more than 55,000 missile and drone attacks against Ukraine in just the last year. At the latest meeting of the Ukraine defence contact group, the Defence Secretary announced a new air defence package, worth more than £500 million, of missiles and systems to protect Ukraine from Russian attacks. In the coming months, the UK will deliver an additional 1,200 air defence missiles and 200,000 rounds of artillery through the air defence consortium.
Patrick Hurley
The Prime Minister’s leadership on Ukraine has been exemplary. Does the Minister agree that that leadership has helped to secure US commitments on security for Ukraine, and that this demonstrates the importance of the US-UK defence relationship to international security?
Al Carns
The UK-US relationship remains stalwart. Our collective leadership on Ukraine has been second to none; the Defence Secretary’s leadership of the Ukraine defence contact group has stimulated billions of pounds of investment; and through what we are doing in Ukraine, we are delivering in support of not just UK security, but European security.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
In the last few weeks, the Prime Minister has been very clear about what he considers our role to be, under international law, if we believe that allies are being attacked. Does he see Ukraine as having exactly the same status as an ally? Does he believe that we are, of necessity, directly involved, given that it is under attack?
Al Carns
As the right hon. Member will know, we continue to support Ukraine with almost as much capability as we can. Through leadership of the Ukraine defence contact group, through capability and through industrial working groups backed by the United Kingdom and across Europe, we will continue to support Ukraine, and do everything possible to ensure the sanctity of Ukrainian sovereignty.
Luke Murphy (Basingstoke) (Lab)
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)
Let me be really clear: the UK’s priority is supporting British nationals and our partners in accordance with international law. The Prime Minister has made clear that any UK action must always have a legal basis. On 7 March, the UK notified the UN Security Council of the relevant actions, including our defensive counter-air operations, taken under article 51 of the United Nations charter. Military credibility and legal credibility go hand inusb hand.
Ayoub Khan
When nations commit war crimes, the UN charter makes it plain that other nations must not provide any support or assistance. Trump and Netanyahu started this illegal war and, in welcoming US aircraft on British bases so that they can be loaded with 2,000 lb bombs, the UK is clearly aiding and abetting that, in breach of international law. Right now, we are helping to escalate this conflict, which is bringing us to the brink of global recession. That is why the British public do not support our involvement in this war. Would the Defence Secretary like to explain why they are wrong?
Al Carns
Let me talk a little bit about crimes: support to Hamas; support to Hezbollah; support to the Houthis; support to various armed groups with lethal aid that has been killing British forces for 20 years. Are we going to apologise for protecting UK nationals? Absolutely not.
Yuan Yang (Earley and Woodley) (Lab)
Last month, satellite imagery of the Gaza war cemetery showed that Israeli forces had destroyed more than 100 allied graves using heavy machinery. This is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission site, and these are graves of British and allied personnel who served in the first and second world wars and made the ultimate sacrifice. Has my hon. Friend raised concerns with his Israeli counterpart? What steps will he take to prevent future destruction of Commonwealth war graves?
Al Carns
I thank my hon. Friend for her really important question. I am absolutely dismayed by the reports of damage to the cemetery by both Israeli operations and Hamas fighters. Brave servicemen laid to rest overseas should not in any way, shape or form have their graves defiled; neither should the courageous men and women who tend to the graves have to experience that. Together with our international partners, we have raised our concerns with Israeli authorities. We will continue to support the commission as it looks to assess and repair the damage when it is safe to do so.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)
We are studying developments very carefully and remain in close contact with the United States and other allies. The UK’s position is clear: the best way forward for the region and the world is a negotiated settlement with Iran when it has given up its nuclear ambitions. Recent events have also underlined the importance of resilience, strong alliances and credible military capability in a world where regional crisis can develop quickly. A sustainable peace must reduce the risk of conflict, not simply pause it.
Monica Harding
My constituents are deeply concerned about further escalation in the middle east and the UK being pulled further into a conflict with no clear objective. They are also concerned about the impact on their energy bills, inflation and interest rates. President Trump is attempting to pull us into his war of choice, urging UK deployments to the strait of Hormuz and asserting that NATO’s future depends on allies committing to deploying assets. Will the Minister rule out the deployment of military assets to the strait of Hormuz, and will he do so as strongly as our German and Spanish allies have done? Does he agree that de-escalation is key, as any further military action threatens a sustainable peace? Does he also agree that a better way forward would be for the UK, as penholder on the UN Security Council, to present an emergency resolution to get the strait of Hormuz open through UN channels?
Al Carns
I have attended every staff college in the military—initial staff college, advanced command staff college and higher command staff college—and they all say two things: “First, you must have a legal mandate before putting people in harm’s way; secondly, you must think through to the end.” We will continue to work in a comprehensive and calm manner with our allies and partners to ensure that we can come up with a solution to the strait of Hormuz, and we will not rule anything out, because we cannot guarantee where this war is going to go.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
Residents in my constituency are rightly worried about the ongoing events in the middle east, so will the Minister reaffirm for the avoidance of any doubt that this Government’s first priority is to keep their citizens safe, and that our decisions thus far and moving forward have been and will continue to be based on the collective self-defence of long-standing allies and on protecting British lives?
Al Carns
As we speak, there will most likely be fast jets flying in the middle east or around Cyprus, tracking, identifying and engaging with drones that pose a direct threat to our British interests, our allies and partners and, potentially, British citizens. I take my hat off to them, and I fully support them. We will maintain that defensive posture for as long as this conflict continues.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool Riverside) (Lab)
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)
Strengthening defence relationships with our allies is a central priority for the Government. We do that through joint operations, exercises, intelligence co-operation, deeper industrial partnerships and close planning with NATO and joint expeditionary force allies and other key partners. We have recently signed landmark defence agreements with Norway, Germany and France and have forged closer capability partnerships, including with Norway on Type 26 frigates and Turkey with Typhoon. The upcoming defence diplomacy strategy will help further enhance our international relationships.
Gordon McKee
The war in Ukraine has shown that rapid innovation cycles are critical to success. Minister Fedorov and others in Ukraine have helped to build a defence technology ecosystem that connects start-ups, engineers and units on the frontline, even allowing some of those units to operate quasi-independently to test out new technologies. Given that the strategic defence review recommended that the UK learn from its allies, how is the Minister using the defence relationship with Ukraine not just to support the Ukrainians in their fight but to learn from them so that we can strengthen the UK’s armed forces?
Al Carns
Since arriving in this House, I have been droning on about drones—it is one of the reasons I came into politics. There are three key lessons that we need to learn. The first is to adapt a process to give us a high-low mix of fifth-generation capability supported by cheap mass. That mass must be dumb hardware with sophisticated software. Finally, the software must be integrated across all domains and be driven by data and artificial intelligence. We will be able to achieve that only with a closer public-private partnership as we move forward.
Michelle Scrogham
The Government understand that “made in Britain” means good quality jobs for British people. Exporting those goods to international allies not only equips our allies with the best of British workmanship but puts billions of pounds into the UK economy. Barrow-in-Furness will build our AUKUS submarines, but what work is the Minister doing to ensure that UK small and medium-sized enterprises are well placed to benefit from AUKUS pillar 2 projects?
Al Carns
The first hundred pages or so of the SDR are about better industrial collaboration between the MOD and our industries. Work on AUKUS will create over 7,000 additional jobs at UK sites and across the supply chain, with over 21,000 working on the programme at its peak. We must do more to work with SMEs. The annual innovation challenge, for example, sees suppliers receive support for developing novel capabilities to demonstration phase. The UK winners in 2024 include two SMEs, one large supplier and one academic group.
Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)
TEK Military Seating in Tunbridge Wells designs and exports military seating. It risks losing a £400,000 order to a customer in the United Arab Emirates because it lacks the permissions in the export licence, and my understanding is that the Department for Business and Trade is waiting for an answer from the MOD. Will the Minister please investigate?
Al Carns
I do not have the details of that specific case, but I am sure that the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry would love to do so.
Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)
Following the drone attack at RAF Akrotiri earlier this month, there has been growing disquiet within Cyprus and the Cypriot community about the continuing existence of the sovereign base areas. Given the absolute necessity of this defence relationship between the United Kingdom and Cyprus, will the Minister update the House on the Secretary of State’s visit to Cyprus earlier this month? Could he also say what reassurance the Cypriot Government need from us to ensure not only that the base is safe but that the future security of Cyprus is ensured?
Al Carns
Our sovereign base in Cyprus is not in question. When the Secretary of State for Defence visited Cyprus, the Cypriot national guard reaffirmed that our relationship is closer now than ever before. We must always remember the complexity of dealing with air defence. When it involves high and fast ballistic missiles combined with slow and low drones, it is a very complex problem for anyone to deal with, but we are trying to ensure that we come as close to 100% as we can.
Derek Twigg (Widnes and Halewood) (Lab)
Given the present focus on the war in the middle east, there is concern that we should not lose focus on what is going on in Ukraine. On developing and strengthening our relationships with our allies, what are the Minister and his fellow Ministers doing to ensure that Putin does not take advantage of the current situation in the middle east, and that we ensure that Ukraine continues to get the full support, weapons and assets that it needs?
Al Carns
We continue to lead, both in the coalition of the willing and in the Ukraine defence contact group, which the Secretary of State attended recently, raising billions of pounds-worth of equipment support in weapons, air defence systems and everything through to female body armour. Ukraine absolutely remains a focus. This is not just about UK security; it is about European security, and that will not change.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
May I build on the excellent supplementary question asked by the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Gordon McKee) about Ukraine and counter-drone warfare? Thanks to the support given by this Government and the previous Government to Ukraine, it has become a world leader in inventing and deploying cheap responses to cheap drones. As a result, there is now an opportunity for it to assist our allies that are under threat from drone attacks in the middle east and in particular in the Persian gulf. Will the Government do everything they can to facilitate that, and thus show that Ukraine does indeed have some cards to play?
Al Carns
The Secretary of State has been in discussions with the National Security Agency and with key individuals in Ukraine. I am a firm believer that the Ukrainians need the west now and that in the future we will need them, given some of the technological advances they have made. It is also worth doubling down on some of the capabilities and initiatives moving forward, ranging from the hybrid Navy to the Army 20-40-40 programme, the Defence uncrewed centre of excellence, the NMITE drone degree to enhance and increase education, industry and the military forces’ move towards uncrewed systems and, finally, the £4 billion on uncrewed systems within the SDR.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
There are growing rumours that the Government plan to bring back their ill-fated Northern Ireland Troubles Bill to the Commons next week. If that is true, it will give us the perfect opportunity to debate the Prime Minister’s links with Phil Shiner, the disgraced lawyer who was convicted of fraud and struck off for making multiple false allegations against British soldiers. The Northern Ireland Secretary has told the House repeatedly that there is no such thing as a vexatious prosecution. Do MOD Ministers now agree that that is not just naive but simply untrue, especially after the case of Phil Shiner —a man universally hated across the British Army?
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)
There are two key roles that the Ministry of Defence plays within this legislation. The first is to ensure that we protect veterans throughout any legal process to do with Northern Ireland, and the second is to ensure that no one corrupts the system to try to rewrite history with a different narrative. There is a third role, which is to ensure that those families who have lost loved ones who were in the armed forces or the security services get the truth, reconciliation and justice they deserve.
Mr Francois
I was asking about the current Prime Minister, not the next one. After previously denying that the Prime Minister was instructed to act in a case against veterans by Phil Shiner, on 24 February the Veterans Minister had to come to the House and correct the record because the Prime Minister did, in fact, act for Phil Shiner in the al-Jedda case before the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. That case effectively opened the floodgates for prosecutions against British Army veterans, which the troubles Bill now threatens to do all over again. To save the Veterans Minister having to come back here again and correct the record twice, can she or this Minister simply tell us why Labour is led by a man who partly made a living out of helping to put British Army soldiers and even their commanders in the dock?
Al Carns
I thank the hon. Member for the field promotion—he, obviously, has not had one. We have two roles: protecting veterans and ensuring that no one can rewrite history through the courts. We will push hard on that and deliver it for the veterans who deserve it.
Dan Carden (Liverpool Walton) (Lab)
Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)
Al Carns
The hon. Member is absolutely correct. We took a six-week programme of deep refit and rearmed in six days—a remarkable effort from both the industry and the Royal Navy. I doff my cap to what they have done. That ship is now sailing to the middle east. At times of crisis, we can move things faster. We made a decision as quickly as possible, and if we need to, we will do the same again. [Interruption.] Opposition Members will recognise that an air defence destroyer is designed to protect a moving aircraft carrier. We may want to look into the investment in ground-based air defence over the last five to 15 years, and the lack of capability that we were left with. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I need to hear the next question. I will not be able to if there is chuntering across the Chamber.
Commonwealth Troops: First World War
Al Carns Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
As the son of a man who fought in the second world war, I am privileged to be able to sum up on behalf of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition in this debate about those who fell in the first world war and the vital contribution made by Commonwealth troops during that epic conflict.
The first world war turned out to be a manpower-intensive conflict in which the contribution of Commonwealth troops was invaluable. The National Army Museum at Chelsea estimates that over 3 million soldiers and labourers from across what was then the British empire, today the Commonwealth, served alongside the British Army in multiple theatres of operations. We have heard a number of erudite and touching tributes from hon. Members to that effect this afternoon, and I will refer to a few of them, but before I do there is one other important point I want to make.
Where is Reform? We are here to debate the contribution of people from all nations, of all colours, of all cultures, made 100 years or more ago, to defending the freedom of what was then the empire and is now the Commonwealth. Why is Reform’s Bench yet again empty when we debate defence-related matters? If those plastic patriots who love to wrap themselves in the flag aspire to be a party of government, let them at least come to this House and behave like it.
Turning to the contributions of Members, I commend the hon. Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) for securing this debate and, if I may say so, for introducing it so brilliantly. He spoke memorably about the extraordinary contribution of the Indian Army—Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs all joined together as one army fighting for freedom against tyranny. He said that honour transcends borders. He was right.
My hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) spoke very knowledgably about the vital work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, not least because she worked for it. She highlighted the commission’s marvellous endeavours to commemorate the sacrifices that were made in defence of freedom. On behalf of my party, I would like to commend the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for everything that it does.
The hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden (Yasmin Qureshi) spoke powerfully about the contribution of the Indian Army, and especially its Muslim regiments. The hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) followed her in a similar vein and spoke in particular about the Sikh regiments who have a proud martial tradition in British service, not least in the first world war.
The hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) made, if I might say, a very socialist contribution, but he also paid tribute to those who served. The hon. Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes) paid a fulsome tribute to Commonwealth troops. The Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding), reminded us that after the largely regular British Expeditionary Force was wiped out while holding the line in 1914, it was eventually citizens’ armies, including from the Commonwealth, who replaced it to win the war.
As there were multiple contributions from across the empire and the Commonwealth during the First World War, it would be invidious to attempt to highlight any one as more important than the others. It might be better to attempt to summarise briefly—in the few minutes that I have to cover a war that lasted four years—some of the national contributions to the wider war effort.
I begin with the Canadians. Following the outbreak of the war, Canada established the Canadian Expeditionary Force, principally for service on the western front. The Canadians fought in many of the major battles in that theatre, including the second Ypres, the Somme, Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele. In so doing, they were supported by troops from Newfoundland, although that did not formally become part of Canada until after the second world war. The Newfoundland regiment also fought at Gallipoli and then on the western front, including in the so-called last hundred days when the allied armies—the British Army in particular, but with Commonwealth support—broke the back of the German army in the field.
That victory, fully utilising the principle of combined operations including infantry, artillery, tanks and aircraft working in concert, should not be underestimated. It is often highlighted by military historians as a significant feat of arms, completely contrary to what might be called the “Blackadder” version of the history of the first world war.
Mr Francois
I see that the Minister is nodding in assent.
The Australians also made a major contribution to the first world war. Over 400,000 served in what was known as the Australian Imperial Force. Over half of them became casualties, either killed or wounded.
Perhaps the most famous Australian contribution, combined with their comrades from New Zealand, was in the ill-fated campaign at Gallipoli in 1915 when the Australian and New Zealand army corps, now forever known as the Anzacs, suffered heavy casualties attempting to overcome the extremely well dug-in Turkish defences on the peninsula. Nevertheless, it is important to record that Anzac troops also served bravely in other theatres of war, not least in the middle east and on the western front.
India, which many hon. Members referred to, made the largest contribution from the Commonwealth, particularly if we include those from what is now modern day Bangladesh and Pakistan. I think it contributed more than a million troops in total over the course of the first world war.
I should declare an interest here as my great-grandfather-in-law Colonel William Sanders served as part of the Indian Army, and at one time commanded a battery of artillery towed by elephants. [Interruption.] He did. He then transferred to the Royal Garrison Artillery on the western front, winning a Distinguished Service Order at the battle of St Quentin, about which the family are obviously proud. The Indian Army of today, and its Bangladeshi and Pakistani counterparts, maintain proud regimental histories that date back to their actions in the first world war.
South African regiments also made an important contribution to the allied war effort, including the 1st South African Brigade, who famously fought at Delville Wood, which the troops nicknamed “Devil’s Wood”, on the Somme. Given what they went through, that was probably appropriate. The South Africans fought not just on the western front but against German troops on the African continent itself, including in both east and south-west Africa. It is also important to record the contribution of some 60,000 black South Africans who served mainly in support and logistical roles rather than as frontline infantry but nevertheless made an important contribution to the allied war effort, as indeed was recognised by General Jan Smuts.
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) for securing this very important debate at a very important time, to all the hon. and right hon. Members for their thoughtful contributions, and to the spirit of the House.
The role played by Commonwealth forces in the first world war is pivotal; indeed, it is legendary—an all too often overlooked chapter of our nation’s history. I am grateful that this debate will help us tell that story to this generation. The contribution of those forces is etched in stone at the heart of London, on the memorial gates on Constitution Hill, on which are inscribed:
“In memory of the five million volunteers from the Indian sub-continent, Africa and the Caribbean who fought with Britain in two world wars.”
It is a fitting memorial that honours around 3 million people from the Commonwealth who volunteered and fought in world war one, from the Indian subcontinent, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Africa and as far as the Caribbean.
Liam Conlon (Beckenham and Penge) (Lab)
The Minister mentions commemoration in London. In my part of south-east London, I had the pleasure of going, with representatives of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, to look at the graves that it maintains. Does he agree that the commission plays a vital role, not only in commemorating those who have fallen, but in educating children and young people today about the contributions that were made?
Al Carns
I completely agree. The commission maintains and looks after thousands of memorials all over the world, which helps us continue to educate and to communicate an important lesson.
The memorial in London commemorates the campaigns fought: on the western front, in Gallipoli, Russia, the middle east and Africa—indeed, in every major theatre of the conflict. It is also a memorial that rightly immortalises Commonwealth recipients of the Victoria Cross during the great war. They include brave men like Khudadad Khan, who was mentioned earlier: a courageous soldier in the British Indian Army who single-handedly held back the enemy to enable reinforcements to arrive. He was the first non-British recipient of our highest military honour during the first world war.
Of the 1 million people under British command killed during the first world war, nearly a quarter came from the Commonwealth nations. Having served in multiple theatres of conflict to protect the country that I am really proud to call home, and having lost good colleagues and friends, I have some ideas of the sacrifice they loyally made, but not—in any way, shape or form—of the scale. Over 74,000 people came from India, 65,000 from Canada, more than 62,000 from Australia, 18,000 from New Zealand and nearly 12,000 from South Africa. Their names are recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission across cemeteries and memorials on every continent, with dedicated memorials inaugurated or under construction in Cape Town, Nairobi, and Freetown in Sierra Leone. Commonwealth forces are honoured prominently during remembrance, with Commonwealth high commissioners playing a high-profile role in commemorations at the Cenotaph—but we must do more. Today we remember their service and their sacrifice, and I am delighted that their legacy lives on in our armed forces.
Let me turn to some of the comments made during the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South made some poignant remarks; different languages, different cultures and different faiths came together to fight for a common good, demonstrating incredible honour, unbelievable duty and outstanding courage. The key lesson from that is that it did not matter where someone came from, their religion or their race; they were united in a common cause.
The hon. Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) was right to point out the outstanding work done by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and I commend her for her past and ongoing support for it. The commission commemorates 1.7 million casualties across the globe, and even now, we have 5,000 Commonwealth personnel serving in the British military. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South and Walkden (Yasmin Qureshi) told us a truly remarkable story about a wireless operator deployed behind enemy lines and covertly inserted into France, describing how Commonwealth forces, or individuals from further afield, played every part in the operational tapestry of both the first and second world wars.
The hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) highlighted how our histories are entwined, but said that in some cases we fail to educate and to communicate that, in particular to the youth of the nation. He said that if we are to push in the same direction, we must understand our shared history and the common cause of democracy, the rule of law, the right to self-determination and equal rights.
My hon. Friend the Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) made some interesting comments and said that war is easy to talk about. Well, I can tell him now that war, if you have been engaged in it, is not easy to talk about. The best way to avoid conflict is to deter it, and I support the comments of the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) that we do not deter it by not preparing for it. I try to keep politics out of this debate, because this is not about a lack of realism; it is about remembrance.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes) mentioned the importance of education and communication to bind us together, to build bridges and to remove the division that people are sowing. He said that we must deal in unity, hope and ambition to drive the country forward, and I completely commend that narrative. The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding) pointed to the staggering contributions from across the Commonwealth, as we have heard from many people—such a poignant thing to dwell on.
The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford highlighted the lack of individuals from certain parties in this House today. Well, I will tell him where they are. They are probably out on social media, painting the sky grey and then selling the country umbrellas. It is an absolute travesty that they are not here to hear about the joint history that every Member has mentioned, and to talk about the shared sacrifice and what unity can indeed overcome.
I commend points made about the early stages of combined arms manoeuvre—something we see in Ukraine with the use of uncrewed systems, which is changing how we fight. Unfortunately, conflict tends to be the mother of invention.
My final point is this. When individuals from the Commonwealth came to fight, it was a huge unifying factor. Bombs, bullets and battlefields do not discriminate. They served together, they died together, and now we must focus on how we tell their story to ensure that we live together.
I again express my gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South for securing this debate. I am pleased that we have had the chance to mark the loyalty, courage and sacrifice of Commonwealth soldiers during the first world war. More than a century later, their legacy still inspires many young men and women. We must do more to honour their sacrifice and increase our ability to collectively recruit people into the British armed forces from all walks of life. As our debate has shown, their legacy continues to inspire us all.
Somalia: Operating Base SHAND Gifting
Al Carns Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)
It is the normal practice when a Government Department propose to make a gift of a value exceeding £300,000, for the Department concerned to present to the House of Commons a minute giving particulars of the gift and explaining the circumstances; and to refrain from making the gift until 14 parliamentary sitting days after the issue of the minute, except in cases of special urgency.
I have today laid before the House a departmental minute describing the gifting of a UK compound within the Mogadishu international airport in Somalia, previously known as Operating Base SHAND, to the African Union support and stabilisation mission in Somalia.
AUSSOM is a multidimensional African Union-led peace support mission approved by the United Nations. Its focus is stabilisation, security and state-building, aiming to transfer full security responsibilities to Somali security forces by December 2029. Since 2021, the UK has contributed nearly $140 million (£102.5 million) to AUSSOM and its predecessor mission, which reflects the UK’s broader commitment to African-led peace initiatives, working in partnership with the Federal Government of Somalia, the African Union, and the United Nations to tackle shared security challenges.
Operating Base SHAND—a UK compound within Mogadishu international airport—was originally commissioned in 2017 to house a three-year deployment to the United Nations support office in Somalia, announced by the then Prime Minister in 2015. That deployment, Operation CATAN, ended as planned in March 2019. Since then, the compound has remained the primary base for UK operations in Somalia. Having served its intended purpose, the base now exceeds the UK’s accommodation requirements in Somalia.
The UK remains committed to working with the Federal Government of Somalia in supporting Somalia’s security, alongside our international partners.
The Treasury has approved the proposal in principle. If, during the period of 14 parliamentary sitting days beginning on the date on which this minute was laid before the House of Commons, a Member signifies an objection by giving notice of a parliamentary question or a motion relating to the minute, or by otherwise raising the matter in the House, final approval of the gift will be withheld pending an examination of the objection.
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