Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Fourth sitting)

Amanda Martin Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 12th December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Francois]

In a moment. Having raised this issue with the Minister, who has a look on his face that says, “This wasn’t in my folder,” I very much hope that he will, being an artful chap, seek some inspiration and extemporise by saying something encouraging so that we do not feel it necessary to press the amendment. I was going to conclude my remarks there, but I do not want to be accused of curtailing the debate, so I will give way first to the hon. Lady and then to the hon. Gentleman.

[Amanda Martin]

Although we—and, I think, service personnel—recognise the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns about pensions in relation to those specific incidents, I will make three points if I may. First, the amendment states that

“A ‘general service welfare matter’ may include issues relating to the provision of pensions”.

That would give a rather larger weighting to the direction of the commissioner, potentially over the direction of service personnel and their families. I talk to service personnel in my city of Portsmouth, which is the home of the Royal Navy, and they might prefer for it to state that a general service welfare matter may include issues relating to housing, postings, their professional careers, their rules of engagement and access to local services.

Including that single provision would direct the commissioner and would not allow for issues to come up from personnel and the grassroots—from our people on the ground. Should a matter come forward as an issue they want to raise, obviously it is in the gift of the commissioner to do so, but actually the amendment would limit things. From the conversations I have had with personnel in my area, this is not at the top of their list. They would not like to be directed on what they can bring forward to the commissioner.

[Mr Francois]

I understand the hon. Lady’s argument, but—

--- Later in debate ---

I know that work has been going on on this, so the purpose of my speech was to reiterate the issue and to give the Minister an opportunity to tell us, I hope, that progress has been made and that it will be easier for military personnel and their families with SEN children to port EHCPs from one LEA to another.

[Amanda Martin]

As a teacher who worked in Portsmouth North, where we have a large number of naval families, I absolutely agree with you that SEND is in crisis. For families who need to move, the concerns are amplified. I sit on the Education Committee, and SEND is one of the top priorities that we are looking at with this Government.

[Mr Francois]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. She will know, not least from her service on that important Committee, of what is called the statutory override. In a nutshell, local authorities must produce a balanced budget each year, but, because of the very great pressure on local authorities that are also LEAs, they have been allowed to overspend on SEN for several years because it is such a big pressure. Bluntly, it would have bankrupted some of them otherwise. She may be able to update us, but I understand that the default position is that the statutory override is due to expire in March 2026. In other words, when local authorities are planning their new budgets for the ’26-’27 financial year, those budgets will have to balance.

I served on the Public Accounts Committee for a couple of years in the previous Parliament. About a month ago, the National Audit Office produced a report, which I am sure the Education Committee will look at, basically saying that the current system is unsustainable. This will be a challenge for the new Government. I am not trying to make a partisan point here, but it was a challenge for the previous Government and it will be a challenge for the new Labour Government, too. I mention that just to drive home the scale of the SEN challenge. There is no evidence that armed forces personnel are proportionately more or less likely to have a special needs child than members of civilian communities, so statistically it is a big problem for them, too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Francois]

I understand the thrust of the hon. Gentleman’s question. What it has to do with the Bill is that this issue cropped up quite a lot in the public evidence session. I respectfully refer him to the Hansard report of Tuesday’s proceedings. A number of witnesses raised the veterans issue, and I believe a number of members of the Committee followed up with questions. We had tabled the new clause by Monday night because we knew that there was concern within the veterans’ community about the independence of the OVA and therefore the independence of the Armed Forces Commissioner, which to be fair is a theme that we have discussed repeatedly today. That is the context in which the new clause was tabled on Monday evening, but it is worrying that one of the three veterans commissioners apparently felt compelled to resign because some in Government were seeking to crimp what they were trying to do on behalf of the veterans they were appointed to serve.

Now that the OVA is back within the MOD, and given that the decision was taken on the Government’s watch, I would like some reassurance from the Minister—we have a MOD Minister here, not a Cabinet Office Minister—that there will be no further attempts to impinge on the independence of any veterans commissioner by anyone in Government, any more than we would want them to impinge on the independence of the Armed Forces Commissioner. I have three very specific questions to that effect; then I will allow the Minister to reply.

First, where is the veterans commissioner for England? We were told, when I raised this issue on Second Reading, that the Department was working on it. At one point, there was going to be a UK-wide veterans commissioner, which then seemingly morphed into a veterans commissioner for England. We have one for Scotland and one for Wales—we had one for Northern Ireland too, but he resigned—so where are we on the veterans commissioner for England? Why should English veterans be at any disadvantage compared with their counterparts from the other three nations of the awesome foursome? Those English veterans served the Crown too. Where is their commissioner?

Secondly, what is the timetable for replacing the Northern Ireland Veterans Commissioner? Presumably the Government do not want that post to remain vacant for long, particularly with all the utter chaos over the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. Thirdly, what formal assurances can the Minister give on the record that this will not happen again? Those are my three questions.

[Amanda Martin]

You state—

[Mr Francois]

“He”!

[Amanda Martin]

Sorry. The right hon. Gentleman states that the Veterans Minister is vital and the fact that they do not sit in Cabinet now is a concern. Can he tell me which Tory MP sits in the shadow Cabinet to represent veterans?

[Mr Francois]

The clue is in the name: the shadow Cabinet is there to shadow the actual Cabinet. If there is not a Veterans Minister in the actual Cabinet, it is not necessarily axiomatic that there would be one in the shadow Cabinet.

To be clear, the decision to take the Veterans Minister out of the Cabinet and the Cabinet Office, and roll them in under the Ministry of Defence as—no disrespect—a junior Minister, was a decision taken by the Labour Government—[Interruption.] Excuse me—one at a time! I hear my hon. Friend the Member for Hamble Valley to my left—dare I put it that way—saying that the Prime Minister promised he would not do that. It was a decision taken by the Labour Government. I have read out the comments from the commissioners, who are there to represent the interests of the veterans’ community; I am not imagining it. The community are clearly very concerned, so perhaps we could hear the Minister’s reply.