Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Andrew Murrison and James MacCleary

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[James MacCleary]

My hon. Friend raises questions for the Minister to answer in closing the debate, but recruitment and retention are key concerns and have been a sort of crisis in the armed forces for many years.

In the context of authorising the maximum numbers of service personnel, it is reasonable that Parliament should be told how the Government plan to treat those people in service. New clause 9 would require publication of a retention strategy alongside the authorisation. It is a modest proposal, and the case for it is straightforward; recruitment alone solves nothing, if the conditions of service drive people back out of the door. We can invest in advertising, outreach and processing, and still find ourselves filling a vessel that will not hold. The problems that cause people to leave are well known: inadequate housing, unsupported families, opaque career structures and a sense that the institution does not value them as individuals.

New clause 10 would require an independent review to examine precisely those factors, including diversity, inclusion, the medical discharge process and the state of defence housing, not because these are peripheral concerns, but because they are operational ones.

[Dr Murrison]

I am concerned by the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. We have the continuous attitude survey, which does its work every year and delivers to Ministers a clear account of what is keeping people in and what is driving them away. Is he seriously proposing another set of reviews, which would add very little to what we already know?

[James MacCleary]

The continuous attitude survey is a survey of service personnel, but a review is quite different, as I am sure the right hon. Gentleman appreciates. We are talking about an independent review, which is not the same thing.

On housing, I want to be specific. The Government’s commitment to improving service family accommodation is welcome, but new clause 13 exists because single living accommodation has for too long been treated as a secondary concern. For a significant proportion of serving personnel, that accommodation is not temporary—it is their home. It is where they recover after deployment, where they live between postings and where they begin and end each working day. If it falls below a reasonable standard, that is not merely a welfare issue; it is a retention issue. We cannot speak of our people as our greatest asset while declining to apply that in principle to where they sleep.

--- Later in debate ---

[James MacCleary]

Absolutely. The suicide rate among young men in this country is already high, and the numbers relating to people discharged from the armed forces are deeply troubling.

We have passed motions, published strategies and made commitments, but we have not created proper, sustained oversight. As my hon. Friend mentions, a veterans’ mental health oversight officer with a statutory remit to monitor provision, assess compliance with covenant duties and report annually to Parliament would begin that change. The covenant should not be a postcode lottery; its outcomes should be measurable, consistent and accountable.

I also acknowledge the amendments tabled by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) on pension communications, the transfer of medical assessments, the reserve forces estate and the treatment of domestic abuse offences. In each case, they address the same underlying problem—that service personnel, veterans and their families are too often disadvantaged, not by malice, but by systems that do not speak to one another, and processes that were never designed with them in mind.

That brings me to the covenant. New clause 14 would place national standards around the extended covenant duty, requiring statutory guidance, minimum requirements for public bodies, proper training and a framework for monitoring reporting. New clause 15 would require the annual covenant report to assess compliance against those standards, analyse outcomes and make recommendations.

The objection to such measures is rarely principled. Almost no one opposes the covenant; the difficulty has always been with the consistency of delivery. One local authority may understand its obligations well, but another may not. One health body may have invested in this, but another may have done the minimum. One veteran may receive good support, but another with identical needs in a different part of the country may be left to navigate the system alone. These new clauses would make the covenant something more than just a statement of good faith. They would make it a standard that could be measured and enforced.

Finally, amendment 90 would require that allegations of sexual offences and domestic abuse occurring in the United Kingdom be referred immediately to the civilian police, and those offences would be prosecuted through the civilian justice system. Let me be clear: this amendment is recognition that when serious crimes are committed by someone in service—crimes that would, in any other context, be investigated by the police, and would be cases heard in a Crown court—the victims are entitled to the same confidence in the justice system as any other civilian. The Bill introduces new protections for victims of domestic abuse, stalking and sexual harm within the service justice system. Those changes are very welcome, but they do not fully answer the question of whether victims have sufficient confidence that a system embedded in a single institution can handle the most serious offences against them with complete independence.

Sexual offences and domestic abuse are not matters of military discipline; they are serious criminal matters. When they occur in the United Kingdom, there is no compelling reason why investigation and prosecution should default to a separate system. Amendment 90 would remove that ambiguity, give victims clarity, and demonstrate that justice for individuals takes precedence over institutional processes.

[Dr Murrison]

The question is surely whether victims are given a choice. At the moment, they are. The prosecutors’ protocol usually means that these cases are tried through the civilian criminal justice system. That is fine, but does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that justice delayed is justice denied? Through the service justice system, these cases are brought to a conclusion far more rapidly than they currently are in our civilian criminal justice system.

[James MacCleary]

I understand exactly what the right hon. and gallant Member is saying, but failures in the civilian justice system—which, as he rightly observes, has a big backlog of cases—should not be a reason for reducing people’s confidence about coming forward with complaints. We know from the continuous attitude survey, to which he has referred, that the main reasons given by personnel for not making a written, formal complaint continue to be not believing that anything will be done with the complaint, and believing that it might adversely affect their career. It would encourage more people to come forward if they knew that the complaint would be dealt with in the civilian system. The amendments I have spoken to do not unpick the Bill, nor do they reverse its intentions.

Defence Readiness

Debate between Andrew Murrison and James MacCleary

Wednesday 20th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[James MacCleary]

As has been pointed out, defence spending has been reduced by successive Governments over a very long period of time, so focusing on the Liberal Democrats’ record alone is somewhat unfair, to say the least.

[Dr Murrison]

Will the hon. Gentleman remind the House which party it was that insisted we delay the replacement of the continuous at sea deterrent by two full years as a condition of the coalition?

[James MacCleary]

The right hon. Member enjoys raising the coalition quite a lot. You are talking about the nuclear submarines, aren’t you? That is what you asked about.