Armed Forces Bill

Anum Qaisar Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

It is appropriate that this Bill has come back to the House in the week in which we celebrate Armed Forces Day. I add my thanks to members of the armed forces who are currently contributing to our fight against covid, and I pay tribute to them for their service. It was disappointing to hear earlier that members of our armed forces are still being deployed overseas without being fully vaccinated.

I take this opportunity to give a shout out to the team from Kayak 4 Heroes, who are currently undertaking a journey of 1,400 km from Land’s End to John O’Groats, by kayak, around the coast of the United Kingdom and along some of our canals and waterways. I am sure the whole House will join me in wishing them the very best of luck in their endeavours.

I have made it clear throughout the passage of this Bill that it lacks the punch required to make a real difference, and the Bill’s commitment to the armed forces covenant falls far short of what it ought to be. Many stakeholders, including the Royal British Legion, have argued that the Bill should go further in strengthening the covenant in law, but many areas have been missed out, such as visas for Commonwealth personnel, pay, DWP issues and proper representation for serving personnel.

I join the shadow Minister in paying tribute to the group from Fighting with Pride, Caroline Paige and Craig Jones, for working so hard to undo some of the injustices of the past. Labour’s proposed new clause 4 is an opportunity to take this further. We have started to recognise that there have been injustices, and we know that many individuals who were convicted of sex offences in the armed forces lost their pensions and continued to have the label of “sex offender” in civilian life, for undertaking a consensual relationship with another person. There are real issues here that still have to be addressed.

Many people were also discharged from the armed forces following spurious allegations that were not related to their sexuality, although their sexuality was the real reason for it. It will be very difficult for us to capture the number of people involved, so I urge the Minister not just to take proposed new clause 4 seriously but to look at how we identify these individuals and put right the wrongs that have been done to them.

Labour’s amendment 7 addresses the service justice system, and the Minister has given us assurances this afternoon that he will be implementing many of the recommendations of the Lyons review. That is good, but I still argue that sexual assaults would be better dealt with in civilian courts, which have far greater experience of such cases. We do people an injustice by continuing to go through a military system, where that experience is not always present. While the Minister is implementing some of the recommendations of the Lyons review, I ask him to undertake an annual review of how it is operating in practice.

The Minister also gave us assurances on service accommodation, but these accommodation issues are repeatedly raised, year on year, by serving personnel. The recent National Audit Office report on single living accommodation describes a litany of neglect, and accommodation for families often falls far below the standards we would expect.

[Anum Qaisar-Javed (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

I am listening to my hon. Friend with great interest. Does she agree that those who are dedicating themselves to service should receive a cast-iron guarantee of decent accommodation?

[Carol Monaghan]

It seems totally obvious that decent service accommodation should form the absolute basis of any agreement and any expectation that personnel have, so I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend.

It is incredible that the Bill as it stands will not strengthen the accommodation offer. Our series of extremely modest amendments—amendments 39 to 42—asks that service accommodation matches the standards that are set for civilian housing in each of the four nations of the UK. This should be a matter of straightforward agreement across the House. We should not be asking service personnel to put up with accommodation that we would not ask civilians to accept. I therefore do not see this proposal as being in any way controversial, and I hope that Members will support it.

Many of the veterans and families who contact me do so because of a lack of support from the Department for Work and Pensions on pension issues, including widows’ pensions, but all these things are out of scope of the Bill. In fact, it seems that all the most pressing and difficult issues for veterans are out of scope. This really is a missed opportunity.

The SNP has for a long time advocated a far more comprehensive way of representing the interests of the armed forces. We look at the examples of many of our NATO allies, which benefit from armed forces representative bodies that personnel can use to make sure that their needs are catered for. We are used to hearing arguments from Members on the Government Benches that we could not possibly countenance such a body as it could undermine the chain of command or encourage strike action. However, as the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) said, such a federation would be like the Police Federation. It would not allow strikes and it would not impact on the chain of command, but it would give a voice that, at the moment, is sadly lacking. When we are looking at ensuring that the covenant is properly fulfilled, such an organisation would substantively carry out that role. I believe, despite the Government’s arguments, that the real reason for resistance to this is that it would give our forces and veterans a voice. I am pleased that Labour has joined us in our position, and we will support its new clause 8 because it would go a long way towards addressing some of these issues.

The Scottish Government have taken a number of their own initiatives in areas that are covered in the Bill. On housing, they offer funding from affordable housing programmes to deliver homes for disabled ex-service personnel. On employability, service leavers are offered fixed-term appointments in the Scottish Government. On education, Skills Development Scotland is retraining Scottish veterans to address the skills gap, particularly in the nation’s cyber-security workforce. On health, the Scottish Government have committed to ensuring that all personnel and veterans can access the best possible care, and have provided funding to Combat Stress and Legion Scotland for mental health first aid training. Of course there is always more that we can do, but the UK Government should be looking to mirror these examples of good practice.