Armed Forces Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I welcome noble Lords who have said that they are relatively new to engaging in military issues, which is something that your Lordships’ House should encourage more of. In this age of geopolitical shocks, unlikely to reduce in intensity or frequency any time soon, and direct if undeclared attacks on the UK, we need far more and broader engagement in security issues than has traditionally been the case. We need a realistic assessment of the level of Armed Forces that the UK population and economy can support, rather than seeking to find a place in the world beyond our capabilities, and a realistic assessment of the unstable diplomatic environment in which we operate. We know who our friends are, and we also need to know that those who have been our friends in the past may not be so in the future. We owe it to the Armed Forces, as the whole of society, to be brutally realistic about the circumstances we now find ourselves in.

I begin by being positive. I welcome the defence housing strategy and the creation of the defence housing service, which, as the letter to noble Lords from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, put it, aims to put first the needs of forces personnel, veterans and their families. That will be a welcome change from the disastrous privatisation—one more disastrous privatisation—of forces housing that, as the Financial Times summarised it,

“sparked multiple court actions and saddled the government with billions of pounds in rent and maintenance costs”.

When I was completing the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme a few years ago with the RAF—I should perhaps declare now that I am completing the RCDS international security and strategy course—forces housing was the issue raised with us perhaps the most often when we spoke to forces personnel, and it is undoubtedly going to take a great deal more in costs and attention to repair. I note the amendment in the other place on ensuring consistent investment and support in the Bill for forces housing, and I think that is certainly worthy of your Lordships’ consideration.

I also welcome the improved attention to the Armed Forces covenant and to victim support, particularly for women and girls, and I was interested in the technical issue raised by the right reverend Prelate, who is not currently in his place, about the treatment of domestic abuse cases; that certainly deserves more examination. I will be probing the Government on how they might act more strongly on rape and sexual assault cases, something the House united in indicating its strong desire for changes to in 2021.

Saying that, I note that I am a veteran of the Armed Forces Bill 2021 and the Armed Forces Commissioner Bill 2025. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, will be hearing from me on some very familiar issues, and I make no apology for that. They are important issues, particularly violence against women and girls in the military and the recruitment of 15, 16 and 17 year-olds into our forces, but I will be adding a couple of new issues to raise.

The Long Title includes

“to make provision about visiting forces”.

I note that in the other place Green MPs supported what was a new Clause 4, which probably comes under that provision, and I will be happy to work on that here, but I want to raise a new issue now and pursue it at later stages, one that I have also raised by way of Written Question. It is that of foreign personnel based or visiting here who commit crimes.

This issue is raised through an excellent job of reporting by the Guardian, which it deserves to be commended for, on the case of Jacob Wulfson, who strangled in his apartment in Cambridge a British woman he met online. This case was allowed to be tried at an US airbase court martial, instead of him facing UK justice. That involved an all-male panel of Wulfson’s fellow US Air Force officers, all stationed at the same base as him. The victim described the hearing as a “distressing and degrading” experience. She said that the system, which was unfamiliar to her,

“picked me up, chewed me out”.

I want to see whether we can use this Bill to prevent any similar cases in future.

I will also be delighted to back up the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, not currently in her place, on the issue she has indicated she intends to lead on, that of inadequate paternity leave in the military. I note, since I was speaking on Friday about transparency in lobbying, that I have been lobbied on this by the NGO called The Dad Shift, and I am backing the campaign that it is leading. I always try in your Lordships’ House to bring the voices of people who cannot be here, so I want to bring some of those voices of men who have indicated their concerns about the current inadequate provision of maternity leave. This is from an Army soldier:

“Being posted 4 hours away from my child when she was born was tough, only having 2 weeks to bond before I was back to being 200 miles away with limited time to travel back and see her was tough and has definitely caused irreparable damage to our relationship, ultimately leading to the collapse of my relationship with her mother too”.


Another said that when his child was born, he was granted two weeks of standard paternity leave, with an additional two weeks of discretionary leave due to his wife requiring an emergency c-section. It is usually said that it takes at least six weeks to recover from a caesarean section. I note that in the joint service publication JSP 760, there is a discretionary element of providing additional compassionate leave, as that second account indicates, but it is, of course, discretionary.

It is difficult to put a full scale on this problem, but nearly eight in 10 service families have children, and 32% have children under five. The level of paternity leave actually taken has dropped, which may be accounted for by a slight fall in headcount, but it is a really significant drop. I would be interested if the Minister, now or in future, can provide any information on what he knows about the level of take-up of paternity leave.

I note that there is a review of parental leave arrangements currently ongoing, due to report in late in 2026 or early 2027, so there is a window of opportunity here for your Lordships’ House to do something really positive. I would argue that it is obviously the right thing to do, but also a great many of the contributions to the debate today have focused on retention of military personnel, and this is obviously an important issue, as well as supporting military families.

I come to the second issue that will not surprise those who were here in 2021, about recruitment of 15, 16 and 17 year-olds into the military and particularly the Army Foundation College in Harrogate, where over the past five years an average of 2,380 children have been trained each year. This has been a cause of considerable complaints and campaigning. I note that I am drawing on the work of Child Rights International Network, which obtained the inspectors’ reports from the last Ofsted visit to the site in March 2024. Recorded under a section titled “Ill-treatment of recruits by staff” was the following. In 2021: eight allegations made, six substantiated and military action taken. In 2022: 10 allegations, five substantiated and action taken. In 2023: six allegations, two substantiated and actioned. For 2024, the data was greyed out.

I have seen some very disturbing footage of not just the treatment of recruits by instructors but behaviour within groups of recruits. It cannot be shared very widely because it might identify the child who took it, but it is very disturbing. There are reports of a 16 year-old former recruit who witnessed his friend being so badly beaten by an instructor that they broke his leg. He was then forced to march on it for miles. We are an utter outlier among developed countries in recruiting 15, 16 and 17 year-olds, and this is something that I will be raising further.

I want to mention just two more issues. One is the Wiltshire Police investigation of sexual abuse during military examinations, which has been ongoing for some time and dates from the 1970s up to 2016 at different locations across the UK. I wonder whether the Minister can update us now, or I will understand entirely if he wishes to do it in writing, on how that inquiry is proceeding. There are a great many people with cause for concern who would like to know what is happening with that.

I also note a very specific issue, but one that is clearly of great concern to some people, with good reason, calling for the recognition and protection of the SS “Tilawa” from 1942 and comparable cases. This is identifying a statutory framework gap governing maritime war graves. Perhaps, again, the Minister might like to write to me about that. I realise it is a fairly technical issue, but it is one that we will be raising in future.