Armed Forces Commissioner Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 5th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, for his introduction to the Bill. I offer further broad Green support for the general direction of the Bill and the creation of an Armed Forces commissioner.

Since I have a large range of portfolios to cover, I will draw a couple of parallels with other areas, where we have seen similar positions created or proposed. It is worth looking at the parallels for those comparisons. The first of these was just a few days ago, in Committee on the Mental Health Bill, when an amendment was tabled—and will return on Report—to create a mental health commissioner; that is, a champion for some of the most vulnerable people in our society. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, shares what is being said here with his health colleagues.

In that debate, I drew a parallel with an already existing position, which has been highly successful—the Patient Safety Commissioner—which was fought for and won by Baroness Cumberlege, who has now retired from your Lordships’ House, sadly. The Patient Safety Commissioner has been really important as a champion for vulnerable people. As the powerful maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Carberry, outlined, all military personnel are vulnerable, being in the chain of the command and denied those union rights that we guarantee—one way or another—to most other workers. All military personnel are vulnerable.

When we think about who the commissioner is, we need to focus on the fact that some members of our Armed Forces are more vulnerable than others, particularly by reason of age or gender. A number of noble Lords, including the Minister, have focused on the tragic case of Gunner Jaysley-Louise Beck. I point the Minister to something I said in the Moses Room in the Armed Forces (Court Martial) (Amendment No. 2) Rules debate. I had just been at a meeting where a representative of female personnel serving in the military said that where they are at now is going back to the attitudes of 2015, particularly in the treatment of female victims of abusers. I contrast that with the Army’s statement after the inquest into the tragic death of Gunner Jaysley-Louise Beck, which said that there had been

“significant changes in the Army, including the introduction of clear and unequivocal policies to state that there will be zero tolerance to unacceptable sexual behaviours”.

I welcome that statement from the Army, but it does not reflect what I have heard from serving personnel and people who speak to and represent them now.

At this point, I feel that I have to agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, about the importance of independent oversight of this appointment. I am not sure whether the Select Committee is the right procedure, but we definitely need that because this person will have such an important role. The noble Baroness commented about an anonymous whistleblower scheme, which we should also potentially look into because we know that sexual predators are often serial abusers and serial predators. It may be that their first, second or third victim does not feel, for whatever reason, that they can come forward. People may witness disturbing behaviour and it might be difficult to know whether to report that. An anonymous whistleblower scheme would potentially help some very vulnerable people in our military.

It probably will not surprise the Minister that the second group of vulnerable people I am going to focus on are the young people, particularly the under-18s, in our military. The Minister knows well my views on this, but the public may not have as much awareness as they need to of the fact that, for example, in 2021-22—to pick one year—23% of British recruits signed up before their 18th birthday. It was 30% if you take just the Army. Think about who the commissioner is going to have to serve; they will have to serve a significant number of children. That will have to be thought about when we consider who that commissioner is.

It is also worth focusing on the fact that the UK military focuses its recruitment on areas of socioeconomic deprivation, and those recruited as minors are disproportionately enlisted from those deprived areas. I point to some really interesting and disturbing work done by Jonathan Parry from LSE and Christina Easton from Warwick University, looking at some of the issues that arise from socioeconomic disadvantage. It can have negative effects on decision-making and inform a mental bandwidth tax, which affects cognition and control. Perhaps we should think clearly about the ability to access a post such as a commissioner. Socioeconomic deprivation is associated with educational and informational disadvantage. Three-quarters of junior recruits assessed in 2015 had a reading age of 11 or below, with some having a reading age of five. We need a commissioner who is able to help people in that situation.

I want to make one final, broader reflection. Many speakers have referred to the state of geopolitics. We have of course seen a great deal of talk about increasing the size of the military, and ensuring that we have a strong commissioner is relevant for this. The people talking about increasing the size of the military really need to look at the demographics, because they will see that by 2040 the population of 18 year-olds will be 10% smaller than it is now. Some figures on health published in the International Journal of Epidemiology showed that 25% of children born in England in 2003-04 had a chronic health condition by the time they reached the age of 16. It is crucial that we are able to look after the vulnerable people in our military, so we need the right person as a commissioner.

Armed Forces Commissioner Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 19th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

Yes. For the purposes of this I am making a verbal amendment to what is on the page; I am not proposing to bring back an amendment like Amendment 2 that would bring in hundreds of thousands of other people. I do not think that was ever the intention; the drafting was not as clear as it might have been. The amendment laid in the Commons and re-laid here was broader than it should have been.

Having listened to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, my sense is that we should not only be looking at women, LGBT groups, BAME people, non-UK citizens and disabled people in the Armed Forces. We should also be thinking that this might be the time to think about the Armed Forces commissioner not just being available for those going through training, but it might be sensible to make sure that the communications are made to them.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. I apologise to the noble Baroness and the Committee more broadly for not being here when my name was attached to earlier amendments. I am not going to complain much about my latest train delays, but I will warn anyone heading on the east coast main line tonight that there are overhead wire problems.

I will speak specifically to Amendment 11 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, to which I have attached my name. I will also speak to my Amendment 12. I apologise for jumping on the back of the noble Baroness’s excellently drafted amendment but I thought there was one element missing, which is what I have added here. This proposed new clause is headed:

“Commissioner support for minority groups within service personnel”.


The Committee will be familiar with my long-term concerns about service personnel who were recruited under the age of 18 and those in the services under the age of 18, which my amendment addresses. I think the way the noble Baroness constructed Amendment 11 set out very well the reasons why and how this should be done. Proposed new subsection 3 in my amendment says that the commissioner must

“maintain up-to-date evidence on the experiences of these groups of service personnel and develop robust community engagement mechanisms”.

To address the first point about evidence, I think we are all very aware of this. I know about the situation of recruits under 18 because of the work of the Child Rights International Network and a series of reports it produced. We are aware of cases of women in the military. We can think back to the situation where we saw a big national campaign about Gurkha veterans a few years ago. We often find out about these issues as they are drawn to our attention through the efforts of NGOs, campaign groups and the work of the affected personnel themselves—and then it is splashed all over the media.

That is not the way in which the Government and Parliament should be made aware of what is happening. We need a regular, steady, reporting record that enables political direction to come from both Parliament and Ministers towards the military, saying, “There’s a problem here; something needs to be done about it”. Keeping up-to-date evidence and not relying on the efforts of volunteers and the personnel themselves is very much addressed by this.

I have put this on the record before, but I have to note the way in which the situation of recruits under 18 has drawn the attention of the United Nations. We referred at Second Reading to one tragic suicide case but of course there are many. CRIN tells us that recruits under 18 are tragically three times more likely to die by suicide than their peers of the same age and two times more likely to die from suicide as adult joiners of the military. We have heard complaints about the Harrogate college and 13 reports of sexual assault cases in a year. I think I can probably guess what the Minister will say—that we have to leave this to the Armed Forces commissioner to decide for themselves.

Armed Forces Commissioner Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 24th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, I share the concern, expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, that lies behind the amendments, although these particular ones do not in fact capture, in my view, the solution to the problem.

The problem is that the nature of classified locations varies. There will be some sites to which the Armed Forces commissioner would not, presumably, be denied access entirely. However, many sites have large areas that will be, and should be, open to the commissioner, but within which there are particular discrete locations where classified activity is conducted, to which he or she should not be admitted.

The Minister of Defence and the Secretary of State may well draw up a list, as was intended, of classified locations. Although the list will be classified and therefore will not be in secondary legislation, as the Minister has pointed out, it will deny the commissioner access to those sites. But the problem with lists is that they are seldom comprehensive and seldom up to date. We are talking about a very large span of estate with a very large spread of activities. The idea that such a list can be kept up to the minute will involve, first, a huge bureaucratic effort and, secondly, will almost certainly be doomed to failure.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, pointed out, it is the responsibility of local commanders to ensure that national security is preserved and that classified information is not available to those who should not have access to it. Therefore, it seems to me that there is only one sensible answer to this conundrum: for the Bill to provide commanding officers with the power in the last resort to deny the commissioner access to specific locations on the grounds that they contain classified activities or classified material. The commanding officer should of course then be required to justify themselves through the chain of command to the Secretary of State. But if we do not provide them with that backstop authority, we are, frankly, hanging local commanders out to dry with the legislation as it now stands.

These amendments do not provide the solution that I see as necessary, but can the Minister undertake today to take away these very real and important concerns and consider how they might be addressed before we get to Report? I repeat what I have said earlier: I entirely understand that such conflicts are likely to be very rare. The commissioner is going to be engaged in looking at service accommodation and other general conditions of service, so most of the time they will not be seeking access to such sites. But it is entirely conceivable that he or she will need such access, particularly if they are considering thematic issues to do with working conditions—and just once is once too many when it comes to national security. I ask the Minister to reflect on this, and perhaps we can have some discussions outside Committee before we get to Report.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I shall speak very briefly to this set of amendments, really to provide some balance, because I feel that we should hear both sides of the argument. The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, in introducing these amendments, said that the commissioner should not be visiting without the Secretary of State being aware, and I entirely agree with that. Obviously, the Secretary of State is the person with political responsibility, who needs to know what is going on and whether the commissioner has identified a potential problem. However, not being aware is not the same as having seven days’ notice. There is a very large gap between those two things.

What we have just heard from the noble and gallant Lord about the commanding officer having the right to deny access is, I am aware, not directly in line with these amendments. However, on day one in Committee we talked about how the ombudsman, as structured, has not worked and has not had sufficient powers. We have to be careful to make sure that we are not putting a commissioner in the same position here. We have to be realistic: there may be a systemic issue, such as those we talked about on the previous day in Committee, and a concern about the treatment of female service people. We might hope that a commander would always want that issue to be exposed and understood, but we cannot guarantee that, and it is really important that we do not disempower the commissioner with changes to this Bill before they are even created and put in place.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, back to her place today; I know she was busy elsewhere in the House of Lords on our first day. It is welcome to see her here. Both she and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, asked about the opportunity to discuss the points that have been made, and we can of course meet between Committee and Report to do so. I can promise the meeting, but I cannot promise the outcome. To be frank, as noble Lords will know, that is how we in this House conduct business, improve legislation and achieve the objective that we all want: the commissioner being effective and having the appropriate powers to do the task they undertake.

As noble Lords know, I like to make some general remarks before making formal points; I hope that is helpful to the Committee. I understand the noble Baroness’s point about the balance between the powers of the Secretary of State and of the commissioner, and I will say something about that. We have tried very hard to balance those powers. I also hear the point made by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, about the importance of national security. There may be elements of a particular base that one would expect the commissioner to be precluded from visiting for national security reasons, even if it is not the whole base; there is also the role of the commanding officer to consider.

On the question of intention, if we take the example of a normal decision of the commissioner to visit a base, the noble Baroness and the noble and gallant Lord will see that there is a requirement in the Bill for the commissioner to notify the Secretary of State that they are visiting a particular base:

“If the Commissioner proposes to exercise the power under subsection (1), the Commissioner must give the Secretary of State notice of the proposal within such period before exercising the power as the Commissioner considers appropriate”.


The noble Baroness’s amendment would require that that happen at least seven days before the commissioner intends to exercise the power. The expectation would be that the Secretary of State would then tell the commanding officer that such a visit was to take place.

However, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, pointed out, under the Bill a confidential list will be drawn up saying where the Secretary of State believes it inappropriate for the commissioner to visit because of national security reasons. That will be shared with the commissioner, although it will remain confidential. But we will take up the point made by the noble and gallant Lord about how that will work with a base only a small part of which may be subject to national security concerns.

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[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, I agree with much of what the noble Earl said, but this seems a rather strange amendment. In my view, it is axiomatic that the work of the Armed Forces commissioner, and the issues that he or she addresses, may have an effect on recruitment and retention in every instance—so that goes without saying—but I am not at all clear how the Armed Forces commissioner will determine whether they have an actual effect. It does not seem to be something that the Armed Forces commissioner can practically fulfil in the sense of the noble Earl’s amendment. I entirely endorse the sentiment behind it, but I simply do not see that it adds anything to the Bill.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, I feel it might be useful if I made some comments on her Amendment 18. I have not discussed this with her so, for the avoidance of doubt, I am in no way speaking for her.

This is an interesting and useful amendment to discuss, particularly in Committee. Clause 4(3) says that, after the commissioner has conducted an inquiry, they are required to offer a report. The amendment proposes that the commissioner should make an annual report on the work done to improve the welfare of service personnel and public awareness of the issues. The idea of an annual report is interesting. I am not entirely wedded to the word “annual”—

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, although 10 minutes have not quite elapsed, I think that everybody who was in the Room before we adjourned is back in the Room. We might just take advantage of a few minutes before the next Division is called to continue—it will be called very shortly. Would the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, like to resume?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the noble Baroness very much. I did not have any written notes, so I shall do my best to continue seamlessly.

I think I was commenting on the way in which the public and Parliament know what the commissioner is doing, and there are a couple of elements in this amendment that are particularly relevant. The general point is that, if the commissioner is holding an inquiry on a particular subject, that may indeed take quite a significant period of time. There are issues that are being resolved that do not necessarily deserve a stand-alone report on a particular subject—but do we have a sense of what issues are being addressed and how the commissioner is working? In particular, we can look at proposed new Section 340OA(1)(c) in this amendment, on

“the resources used by the Commissioner in fulfilling its functions, and any further resources required”.

It is important that Parliament and the public have a sense that the commissioner has a vehicle by which they can say, “X number of extra issues have been raised with me, but I only have the resources to do this number of things”.

So it is useful at this stage perhaps to regard this as a probing amendment. I am very interested in whether the Minister can comment on Clause 4(3) on page 5, which I referred to. It talks about an investigation and a report, but how are we going to know what the commissioner is doing in a general sense and get a general picture of their work? How do Parliament and the public know that? I think that is what this amendment seeks to address.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I thank the noble Earl, Lord Minto, for introducing these amendments. I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, here and note her apologies but also her sterling efforts to get here despite the broken rail. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for stepping in.

The noble Earl is right to point out the challenges on recruitment and retention, and the Government are taking a number of steps to try to deal with those outside the remit of the Bill. We can go through all those, on pay, how the childcare arrangements have changed and the change to the recruiting system—there will be a new system from 2027 that will bring the three services together. All those sorts of changes are trying to improve the recruitment process. On the retention aspects of it, we hope and expect that the general welfare investigations and work that the commissioner does may help to address some of the other points that the noble Earl made with respect to their impact.

But I take the point from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup: of course the commissioner can look at recruitment and retention if she or he believes them to be of a general welfare concern. Whether they do or not is an open debate, but we are taking other measures outside this Bill to deal with that issue, and we hope that we can address that in the way we want.