Armed Forces Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 27th October 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

First, I want to thank your Lordships for what has been a profound and stimulating discussion. I am conscious that much of the debate has centred on fairly technical legal issues, not least in particular reference to the criminal legal system, both for civilian and service justice systems. I shall do my best to address the issues raised.

By way of preface, in response to points notably made by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, and echoed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, we all want a service justice system that is fit for purpose. I think we are all absolutely united in seeking that objective, and that is exactly what the Bill aims to achieve. That offers me the opportunity to say to your Lordships that much had to move at pace, involving a considerable volume of material. I apologise for that, as I know that you have all been deluged, first with the publication of the Henriques report and then the tabling of government amendments to create the defence serious crime unit.

While I think that these are regarded as very positive developments, I understand that it has put pressure on everybody to try properly to assimilate and understand the report and amendments. I took the view that the amendments did not make a lot of sense without the report, and I had to navigate my way through a fairly tangled jungle of clearances to make sure that we could get both things out into the public domain. I felt that it was important that we did that; it seemed to me that the amendments the Government were then able to table to the Bill in respect of the defence serious crime unit provided reassurance and perhaps answered some of the questions raised today. I think that gives a clear signal of intent about the desire to ensure, as a number of noble Lords have observed this afternoon, that the criminal justice system is absolutely fit for purpose and as good as it can be.

I will now address the amendments in this group. I shall do that beginning with Amendment 5 and then move on to Amendment 6—and then I shall speak to the intention expressed by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, to oppose Clause 7. Finally, I shall speak to Amendment 7 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon.

The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said that there has to be confidence in the justice system, and I totally agree with that. He rightly referred to recent statistics, which are deeply troubling—and I make no pretence about that. As he probably knows, there has been ongoing work in the MoD over the last decade to try to address cultures and behaviour, to provide people who have been treated wrongly—whether it is the victims of unacceptable behaviour or of a criminal offence—with the confidence to come forward, and to try to reassure those within our Armed Forces, not least our women, that this is a good and safe place to be. That has been a Herculean struggle; it has been a huge challenge, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What I can say is that there has been systematic progress of very good work.

The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, referred to the Commons Select Committee report, in which the MoD very readily engaged—and the Secretary of State took the courageous and absolutely correct decision to allow serving women to appear as witnesses before the committee. I thought he was absolutely right to do that, as it is the only way in which we can get evidence out into the open. Very troubling evidence was heard, and some of it was utterly appalling. What I drew comfort from was that, to the end, a very high percentage of the women who gave evidence said that they would recommend a career in the Armed Forces to other women. I felt encouraged by that. There was recognition that, while unacceptable practices and attitudes have existed in the past, there is a discernible recognition that the direction has changed.

In relation to the stats to which the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, referred, they are troubling, but they do tell us that people are now coming forward. One problem that we had was that people would not come forward; they did not have the confidence to do that—and that to me strikes at the very heart of the probity and integrity of, and the confidence that people should rightly have in, the system.

We have been and are reforming the service complaints system. A huge amount of work has been done among the single services to that end.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

I seem to have lost the sound.

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

My Lords, it might help if everybody knew that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who is intending to participate remotely in the next group, has just arrived. There is possibly a little technical adjustment to be made so that she does not find herself inadvertently speaking in the wrong debate.

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[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I apologise—I thought I had. I beg to move.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I first apologise for the technical glitch. This is the first week of new remote contributions to Grand Committee. It is such a shame that we always notice the problems rather than the vast majority of smooth remote contributions. I pay credit to all the staff involved in helping those of us who are disabled Peers and can attend only remotely at present.

I commend the Minister for the principles behind the Armed Forces covenant, which are an admirable start to providing that morally binding commitment to current and past service men and women. But frankly, as these amendments seek to point out, it is somewhat patchy at the moment on the services that current and former service men and women would be able to access. Why is one function included and another excluded, when the barriers to accessing services are exactly what the covenant is trying to resolve?

Amendments 8 and 10, to which I have added my name, would add a number of functions to the relevant functions listed under proposed new Sections 343AA and 343AB. Amendment 13, to which I have also added my name, addresses how the Bill can widen the scope to other forms of potential disadvantage for service personnel under the Armed Forces covenant, including employment, pensions, compensation, social care, criminal justice and immigration. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has addressed very ably why this is needed, so I want to focus briefly on access to social care as one illustration.

The covenant already recognises that health is a vital service, where serving personnel and veterans can face particular problems, but social care—whether for the serving person or veteran, or for a member of their immediate family—is not. While social care is commissioned by local authorities it can, due to the circumstances of the individual, often involve a number of bodies. Some are within central government, for example on disability benefits; some are public bodies, for example health and local authorities; but some are also private, such as for those who are given a personal budget and will purchase their personal care that way. It can be very difficult and messy to navigate if you are new to it or have had to move.

Let me give an example to illustrate this point. Serving families with a severely disabled child have found it extraordinarily difficult when moving from one posting to another to transfer their child’s essential social care support, without falling off the bureaucratic cliff and having to go through reassessments in their new area, then waiting for the reports from those assessments. No services were given at all, so all help was denied them until the end of this new process. The child’s needs had not changed; their serving parent had merely been posted elsewhere. To be clear, this is not just a bit of social support every now and then. Disabled children, like the one I am describing, may have severe epilepsy or be fed with a tube, or be on ventilators some or all of the time. The help of carers at home supports the unpaid parent carer, who is already on duty pretty well 24/7.

Shockingly, the consequences of not having that help mean that a child might even be taken into care and away from their parents, not because the parents cannot cope but because one of them has been posted elsewhere. Adding social care to the covenant would protect the family and prioritise the ways of continuing the help that they are getting, when the move has made the difficulties entirely apparent.

For service men and women, and veterans, the complexities about access to services if they have mental health problems can be just as acute. Too often, we think of mental health as solely the domain of the NHS and those specialist charities such as Combat Stress, which I have been working with. The reality is that severe mental health problems disproportionately affect access to every part of the individual’s life, including discrimination in employment, access to criminal justice and compensation, and even to pensions, as well as social care. If the principles of the Armed Forces covenant are to ensure the well-being and support for current and former Armed Forces personnel, surely it cannot be possible for certain parts of the public sector to ignore it.

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[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

This amendment again applies to the covenant. I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Smith, for their support on this amendment. It seeks to extend the application of the covenant to central government. Using the test that I always use, I think people would expect that to be the case, but no doubt we will hear from the Minister why the Government seem to be resistant to it.

We all believe that the Armed Forces covenant represents a binding moral commitment between government and service communities, guaranteeing them and their families the respect and fair treatment that their service has earned. The Bill creates new responsibilities for a wide range of public bodies, from school governors to local authorities, to deliver the covenant, yet central government is not included. Amendment 9 seeks to change that. In practice, without it, we would create a situation, which I think sounds farcical, in which a chair of school governors, for example—and you can make other examples up—has a legal responsibility to have due regard to the Armed Forces covenant, but government departments, including the Ministry of Defence, do not. I find that really strange, to be frank.

As the Royal British Legion has pointed out, many of the policy areas in which members of the Armed Forces community experience difficulty are the responsibility of national government or based on national guidance. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, said at Second Reading, it is

“questionable whether it will be successful without incorporating central government, with its policy responsibilities,”—[Official Report, 7/9/2021; col. 742.]

into the Bill. The British Medical Association has called on the Government to

“expand the ‘specified persons and bodies’ section under clause 8 of the bill to include … Her Majesty’s Government and Secretaries of State with responsibility for the functions specified within the bill.”

Giving evidence to the Bill Select Committee, General Sir John McColl of Cobseo said:

“I do think that there is a strong argument for the inclusion of central Government functions … At the moment, the central Government traction that we have is that there is a moral requirement for Government to comply with the Covenant. That is fine as long as it works, but in some cases it absolutely does not work.”


It should be a part of this Bill, in primary legislation.

The MoD has said, in defence of not including central government in the Bill, that it was already in many ways subject to a duty of regard to the covenant. Personally, I do not think that is enough; it is insufficient. Central government should be included in the Bill. The Bill Select Committee report said:

“The Committee notes that by excluding central government as a responsible public body, Service accommodation is not covered by the duty of due regard. The Government may wish to consider adding this as an area where the duty applies in the future.”


Again, that is just one example of the Bill Select Committee looking at this and giving a practical example of what happens if central government is not included in the Bill. With those remarks, I will leave it there. I look forward to the Minister’s response, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 9. As the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has already said, at Second Reading a number of noble Lords, including me, raised the fundamental problem with the Armed Forces covenant. While local authorities and other public bodies offering key services are listed, there is one glaring omission: central government is not required to have due regard to the covenant, and the noble Lord has just ably explained why that is such a contradiction.

The Government need to understand that in creating the covenant they have created demand and expectation. To use the closing comments by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, from the previous group on my Amendment 64, if you asked anyone outside the Bill they would think that the Government were already included. That service accommodation is not included is a helpful pointer to why the Government need to reconsider.

Without the same responsibilities for central government and its services to provide the covenant, frankly it is nothing more than warm words. I am sure there are plenty of arguments to say that it should, and probably will, be covered by different parts of government services, but the point is that the amendment can remedy that. The amendment would go further than the Government want to at the moment, but if the Government do not accept that they need to have the same responsibilities as other bodies, frankly they are not truly committed to delivering the covenant.

The police covenant being proposed at the moment in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill has this same lack of responsibility for central government while imposing it on other bodies. I have to say that it is beginning to look a bit worrying.