Armed Forces Commissioner Bill

Calvin Bailey Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 18th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume) on her excellent and evocative speech. I remember those sweeping coastlines and purple-topped moors; I used to fly over them in my RAF C-130. She will be an excellent advocate for her community and all those who come up behind her in the Jo Cox Foundation.

Our forces can defend our country effectively only if the bonds of trust between service people and leaders are strong. I welcome the Government’s action on our manifesto commitment to establish an armed forces commissioner and fix the complaints system, which has been broken for many years. Action is urgently needed. Confidence in the service complaints system remains low, despite the work that the Service Complaints Ombudsman has done. The ombudsman herself has concluded, every year for the last eight years, that the system does not operate in an efficient, effective or fair way. In what other area of public life would such sustained failure be allowed to persist?

Fundamental issues need to be addressed that go beyond performance standards on individual complaints. The biggest problem with the current system is that it individualises complaints and encourages mediation in each instance. In my experience, that can result in abusive or incompetent individuals remaining in place and perpetuating harm over many years, even though they have had many complaints against them. Surely we can learn the lessons from the Letby case, police disciplinary cases and similar cases of very public systemic failures over recent years. The commissioner needs to be empowered to seek out the bigger picture and the pattern behind individual complaints, and escalate them proportionately. As we know, often a small number of individuals wreak enormous damage on not only their many victims but the organisation as a whole because of the hostile and discriminatory environment that they create. Only systems that proactively identify patterns of behaviour and root out abusers will deliver a safer and fairer place for everyone in our forces community.

The commissioner’s work needs to form a normal part of service life. Service people rarely want to be seen as a whistleblower. Rightly or wrongly, many do not want to go outside the system, due to perceptions of letting the forces down, so we need to be clear that when someone communicates with the commissioner about their experiences, they are staying within the armed forces community, and acting in the best interests of all our armed forces. At the same time, we need people to have confidence that their communications will be secure, and that they will be protected from any possibility of reprisals. I hope that the Minister will tell us more about how the Government see such communications with the commissioner compared with whistleblowing in civilian life. It might be necessary to set out in the Bill the protections that are relevant to service complaints to clarify that.

Improving the complaints system will be effective only if we address the experiences of every part of our armed forces community, including women in our armed services, service personnel from ethnic minority backgrounds, non-UK passport holders, and LGBT+ service personnel. There is troubling evidence of differential treatment for service personnel from those backgrounds. It is vital that we address that in the interests of fairness, to ensure that our forces are more representative of the communities they serve and to address ongoing issues of recruitment and retention. The Bill presents an opportunity to effect change, so I would be grateful for anything that the Minister could set out about how he expects the commissioner to establish connections with those communities and work with them proactively to gain an understanding of what is required.

Equally, the commissioner needs to represent the wider armed forces community beyond regular service personnel. Service families are clearly critical to many of the commissioner’s functions, but I hope that it is made completely clear that the bereaved are equally deserving of our continued support, if they wish for it. The Royal British Legion has rightly pointed out the relevance of the Haythornthwaite review, and its central recommendation that there be a move towards a fluid spectrum of service, where people can move easily between regulars and the reserves. Working towards that will surely require action from the commissioner to ensure that the needs of reservists and recruits are being met.

I welcome the Government’s ongoing work to meet our manifesto commitment to put the armed forces covenant into law. I am mindful of the cross-departmental nature of many of the issues that affect service personnel—something that is rightly made explicit in the covenant. I wonder whether, as the Bill progresses, we should consider setting out the relationship between the commissioner and the Cabinet Office, to give a clear point of contact within Government and a way to easily escalate complaints that are impacted by cross-Government working. Surely it would be best to future-proof the Bill by ensuring that the commissioner’s structures fit with the covenant from the outset, although I accept that the Department’s thinking about the best legal form for the armed forces covenant may not yet be complete. Will the Minister set out any early thoughts on that?

Ultimately, the Bill represents very welcome action from the Government to give the people who keep us safe a more effective guarantee of safety and fair and decent treatment in return. It is equally welcome that we are learning from our European partners about the design of the institution, and placing emphasis on transparency and accountability to Parliament. My hope is that the Bill will form part of a wider shift in how the armed forces community works to deliver on the promise of defence as a truly rewarding career of service. If we can achieve that, our country will be safer for it.

Remembrance and Veterans

Calvin Bailey Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Veterans and People (Al Carns)]

It is indeed 360 years since the formation of the Royal Marines and they are still going strong. I will refuse to take advice from the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) on face cream but it was a privilege to take the salute just the other day from both the Commandant General Royal Marines and the Commandant of the US Marine Corps, which demonstrates the strong ties across the pond with the US between those Marine units.

I am grateful to Members for their thoughtful reflections on remembrance and the contributions of veterans to this country. We have heard moving contributions from Members reflecting on their personal experience of service, and as I am sure they would testify there is an unspoken oath of allegiance between service personnel. Indeed, it knows no bounds; it is the glue that holds the forces together, and that oath has always extended to the fallen on the battlefield and beyond. For serving personnel and veterans, remembrance is an enduring reflection of that oath, and on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day I will remember the individuals who have gone before us but also those I have stood next to who have been killed or wounded—after five tours of Afghanistan, one of Northern Ireland, and multiple of the Arabian gulf, eastern Europe and Africa, there have been many.

Importantly, we must remember those who will never see that smile again or see them laugh or hold them close once more. It is a time for them, and those that did not come home to see their children, their partners, or indeed their loved ones or their friends. It is our duty to remember them all.

But remembrance is not only about fallen comrades and veterans; it is a rare moment when the nation comes together, from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. And it is a reminder to everyone in every generation across the whole country that the freedoms we all enjoy—the freedoms of speech, of equality, of quality of life—were all hard fought for and hard-won. Freedom is not free, and it is something in the fractious world we live in today that individually or collectively we should not take for granted.

Those freedoms are forged from the sacrifice of the young men and women of the Army, Navy and our Air Force who stepped forward when the country needed them: the sacrifices of the few who are still owed so much by the many; the sacrifices on the high seas, in the air, on the beaches and the landing grounds and in the fields, and in the streets from world war one to Operation Overlord, where they secured a beachhead in Normandy that would free a continent from Nazi tyranny and usher in the rules-based international system; and the sacrifices of 80,000 British service personnel who fought in the forgotten war on the Korean peninsula to uphold the rights and freedoms enshrined in that rules-based international system. All are memorialised in stones outside the MOD, of which one says,

“A distant obligation honourably discharged.”

There were the sacrifices in the south Atlantic, on the open water, in the skies and on the windswept heaths, for the right of the Falkland Islanders to choose their own sovereign future. And the sacrifices of service personnel in desert fatigues who liberated Kuwait and fought in Iraq, and those in the operational areas whom I served alongside in the long troubles of Northern Ireland, the middle east, Africa, Afghanistan and eastern Europe who sacrificed so much to uphold the right to self-determination and give freedom and democracy a chance to take root. And the sacrifices we cannot talk about because we do not comment on certain issues.

It is thanks to all those who have served and sacrificed and whom we honour on Remembrance Day that we can sit here, as democratically elected MPs, and debate the future of this wonderful country. Few, if any, outside the armed forces sign a contract that puts their life on the line and those who have served or continue to serve often pay the price for that service, through the long-term mental or physical scars, the impact on families and on their children, or through the painful memories or indeed the longing for the camaraderie and service they left behind. It is my opinion that those who serve through one way or another serve until the day they die. That is why this Government of service are committed to standing with members of our armed forces and their families long after they leave the services.

[Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Syd Little was part of the team which delivered life-saving supplies to Mount Sinjar on 9 August 2014, in the operation now known as Operation Shader. Flight Sergeant Little lost his life this weekend to cancer. Does my hon. and gallant Friend agree that service people face some of their greatest challenges on their exit from service and that the veterans strategy is essential to ensuring that those challenges are not equal to those they faced while serving?

Ukraine

Calvin Bailey Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I will indeed. At no point during the two days of NATO Defence Ministers’ talks was there any indication of the sort of views that the right hon. Gentleman suggests that some in America may hold, or that President Macron might have previously expressed. Indeed, in the good bilateral meeting that I had with the French Minister for the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, it was clear that the French commitment to supporting Ukraine is as strong as the UK’s. I am glad to say that the determination of the French to work more closely with us on security and defence is equally strong.

[Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

I welcome the statement and the announcement of further funding. To ensure that we sustain the pace with which we are providing aid to Ukraine, and that we energise our own logistical enterprise, what action is my right hon. Friend taking to boost UK defence industrial production to support the Ukrainian armed forces and defence supply chains throughout the UK?

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend knows this territory as well as anybody else in the House. He will know that over the 973 days the UK Government have changed fundamentally the way in which we go about procuring what is required. British industry has responded magnificently to that. It has been able to respond more quickly, innovate more rapidly and devise what it can produce to meet the needs that Ukraine says it has on the frontline. The UK Government’s task is to be the middle man to ensure that that can happen at greater volume and speed. We will continue to do that.

Afghan Special Forces Relocation Review

Calvin Bailey Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard]

I understand where the hon. Gentleman is trying to get to with his question. It is difficult for me to comment on special forces, for reasons that he will appreciate. I am also really keen to see the output of the Afghanistan inquiry and to understand what lessons Lord Haddon-Cave can identify from that. That might be the moment when that conversation is more appropriate, but it is not one that I can have now.

[Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

I praise my hon. Friend for his pursuit of justice with regard to the Triples, and not only in opposition but since he has entered power. On lessons learned, one of the tenets behind a number of the Bills that the Government have pursued—in relation to the Hillsborough inquiry, for example—is a duty of candour. Might that be considered as part of the Afghanistan inquiry as a whole?

[Luke Pollard]

The Government certainly intend to bring forward the Hillsborough Bill, which I hope will enjoy cross-party support, particularly in relation to a duty of candour. What we have discovered with the Triples review—I await the final report—is more a failure to organise and record properly, rather than a deliberate attempt to disrupt and not share information. It is that essential plumbing that failed, but also the grip and leadership of the programme, and we need to learn from this to ensure that it never happens again and that all those people who had an eligible case get the support and sanctuary that they need.

Ukraine

Calvin Bailey Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who prompts me to say something that I did not give enough emphasis to. Never mind the Government support; the technology that he talks about, which is playing such a decisive role in the hands of the Ukrainians, is often developed and provided by the bright people in our and other countries’ industries. We pay tribute to all those in our British industrial and research companies, who in some cases are working with the Government and in some cases are working under contract to the Ukrainians to provide them with what they need to win this fight, to protect their country’s future and to regain their territorial integrity.

[Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for the early opportunities he has provided for MPs from all parties to be briefed on the ongoing situation in Ukraine. I welcome the Government’s commitment and his personal commitment to keeping Members of the House updated regularly. May I ask that he ensures that the lessons identified from Ukraine, in particular those of the formations and structures that are allowing the Ukrainian forces to be so effective, are fed into the SDR?

[John Healey]

Yes, indeed. My hon. Friend served until very close to the general election in a very distinguished and senior capacity in our forces, so I say to him, as I did to the right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke), that the defence reviewers will welcome contributions from all sides of this House, particularly when Members who have such deep expertise are willing to make that available. I appreciate his welcome of this early statement and say to him that it will not be the last.