Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Calvin Bailey and Ben Obese-Jecty

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bailey]

The right hon. Member makes a powerful point, and I agree with him entirely. That is why it is so important we make sure that the armed forces covenant works. The covenant will have to do a lot of work and heavy lifting, just as it will in relation to the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Huntingdon, but we will have the legal power and we will have recourse to those Departments. We hope to hear from Ministers today that they will press home the legal advantage they now have in that regard.

Finally, this debate reminds us that the Armed Forces Act 2006 was itself forged in the context of its time. It brought together a number of separate pieces of legislation and created a framework suited to an era in which the size and scope of the armed forces were reducing and many of the strategic assumptions underpinning our national security appeared to be settled. The measures in this Bill are all welcome and necessary, but they remind us that much of the heavy lifting now sits elsewhere. Questions about mobilisations, reserve integration, military aid to the civil authorities, the legal protections offered to service personnel acting on behalf of the state, and wider national resilience sit largely beyond the scope of the Bill, yet those issues are becoming increasingly important as the strategic environment changes around us. As legislators, we have a responsibility to ensure that the legal frameworks governing our armed forces continue to evolve alongside those changes. This Bill makes important improvements, but it should also encourage us to think carefully about the work that remains to be done and ensure that future legislation is ambitious enough to meet the realities of the world as it is, rather than the world as it once was.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

I wish to speak to new clause 5, which I tabled. I start by thanking all Opposition Members—both in my party and across four other parties—who have supported this amendment. Let the record show that not one person on the Labour Benches supported it.

We often speak in this House about veterans, our shared respect for those who have served and how best to support veterans in their post-military life, be it with careers, housing, mental health or simply the frailty of growing old. With that shared sense of society repaying our collective debt to those who have served must come the moral courage to do the right thing that we expect those who have served to show.

During my Army career, I had the privilege to serve alongside and command soldiers from all over the Commonwealth—Australians and Canadians, South Africans and Jamaicans. As a support weapons platoon commander, a quarter of my anti-tank platoon was Fijian. As hon. Members may expect from a fine rugby playing regiment such as the Duke of Wellington’s, it was unbelievably competitive to get a spot on the wing. I therefore know well the courage and the sacrifice shown by our Commonwealth personnel not only today, but alongside me on operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and during operations across the globe long preceding that. We owe those men and women the right to make a life in the country they have risked theirs to defend.

Over four years ago, in April 2022, the previous Government implemented a visa fee waiver for those who have served in the UK armed forces. That waiver also applied to eligible veterans who were yet to regularise their immigration status. Having campaigned for that long before I became an MP, it was hugely welcome to see the playing field levelled somewhat for Commonwealth veterans. While that was a welcome first step, I personally felt that it was not enough.

We in this Chamber often recognise the sacrifice and the challenges of those families left behind when service personnel deploy. Being a military spouse or child is not easy. This situation is made even harder for the family of a Commonwealth service member, because while we waived the fees for serving personnel in 2022, we did not extend the right to the immediate family and dependants of that service member. That means many Commonwealth veterans are saddled with significant visa fees if they wish to stay in the UK as a family after leaving the armed forces.

From 8 April this year, when the cost increased once again, the base fee for applying for indefinite leave to remain is £3,226 per person. To put into context the speed of that increase, when we waived fees for service members just four years ago, it was £2,389 per person—a near £1,000 increase. That is just for indefinite leave to remain, not citizenship. In the US armed forces, a non-US citizen can achieve full US citizenship upon discharge for the price of the admin fee—just a few dollars. A service member, their spouse and two children now potentially face a cost of just shy of £10,000 for the right to live in the country they have risked their life to defend. I defy anybody to tell me that that is fair.

It is not until the 12-year point that personnel become entitled to a resettlement grant of £15,047. The purpose of the resettlement grant is to do precisely what it says: to give people a head start, be it through a trade course, a deposit for a house or the funds to set up an entrepreneurial new business. None of those options is available to those who need to spend the majority of the grant on just obtaining the right to live in the country.

What on earth are we doing? Why are we fleecing those who have served this country, saddling them with a five-figure burden? The Royal British Legion and Poppyscotland lead the charge on this campaign. They have pushed for these changes consistently. They highlight that in delivering this manifesto pledge, the Government would fulfil their obligations under the armed forces covenant by removing those disadvantages and barriers to family life.

Going into the 2024 general election, the Conservative manifesto looked to correct this issue. As part of our pledge to veterans, we announced that a Conservative Government would:

“extend the visa fees waiver introduced to cover Commonwealth personnel, to include their direct dependants.”

The Labour manifesto, too, made that pledge, stating:

“We will also scrap visa fees for non-UK veterans who have served for four or more years, and their dependents.”

So where are we with that? I have raised the question on a number of occasions. In November 2024, I asked the then Veterans Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), what the timetable was for delivering that manifesto pledge. I was told:

“We are working on that. It is in the manifesto, and it will come out in due course.”—[Official Report, 18 November 2024; Vol. 757, c. 22.]

In June 2025, during the Armed Forces Day debate, I asked the then Armed Forces Minister, the hon. Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), if he could provide an update

“on the work being done to waive visa fees for families and dependants of our Commonwealth personnel”.

He told me:

“We have a manifesto commitment to deliver that. The Defence Secretary has spoken to the Home Secretory about this, and our officials are in dialogue about it. I hope that the Minister for Veterans and People, who looks after this area, will be able to announce progress in due course. The hon. Member and I share a strong sense that there is a wrong to be righted here, and those people who serve our country for a good period of time should be able to settle here. I think progress will be made, but I recognise his interest in that happening.”—[Official Report, 26 June 2025; Vol. 769, c. 1290-1291.]

That was a year ago.

On 5 January 2026, the new Veterans Minister told me in a written answer that the Government are

“working closely with the Home Office to deliver this commitment”.

She went on to state:

“it is not possible at this stage to provide an implementation date”.

In April, she informed me:

“This Government is committed to waiving visa fees for non-UK veterans”.

In total, I have asked the Government for an update on the progress of the implementation of their manifesto pledge seven times and we are no closer to an implementation date after nearly two years than we were when the Government came to power.

I am not seeking to apportion individual blame here. Having spoken to Ministers individually, including the two on the Front Bench today, I do not doubt that the Defence Front Bench wishes to implement this policy, but there is clearly something that is causing it to stall, be that the Home Office or the machinery of government. There is an opportunity here to drive this policy forward. We should bear in mind that the Ministry of Defence does not even collate the information regarding the number of ILR applications submitted by family members of service personnel. It has literally no idea of the impact the failure to deliver this policy is having.

After two years with no timetable for implementation on the horizon, I have little confidence this is a priority on the MOD’s to-do list. I appreciate that the Government measure working flat-out in months, but this could be measured in continental drift. It simply does not appear to be a priority for the Government. However, my greater fear is that rather than do the right thing today, the Government will churlishly and spitefully vote against new clause 5, “because politics”. Not one Labour MP signed the new clause, despite every single one being asked twice. The Government have whipped their MPs not to support it, just as they will whip their MPs to vote against it.

A vote against new clause 5 is not just a vote against the Labour manifesto that each Labour MP stood on. It is a vote against our veterans. It is a vote against those who have risked their lives to defend this great nation. It is a vote that tells Commonwealth personnel that this Government do not have their back, that joining our armed forces will still see them treated as second-class citizens, with limited options post service. Those Labour MPs with a military presence in their constituencies should ask themselves how they will spin it to the service member who has to pay £10,000 to live here with their family, instead of putting down a deposit on a house or launching a business. They should ask themselves whether, for the sake of playing politics this evening, it is worth holding somebody else back.

[Mr Calvin Bailey]

I thank the hon. and gallant Gentleman for giving way. He is making a powerful speech, the majority of which I agree with. Does he recognise, however, that the armed forces covenant places a legal responsibility on all Departments to remove those barriers and impediments to service life? As a service member, I engaged with the Royal British Legion and Cobseo from about 2017 to try to address those barriers and impediments and failed to do so numerous times under the previous Government because of the nature and approach of the Home Office in addressing these problems. Perhaps the problem we have today is not whether the Department wants to address the issue, but a wider cultural problem. Would the hon. Gentleman join with the all-party parliamentary group to ensure that we apply and enforce the armed forces covenant in the way it is designed in order to achieve the outcomes on which we both agree?

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

I do not disagree. I recognise the point that the hon. and gallant Gentleman is making and his passion for delivering what he describes. I am a member of said all-party parliamentary group, and I am happy to push in order to try and get this across the line. I also recognise the politics of this. Although I am not sure his party will welcome him apparently somewhat throwing the Home Office under the bus in this instance, I recognise that there are complexities around the ability to deliver from a Home Office perspective. I know that is something that the Conservatives encountered when we were in government, and I imagine it is very much the same situation for the Government now.

I insist that new clause 5 is still a good new clause. It would come in the right place within the Armed Forces Bill. I recognise that the hon. and gallant Gentleman is trying to give the Government some wiggle room to get out of voting for the new clause this evening, but I am convinced that it should be voted on, and that we should push it forward in order to put some pressure on the Home Office.

[Mr Calvin Bailey]

I just want to amplify what this means for our service people, as I know there is a slight conflation of issues here. As our service people approach the end of their time in service, if they are not a UK passport holder—the majority of those people may be Americans and not Commonwealth personnel—they will not have access to work and to credit during the final six months of their service. This impediment has been in place for decades; as I said, I fought to change it through Cobseo when I was in service, and we are trying to deal with it again now. That is why this matter is broader than the hon. Gentleman’s new clause.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

I agree that it is a broader topic than simply covering Commonwealth veterans and their family members from those same Commonwealth countries. There are a number of personnel living here are UK personnel but have spouses and children who may be from overseas, and the same rules apply to them. I do not disagree with the hon. Member; I think we are very much on the same page on a number of issues—it is literally just the technicality of politics that is getting in the way.

We are squeamish when it comes to discussing immigration. No party has yet demonstrated that they have the right answer, but on this specific element of the debate, it is very simple: no matter how high a bar we set for the right to live in this country—whether that is for key workers or high net worth individuals—those who have risked their lives to defend the freedoms that we enjoy deserve to settle here with their families without penalty. That should always be above that high bar. At the heart of our security are the men and women who serve and risk their lives for this country. That is in the Labour manifesto. I urge Government Members to do the right thing today and support new clause 5.

Typhoon Fighter Sovereign Capability

Debate between Calvin Bailey and Ben Obese-Jecty

Wednesday 12th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I welcome Turkey’s order for 20 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft. I appreciate that it is good news for the UK, good news for the workers at Warton and Samlesbury and good news for BAE and the future production of GCAP. The Government have confirmed that the Turkish jets are tranche 4 aircraft, with the first of the order due to be delivered to the Turkish air force in 2030. The Government refuse to disclose the number of aircraft that will be delivered each year, but have confirmed that it will not impact our ability to conduct the RAF Typhoon phase 4 enhancement programme or, at the back end of that process, the manufacturing of GCAP.

I recently asked the Government what estimate the MOD has made of the contribution of Typhoon jets to GDP. The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry told me:

“The biggest contribution of defence to GDP is peace and security.”

While in abstract I share that sentiment, it was not really the answer that I was looking for. Typhoon has been one of the UK’s most successful defence export programmes in recent years, with £1.4 billion in export contributions annually and over £30 billion of value to the UK economy, which is more than double the £12 billion initially invested. The programme contributes around £1.6 billion to the UK economy and helps to preserve our sovereign fighter jet manufacturing capability.

Under the NATO Eurofighter and Tornado Management Agency, the industrial subsystem production and workshare agreements across the partner nations arrangements dictate that the UK leads on manufacturing the front and rear fuselage, windscreen and canopy, fin and rudder, engine bay doors, foreplane and a range of major avionics systems, which make up 37% of each Typhoon aircraft. For both UK aircraft and UK-led export orders, final assembly takes place at Warton, where the major equipment components, which have been manufactured in Samlesbury by BAE Systems, are ultimately assembled. To that end, it would be good to know how much the order of 20 Turkish jets will create, given the satellite industries that orbit the final assembly and certification processes. Including the Turkish order, there are 154 Eurofighter Typhoons awaiting delivery across the partner nations of Germany, Italy, Spain and Kuwait. How many of those planes will receive final assembly at Warton?

What is the plan to ensure that there is no skill fade in the intervening years? While it would be nice to imagine a Kanban-style lean manufacturing process that sees Typhoons rolling off a production line every few days, these jets take several years to construct. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that those responsible for airworthiness testing and certification are kept current and competent between now and 2029, when the first Turkish jets will be approaching completion?

Beyond the order, it is worth addressing what assurances the Turkish have been given about the longevity of the jets. The Turkish air force will not receive the last of the jets until 2035, but the out-of-service date for the RAF is 2040. How will the jets be upgraded after we retire them? How will upgrades be delivered at the Warton and Samlesbury plants when they are focused solely on GCAP? The Typhoon is scheduled to remain in service with air forces across Europe and the middle east until the 2060s.

Our four remaining tranche 1 aircraft are based at the Mount Pleasant complex in the Falkland Islands, and I had the pleasure of visiting No. 1435 Flight earlier in the year to better understand their role in air defence and quick reaction alert for the south Atlantic islands. However, the handful of remaining tranche 1 Typhoons have an out-of-service date of 2027. Can the Minster confirm whether these will be replaced with tranche 2 or tranche 3 aircraft? If so, which other squadron will lose a flight?

As I mentioned, the current Typhoon fleet—our 67 tranche 2 and 40 tranche 3 planes—has an out-of-service date of 2040, but in a written answer to me on 24 September, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry stated:

“Typhoon will continue to serve as the backbone of the UK’s Combat Air Force until at least the 2040s.”

Can the Minister confirm whether the out-of-service date of Typhoon is 2040 or well beyond that?

I recently asked the Government about the scope of the planned upgrades for Typhoon, specifically with regard to the mark 2 European common radar system, defensive aid suites, avionics and weapons. The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry confirmed that those would be outlined in the forthcoming defence investment plan, which it is rumoured will not be published until December.

The upgrade programme is due to take place over the next 15 years—coincidentally, the same as the aircraft’s remaining lifespan. The Minister has previously informed me that the phase 4 enhancement—P4E—upgrade programme is in the system definition de-risking phase of activity, following the system definition contract last year. The full scope of the P4E capability package has not yet been agreed, and without that agreement the programme cannot progress on to the design, development and demonstration phase. With that in mind, it appears unlikely that the P4E programme can be accurately outlined in detail in the defence investment plan.

With the best will in the world, we know the Government are not about to pull the trigger on a domestic Typhoon order. We cannot afford them, and they clearly do not fit into the combat air succession plan. Having read the strategic defence review, it is clear to me that Typhoon is seen as an integral part—the backbone, in fact—of our combat air capability, but the MOD clearly wishes to pursue exquisite capability, irrespective of the opportunity cost.

The current plan sees a mixed fleet of Typhoon and F-35B. I stress the “B” because, frankly, the announcement on the F-35A is a red herring. We are yet to receive the remaining F-35Bs of the current tranche. The remainder are set to be delivered by March 2026, taking our total to 47, with one written off having fallen into the sea. The mooted 12 F-35As are a straight swap for 12 F-35Bs from the next tranche. Those F-35As were pitched as dual-capable aircraft, and would therefore form part of the NATO nuclear mission. If that is the case, why will the F-35As be assigned to 207 Squadron’s operational conversion unit? Using the planes as a training fleet workhorse does not scream nuclear readiness. How many of the jets will be held at readiness?

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

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that the highest echelon of pilots—those who are best trained—will be the operational conversion unit instructors? Therefore, the 12 aircraft allotted to the nuclear mission will be the leading edge of the force’s capability, so it makes eminent sense for that part of the force to deliver it.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

I bow to the hon. Gentleman’s expertise in this field, being the decorated RAF pilot that he is. However, I also take that as Government confirmation that the OCU instructors will potentially form the backbone of our NATO dual-capable nuclear readiness force. Can the Minister confirm that when he sums up?

I know this is a trick question, as the Minister probably does not know what the nuclear readiness plan is, and I do not think the RAF knows either, given there is currently no timeline for gaining nuclear certification. At this point, it is worth noting that, in February, the US Marine Corps—by far the biggest user of the F-35B—changed its programme of record to more than double its order of the carrier variant, F-35C, while reducing its F-35B order by the same amount. Our carriers are not equipped with cats and traps, so the F-35C variant is a non-starter, but we should note the direction of travel of the US Marine Corps, given the combined arms nature of its brand of expeditionary warfare.

The Government have stated that the introduction of the F-35A variant will support the stand-up of a third frontline F-35B squadron, but the F-35A variants will not enter service until the 2030s—we have not even ordered them yet—and that is quite aside from the certification of nuclear capability. When will we achieve initial, and then full, operating capability for the F-35A with nuclear certification?

Crucially, our F-35s are not capable of conducting missions alone. It is not often discussed, although we have already mentioned it here, but the F-35 cannot yet carry the Meteor missile, MBDA’s beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile. The Government have previously confirmed to me that the current estimated timeline for the Meteor’s in-service capability is the early 2030s. Our top-of-the-range jet fighter currently has no stand-off air-to-air missile capability. It is effectively unarmed in the face of a near-peer aerial adversary against which we cannot expect to have day one air superiority.

In July, the previous Minister for Defence Procurement, the right hon. Member for Liverpool Garston (Maria Eagle), told me:

“Block 4 modernisation will include the integration of UK-unique weapons and upgrades to air-to-surface and air-to-air weaponry.”

That would appear to be an aspiration, not a guarantee. Options for future Meteor development are still under consideration by the Meteor partner nations of France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Sweden, and the aim is to have reached consensus by the end of the year. Can the Minister provide an update on the progress made at the recent working-level discussions in September and October?

This issue was also recently identified by the Public Accounts Committee in its excoriating report, “The UK’s F-35 stealth fighter capability”, which highlighted:

“The Joint Programme Office…has invited the UK…to include a UK weapon in its so-called digital accelerator which it hopes will speed up delivery. In the meantime, the Department told us that as part of its Defence Investment Plan it is considering buying other weapons that are already available and integrated.”

In his response, can the Minister outline what off-the-shelf weapons the Government are currently considering buying as an interim solution to this problem? How do they intend to integrate an interim stopgap weapon?

At present, the solution is actually Typhoon. Yes, in order to use our very expensive, top-of-the-range, invisible-to-radar, fifth-generation F-35s, we have to fly them alongside our not-very-invisible-to-radar, fourth-generation Typhoons, because only they can carry the payload to defend them in air-to-air combat. I am not sure this is exactly what was intended by the hybrid airwing outlined in the strategic defence review.

That is before we point out that an independent carrier strike group is irrelevant if we need a land-based plane to support our carrier-based capability, and that for the F-35B to be in range of a target, the carrier would have to be in range of hostile ballistic missiles that we cannot feasibly protect them against. The future air dominance system, which will be its primary air defence shield, comes in the form of the Type 83 destroyer, for which the final business case is not due to be submitted to the Treasury until 2028—the 2035 initial operating capability for Type 83 already looks ambitious. I digress, and discussions on the limitations of designing our military strategy around our capability, rather than the other way around, are for another day.

The F-35’s out-of-service date is 2069, by which point some of our 138 airframes will be over 50 years old—older than any combat jet the RAF has ever had in service. What will be the final fatigue index of those airframes by then? Given the rapid development of uncrewed platforms, are we really going to rely on an ageing crewed jet as the backbone of our combat air capability in 2069?

Having covered a fair amount of ground, I close by reiterating that the recent Typhoon deal with Turkey is a good thing, but I fear there are an awful lot of unanswered capability questions regarding our air power. While the answers to all these questions are for the next month, when they will be published in the defence investment plan, the Minister knows well that I will circle back on every single one of those points—he probably suspects I have a tracker monitoring their status.

With that in mind, we need a clear and concise air power strategy, because talk of autonomous collaborative platforms and hybrid air wings is premature. It should be noted that the Chief of Defence Staff, in his previous role as Chief of the Air Staff, stated this summer that the RAF has

“no major equipment programmes planned for the next 15 years. We have what we have for the near and medium term.”

The question is not when the defence investment plan will be published, but whether it will have anything in it when it is.

Defence committee

Debate between Calvin Bailey and Ben Obese-Jecty

Tuesday 8th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bailey]

In short, yes, the covenant is going into law. The report shows the stark contrast between governance in the UK and in Scotland.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

Only last week, I spoke to a serving constituent who highlighted the issues he had had regarding the selective application of the armed forces covenant by universities. There are universities that have signed the covenant but offer no additional dispensation regarding study breaks for service personnel who are undertaking a course but are subsequently deployed. Deployments are often for 26 weeks, not including pre-deployment training or post-tour leave, whereas the maximum study break is around 16 weeks, in two terms of eight weeks. This may lead to the service person dropping out of the course and the forfeiture of their enhanced learning credits, through no fault of their own. Can I ask the Select Committee member, or indeed the Minister, to take this into account in order to facilitate the resettlement that service personnel depend on?

[Mr Bailey]

I will. As someone who was impacted thus myself, this is something I am aware of, and I will take it back to the Defence Committee for a response.