Draft Armed Forces (Terms of Service) (Amendments Relating to Flexible Working) Regulations 2018

Gerald Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 General Committees

[Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. We all owe a huge debt of gratitude to those who serve in our armed forces and that debt should be at the forefront of our minds, with Remembrance Sunday just a few weeks away. The national commemorations will be especially poignant this year, as we mark the centenary of the end of the first world war and of the Armistice in 1918.

As the Minister mentioned, this is the first time we have met in Committee to consider regulations made under the Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Act. The Opposition support the regulations as they essentially implement the core principle of the Act: that personnel should have the right to request flexible working. We supported the Act when it came before the House, because we want our armed forces to have greater control and flexibility over how they serve and we want to enable the forces to draw from the widest possible pool of talent when recruiting servicemen and women.

We all recognise that the complexities of modern life mean managing work and home responsibilities, as has been mentioned. This is even more the case for members of armed forces, who are expected to deploy or relocate at a moment’s notice. The flexibility that the Act affords must be balanced against the overriding priority, which is to retain armed forces that stand ready to defend our country. To that end there are limits on the amounts of flexible working that personnel can undertake. The Minister has set out some of those limits—perhaps he can go further and talk about how they were arrived at.

The regulations enable personnel to apply for flexible service, but as I understand it there is no guarantee that this will be granted. Can the Minister outline what would happen if an application is refused and what process exists for personnel to appeal a decision?

The Minister will recall that during the passage of the Act, we on the Opposition Benches put forward amendments that would compel the Department to publish the number of personnel who are serving part time in the quarterly service personnel statistics and in the biannual diversity statistics. In the other place, the Minister’s colleague, Earl Howe, stated that the Department would use data collected about the number of personnel requesting flexible working, but only internally “for analysis purposes.” Can the Minister set out why this data will not be published in the usual way along with the standard releases of statistics from the Department? Surely this would be a straightforward and cost-free way of assessing how the policy is operating, as the information is collected anyway.

We know that one of the foremost reasons for introducing the Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Act and these regulations was to improve the rates of recruitment and retention. That is certainly a very important aim, given that the number of fully trained personnel continues to fall across each of the services. In fact, the full-time trade-trained strength of the Army has fallen by more than 1,000 since this time last year. The Public Accounts Committee recently reported that the Government’s recruitment plans are

“not sustainable in the long-term.”

In the light of the draft regulations, will the Minister set out how his Department plans to remedy that crisis in recruitment and retention?

The number of personnel serving is measured against the strategic defence and security review targets for 2020—namely, an Army of 82,000, an Air Force of 31,750 and a Royal Marines and Royal Navy numbering 30,450 personnel. Clearly, we are some way from meeting those targets. It is difficult to see how they can be met on the current trajectory, even with the draft regulations. Will the Minister confirm that those targets will not be changed as part of the modernising defence programme?