Armed Forces Commissioner Bill

Helen Maguire Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 18th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)]

Today, I speak for my party in

support of the legislation before us. It is clear that the armed forces community has been let down, not least under the previous Conservative Government. The findings of recent reports and surveys are testament to that. In 2023, the Haythornthwaite report found that the most common reason for leaving the armed forces was the impact on family and personal life. Overall satisfaction with service life was at just 45%. Only just over a third of personnel reported that they felt valued by the service. The Atherton report found that

“the MoD and the Services are failing to protect female personnel and to help servicewomen achieve their full potential”.

It is unacceptable that the experience of women in the armed forces, and the challenges that many female personnel face, such as sexual harassment and discrimination, have not been properly addressed.

Armed forces families are also too frequently being let down. In the armed forces continuous attitude survey, one third of spouses said that they would be happier if their partner chose to leave the service. Service families are too frequently unable to get basic support, such as access to information, except through the member of the family who serves. The complaints system is not working. In her most recent annual report to Parliament, the Service Complaints Ombudsman, Mariette Hughes, was scathing about it; she remains

“unable to say that the Service Complaints system is efficient, effective or fair”.

That is the eighth consecutive year that she has reached that assessment. Women remain disproportionately represented in the complaints system.

Those who serve in the armed forces, and their families, are putting their life on the line for our country. It is profoundly disappointing that report after report makes it clear that they have been, and continue to be, neglected, ignored and taken for granted. They deserve better. Delivering a fair deal for the armed forces community is not just the right thing to do; it is crucial for our national security. The conditions that service personnel and their families endure contribute directly to the crisis in recruitment and retention that our armed forces are experiencing. In an increasingly insecure world, with Putin’s troops waging their illegal war in Ukraine and Trump about to return to the White House, we cannot afford to not take this issue seriously.

The Liberal Democrats very much welcome the Bill. We welcome the fact that the commissioner will be a much-needed point of contact for armed forces families; will be a public champion for families, having been tasked in law with raising awareness of the welfare issues faced by the armed forces community; and will be properly empowered to independently investigate complaints—for example, they can arrive on sites without notice. We are pleased that the legislation has been introduced to Parliament less than six months after the election. We will support the Bill, and we will work with Members on all sides of the House to strengthen it during its passage through this House.

I thank the Service Complaints Ombudsman and her office for the work that they have done since 2015, offering independent insight into processes and highlighting the failings of the complaints system. It is right for the work of the office to be subsumed into this stronger role, but as the ombudsman made clear, further work needs to be done to bring the service complaints system up to standard. I would have liked this legislation to be used to set that in motion.

We must ensure that the Bill delivers for armed forces families. Families are at the heart of the Bill, and will clearly be of significant importance to the work of the new commissioner, but clause 4 leaves the definition of “family member” up to the Secretary of State. We hope that during the passage of the Bill, the Government will commit to a definition in the Bill, so that there is certainty for armed forces families. It is important that we ensure that families made up of kinship carers—there are often aunts and uncles who care for nieces or nephews—are in scope of the definition. We must also think of divorced partners who are still affected. It is vital, too, that bereaved families come in scope of the definition, and accordingly the work of the commissioner. I hope that Members from across the House agree that bereaved families need the advocacy of the new commissioner as much as, if not more than, anyone else in the armed forces community. We also need to ensure that reservists and recruits have equal access to the commissioner. As for female, black and minority ethic, non-UK and LGBTQ+ personnel, the Government must ensure that the commissioner’s office is equipped with up-to-date evidence and community connections to identify issues and be able to reach into those communities.

It is to that advocacy role that I now turn. Clause 1 makes clear that the role of the commissioner will be not just to promote the welfare of service personnel and their families, but to improve the public’s awareness of welfare issues experienced by armed forces families. I hope that the Minister will be able to shed some light on how the Government envisage the interaction of those two separate functions in practice. The crucial issue is resource—we need to ensure that both those ambitions can be met, as well as the existing responsibilities of the ombudsman role which is being subsumed into the commissioner’s remit—and I urge the Government to offer assurances on that front. I also hope that the Minister will be able to offer further clarification of the appointment process, as well as subsequent timescales for getting the commissioner’s office up and running. The Government have committed to pre-appointment scrutiny of the preferred candidate by the Defence Committee, but what happens if the Select Committee disagrees?

Clearly, whoever is appointed to this role must be truly independent of Government. Under the previous Conservative Government we saw the limitations of the existing public appointments process, even when Select Committees were involved. Giving relevant Committees a confirmatory vote would greatly strengthen the safeguards in the appointments process, and would ensure that the best person for the job was put forward, rather than the best person for the Government. Can the Minister also clarify how the commissioner will interact with the existing Veterans Commissioners for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the proposed national veterans’ commissioner for England?

The Armed Forces Commissioner must prioritise accessibility to the communities that he or she aims to represent and support. We must ensure that if access is digital only, that does not create a barrier if, for example, people are deployed or have a low reading age. It is vital that our armed forces know who they can turn to for support when they need it. Military personnel are trained to be resilient and endure tough conditions, and the culture does not make it easy for people to reach out; I have personal experience of that. If we are to introduce an Armed Forces Commissioner, the Government must include an effort for culture change as well, and I would welcome a greater understanding of how they will achieve that. I understand that people who have served in the armed forces may be considered for this position. Such people could bring valuable knowledge and insight, but how will the Government ensure that they are sufficiently removed from the current culture to bring an independent perspective?

It is also vital that, while welcoming the creation of this new role, we acknowledge that it will in no way be a silver bullet to address the many problems facing the armed forces community, which I have mentioned and which have been touched on by other Members. To deal with serious complaints, for instance, we need to strengthen rules to help support whistleblowers across Government, and the Liberal Democrats continue to support the creation of an office of the whistleblower for that purpose. We urge the Government to go further and fully implement the Atherton report, to ensure that women in the armed forces, who have been let down far too frequently, receive the fundamental protections that they deserve. We should also look at strengthening the armed forces covenant. Will the commissioner’s role include giving due regard to the covenant, and will the Minister agree to strengthen the covenant by placing a legal duty on all Departments to give due regard to it?

We will continue to present proposals to improve the quality of life for service personnel and their families. There are basic steps that we can and should take, such as establishing a one-stop shop for families of service personnel so they can easily gain access to information, including the publication of a guide and an accessible helpline. Housing is also hugely important: service personnel and their families should be able to live in a decent home. I pay tribute to the work of my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), who has campaigned for a decent homes standard for military housing, and I hope that when the Renters’ Rights Bill comes back to the House for its remaining stages, the Government will listen to Liberal Democrat representations on the need to enshrine that in law.

The armed forces community deserves a fair deal. The Liberal Democrats support these measures as a step in the right direction, but we will continue to call on the Government to do more to ensure that service personnel and their families are no longer taken for granted.