Armed Forces Bill

Debate between James Gray and Dan Byles

Monday 10th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell), as is his wont, added considerably to what has been a long and interesting debate so far this evening, predominantly on clause 2 and the military covenant. By reference to Colchester, the hon. Gentleman made a useful contribution to the debate.

Although the rest of the Bill is extremely important and our armed services would not exist without it, there are others much better qualified than I who will no doubt address the other parts of the Bill later in the debate and in Committee. Therefore I, too, will focus most of my attention on the military covenant.

It is a rather frightening and humbling experience in this place to follow speakers who know so much more about the subject than oneself. In particular, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) and his colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster), both of whom know more about the military covenant than most other Members in the Chamber today will ever find out. I pay tribute to their contributions.

I will not seek to equal that or compete with it. I shall focus on the concept of the covenant, why it is there, what it does, and in particular, what the Bill does to strengthen it. The covenant has, of course, existed for many years. I speak from two personal areas of experience. The first is as chairman of the all-party group on the armed forces. Several of my co-chairmen and vice-chairmen are present in the Chamber this evening. It is a humbling experience to see each of the brigades returning from Afghanistan marching through Carriage Gates, arriving at the east door of Westminster Hall and going down to the Terrace for a reception.

At the most recent event, when 4 Mechanised Brigade arrived, I was particularly struck by one soldier wearing his combat kit cut off where his boxer shorts would be. It was only afterwards that I discovered the reason. He was marching in the column. He was not a casualty. The reason for that rather unusual form of military dress was that the third degree burns to his legs were so severe that he was unable to take even the light cotton of desert combats against the skin. None the less, he was determined to march in with the rest of them. I pay tribute to such people. Very few of those in the Chamber tonight could compete with that level of true heroism.

I say the same thing about many of the people whom I meet week by week and day by day in the high street of Wootton Bassett. Large numbers of the regiments and the fallen soldiers’ families come to our events in Wootton Bassett, which are held twice a week. The heroism that they show and the bravery and pride that the families show about their close relative who has been killed in Afghanistan is a humbling experience.

With that as background, we have to think about what we as a nation and as a Parliament are doing with regard to our armed services. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire asked whether the military covenant was about improving the lot of soldiers by comparison with other citizens, or whether it was about removing the disadvantage suffered by soldiers. If somebody has to serve under the most appalling privations, as they do in Afghanistan and elsewhere; if somebody has to close the Queen’s enemy, risk being killed by them or, even worse, have to kill them, not something that any of us would want to do; if somebody has to risk the most appalling injuries, to which some of those whom we have seen visit Parliament over the years stand tribute; and if somebody has to suffer as our soldiers suffer, we as a nation owe them more than we owe other public servants.

Of course, public servants such as firemen and all sorts of people do useful things, but, when we require a person by his job to do the things that we require our soldiers to do, we owe them more than we owe any other public servant. So, with the military covenant, we ought to seek not just to resolve the disadvantages that our soldiers face, but to add to the covenant the idea of improved citizenship, as I think my hon. Friend called it.

A number of us in the Chamber have been out to Afghanistan, and I was there not so long ago with the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell). When one says to soldiers and, come to that, sailors and airmen, “What sort of things are you worried about? What are your problems here on the very front line? Are you worried about the kit?”, the answer by and large is, “No, we are not. The kit that we are issued with now is second to none in the world.” When one asks, “Are you worried about the Taliban, being shot at, being deployed, being hungry, being cold or the desert conditions?”, one finds that they are not concerned about that at all. Those of us who come to this place and say that somehow or other our soldiers are worried about that sort of thing are wrong. When one meets someone on the very front line and asks, “What is it you are most worried about in your service career?”, they say, “I am worried about the family back at home, the housing, my pay and conditions and what I am going to do after I have left the Army.” They are not worried about the ordinary, run-of-the-mill occupation of being a soldier, because they signed up. They recognise the dangers of being shot at, killed, serving in awful conditions and all those things. What they do not recognise are the appalling consequences for their marriages, families and lives after they have left the services.

Earlier in the debate, there was a rather sterile, academic and statistical discussion of whether a disproportionate number of soldiers find themselves imprisoned or suffer from drug or drink abuse after they have left the services. Those people do suffer after they come back, however, and it is thanks to us sending them there—our decision in this place. We decide to send them to Afghanistan. They face all those privations, they come back and many experience prison or mental, drug or alcohol problems thereafter, and we have to bear responsibility for that and put it right.

The military covenant aspect of the Bill is in some ways the most important part, although all the legislation has much to recommend it. With that as a background, it is important that we first thank and congratulate the Government on their commitment to recognise the military covenant and to put it into law. Secondly, we should very much recognise that they have taken some steps to do so, and that in the Bill we have clause 2, because in the military covenant’s long history it has never once been recognised in law.

Without being difficult, however, I have a couple of questions for the Government on which Ministers might choose to brood before they come to reply. First, I have some difficulties with the constitutional aspect of taking something that should be a ministerial or political duty and trying to put it into law. Law is something for which there is a sanction if it is not adhered to, so I wonder what would happen if some subsequent Government—I am sure not this one—20 years from now failed to fulfil the covenant. What would be the sanction against the Secretary of State? Would he come before the House and get ticked off? Would he go to prison, pay a fine or lose his job? What would be the sanction inherent in the Secretary of State failing to perform under clause 2? The same applies to a number of Bills that we passed before the general election on climate change and child poverty. They are not capable of sanction, and I slightly wonder whether there is a constitutional difficulty with putting the covenant in the Bill as it has been. In other words, should it not be a matter about which Ministers are overwhelmingly concerned, whether or not it is written into law? If they were not, they would lose power at a subsequent general election, so there is quite an interesting constitutional conundrum in the Bill.

[Dan Byles]

Does my hon. Friend also agree that there is a danger regarding who decides whether the law has been broken? Will the matter go before the courts? Will we see judicial intervention on the matter of whether the Secretary of State for Defence has broken the military covenant?

[Mr Gray]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting and important point—exactly what I was driving at. Who decides whether the provisions of the clause have been achieved in years to come?

That leads to me to the second part of my question. My party’s manifesto went to great lengths to say how important the covenant was and how we as a party in government would put it into law. We talked about a broad spectrum of things in the run-up to the general election, but before us we have a relatively modest clause, simply saying that the Secretary of State will bring forward a report once a year. He will draft it and say what is in it, although it will be about education, housing and health care and in such other fields as the Secretary of State may determine. So, he will sit down, write a little essay about all the things that he has done to achieve the military covenant and bring it before the House.

We do not know from the Bill whether there will be an oral statement, thereby allowing hon. Members to question him, a written statement or a statement to the Defence Committee, thereby enabling us to scrutinise it carefully. What form will the statement take, and what powers will the House have to hold the Secretary of State’s feet to the fire? Is it possible to imagine a situation in which he comes to the House and in his report says, “I am extremely sorry. This year we have broken the military covenant in a great many ways and done terribly the wrong thing by our armed forces”? Of course not. The Secretary of State will come along every year with his statement and say, “Look what marvellous things we have done with regard to the covenant,” and hope not to be too carefully cross-examined over it.

Given how strongly I feel about the importance of the military covenant, and given that I feel we owe it to our soldiers, sailors and airmen, whom we ask to do such awful things that we ourselves would never consider doing, I slightly question—I do not mean to be disloyal—whether the clause achieves what the coalition Government set out to achieve. Is it actually a rather sad little clause? Could it be strengthened? When the Minister responds to the debate, I would like to know in particular how the Government see it operating. Will it be a mechanism by which this House holds the Government to account? Will it enable us to hold the Minister’s feet to the fire and say, “Secretary of State, you’re not living up to the military covenant. You’ve broken it”? Or is it just going to be a little PR exercise, enabling successive Secretaries of State to say, “Haven’t we done well by way of the military covenant?” If it is, it will be not worth the paper it is written on.