Veterans Advisory and Pensions Committees Bill

James Sunderland Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 24th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

I rise to support this excellent Bill, both as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on veterans and as a veteran myself. I take my hat off to all of our 2 million-plus veterans in the UK for what they give to our society; it is entirely right that we support them as best we can. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) for bringing the Bill forward. It is an excellent Bill and I am happy to support it today.

Back in the day, as a new and younger MP, I chaired the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill. Members may recall that Lord Lancaster tabled an amendment that the Committee decided not to support. The reason was simple: the MOD asked the Committee to pause so that it could look holistically at the proposal. In complete deference, I say that it is to the full credit of the MOD that it has looked at it; the fact that we are discussing this very Bill on the back of that recommendation is testament to that.

I do not want to cover the Bill itself in too much detail, but we know that there are 12 veterans advisory and pensions committees across the UK: nine in England, one in Scotland, and one each in Northern Ireland and Wales. Their statutory function is to engage at a local level with war pensioners and armed forces compensation scheme recipients, and to make recommendations and representations to Government.

The policy changes in the Bill will provide for VAPCs to be given additional functions in law—that is important. Why is that important? The language in the Social Security Act 1989, which currently underpins this work, is interesting: “engage”, “support”, “represent”, “recommend”, “assist”—it is pretty flowery stuff. My view of VAPCs currently is that they are great organisations—they have good people, are well led and have considerable horse power—but they have no statutory teeth at all. The Bill is about giving VAPCs the statutory teeth they need to be able to provide defined influence—on which more in a minute. At the moment, a whole raft of people in society do great work for our veterans. We have the armed forces champions, VAPCs, fantastic charities, the third sector—the list goes on. I feel strongly that the VAPCs are the right statutory vehicle for taking that forward, and I will explain why and how in due course.

Back in November 2021, the MOD, working closely with the Office for Veterans’ Affairs, provided VAPCs with new non-statutory supplementary terms of reference. That has been looked at over the past 12 months, and the decision has been made to widen those statutory functions and enable matters in the TORs to be set out in secondary legislation. This is about giving the VAPCs teeth. Why are we doing this? It is to better serve the needs of veterans and to better reflect modern-day concerns of the veteran community. Again, that is really important. Is it good that we are doing this? Absolutely, yes.

Clause 1 creates a new enabling power for the Secretary of State to make regulations establishing VAPCs for the specified areas—yes. Clause 2 repeals section 25 of the Social Security Act 1989 to make those consequential amendments in law—yes. Clause 3 is about the time period over which that will be enacted. In my view, it needs to be as soon as possible, and I urge the Minister to push the Bill through as quickly as possible.

Here is the issue: why are we doing this? Why is there a requirement for more powers in law? There is a simple reason, which I will explain. Over the past three months, the all-party parliamentary group on veterans has been running an unprecedented nationwide survey into the experience of our veterans when claiming compensation, war pensions or financial support from Veterans UK. There is no question that the majority of our 2 million veterans in the UK live happily and successfully and have fulfilling lives. But anecdotally, the APPG has been presented over many months with evidence that the experiences of individuals when dealing with Veterans UK are not always positive. The claims process right now is deemed to be too confrontational, too bureaucratic and too antiquated, and it takes too long. It may be that greater scrutiny is needed for that most important task.

In terms of trends, we know that Veterans UK has been under-invested in for years. Some staff may still be working from home, decisions take too long, calls take too long to answer, and the migration from paper records to digitisation has been too protracted. We also know that some veterans remain on a knife edge, with the prolonged, impending nature of life and death outcomes. How is Veterans UK governed? At a superficial level, the levers needed for making the changes that we think are necessary already exist in the MOD. The simple reason is that Veterans UK sits under the MOD. It forms part of Defence Business Services, and therefore the authority for its core outputs does, should and must come from good command and control within the MOD.

Again, why is that? Let us take the brief example of Corporal retired John Smith—we all have a Corporal retired John Smith in our constituencies. Having experienced an issue with Veterans UK, and exhausted his own personal options for redress, he might write to his MP. The MP writes in due course to the Minister—he is sat in his place—but the Minister then writes directly to Veterans UK for the answer. Given that there is currently no independent body dealing with grievances or challenges, Veterans UK today is both judge and jury, and effectively marks its own homework. That is not acceptable.

I have yet to meet the Minister—I will do so next week—but let me give a fleeting insight into what the survey told us. It is a cross-party survey—each of the four co-chairs is from a different party—and it received more than 1,000 responses. The headline statistics are that 76% of the veterans and personnel surveyed would rate their overall experience of claiming compensation through Veterans UK as “poor” or “very poor”, compared with just 6% rating it “good” or “very good”. Likewise, 77% of veterans and personnel rate the communication they received while awaiting the results of the application as “poor” or “very poor”, compared with 6.5% rating it “good” or “very good”. One respondent said:

“Veterans UK make it so difficult for all veterans and you feel like a criminal, there’s no compassion whatsoever.”

That is not acceptable, so we have work to do.

So what? The purpose of the survey is not to situate the estimate, but to generate the evidence needed for further scrutiny. We have now done that. I have some questions for the Minister. Does Veterans UK require a formal structural review or a dedicated delivery board? How do we know that Veterans UK is governed appropriately and whether our veterans are given the best deal? Those questions need to be answered.

To come back to the VAPCs Bill, in my view a ready solution may now exist for providing oversight to Veterans UK if that is deemed necessary. Although service charities such as SSAFA, Cobseo, the Royal British Legion and Help for Heroes, along with the new veterans commissioners, all play their part in supporting our veterans, the more formalised body of the veterans advisory and pension committees could offer that statutory solution. I again commend my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy for bringing forward the VAPCs Bill, which will release VAPCs from some of their legal constraints so that they can be more adaptive and innovative in working with veterans.

On the back of the Bill, the VAPCs—a significantly untapped resource—might be able to reshape the extant relationship with the Office for Veterans’ Affairs to add value. They could be given the formal task of holding Veterans UK to account by providing an ombudsman or assurance-type entity. Equally, they could be given formal oversight for decisions that become subject to challenge or independent adjudication.

[Dean Russell (Watford) (Con)]

I think it is so important that this Bill goes through, and I applaud my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) for his work on it. I have done a lot of work with local organisations in my constituency of Watford. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) agree that everyone who works to support veterans deserve a lot of credit, given that so much of that work is done voluntarily? If there is the opportunity through the Bill to create a statutory body, that is fantastic. We should applaud everyone who is so supportive of veterans now, who has been in the past and who will be in the future.

[James Sunderland]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. So many people in our fantastic communities across the UK are doing great work in support of our veterans, but of course we can do it better. In my view, giving VAPCs a statutory responsibility and role could be just what we need.

I will wrap up very quickly. This timely Bill, which frees VAPCs from statutory control and limitations, offers a potentially fantastic framework for enhancing their role and outputs to the benefit of all our veterans.

Veterans Advisory and Pensions Committees Bill

James Sunderland Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th March 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Murrison]

This Bill is intended to regularise what has become custom and practice. There is nothing particularly new here, but the Bill does give VAPCs, which we have decided are worthwhile, a statutory basis. I hope the Bill will be seen in that light.

Under this legislation, VAPCs would have a statutory remit to do more than engage locally with recipients of war pensions or the armed forces compensation scheme. They will cover a broader range of issues; they may, for example, gauge veterans’ views on the support they receive from the Veterans Welfare Service, and raising awareness of the armed forces covenant. I hope the Committee will accept that the Government’s intent, through the legislation and the various reviews under way, is to ensure that the interests of veterans are furthered. That Government are sensitive to their concerns about how they are dealt with under the armed forces covenant.

The VAPCs will provide the Ministry of Defence and the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs with a source of independent advice about how the MOD should support veterans and their families. Families are very important in this. One of the changes that the legislation will certainly bring is a focus not just on war pensioners and recipients of benefits under the armed forces compensation scheme but families and the wider defence community. I should highlight that the Bill also allows for recommendations to be adopted from the ongoing independent review of the VAPCs under the Cabinet Office public bodies reform programme, which is due to report at the end of this month, and from the recently announced independent review of the role and scope of the Government’s welfare provision for veterans, including by the MOD under the Veterans UK banner.

I take the point made by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, which reflected the perfectly understandable concern that there is a lot going on at the moment, and that there is a risk of overlap. I hope that the timeline that I have given, and the fact that this is enabling legislation—further regulations would have to be made as statutory instruments—mean that, in reality, the whole thing is pretty much covered off. Of course, rather than running these things in parallel, we could have run them in series, but I am persuaded that we need to crack on with this issue, and I do not necessarily want one to follow the other.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way and to Mr Gray for allowing an intervention—I am conscious of falling foul of the tube strike this morning. Having chaired the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill, I have taken a huge interest in the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy, and I commend him on bringing it forward, because it covers the things that we did not quite get to in that Committee. Does the Minister agree that what is exciting about the Bill is not the statutory change itself, but the opportunities now available to the VAPCs? The Bill is about giving them some teeth, and perhaps also holding Veterans UK to account.

[Dr Murrison]

Yes, and that was the subject of one of the amendments that we discussed earlier. The Bill will give the committees teeth—that is the intent—so it will make the veterans’ voice louder in this domain.

The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport rightly made the point about terms of reference. VAPCs will sit within the Ministry of Defence’s remit, so the terms of reference will rest with the MOD rather than the Office for Veterans’ Affairs. He also made a point about websites, which had not struck me, but I am sure that VAPCs will have heard what he said. I do not want to mandate how they do their business, and there is a balance to be struck between their independence and what the MOD would like. I have a natural instinct towards regularising stuff, but in this instance it is important to give them a little wriggle room to do their comms piece as they see fit. The hon. Member’s point is well made, and I hope that those who are perhaps doing less well will have heard what he said.

Mr Gray, you will be delighted to hear that I have taken a red pen to a lot of my speech, because having sensed that the Committee is broadly content with the Bill, I do not see any point in dragging out the Committee, but I want to make a quick comment about the devolved Administrations. The committees will work closely, as they do now, with the devolved Administrations, and as they become aware of issues, they can raise them with Ministers. Ministers can then direct their officials, as they do now, to work with their devolved counterparts on the issues and find a workable solution. My general experience of working with the devolved Administrations in the area for which I am responsible has been positive.

I conclude by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy for his hard work on the Bill, for which I am extremely grateful, and the enthusiasm with which he has approached the task. The Bill has our wholehearted support, and I commend it to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 2 and 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.