Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Jamie Stone and Martin Docherty-Hughes

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 13th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I find myself making a mental note to be fairly worried if the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) praises me, but we will gloss over that. I, too, would like to extend my thanks to the Minister. I was delighted to receive a telephone call from him to discuss this Bill a few days ago. I would have been much more surprised had I received a telephone call from his predecessor.

I will give credit where it is due. In our conversation, we discussed the fact that I would be very pleased, forgetting political boundaries, if the Minister or one of his colleagues would care to come to witness NATO’s Exercise Joint Warrior, which takes place off the north-west of my constituency and in other parts of Scotland. It would be a tremendous shot in the arm for our military personnel to see a ministerial presence. I do not think we have actually seen a Government Minister there—certainly not in the lifetime of this Government. I cannot speak for previous Governments; I was not here. It would also be churlish of me not to express my thanks to all the organisations that have been in touch with me during the whole process of this Bill.

We are rather short of time, so I will keep my comments very brief. I want to talk about two things. The first is to say that my party will be supporting amendments 1 and 2. Further to the remarks of the right hon. Member for North Durham on amendment 1, the general public do not really understand why, if a member of the armed forces commits a truly terrible crime—murder or rape—they should be tried and dealt with differently from how someone not in uniform would be dealt with, in a civil court. As an MP, if I were to commit a crime, I would not have the right to be tried by my peers in this House. I would be up in court, in the dock, the same as any other citizen of this country. There seems to be an impeccable logic in amendment 1.

The right hon. Member for North Durham is correct, in that the military police do not have the resources to investigate in the depth that would get to the bottom of some of the most serious allegations that can be made in this land.

Finally on amendment 1, let me turn it around. If the Government cannot support the amendment, are they saying that, in fact, the civil courts are in some way inferior to military courts? Why would they not trust the civil courts and the civil police to get it right?

Secondly, I do not want to weary the Chamber on this, but it is a point I have made a number of times and, for the sake of the record, I repeat it. I have talked at some length about my concern that reducing the size of the Army will lead to the Army, and possibly the other armed services, being seen as not a terribly desirable career option for young people.

We have a massive recruitment problem. Going around the highlands of Scotland, going to the Black Isle show, the Dornoch show and my local Tain highland games, in years gone by there would be a stall set up by the Army, the Navy or the Air Force, or perhaps two or three of them. The stalls were very popular, an attraction to the general public. They were one of the many reasons why people would go to these events, because people like to see the weapons on display and meet the armed forces personnel. Those events were excellent for recruitment.

I leave Members with a final thought. My thanks again to the Ministry of Defence, as I and others, including the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock), went to the Ministry to be briefed on what we have been doing with the United Nations in Mali. It was a most interesting briefing. One message came out. When a young person in my constituency says they are thinking of joining the Scots Guards, the Royal Regiment of Scotland, the Royal Air Force or the Royal Navy, if I can say, “If you opt for that career, you might get yourself involved in something like the peacekeeping effort in Mali,” I guarantee it will be a tremendous attraction. It is very different from doing an ordinary job—I do not want to do down ordinary jobs—a non-services job. That is one way of augmenting recruitment.

All of us in this place, regardless of our political persuasion—if we care about the defence of the realm, if we care about our armed forces, which I am sure everyone here does—have a duty, as Members of Parliament, to do everything we can to encourage recruitment by talking to our constituents and talking to what we call modern studies students in Scottish schools, to say, “Here is a career option you might like to think about.”

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

I associate myself with some of the remarks of the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), especially those about the work he and the hon. Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton) have been doing in the Defence Sub-Committee on women in the armed forces.

As we discuss the Bill’s remaining stages, it is unfortunate to reflect that at no point in its journey has it received the attention I would hope for such an important piece of legislation, especially in a week in which we see the inevitability of the external factors that always pop up and seem to push armed forces welfare down the pecking order.

Today, unfortunately, it is international aid. I often wonder whether there are some in the defence establishment who see the aid budget as a golden goose whose slaughter would provide some sort of bounty for the armed forces, solving any funding crisis in the equipment budget. Although I do not want to say it, even if we were to cut the entirety of the aid budget, defence would still need reform.

That is particularly pertinent when it comes to the lack of progress on service justice in the Bill. I have seen it throughout my time on the Defence Committee, especially each year when we hear from the ombudsperson for the armed forces about how their role is stymied by a lack of investment and interest, and by byzantine regulation. Although excellent work is being done across the board by a plethora of armed forces charities, I cannot help but feel each time that the hugely divergent range of lived experiences of the 170,000-odd people in uniform—their geographical spread and divergent socioeconomic circumstances—means that charity, however well intentioned, often does not reach those who need it most.

In the case of both service justice and access to services for those in need, which are included in amendments this afternoon, we see a continuation—at least from my perspective and that of my party—of a two-tier system that enshrines class and social privilege, and ensures that the organisation itself will be unable ever to realise its full potential. The deficit in both service justice and access to services brings us to the case of Lance Corporal Bernard Mongan. This week, the Army’s report into his death in January 2020 was brought to wider attention. It admitted

“failings in the proper management of personnel”,

meaning that Bernard lay dead—undiscovered, in his bed, in his room in his barracks—for three weeks. I wrote to the Secretary of State about this case last year, and I have no doubt that the Ministry and the Army feel that his death was unacceptable and profoundly regrettable. However, there are other unsettling aspects of the case that speak to some of the challenges that we face in this Bill.

Lance Corporal Mongan came from a Traveller background. Although I do not want to go into whether that was a contributing factor in the bullying that may or may not have led to Bernard’s death, we must ask ourselves why it is that, time and again, those from our most marginalised communities are failed in this appalling fashion. This is precisely the moment when we should be ensuring that equality of opportunity and an armed forces who are representative of all communities on these islands become a reality. I can only, sadly, come to the conclusion that that is an opportunity that has been missed.

Although enshrining the armed forces covenant into law is welcome progress, a real legislative framework for armed forces personnel in this political state is, quite simply, long overdue. We can call it a bill of rights for the armed forces or an armed forces representative body, as has been my party’s policy for many years. I could even call it a trade union; I do not have a problem with the words “trade union”. We could at least start by giving members of the armed forces a contract that clearly states the obligations that their employer has to them and vice versa. Until we do, it is unlikely that we will be able to address the underlying issues that so many armed forces personnel face.

Finally, I feel that I should touch on something that is in a way connected to this legislation and which illustrates the knots into which the UK Government tie themselves to keep up appearances. I am currently chairing the Defence Sub-Committee on the subcontracting of MOD staff, which held its first evidence session yesterday. We will hear Ministers and other Members today make references to things such as “defence family”, “defence people” and “whole force”, but the demonstratable experience of many of those who make up the whole force, including my own constituents, is one of worsening conditions, lack of security and increasing alienation with the picture that is painted, I am afraid, by those who come to the Government Dispatch Box, including the Minister. We will undoubtedly hear all about the increase in the capital budget from the Government Benches today. I only wish that we might hear more about the day-to-day spend that is to remain stagnant over the next five years and what the Government intend to do to ensure that it is not the poorest paid in the armed forces who bear the brunt of this fiscal restraint.

I have always believed that in life, just as in politics, the key measure of our character and our beliefs is how we treat those with the least power and agency. It is high time that we enshrined the rights and responsibilities of all members of the armed forces, and, indeed, all those who support them. I will never tire of saying in these debates, Madam Deputy Speaker, let us speak of them less as heroes and more like you and me, entitled to everything that you and I would expect. It is the very least that we can do.