Armed Forces Bill

John Healey Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 8th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

I join the Minister in his tribute and thanks to the men and women of our armed forces—those deployed to standing commitments, from Cyprus to the Falklands; those serving as part of our NATO defences in Estonia or the UN peacekeeping in Mali; and of course those who are part of the largest ever peacetime deployment in this country, helping this country through the covid crisis. British forces are respected worldwide for their professionalism and for the values that we most admire: integrity, loyalty, discipline and service.

This Armed Forces Bill renews the legal basis for our armed forces and system of military law, and in turn also renews the nation’s commitment to our forces personnel through the covenant; and, with almost 70 speakers from all parts of the House, it is quite clear this afternoon that the House is determined, together, to do exactly that.

Labour supports this legislation. We share that aim, and we welcome the order that will follow this debate to extend the present Armed Forces Act from the end of May until the end of December, so that Parliament has the time to give the proper scrutiny to improving this Bill. As it stands, this Bill is a big missed opportunity—the opportunity to make good in full on the commitments in the armed forces covenant, so that Britain becomes the best country in the world to serve and to be a veteran; the opportunity to fix long-run problems for forces personnel, their families and veterans, which have become so clear over the last decade; and the opportunity to set a framework for the armed forces that is fit for the challenges and complex threats that Britain must face.

Let me make this point about the Armed Forces Bill, in particular to Government Members who are used to toeing the line on legislation. This Bill is different. This Bill is bipartisan and goes next to a Select Committee, not a Public Bill Committee. The Bill can be improved from all sides as it goes through Parliament. The Bill rests on the groundbreaking Armed Forces Act 2006, which consolidated half a century of service law. To stress the point, on Second Reading of that Bill, in 2005-06, a Government Back Bencher made a strong argument for a service complaints commissioner, which at first was knocked back by the Secretary of State, John Reid. However, by the time the Bill became an Act, the proposal from my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) had been incorporated fully into the legislation. He will no doubt have fresh proposals for this Bill to put to this Secretary of State.

On clause 8, we stand fully behind the armed forces covenant and the aim to give it full legal force. In fact, in 2009 Labour in government consulted on introducing legally enforceable rights for the forces, their families and veterans, and our 2010 manifesto proposed to enshrine those rights in the armed forces charter. I am therefore pleased that the Secretary of State could say on publication of the Bill at the end of last month:

“For the first time ever we are putting into law the Armed Forces Covenant.”

The Secretary of State might just want to let David Cameron know that. In fact, he might be surprised to learn it, because he boasted in 2015 that he had already done so, saying:

“We are the first Government to put the military covenant properly into law”.—[Official Report, 4 November 2015; Vol. 601, c. 961.]

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I am sorry that the Minister did not want to take interventions. He said that the armed forces covenant is now 10 years old, but it is actually a lot older. It started in 2008 with the Command Paper under the last Labour Government, and the document he referred to, which came out in 2009, referred not only to putting the covenant into law but giving it teeth. The proposal in this Bill does not have teeth. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is a bit strange that the weakened version that we have now has none of the proposals in the 2009 Green Paper? Let us also remember that this is the same Government who, in 2011, opposed the motion tabled by me and the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) to put the covenant into law.

[John Healey]

My right hon. Friend is right, of course. I want to stress, to the extent that I can, the cross-party, long-term and long-run support for many of these provisions. He is right that the covenant has its roots in the previous Labour Government—we called it a charter then, rather than a covenant—but over the past two decades, I believe we have made great strides in providing better services, support and opportunities for service personnel and veterans.

That is to the credit of Ministers who have made it their personal mission, of hon. Members on both sides who have championed the cause, of councils and local agencies that have delivered services to our veterans, and of service charities such as the Royal British Legion, Cobseo, the Confederation of Service Charities, the RAF Families Federation, SSAFA, the Armed Forces Charity and Help for Heroes, which have hugely improved Government policy, advanced public understanding and developed direct support for forces and veterans. Those charities welcome the Bill, as I do, but they are disappointed by the limitations of the legislation, as I am.

I must say to hon. Members that, if they read one background briefing for this Bill, they should make it the background briefing that the Royal British Legion has sent to us today. It rightly says that a decade’s experience of the covenant confirms that,

“the range of policy issues that have a significant impact on the Armed Forces community is wide and ever-changing: including health, housing, employment, pensions, compensation, social care, education, criminal justice and immigration”.

The Bill is too narrow. It covers only aspects of health, housing and education. The Bill creates a two-tier covenant. It applies only to local councils and local agencies, not to national Governments. The Government are letting themselves off the hook entirely when, as the Legion says, many of the areas in which forces personnel and veterans have problems are the responsibility of national Governments or are based on national guidance to delivery agencies.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the clauses relating to service justice and terms of service were ultimately requested by the armed forces. They should therefore be non-contentious, although I agree that perhaps clause 8 could be more prescriptive. However, to bring the armed forces covenant into statute, to do it equally and to make it deliverable across all local authorities, across all devolved nations and also Northern Ireland, where particular circumstances reign, will be no easy feat. My view therefore is that, far from being overly prescriptive in primary legislation, it may be better to be less prescriptive. Does he agree that we should commend the Bill for what it is, not attack it for what it cannot necessarily be?

[John Healey]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s interest in this. I think there is potential, as he indicates, for cross- party support for doing more than is currently in the Bill on the implementation of the covenant. The problem is not that it is prescriptive, but that it is prescriptively narrow at present, directed only at local councils and local agencies and not the responsibilities or services of national Government, and that it is too narrow, in that it mentions three areas when the lived experience of armed forces and veterans quite clearly raises problems on a wide range of other fronts. That is the lesson of the experience of the past decade and more—that is the challenge we must meet. This is a once-in-five-years piece of legislation and I want to ensure that we on the Opposition side play a part in helping Parliament to meet that challenge.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I agree with my right hon. Friend, and I suggest that the hon. Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) read the Green Paper of 2009, which actually set out some real teeth there, including setting out a clear charter of what was in the covenant; the ombudsman’s role, so that people could have redress; armed forces champions, as already mentioned by the Chair of the Select Committee; and a five-yearly review to coincide with the Armed Forces Act, so that the disadvantage could be looked at. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Bill is letting Government Departments and the MOD off the hook?

[John Healey]

My right hon. Friend is right. He mentions teeth, and I will come to that in a moment. Members on both sides of the House and the Select Committee can help the Minister with his personal mission to do best by forces personnel and veterans. We can make this stronger and better than the missed opportunity that the provision in clause 8 represents. It is too narrow. It creates a two-tier covenant, and it is too weak. It offers no definition of what “have due regard to” the covenant means, and it offers no enforcement for members of the armed forces community who feel they have been let down.

That makes the statutory guidance that the Minister promised at oral questions last week essential before the Bill’s Select Committee scrutiny stage. When only one in 10 judicial reviews succeed and the cost of unsuccessful judicial reviews is upwards of £80,000, proposals for easy, accessible redress beyond a judicial review are also essential before the Select Committee stage. I trust that all Members on the Select Committee will want to pursue those shortcomings with the Minister. Let us not allow this golden opportunity to reinforce the covenant remain a missed opportunity, as it is in the Bill.

I turn to the service justice system and clauses 1 to 7. In the five years since the last Armed Forces Act, the Government have extensively reviewed the service justice system, with his honour Shaun Lyons reporting early last year, backed by a service policing review carried out by Professor Sir Jon Murphy. Many of the recommendations from those reviews are in the Bill. Lyons rightly said:

“Independent oversight is a critical factor in bringing transparency and building confidence in policing.”

We welcome the new Service Police Complaints Commissioner, modelled on the civilian police’s Independent Office for Police Conduct. We will want to ensure in the Select Committee that the Government get important details right on matters such as time limits for bringing complaints, protections for whistleblowers, scope to consider super-complaints and respective remits for the commissioner alongside the Service Complaints Ombudsman. We also welcome the expansion of the courts martial boards, with new rules on reaching qualified majority verdicts.

However, there are two big gaps. First, Ministers are missing the opportunity to improve confidence and results in cases of murder, manslaughter and rape committed by service personnel in the UK. As the Minister has conceded, Lyons recommended that those cases should be dealt with by the civilian justice system. He pointed out that the military courts secure convictions in only one in 10 cases of rape, while Crown Prosecution Service figures show that the civilian rate is around 50%. Such a move would restore the position that Parliament intended when the principle of concurrent jurisdiction was first introduced in the Armed Forces Act 2006. The Secretary of State has so far just said no but has offered no rationale for rejecting that recommendation, and the Minister this afternoon has again offered no justification for rejecting that recommendation.

[Johnny Mercer]

rose—

[John Healey]

If the Minister wants to do so now, I will happily give way.

[Johnny Mercer]

First, we cannot reject a recommendation that did not exist. That was not the recommendation of the Lyons review, as the right hon. Gentleman well knows. Secondly, I have given a justification a number of times: this decision was made because we want to see more integrity and resilience in the system and agree a protocol between prosecuting jurisdictions to ensure that the system works better for everyone. What was advised was Attorney General’s consent. We have gone for better than that, and this will achieve better outcomes for our people.

[John Healey]

That is not an explanation of why; that is an explanation of what, and the protocol is about the what, not the why. The Government are missing the opportunity to improve the results and the confidence in how these very serious cases are dealt with. If the Minister thinks that this was not a recommendation in the Lyons report, I suggest that he re-reads it.

Secondly, and importantly, the Bill has little to say about fixing the biggest flaw in the service justice system—investigations—and it has nothing to say about investigations of overseas allegations, despite the Minister telling me on Third Reading of the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill in November:

“The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne raises time and again the issue of the investigations, but he knows that they are for the forthcoming armed forces Bill and will be addressed there.”—[Official Report, 3 November 2020; Vol. 683, c. 258.]

They are not. He also knows that 99% of the allegations against British troops from Iraq and Afghanistan did not make it to prosecution and would not have been affected by the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill. The Government have already had three reviews in the past five years and have more than 80 recommendations on investigation, so I urge them to work with us and with a wide range of peers in the Lords on the changes needed to that Bill.

The Minister quite rightly said that this legislation is as much about our future as our past. This is indeed five-year legislation that will take our armed forces beyond the Government’s integrated review, when it is finally published, beyond its four-year funding plan and beyond the next general election. For it to function as the future framework for our armed forces to keep this country secure, the Bill must fix the flaws that have become so clear since the last Act in 2016.

On maintaining the strength of our armed forces, there is serious concern that Britain’s full-time armed forces remain 10,000 below the total strength Ministers said was needed in the 2015 strategic defence review, and an MOD report revealed over the weekend that all but one of 33 infantry battalions are seriously short of battle-ready personnel. The Minister responded on social media to that report, saying that it is not secret but a “routine update”. I want to see Parliament use the Armed Forces Bill to mandate Ministers to report to Parliament each year on the fighting strength of our armed forces.

On maintaining the pay of our armed forces, the decade of decline since 2010 has seen military pay fall behind and with it, by the way, morale and retention. For instance, last year an Army private was getting almost £2,000 a year less than they would have done if the pay had kept pace with inflation. I want to see Parliament use this Armed Forces Bill as the basis for a debate about making the recommendations of the independent Armed Forces Pay Review Body binding on Ministers.

On justice in our armed forces, more than 6,000 personnel serve in Britain’s armed forces from overseas, mainly from the Commonwealth. Their service to our country earns them the right to live in our country, yet the Government charges huge fees to apply for British citizenship, so someone leaving the forces now with a partner and two children has a bill of almost £10,000. It is unjust; it is un-British. I want to see Parliament use the Armed Forces Bill to get Ministers to scrap these unfair fees.

Finally, on the role of reservists in our armed forces, covid has made it clear that our military are essential to our national resilience, not just our national security, and that reservists will contribute more in future to our defence capabilities. While the Government’s moves to make reservist training more flexible are sensible and welcome, I want to see Parliament use the Armed Forces Bill to deal with other problems they face, especially with employers.

In conclusion, the Minister has said to the House that he is open to proposals to improve the Bill. We will take him at his word. We will at times test his word, but we will work with the Minister if he will work with us. We will work cross-party and with a range of interests beyond Parliament to build consensus so that this Bill, when it becomes an Act, really does make the most of this opportunity to strengthen the nation’s commitment to our forces, their families and veterans.