Military Covenant

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hancock]

We had the same problem when the last Government refused to accept their duty of care responsibilities. They did that because nobody could clearly define, in rigid legal terms, what a duty of care was.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

We did.

[Mr Hancock]

No, you didn’t. The hon. Gentleman, who was a Minister and before that was on the Defence Committee, will remember from his experiences on the Committee that the Labour Government’s big failure on the duty of care was that they were unable to define clearly what it meant.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

I thank Back Benchers on both sides of the Chamber for having retrieved the debate, as Hansard will record. The debate will be read by many service personnel and former military personnel and, as I said in an earlier intervention, it does not go down well to play party politics with our armed forces.

Having served on the previous Armed Forces Bill—now the Armed Forces Act 2006—and on the Committee debating the current Armed Forces Bill, I pay tribute to the previous Government for the many advances that were made regarding the welfare and interests of our serving personnel and their families.

I have no recollection of the military covenant—now known as the armed forces covenant—being mentioned in our deliberations on the previous Bill. That concept has been brought about by the efforts of the Royal British Legion, to which I pay tribute. I also thank the Secretary of State for praising reservists and for reiterating that praise when I intervened on him, because that is part of the one-Army concept. Serving reservists and their families are sometimes left out of the debate.

The armed forces covenant will be enshrined in law when the Bill is enacted because those words will appear in legislation for the first time and because the Secretary of State will be required to come to the House each year and make a report. I am pretty confident that any Secretary of State who for whatever reason tried to airbrush out matters of concern would be quickly picked up, and quite rightly so, by any Member who thought such issues were being ignored.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The hon. Gentleman says that the covenant will be enshrined in law, but he attended the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill the other day when the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan), said of the covenant:

“As I have explained already, it will be a conceptual, philosophical statement, and it will have about the same legal position as the service Command Paper”.

To say that it will be enshrined in law is complete nonsense.

[Bob Russell]

I am not a lawyer; all I know is that the Bill, which I hope will become an Act, refers to the armed forces covenant. Should there be more than that, or should there be less? I do not know, but I do know that as the years unfold, that concept will be developed and built upon. Not only the Royal British Legion but other charities are involved. We have heard about the external reference group, but in fact a breakdown of that group has shown that the majority of its membership is within Government. It is more of an internal reference group, with a few very important external people added on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I will be as quick as I can. I love the idea of a military covenant. Of course our armed forces are a special case. They are a martial profession: people who join them do not do so to join a nursery school; they know they are going to take risks and they know they may lose their lives. As we know, they are in a unique profession, so we have to deal with them uniquely. That is why we must look after them. I repeat: we must look after them.

The military covenant is a work in progress. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer), who is no longer in his place, and others who say that it is the idea of the covenant that counts rather than law. We feel strongly that the tri-service military covenant being looked at now, as work in progress, could get better. I feel that the military covenant comprises three crucial aspects, which I will quickly run through.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

What the Defence Secretary said this afternoon, which was also said in recent proceedings on the Armed Forces Bill, is that a document called “the armed forces covenant” is being worked on now and will be produced later this spring. If that is the case, and the Prime Minister is clear that the covenant should be written into law, why is it not part of the Armed Forces Bill? When an amendment was proposed last week to enshrine the covenant in law, why did the hon. Gentleman’s party vote against it?

[Bob Stewart]

The answer is I do not know, but I will continue and I will be quick.

What is crucial to whatever we call the military covenant is how we respect our soldiers when they are killed. As a boy, I remember watching my father’s battalion come back. He was the only officer who had not been killed and I remember watching the bodies come off the back of an aircraft at RAF Khormaksar in Aden. We have come a long way since then, and we must respect people properly. Secondly, the families must be looked after properly. When someone dies in the service of our country, we have a duty as a Government to look after those families for the rest of their lives. And my third point is that we have a duty to look after those who are hurt badly for the rest of their lives, too.

I am happy that the military covenant is going to be part of the Armed Forces Bill. I like the idea of having a report every year. I commend the idea of the Queen’s regulations. When I was serving, they were my bible when it came to dealing with my soldiers and how I should behave. Perhaps the tri-service military covenant will in due course become part of the Queen’s regulations.

Members on both sides of the House must try to do whatever we can in these parlous economic times to look after our soldiers so that we will remember them.