Armed Forces Commissioner Bill

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I will be so brief that they will not have enough time to put my name on the annunciator.

I welcome the agreement that has been reached and I think that this is a good example of the House improving what is an important Bill, which I hope will succeed in every respect. I pay tribute to all noble Lords, because I have been involved in that sense with the Bill since the beginning—I have an interest, which I have declared previously. It has been a very useful, good example of the House in action, and I particularly congratulate my noble friend the Minister, who has behaved in an exemplary way throughout the entire process. I am very pleased to see that the result that we have agreed will pass through and that the whistleblowing defence review will take place.

I have failed: they have put my name on the annunciator.

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

My Lords, I join the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, in welcoming not only the review into whistleblowing but the movement on this Bill, because it is an important one.

I just want to ask a few questions about the whistleblowing review. I do not want to be cynical, but we know that, in good old “Yes Minister” parleys, if you want to kick something into the long grass, you set up a review. So it is going to be important that, once the review is published, the terms of reference are correct and there is an indication of a commitment of the department to implementing the review—I think the Minister suggested the Armed Forces Act coming up, which would be a good way of doing it.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, said, this is going to be a major issue for defence. Rightly, defence needs to be secret at times, and it is also important that the chain of command is in place. But I see this not as a threat to defence but as an opportunity for defence, because some of the best companies and others that have adopted open access and whistleblowing methods have actually added to their capabilities by learning the lessons.

If we are going to do this, the terms of reference will be very important. Trying to get the cultural change to which the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, referred is going to be important. I do not think the problem is necessarily in the Armed Forces. Part of it is going to be within the MoD itself, and I think we have seen that in the fiasco of the last few weeks over the Afghan data leak. From my experience of being a Minister there, I know the stock thing is to protect the organisation. We need to try to turn this on its head a bit and say, “Look, if we do this properly, we can have a situation whereby if someone comes forward with a whistleblowing issue, don’t see it as necessarily an attack straightaway on the department or the institution. It should be seen as an opportunity to learn from that”. The important thing in any whistleblowing change is that there has also to be a commitment to implement what is found, because so often, these things happen and then nothing changes. There will be a huge cultural issue within the MoD. That would not just be welcomed by the general public and the Armed Forces but lead to efficiencies and learning lessons. It should not be seen as a threat or “Somehow, we have to have a knee-jerk reaction, and the important thing is to protect the department at all costs”.