Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Lincoln Jopp and Graeme Downie

Committee stage
Tuesday 10th December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Lincoln Jopp]

We might return to that on Thursday, but thank you.

[Graeme Downie]

Q Minister, you mentioned ensuring that issues are handled and dealt with, and you said that previously issues had fallen away and not been taken up by the MOD. Would that not make it more sensible to have a duty on the face of the Bill for the MOD to respond to commissioner reports to ensure that action can be taken? Could you comment a little on that?

Luke Pollard: It is quite normal in legislation of this type for there not to be provision in primary legislation. It is certainly the intent of the Secretary of State and me to ensure that provision is given to that coming back, but I am aware of an amendment tabled by the Liberal Democrats in a similar way. I am happy taking that issue and having a discussion about what we can do to ensure that sufficient attention is given to any recommendations.

When we were drafting the legislation, we tried to ensure that where a Secretary of State who has not been involved with the origin of the Armed Forces Commissioner may be in post, they cannot put in place any obstacles to the proper scrutiny of the welfare needs of armed forces personnel and their people. The expectation is that the Ministry of Defence would respond to those recommendations; what we would need to establish informally, which does not require primary legislation, are the methods for tracking the recommendations.

Certainly, as a new Government, we are very aware that many of the recommendations made by the Defence Committee, for instance, to Government over the past decade sometimes have not even been responded to or had information provided back. As part of renewing the relationship between Parliament and the Ministry of Defence, we believe that enhancing parliamentary scrutiny of what the Ministry of Defence does will produce better outcomes both strategically and for our people, so that we will be able to respond to those recommendations from the Armed Forces Commissioner, HCDC and other bodies that report on the welfare needs of our people.