Armed Forces Recruitment: Under-18s

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and George Kerevan

Tuesday 7th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered recruitment of under-18s into the armed forces.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. This is an emotive and controversial issue, and I recognise the strength of feeling on both sides of the debate. For that reason, I will preface our discussion by saying that I want this to be the beginning of a dialogue on which we can build consensus and uncover the rational facts that should underpin any good policy.

Fundamentally, I sought the debate because I am concerned about the welfare of young people who join the armed forces—in particular, the Army. I have a professional background of more than 20 years of working in the education of young people aged between 14 and 19. The last group I taught were taking level 2 public services at Coleg Menai, many of whom had their sights set on joining the Army. I wish them all the best in their chosen career.

Some of my colleagues appear to believe that any questioning of the armed forces or Ministry of Defence policy is somehow an attack on the institution as a whole, so I would like to emphasise that nothing could be further from the truth. It is not attacking the Army to express the desire that soldiers be treated well and fairly, and that their short and long-term welfare be considered priorities in the recruitment and training process. I do not believe it is a threat to national security to seek the highest standards of welfare and educational attainment for all young people in this country. As we can see all too clearly in the world today, it is essential for the healthy functioning of a true democracy that Government institutions and the policies they make are continually exposed to scrutiny and challenge.

The purpose of the debate is to seek answers from the MOD regarding numerous concerns about the recruitment of young people under the age of 18 to the armed forces and to press for a thorough and independent review. Dozens of religious, military, legal and policy organisations, alongside unions and trusted military professionals, have expressed concerns about this policy. They include the Select Committee on Defence, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Children’s Commissioners for all four nations of the UK, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, UNICEF and many more. They seek to ensure the same fundamental standards of welfare and protection that are taken for granted for that age group in any other sphere of life, but the MOD has not yet provided a detailed response to assuage those concerns.

We have heard from the MOD many general assertions about the wider benefits to the individual and society as a whole of early enlistment, anecdotes about individual recruits who have achieved remarkable things, and apocryphal stories about the lad who would have been dead or in prison if he had not joined the Army at 16. We have also heard from many senior Members of the House about their own happy experience of military service—sometimes decades ago, sometimes more recently. Although I respect the insights drawn from the personal experience of many Members, possibly including some in this Chamber, the plural of anecdote is not facts. I and many others want to hear from the MOD hard, objective, empirical evidence and analysis that demonstrates a carefully thought through policy, taking into account both the recruitment requirement of the armed forces and the welfare of those who enlist.

The UK is unique in the developed world in enlisting 16-year-olds into its armed forces. That is not standard practice, it is not a necessity, and it is not a policy shared by our military allies and peers. It does not make me proud to say that our colleagues in this matter are North Korea and Iran.

[George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)]

Am I correct in saying that the UK is the only NATO member that recruits at the age of 16?

[Liz Saville Roberts]

It is my understanding that we are indeed the only NATO member and the only standing member of the UN Security Council to do so.

This is a well-rehearsed argument—forgive me—but it is worth reminding the House that 16-year-olds cannot buy a kitchen knife in a shop, although they can be taught to kill with a bayonet. They can enlist and train in the Army, but the law states that they cannot play “Call of Duty” on an Xbox or watch the Channel 5 documentary series “Raw Recruits: Squaddies at 16”. To watch it online, they would have to tick a box to confirm they were over 18. If it were not so serious, it would be laughable.

Our respect for the armed forces as an institution and for the individuals who represent it makes it easy to treat the institution as beyond question, but I propose strongly that that is dangerous and wrong. There has been no thorough review of the enlistment of minors since at least the time of Deepcut, and I hope today that we can restart that conversation to ensure the welfare of our soldiers and young people across the country.

On the matter of education, I am sure we agree that the educational opportunities that we afford our young people must aim to achieve a common baseline, no matter what their background. The armed forces are, however, exempt from the Department for Education’s standard minimum target for all 16 to 18-year-olds of GCSEs in English and maths at grade C or above. I hope the Minister will be able to explain why our young recruits are not provided with those qualifications, which are deemed essential by all educational employment experts.

The MOD claims that the qualifications it offers—functional skills for numeracy and literacy—are equivalent to GCSEs, but they have been labelled as suffering from major and fundamental flaws by the Department for Education’s own expert review of vocational education, the Professor Wolf report. That finding holds true for all young people, including those who are not academically inclined in any traditional sense and are pursuing vocational, rather than academic, education. I am sure my colleagues agree that young soldiers deserve, as a very minimum, the same educational opportunities as their civilian friends, and certainly nothing less.

The MOD frequently refers to the apprenticeships that young recruits undertake, but closer examination of the curriculum and the content of those courses reveals that, although those apprenticeships may be excellent training for a military career, they are of little value for future civilian employment. Let us bear it in mind that soldiers may be with the infantry until their early 30s, but those young people will need to find work until they are 67, so they need those skills for their long-term welfare.

Those courses consist of modules such as “Tactical advance across battlefield” and “Use of light weaponry”. Young veterans have repeatedly stated that those qualifications were effectively useless in finding employment after they were discharged. That has been borne out repeatedly by Royal British Legion studies on unemployment among ex-service personnel, which show that young veterans are significantly more likely to be unemployed than their civilian peers, and that the lack of qualifications and skills that are transferrable to civilian life is a major factor in that. I hope the Minister will explain how young veterans, the majority of whom are trained for combat roles, not technical ones, can use those highly specialised military skills in future civilian employment.

The MOD has frequently asserted that the Army provides a constructive alternative to young people who otherwise would not be in employment, education or training, or worse. That is an appealing argument, and it would be quite persuasive if there were robust data to support it, but researchers working on my behalf have found none. I regret to say that MOD data indicate quite the opposite.