Armed Forces Bill

Lord Boyce Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boyce]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee and member of various service charities.

I welcome the provisions in this Bill that build on the significant changes brought in by the Armed Forces Act 2006. Five years ago, some of us in this House expressed concerns about the introduction of the then new disciplinary system, especially the speed at which it was proposed to be introduced. However, I am advised that it has settled in well; and this is good news, not least because of its appropriateness in an increasingly joint operating environment.

A successful disciplinary system relies on its constituent parts. For most cases, this is primarily the commanding officer—and some of us majored on this point in 2006. However, I recognise that for more serious cases others have to be involved—the service police, the Director of Service Prosecutions, the court administration officer and the judge advocates. This Bill sets out to strengthen the position of the service police in terms of their independence, and I understand and support the rationale for this. An effective investigation that supports the chain of command is invariably an independent one, and the Government are right to ensure that independence is protected.

However, I am concerned that the Director of Service Prosecutions is to be given the power to appoint prosecuting officers who are not service lawyers. To maintain its credibility, the Service Prosecuting Authority needs to be able to demonstrate that its prosecutorial decisions are taken by lawyers who understand the environment in which the accused persons are operating. The proposal in the Bill seems to reverse the understanding of the position that I thought we had established during the passage of the 2006 legislation.

I note also that the Bill aims to give commanding officers the power to require their people to be tested for alcohol and drugs by the service police. I am pleased that this power rests with the commanding officer, who has the central role to play. However, in this context, I also note that the Defence Council will be given the power to specify duties that will be subject to maximum alcohol limits. I hope that the Defence Council will exercise that power with proper regard to striking the correct balance between operational imperatives and the demands we place on our people. More importantly, I equally hope the Defence Council will not attempt to bind the hands of commanding officers, who in my experience are best placed to make that judgment.

I absolutely do not apologise for having mentioned several times the role of the commanding officer and the chain of command. They are absolutely key to the effectiveness of our forces and in particular to what is sometimes called the moral component of fighting power. It was good to hear the Minister reinforce that point in his opening comments.

I turn to Clause 2 on the Armed Forces covenant report, which was levered into the Bill at the last minute. I welcome the implied—I use that word advisedly, particularly following the comments of my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig—formal public and statutory recognition that this clause conveys of the self-sacrifice of all our service men and women, rather than it being imbedded in some Army doctrine manual, as it has been hitherto. I also welcome, bearing in mind the points that I have been making about the command chain, the proposal in the Armed Forces covenant provisions not to attempt to set out specific rights and obligations. It seems to me that, so far as serving personnel are concerned, the structures and processes established over many years of experience should continue to provide a proper mechanism for holding the chain of command to account.

I have in mind, for example, the service complaint system whereby a serviceperson can complain to the chain of command about an injustice that he or she believes they have suffered. The complaints system was bolstered in the 2006 Act by the establishment of the Service Complaints Commissioner. I have read her annual report for 2010 and support the good progress that has been achieved. However, I do not support her call for an Armed Forces ombudsman. The significant changes that have been made should be given time to bear fruit. An ombudsman scheme has the potential to undermine the role of the chain of command. I am pleased that the Government appear to have accepted that point.

The position for veterans and for those the Bill calls “relevant family members” is, of course, different. For these people, the disadvantageous effect of their former service, or the service of their spouse, father or mother, is unlikely to be a matter that the Ministry of Defence can fix. It is likely to be the responsibility of another government department. It therefore seems to me that it is ineffective to require the Defence Secretary to prepare a report and lay it before Parliament. Instead, the responsibility should lie with Ministers having the responsibility for providing the solution—or at least a Minister from the Cabinet Office with the authority to co-ordinate those Ministers.

As the covenant makes clear, it is not just in the fields of education, healthcare and housing that Ministers may have to become involved. For example, there is the matter of former armed services people in prison. In that context, a couple of weeks ago I was pleased to attend the launch of the report of the inquiry into this subject, organised by the Howard League for Penal Reform and chaired by Sir John Nutting QC, to which the noble Lord, Lord Lee of Trafford, referred earlier. I declare an interest as a member of that inquiry’s advisory board.

With official estimates suggesting that the English and Welsh prisons hold around 3,000 ex-servicemen, there is understandable public concern as to why those who have served their country go on to offend. The inquiry has been able to dispel some of the myths around serving in the Armed Forces and subsequent offending behaviour, and has thus countered much of the media attention given to the possible connections between the two. It has also made some timely recommendations on how we can do better. These include expanding the current free veterans’ helpline provided by the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency to provide information and support to ex-service personnel in a crisis, as well as rolling out existing efforts among the police, probation and prison services to identify ex-servicemen at the earliest possible point and put them in touch with ex-service organisations that can help them.

I commend the work of the Howard League and Sir John Nutting QC to this House, but my point in raising this is to emphasise that this adds further strength to the argument for a Minister detached from the MoD and with cross-cutting responsibilities for veterans, who could provide stewardship in this area as well. I guess that the Minister is getting this point, as it has been mentioned by many. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, had he been able to be here, would have made the point very strongly also.

In sum, I am not convinced that the Government can be held fully to account when the delivery of the covenant is not met, and I fear that the good intentions that lay behind getting the covenant formally recognised may be squandered.

My final comment on the covenant is that perhaps the annual report should also cover how the expectations of those serving, regarding the size, shape and capabilities of their forces, are matching up to what they are being called to do today, and how expectations are being met in proceeding towards the vision for the Armed Forces in 2020—how those expectations actually stack up. Such expectations underpin fighting morale and sense of worth, which surely are a fundamental part of the rationale for the covenant. I am afraid a report on that subject currently would make depressing reading.