Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Bill [HL]

Lord Boyce Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boyce (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment moved by my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig.

I remain to be convinced of the necessity of the Bill, as the Armed Forces are already empowered to allow flexible working. Some might argue that the Bill will allow the Armed Forces to be brought in step with modern working practices, which will be an important improvement to quality of life and hopefully will improve retention. Retention would be markedly improved if the men and women of our services were not profoundly depressed by a defence budget that is totally inadequate to meet the aspirations of SDR 2015, and when our service men and women are seeing major savings measures being contemplated that will impose major savage surgery on present and future equipment capability, and which have already dramatically curtailed training overseas—which, apart from causing us to become an embarrassment in the eyes of our allies, will have a concomitant downward effect on operational capability and morale. This is all on top of the fact that our service men and women are suffering from a number of deeply hurtful efficiency measures in train that are making their quality of life woeful.

Aside from that, I do not envisage that the Bill can be stopped. But if it is to go through, a key to its subsequent success from an Armed Forces perspective would be its attractiveness to the limited number of those—certainly very limited in the case of the Royal Navy—who would be allowed to take time away from their duties.

There is no way that labelling this “part-time” will be remotely attractive. It may be that such an expression is viewed with equanimity, if not honour, in civilian life, but I am astonished that there are those in this House who consider that being in civilian life is the same as serving in the Armed Forces. In the Armed Forces this will be viewed as an unpleasant epithet and will be used as such by the media and others ill-disposed towards us who desire to be insulting. When our allies, especially the United States, which is already deeply concerned about our potential capability cuts, hear that we are to have a part-time Army, Navy and Air Force—which is how it will be characterised—they will think we have lost the plot.

Apart from that, part-time in civilian life does not require a person to be instantly recallable at any time of the day or night, weekday or weekend. Some may think that this provision in the Bill is unlikely to be realised—but what happens if a strategic submarine cannot sail because of a lack of a nuclear propulsion watchkeeper? That is a national emergency.

In other words, to characterise these arrangements as “part-time working” as seen through civilian eyes is to obscure the fact that this will be a temporary arrangement between a service person and their chain of command which can be ended at the wish of either party with notice or terminated without notice in the event of emerging operational imperatives—for example, my nuclear operator analogy.

Also, there are policy limits on how long and on how many occasions through a career a service person may apply to serve under reduced-commitment terms and there will be practical limitations on who may be considered eligible for such arrangements, and when. As I have already said, there will be many limitations in the case of the Navy.

Given these circumstances, resorting to language where one will be called a part-time sailor, soldier or airman will be deemed among those who matter—and I have spoken to a lot of service men and women, rank and file, in the past few weeks—derogatory and belittling of their contribution. The expression is flawed in definitional terms.

Thus, my contention is that this expression—“part-time”—will do nothing to enhance the attractiveness of this sort of flexible working, which has its advantages, as my noble and gallant friend pointed out. In fact it will do quite the opposite. It will be retention negative and will add to the challenges facing the chain of command, who are charged with overseeing a shift in the culture underpinning working patterns on which the success of this initiative rests.

I totally endorse the amendment, and particularly my noble and gallant friend’s words in it, which are a far better definition for people wanting to take breaks.