Armed Forces Commissioner Bill

Lord Colgrain Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 5th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Colgrain (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Carberry, on her excellent maiden speech. We are obviously very fortunate to have her in your Lordships’ House. I shall not detain noble Lords very long in this refrigerator of a Chamber.

I thank the Minister for his excellent introductory remarks and for the briefing he undertook last week at the MoD. At that briefing, I asked him a question regarding reservists and the extent to which, and when, reservists will fall within the commissioner’s new remit. I tried to make the point that the moment of deployment for reservists is not as clear cut as it is for regulars, given their particular domestic circumstances and their relationships with their employers. The definition of their deployment date cannot always be readily ascertained. Thus, their particular general service welfare matters and, subsequently, service law may need to be viewed from a slightly different perspective.

I was delighted to hear that the Minister’s son-in-law is a reservist; he indicated last week that, as a result, he had an inkling as to the point I was trying to make. I had the impression that, as a consequence, he might have said something in the introduction to this debate that would clarify the situation regarding reservists: he did indeed use an all-encompassing expression which included the word “reservists”, but really no more than that. I may have got this wrong but as I looked through the Bill I could find neither reference to the point I was making nor even the word “reservist”.

I hesitate to talk too much about reserves, given that in front of me is my noble friend Lord Lancaster, who knows much more about reserves than I ever will, but he, unbeknownst to me, encapsulated part of the worry I have by referencing both a pensions issue and a pay issue in the past. I find myself thinking that there may be an overview problem associated with the Bill and reservists in particular. I wonder whether there is a means whereby the Minister might agree to get together with me, my noble friend Lord Lancaster and anybody else who has a particular reservist interest to see whether we can do the equivalent of stress-testing certain circumstances whereby reservists might find themselves having the Bill applied to them slightly differently from regulars, and see whether that might be a worthwhile starting point.