Armed Forces Bill

Lord Empey Excerpts

Tuesday 4th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 7 in my own name and comment on Amendment 6 in this group. There is an obvious similarity between the two amendments. I worded mine slightly differently because the particular Secretary of State who may be required to provide information from time to time will vary. That is why in Amendment 7 I used the term “relevant”. Similarly, it may be that in some reports specific requirements are made of one devolved Administration and not another.

There is a second reason why Amendment 7 differs from Amendment 6. I detected in conversations with the Government a sensitivity over any interference with the devolution settlement. I phrased my amendment so that it goes to the Administration rather than to the individual Minister in the Administration. I personally have no difficulty with the requirement going to the individual Minister in the devolved Administrations but, with personal experience in dealing with this for many years, I can assure the House that there will certainly be difficulties, particularly if that applies in Northern Ireland.

I made the point at Second Reading and in Committee that we have cast-iron experience that there is a loose end in the Bill. At Second Reading, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, expressed the views of many Members in this House that there was broad support for the covenant and that we were glad to see it coming before the House in the amendments. But the noble Baroness made the point that there were loose ends and that those would have to be tidied up as the process continued. We now have an opportunity to do just that.

The wording of either of these amendments may not be perfect. Indeed, there may be technicalities here or there that need to be improved, but there is time for that to be done. I join with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, in the comments he made when introducing his amendment. Mine merely gives the Minister a different way of doing that, another option to achieve exactly the same thing. We want buy-in.

An important point has been made by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and the noble Lord, Lord Newton. If there is a statutory requirement on a department to do something, somebody in that department is plugged in to do it. All legislation and legislative requirements in a department are written down every year and a path is created in the department for that particular legislative requirement to be fulfilled. Otherwise, it is left to the whim of the relevant Minister, or to a correspondence between two private offices, or to whatever particular interest any given Minister may take in the subject. Making a requirement on a department ensures that the legislative section takes it on board and it is put into the programme of that department for a year ahead, so we know that the thing will be done right.

I can well understand Government resisting amendments. I have done it myself and we all know it. My anxiety is over the fact that this is a unique piece of legislation. The speeches delivered by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, would have got the message across that we are dealing with something unique, and I welcome that. If one sees the privations and dangers that our service personnel are going through, and if we read, hear and see in our own areas the consequences of the actions that they are being required to take—far-reaching consequences that will grow in significance over time, because people are coming back from these wars with terrible injuries from which in other times they would have perished on the battlefield and facing 40, 50 or 60 years of life with them—they are going to put a Major requirement on the delivery of service in the years ahead.

It is not unreasonable in those circumstances to say to given departments, which I expect will vary from year to year, and to the devolved Administrations, that they have to be plugged into this process. I know there are sensitivities over interference with devolution settlements and I suppose that there may be some people who do not want to annoy Mr Salmond, or whoever, but the fact of the matter is that service personnel and former service personnel are a national responsibility. They are the responsibility of Parliament; they are employed as soldiers, service men, airmen and naval personnel on behalf of the United Kingdom, not on behalf of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or England. It is therefore up to Parliament, irrespective of devolution settlements, to ensure that there is not a postcode lottery as far as the provision of services is concerned throughout this country.

As I said, I know this from personal experience because last year, in the Northern Ireland Assembly, a Bill was introduced entitled the Armed Forces and Veterans Bill. It was a Private Member’s Bill and it went through all its stages. I provided the Minister with copies of the debate from the Committee and all the rest of it. Yet when push came to shove in February of this year, that Bill was vetoed and not allowed to proceed. That was done under the special provisions that we have, because some people objected to special provision being made for service personnel or former service personnel. I wrote to the Minister—he has kindly replied to me—that in Northern Ireland we have Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act, which is designed to prevent discrimination. I was concerned that people would hide behind the idea that if they were giving something special to service personnel, it would be discriminating in favour of a particular group, but I am happy to say that the Minister assured me that that was not the case.

Nevertheless, I believe that there has to be some means of ensuring that Parliament is aware of what the input is and that if there is a special requirement which the Secretary of State should deem appropriate, it can be delivered. I believe that on two points: first, that of ensuring that departments actually deliver on this and, secondly, that there is no political interference at a devolved level with the delivery of service. This is a national provision. It will remain the responsibility of Parliament, which is the way it should be because defence is an excepted matter. Yet while that provision is never going to be the responsibility of the devolved Administrations, the delivery of the necessary services is—so Parliament has to prioritise and be clear. I have no problem whatever with whether that is done by means of Amendment 6, my own amendment or another amendment which we could deal with between now and next week. To ensure that it is done is the key and I therefore look forward very much to the Minister’s response to this group of amendments.

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Moved by

[Lord Empey]

9: Clause 2, page 2, line 39, at end insert—
“( ) Where an armed forces covenant report states that special provision for service people or particular descriptions of service people is justified, it must also state how the Secretary of State will seek to ensure that the special provision made is broadly the same in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.”

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, this is almost a consequential amendment. I said in my previous remarks that the one thing that I want to prevent is a postcode lottery in the delivery of services to members of the Armed Forces and veterans. Given that we have a national commitment and defence is a national issue, but the delivery of many of these services is within the remit of neither the Secretary of State for Defence nor other Whitehall departments, there is a long-term danger of divergence. We all know that there are already differences between regions of the country in the delivery of healthcare, for instance. That is not specific to the Armed Forces; it is true in general. There are also variations in standards in education, and variations from one local authority to another in the standard of housing provided. Therefore, because of the diversity of our nation, one is not going to get absolutely the same level of service in every corner. However, we have an obligation to ensure that, in so far as it is possible, we have broadly the same level of service provision where that is required for members of the Armed Forces or veterans.

Lest the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, thinks that I would like to see people who had an accident 50 years ago coming forward for compensation, I stress that that is not what I am getting at. I do not think that is what anybody here is getting at. What we are getting at is to ensure that those people who put themselves in harm’s way on our behalf are provided for. The noble Viscount, Lord Slim, who is not in his place, pointed out that in only one of the past 40 or 50 years have no personnel died in action. Given all the complexities and the growing number of multiple amputees and seriously injured young people who are coming back from conflicts, we know that there will be a long-term burden.

The Secretary of State has the power to indicate in the covenant if he feels that special provision has to be made. However, the Secretary of State for Defence is not the person in charge of the delivery of that special provision. He may have considerable influence in Whitehall due to the fact that you generally have a one-party Government or at least a coalition, as we now have, but in the devolved Administrations you could have anything but. You could have parties that are poles apart. It is highly likely that the special provision will cost money. Where will the money come from? The devolved regions are given block grants and it is up to their relevant Ministers to disburse them. The Secretary of State could say, “I believe provision X should be provided to the service personnel and veterans”, but he cannot deliver it because a devolved Minister can tell him to take a running jump. I assure the Secretary of State that I know for certain that some of them would do that—and he knows that only too well—so how is he to deliver on the covenant without running the risk of instituting a postcode lottery? The only way that I can think of—other noble Lords have said the same thing—is by having a statutory requirement because, if the requirement is placed on a devolved Administration as opposed to an individual Minister, the Administration take on the responsibility, just as a Whitehall department takes on a responsibility.

If the Secretary of State for Defence decides that provision needs to be made which would have implications for health spending, what will his colleague in the health department say? Will he say, “Do you realise that this will cost me another £70 million a year? Where is the money to come from? Are you giving it to me?”? How will the Secretary of State provide the wherewithal to deliver the special provision which, sadly and regrettably, I have no doubt will be required? The amendment seeks merely to nail down the covenant so that it has a practical implication and outcome for those who need it most. I return to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Newton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, about departments and how the system works. A department has a mechanism whereby all its statutory requirements are listed and the obligations are brought through year on year and there is a process for doing that. If it is merely a case of having a chat with the relevant Minister, I assure noble Lords that that will not deliver. As the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, said, we need to tidy up the loose ends.

This matter follows on from Amendments 6 and 7 and the consensus that we have had throughout the passage of the Bill. I join the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, in thanking the Minister for making himself available for briefings. I regret that I could not attend the one this morning because I could not get here in time but I thank him for what he is doing. I sincerely hope that the period of reflection that he and his colleagues will undertake will be highly productive. I beg to move.

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[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, noble Lords who have spoken in support of Amendment 9 have voiced their disquiet at the prospect of variation between the different countries of the United Kingdom in the way that special provision or special treatment is applied. I have previously said to your Lordships that the Government are sympathetic to the principle of consistency. As noble Lords have pointed out, members of the Armed Forces serve the Crown and the whole of the United Kingdom, not a local council or the devolved Administrations. The Armed Forces covenant is with the nation, not with one part of it. All parts of government across the UK share the moral obligation to honour it.

Nevertheless, we must keep this in perspective. The terminology of a postcode lottery is emotive and sometimes used unfairly to describe the legitimate scope for local decisions about local services. There are many examples where that scope for local decision has led to better outcomes for members of the Armed Forces community, rather than allowing councils or Administrations to escape their obligations. The Government have no wish to stifle that local initiative or control everything from Whitehall by regulation.

One alternative to regulation is successful dialogue. Again, I have referred in the past to what dialogue has achieved across a range of different domains, such as the introduction of the new arrangements for scholarships for bereaved service children. Another example I gave was the new transition protocol for transferring the care of injured personnel from military to civilian services across all the countries of the United Kingdom. So I am not as pessimistic about the future as the noble Lord, Lord Empey. The noble Lord knows that the particular terms of the amendment, which would require the Government to include in the report a statement on how we would ensure that the provision is broadly the same across the UK, causes difficulty. That goes some way beyond what we envisage as the content of the annual report. Even if we accepted the underlying assumption that the UK Government should act in the way suggested, we would not necessarily have the answers available when the report was published.

In Grand Committee, the noble Lord invited the Government to reflect further on those matters, and we have. He used a very good phrase when he referred to his desire to connect every part of the UK to the report process. In that debate, I gave the noble Lord the assurance that, where the Secretary of State reaches the conclusion that special provision is justified, the annual report will attempt to take into account the position across the United Kingdom. We would take a wide view. I trust that that assurance, together with the further statements which I had made today about the report process, will give the noble Lord the assurance he seeks. I therefore ask him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Empey]

I thank the Minister for his response. I understand that “postcode lottery” can be an emotive phrase, but he knows that neither I nor anyone else who has used it has done so with any sense of flippancy. It was used to convey the point that servicepeople serve all of us and that services that they need in unfortunate circumstances should be broadly equivalent or equal throughout the United Kingdom. I think that that is the general view.

I support the concept of dialogue. That is excellent and, so far, it is going fine. However, I can tell the Minister, because I know—I do not have to imagine it, we have it in black and white in Hansard in Stormont—that there can and could well be a difficulty. The reason why it is going so well at the moment is purely because of the individual personnel who happen to be in post at this time, but that will change from Administration to Administration.

I am trying to ensure, as other noble Lords are, that we avoid difficulty in the future. However, we accept, and I think everybody accepts, that one wants to do this with the minimum of regulation. However, the Minister needs to take it on board that if the Secretary of State for Defence decides that special provision has to be made, which is perfectly natural, the quid pro quo is that the Secretary of State has to be in a position to tell Parliament how it is going to be delivered. The Secretary of State for Defence is not the Minister who can deliver. That is a fact. It might be an inconvenient fact but it is nevertheless a fact.

All I am interested in is avoiding a problem in the future. I have no desire to create difficulties for the Minister or for the Government but I wish to ensure that difficulties are not created down the line and that an unseemly row starts over something that we would want to keep above that sort of level. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 9 withdrawn.