Armed Forces Bill

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th September 2026 Lords Chamber

The historic reason for having regional associations was not bureaucracy but fostering local connections. This remains just as important today. Indeed, the Commons committee recognised the importance of retaining regional representation and local connections, so I urge the Government to think carefully about whether the measures in Clause 38 protect these. Does the proposed NDPB deliver a properly governed national body that retains genuinely empowered regional structures? In Scotland, that should mean meaningful and guaranteed representation; a clear role for both highland and lowland; proper engagement with Scottish civic and public institutions; and sufficient delegated authority to ensure that decisions affecting Scottish reservists, cadets, employers and the reserve estate are informed by people who understand Scotland. Until the Minister can demonstrate that this is the case, important questions remain unanswered. Therefore, I support opposing the question that Clause 38 stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, let me start by saying that I agree with everything that has been said so far. I have put my name to some amendments in subsequent groupings that seek to ameliorate some of the worst aspects of Schedule 6, where I think the Government have got it badly wrong. I will seek to develop those arguments further when we come to those amendments.

Let me pose a question to the Minister. My understanding, like that of the noble Earl, Lord Minto, is that this move is largely driven by a desire to centralise much stronger financial control. If such central financial control is necessary for financial efficiency and propriety, how on earth will the Government carry out their agenda of decentralisation more widely across the country? Since this is a Government who seek to promote devolution, decentralisation and much greater local control, how on earth can this particular part of the Armed Forces Bill be consonant with that policy? They simply cannot have it both ways. I wonder whether the Minister, when he responds, could address that point.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure and honour to follow the several noble Lords, including two noble and gallant Lords, who have already spoken; of course, they have tremendous expertise. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, because she made a point that is very important for the more general argument and not just about Scotland: the reserves are not a reserved matter. That says something about how it all operates and how local it is.

I have the honour, as a Sussex man, of being a member of the Sussex Club. We have an absolute rule that we have no speeches ever but, at our annual dinners twice a year, as well as the loyal toast, of course, we have two other toasts. One says, “Prosperity to the county of Sussex”. The other is to the forces of the Crown.

The link between those two toasts says it all. This is partly why we do not have speeches. This is what we are talking about here: this is why it matters, and why it is rooted. We must remember that the origins of all our armies, unlike the origins of the Royal Navy, are not as standing armies but as regiments raised. That is how the loyalty of the people has always been bound in. It is quite a serious historical, emotional and cultural matter.

However, we should not rest our argument only on that point, central though it is. It could be argued that for some reason, these arrangements are out of date. We would then need to think about whether they would be more efficiently done if they are centralised. The noble Earl, Lord Minto, said that centralised non-departmental bodies are a majorly difficult feature of modern British government. It is all to do with the problem of answerability. What comes into rhetoric a great deal in modern government is that we need “an independent body” to do something or other. That sounds lovely, because we all want independence, but what does that independence mean? It means a person with a bureaucratic background being appointed by bureaucrats. There is almost no answerability to the public more widely, or even to Parliament. Therefore, I would be suspicious of that.

Following on from what the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, said, this is relevant now because the Government have inherited this measure from their officials, but it is not consonant with their own policies. The so-called “Manchesterism” from the Prime Minister is, in a way, a modern and more urban version of the thing we all are praising in relation to the reserves in the counties. It is the idea that local loyalty matters, that local people understand these questions better and that power should be devolved. This measure is going in absolutely the wrong direction.

This matters particularly because this Government are trying to shift all of that. Also, we must not forget the wider picture. We live in a dramatically more dangerous world than we have done for a very long time. The loyalty we are talking about needs to be constantly cultivated. People need to understand why their service matters. This will make it harder for them to understand, at a time when we want them to volunteer.

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[Lord De Mauley (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 46, 47 and 49 in my name. To understand the importance of these amendments, one needs to appreciate the significance of the nationwide membership of the RFCAs. The 2019 Sullivan report on the RFCAs, which recommended conversion to an NDPB, itself provides an explanation at paragraph 2.2.2, where it says:

“A key strength of the RFCAs is their extensive volunteer membership (numbering around 8000), bringing with it a wide breadth of expertise and community links—without which the RFCAs would unlikely have access to the information and knowledge needed to discharge the duties … Their position as the link between Defence and the wider public, continuity of staff and expertise, and tri-Service drive enables the RFCAs to deliver across all functions, particularly community and employer engagement (the latter proven by the success on the Armed Force Covenant and Employer Recognition Scheme work strands). This is particularly valuable in cases where local knowledge and understanding may be limited in MoD customers”.


What is proposed in the Armed Forces Bill is the removal of all the regional chairs from the central board—the new decision-making arm of the RFCA. If the Armed Forces Bill proceeds as drafted, the members who currently elect those chairs will be completely disenfranchised, with the consequence of a loss of defence’s connection with society and the advocates and supporters of the reserves and cadets across the UK. The members have made it very clear that this will be sufficiently significant that it will lead to a reduction in the membership to a negligible number. Is that really what the Government want, when they state in the strategic defence review their ambitions to increase the size of the reverses, to increase the number of cadet and to create a completely new homeland and critical national infrastructure defence force, and that a whole-of-society approach to defence is essential?

In discussions with the MoD over the last 12 months, matters had developed to a point at which the MoD had agreed in writing, confirmed by a Government Minister at the RFCAs’ annual conference, that regional chairs would indeed sit as full members on the national board in order to protect the societal links and work done by the engaged and experience membership. Stepping back from that commitment, as the Bill does, is already being taken very badly by the membership.

I do not blame the Minister; I do not believe that the implications of what is proposed have been explained to him. They cannot have been, because if they had he would not be proceeding with this. This is about something more important even than the Permanent Secretary’s perception of how he will improve his oversight of what, in the context of the MoD’s overall budget, is a relatively small amount of funding that the RFCAs receive and use on maintenance of the volunteer estate. It is about the country’s ability to defend itself in time of war, because the effect of Section 38 and Schedule 6 will do irreparable damage to the Government’s ability to defend the country through the use and expansion of the Reserve Forces, of which the RFCAs are a demonstrable key enabler.

This will also have a damaging effect on the Government’s aim of growing the cadet forces, in which, again, local RFCAs are pivotal enablers. The Denny report, entitled The Impact and Value of School-Based Cadet Forces in the UK, identified that those with cadet service were statistically unlikely to be not in education, employment or training—something rather topical these days.

Turning to Amendment 49, I mentioned earlier what the Sullivan report says about a key strength of the RFCAs being their extensive volunteer membership. I will give a couple of examples of how the membership helps defence. My first example is that in the first decade of this century, the country was mobilising reservists in large numbers to go to Iraq and Afghanistan to bolster the Regular Army. The Regular Forces live on the patch: there are welfare officers, commanding officers and RSMs’ wives—a whole machine that is wheeled in action to look after the welfare of the families left behind. For the reservists, who are scattered over the area from which their unit recruits, which can be several counties or several cities, there is no such welfare machine. That is when the RFCAs’ membership comes into action, visiting and offering help and advice.

Reservists have the added complication of a civilian employer. An RFCA member who is an employer can visit them and explain what is happening and the legal position. I commanded a reserve regiment during the mobilisation of large numbers of reservists for Operation TELIC between 2003 and 2005. Without the support and influence of the RFCA, particularly with employers, the reserves would have responded less effectively. It allowed me to command and lead while employment matters could be successfully dealt with by the RFCAs. I know that other commanding officers had similar experiences. It was the RFCA that led on the work relating to employment that was subsequently woven into the Future Reserves 2020 White Paper.

My second example is that, being apolitical, the RFCAs have been extremely helpful in defence, especially in the devolved Administrations. In Scotland, when the Government announced the expansion of the cadet forces in schools, one of the nationalist papers printed a story suggesting that this was about training child soldiers. Its apolitical position allowed the RFCA, through its members and connections, to persuade the Government in Scotland that that was not a fair representation. They agreed, and the story died.

The SDR proposed increases in the size of the reserves and the cadets; the creation of a new homeland defence force; that defence should become a whole-of-nation responsibility; and that resilience in the civilian community needs to be improved. Therefore, it seems quite extraordinary that the RFCA’s membership, which could do so much to enable these things, should be abolished for no good reason.

Further, as was said earlier, this is directly against the new Prime Minister’s drive on the devolution of power and influence outwards. Whereas the Reserve Forces Act 1996 included in its Schedule 4 detail on the grass-roots membership, this is completely and deliberately removed by Clause 4(2)(b) in Part 3 of Schedule 6 to the Armed Forces Bill. There would henceforth be no reference at all to membership in primary legislation, for the first time since 1908. Thousands of volunteers across the UK would immediately be disfranchised and lost.

It has been suggested that the membership might be reinvented through secondary legislation; the Minister referred to this earlier. However, we all know that this is a poor way of doing it. It relegates the voluntary concept to a secondary level of importance and makes it much easier to amend, change and delete it. I beg to move.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to these amendments for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, set out so clearly and cogently. I do not intend to repeat them all, as I agree with everything he said, but I want to make a couple of wider points centred on the requirement for a regional approach to our reserves and cadets.

There has been wide acknowledgment of the benefits that such an approach would bring. However, a couple of things have not been mentioned to the extent that they should be. First, there is the matter of footprint. The Reserve Forces and cadets allow us a military footprint across the United Kingdom that is no longer possible with our sadly depleted regular forces. This matters. It means that defence and defence issues can be represented locally by people who are local; the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, pointed out one example of where this has been an inestimable benefit in Scotland. That is one very important point.

My other point concerns the matter of identity. Within military organisations, identity matters—identity of the group. In the regulars, it is perhaps identification with your ship, your regiment or your squadron but, as far as regulars are concerned, it is identity with your locality. That is fundamental to it, and that identity is fundamental to the effectiveness of any military organisation. The noble Lord, Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton, said that the Bill does not seek to destroy the regional aspect of the Reserve Forces. That may be true to an extent, but he knows as well as anyone here that the regional nature of the Reserve Forces is not just about the wiring diagram. It is about the authority that those regional forces have; that is absolutely fundamental.

In response to an earlier amendment, the Minister said that devolution is achieved through overarching strategic direction and that mayors cannot do what they like. Actually, though, that is the whole point: within certain limits, they can. The point of devolution is giving them authority along with responsibility. There is overarching strategic direction, although it will not necessarily work in the case of mayors because you could have a Conservative mayor and a Labour national Government; I am not quite sure how far the Conservative mayor would follow the national Government’s overarching strategic objectives, but we are not discussing that matter here today. So I accept that there is an overarching strategic directive, but it is strategic. It is not operational or tactical. Therefore, local authorities will have a great deal of freedom to decide things, but they will need the authority to carry through on those decisions. Authority goes along with funding in many instances, but with other things besides. That is one of the reasons why Schedule 6 is potentially so damaging for the Reserve Forces.

This speaks to what we would term “mission command” in military parlance. You give overall direction on the broad objectives that you want to see achieved, but you leave a great deal of freedom open to your subordinate organisation—in this case, the regional forces—to decide how it is to be done. Yet they must have authority along with that responsibility. If mission command is to operate effectively, at a superior level, you need to listen to your subordinates’ concerns when they tell you that something simply will not work so you must come up with a different plan. At the moment, as the legislation is framed, the link between the subordinate and superior formations will be, at best, neutered and, at worst, cut off completely.

Amendments 46 and 47 seek to ensure that the RFCAs are properly represented at a senior level and that their voices can be heard. However, that plays both ways. If their voices are not heard, they will lack authority at the local level. If they lack authority at the local level, it will have an impact on recruiting and retention, with lower morale and lower effectiveness. Nobody in this Chamber wants to see that, I know.

Equally, Amendment 49 seeks to ensure that the RFCA’s wider membership is enshrined in primary legislation and that its breadth and diversity are retained so that, again, the wider community and regional links are retained and have credibility across that regional community.

As I said earlier in Committee, I have concerns about Schedule 6 overall. If we are to retain it, I plead with the Minister to take these issues away and correct those bits of it that will restore the authority and the voice of the local Reserve Forces and cadets, in particular through the RFCAs.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to intervene very briefly in support of my noble friend Lord De Mauley. I declare my interest as a former Defence Minister and as the Minister who was responsible for piloting the Reserve Forces Act 1996 through your Lordships’ House; I suspect that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, is the only person present who might remember that, having directly witnessed it. I declare a further interest in that my wife, who is the lord-lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, is the president of the South East Reserves Forces’ and Cadets’ Association.

In mentioning my part in giving birth to the 1996 Act, I do not wish the Committee to suppose that I am opposed to changing it. I am not an old reactionary—at least, not in this regard—as I am the first to recognise that the world as it was in 1996 is not the world we are confronted with today. When it comes to the Government’s stated aim of placing greater emphasis on our Reserve Forces in creating a more lethal and integrated force model for defence, I am wholly in favour.

However, in acknowledging the deficiencies of the 1996 Act against that policy backdrop, we should not at the same time downplay its strengths. One of its major strengths, as other noble Lords have emphasised and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, so well described, is to acknowledge the importance of ensuring the buy-in of the civil community in the delivery of well-supported, well-motivated, administratively efficient reserves and cadet units.

Armed Forces Bill

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 48, 50, 51 and 52 in my name.

Amendment 48 is about payment to the new non-executive board members. The members of the RFCAs and all their forebear organisations, commencing with the county territorial associations in 1908, whether acting locally or nationally, have never been paid. The volunteer ethos is of very considerable significance, especially in the world of reserves and cadets. Imagine how it will look to the reservists, who volunteer and put their lives on the line, and to the cadet forces, if the non-executives are to be paid. It is a really bad look and unlikely to attract the best of society who are absolutely committed to the reserves and cadets.

Furthermore, we are living in a time of scarce resources, especially in the field of defence. Yet here is the MoD deliberately adding cost, when it knows there is a ready supply of volunteers who will do, and indeed are doing, this work for no financial reward. One can guess the reaction of those who have shown, over many years, their dedicated and unpaid commitment to the reserves and cadets, to the appointment of paid non-executives with no apparent commitment to the reserves or cadets. It is a mistake to offer money to entice people to apply for these roles.

I turn now to Amendment 50, which seeks to reinstate lords-lieutenant. Lords-lieutenant are the sovereign’s representatives in their respective lieutenancies or counties. It is their foremost duty to uphold the dignity of the Crown. Historically, each lord-lieutenant was responsible for organising the county’s militia. The Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 1907 established county territorial associations, with the lord-lieutenant as the president of the county association. The relationship of lords-lieutenant with the military today is maintained via their presidency of their county RFCAs. All lords-lieutenant are affiliated to one of the 13 regional RFCAs; one of them is president and they rotate the presidency among them.

This is constituted in primary legislation, most recently in Schedule 4 to the Reserve Forces Act 1996. Removing that would remove the final vestiges of a military role and an important part of the symbolic relationship of the lords-lieutenant to the Crown. Service personnel hold the sovereign in the highest regard. To cut off this link between reservists and the Crown seems, to say the least, inappropriate. Lords-lieutenant have evidenced considerable concern over the review’s proposals and the consequences of breaking this important link. Under the Armed Forces Bill, the involvement of the lords-lieutenant, which was established under paragraphs 2, 3 and 4 of Schedule 4 to the Reserve Forces Act 1996, is to be abolished. Paragraph 4(2)(b) of Schedule 6 to this Bill will omit

“section 111 and Schedule 4 (provisions of schemes for the constitution of associations)”.

It has been suggested, as an afterthought, that the continued involvement of the lords-lieutenant might be achieved through secondary legislation or regulation. The involvement of the lords-lieutenant is currently in primary legislation and to relegate it to regulations is nothing short of insulting. It also makes it much easier to amend, change and delete it. If it is proposed to amend the law in a way that affects a class of persons, it is customary to consult them. Even if there is no statutory duty to do so, there have been cases where the courts have held that failure to consult is a reason for upholding judicial review of the Government. I understand that the Association of Lord-Lieutenants has not been consulted. I urge the Minister to consider the amendment carefully.

Amendment 51 addresses the establishment of a national council. The strength of the RFCAs lies in their embeddedness across the regions. This was not accidental; it reflects the original Haldane model from 1908—a decentralised, citizen-based structure designed to mirror national diversity and ensure societal ownership of the territorial Reserve Forces. It has endured and worked for over a century. What is today described as “connecting defence with the nation” is rooted in this model, so it is right that Schedule 6 of the Bill establishes regional councils through paragraph 14 of proposed new Schedule 4A. What is extremely odd, though, is that the drafters have not understood that the regional councils are irrelevant if their views are not brought together and debated centrally, so that a single considered professional message can be delivered to Ministers.

Abolition of the membership, discussed in the debate on the last group, also presents a conundrum as to where the regional council members will be elected from. When we questioned this, we were told, “Don’t worry, it’ll be dealt with in secondary legislation”. This is a quite extraordinary response. Without a national council, the regional councils are completely irrelevant, and without a membership they will be ineffective. This seems to be an attempt to pay lip service to devolution, while in fact cutting it off at the roots. A national council is fundamental to the functioning of the new structure, and the amendment would establish one.

Amendment 52 addresses the external scrutiny team. The Council of Reserve Forces and Cadets Associations external scrutiny team provides an independent annual assessment to Parliament of the state, capabilities and health of the United Kingdom’s Reserve Forces, identified as fundamental to advising Ministers and the single services on the effectiveness of training, fighting efficiency and leadership of the reserve, thus meeting the FR 2020 proposition to reservists. It was established following the Future Reserves 2020 review and operates with statutory duties mandated by the Reserve Forces Act 1996.

The Armed Forces Bill, in paragraph 5(b) of Schedule 6, introduces the concept that the Defence Council can remove responsibility for producing the annual assessment or report and award it to someone else at stroke of a pen. This is not the case in the current legislation. Will the Minister therefore explain what lies behind this change? To whom might the responsibility for producing the independent assessment be transferred? What would be considered appropriate grounds for transferring it? When might this happen? How will Ministers ensure the assessment continues in future to be conducted properly and truly independently of the MoD? I beg to move.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, I added my name to these amendments, and I agree with the points that have been so well made by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley. I will start my brief remarks by making just a couple of general points. First, while there have been some criticisms of the arrangements of reserves and cadet forces, particularly in fairly recent reviews, most of these have been attended to subsequently. The general opinion was that, in the round, the Reserve Forces and cadets operated extremely well and were extremely valuable, and the arrangements that had been set in place had served this country extremely well for a very long time. There is, therefore, a burden of proof on anyone seeking to change the current arrangements to show why any proposed alterations will be better than the arrangements that are already in place. I fear that the Government fail on this count in many instances in this particular part of the Armed Forces Bill.

Secondly, the Minister has previously indicated to the Committee that some of the shortcomings might be attended to in secondary legislation, and the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, just referred to this. That is all very well, but as everybody in this Chamber knows, we cannot amend secondary legislation; we take it or leave it, and usually, we have to take it. Of course, there must be secondary legislation for the detailed implementation of an Act and the measures in it; but issues of principle should be settled in primary legislation, not in secondary legislation, for some of the reasons that the Lord, Lord De Mauley, just pointed out. Quite a number of the issues covered by the amendments this evening are issues of principle and, therefore, belong in primary legislation, not in secondary legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

That might be a matter for us to consider in the conversation that we have. I do not want to go on for too long, but I understand many of the comments that different people have made this evening; I agree with some of them to a larger or lesser extent. I have never thought, generally speaking, that, in certain circumstances, unpaid work is the way forward. This is one of those situations, in respect of the board: I do not think it undermines the voluntary ethos as a whole because, here, it is related to board membership. In that circumstance, it is perfectly reasonable, given the new board that we wish to set up, that the position should be remunerated, although I accept the point that, in the broader establishment of lords-lieutenant and others across the wider—

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

The Minister has said that he does not believe that having paid non-executive directors will lessen their commitment. That is not the question, though. Surely the question is: does having unpaid representatives lessen their commitment? It does not. So why do we want to change it?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

That is the difference. I understand the whole point about the voluntary ethos generally across the reserves and cadet associations; I absolutely accept that. I am saying, with respect to the board members, that, where you are creating a national board that wants to take on certain statutory functions, that position should be remunerated. That is the difference between us. In the end, personally, I think that that is not inconsistent with the belief that you can have a voluntary ethos.

Look—we have voluntary organisations all over the country that display a voluntary ethos of which we are all proud. At the top of those organisations are people, including board members, who are remunerated. We would not expect them to be able to do that job of work without that remuneration. That is the principle and the point that I am making.

We are committed to equality of opportunity and to breaking down barriers that prevent people contributing to public life, so we want public appointments to be open to all those who have the skills, experience and commitment, not only to those with the financial means to do so without compensation. The Government’s objective is to attract the best candidates from the widest possible range of backgrounds, and retaining the option to remunerate supports that aim. I hope that explains the Government’s position while accepting, again, that many noble Lords will disagree with it. That is my point about payments for the strategic oversight board while respecting the voluntary ethos more widely within the reserves and cadets associations.