Armed Forces Commissioner Bill

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 24th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to join you all this afternoon on day two of Committee on the Bill. I should explain that last Wednesday, consideration of an important non-defence Bill in the Chamber precluded me from attending Grand Committee, so it is a particular pleasure to be able to be here this afternoon.

In speaking to Amendment 13, in my name, I will speak to the other amendments in the group. At Second Reading, I raised the extent to which, with reference to access to premises, powers seem to have leached away from the Secretary of State and transferred excessively to the commissioner. I am absolutely satisfied that this is for no malign reason at all—it is just a consequence of drafting. I was encouraged by other contributions at Second Reading that I had support for my concerns.

The amendments in my name, Amendments 13, 14 and 15, simply attempt to restore control to the Secretary of State. I freely admit that I may not have found the perfect solution to this, but I thought it would be helpful to have a debate, so that the noble Lord the Minister can understand the spectrum of views.

Without amendment, under the Bill the commissioner can, in the United Kingdom, access MoD premises without the Secretary of State being aware. That is not acceptable, and it raises two issues. As a matter of principle, is that really the position we want to put the Secretary of State for Defence into? Just think of the wide range of premises within the MoD, some at the top levels of security protection. Much more practically, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, pointed out at Second Reading, it is not only the location of the premises which matters but the activity taking place within them. As he observed, a base commander has overall responsibility for security, and I am afraid that entirely predictable is a clash of wills between the commissioner who seeks entry to a premises, and the base commander who says, “No, I am denying entry”. That is not sustainable.

My amendments may be clumsy, but I have restored power to the Secretary of State, who must have notice of intended access and must then inform the commanding officer of the relevant premises of the commissioner’s intended visit. I have provided for seven days’ notice, unless evidence is in danger of being lost or there is continuing risk to personnel using the premises. But in that event the commissioner must still intimate in writing to the Secretary of State why he is not giving notice; then, at least the Secretary of State will have some idea of what is going on.

The important lens through which to look at this is defence and security and the rightful overall authority of the Secretary of State, and I feel that the Bill has not got that balance quite right.

I look forward to the debate, and particularly to the response from the noble Lord the Minister, who may very well want to take away what he hears today and reflect upon these contributions. I beg to move.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, I share the concern, expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, that lies behind the amendments, although these particular ones do not in fact capture, in my view, the solution to the problem.

The problem is that the nature of classified locations varies. There will be some sites to which the Armed Forces commissioner would not, presumably, be denied access entirely. However, many sites have large areas that will be, and should be, open to the commissioner, but within which there are particular discrete locations where classified activity is conducted, to which he or she should not be admitted.

The Minister of Defence and the Secretary of State may well draw up a list, as was intended, of classified locations. Although the list will be classified and therefore will not be in secondary legislation, as the Minister has pointed out, it will deny the commissioner access to those sites. But the problem with lists is that they are seldom comprehensive and seldom up to date. We are talking about a very large span of estate with a very large spread of activities. The idea that such a list can be kept up to the minute will involve, first, a huge bureaucratic effort and, secondly, will almost certainly be doomed to failure.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, pointed out, it is the responsibility of local commanders to ensure that national security is preserved and that classified information is not available to those who should not have access to it. Therefore, it seems to me that there is only one sensible answer to this conundrum: for the Bill to provide commanding officers with the power in the last resort to deny the commissioner access to specific locations on the grounds that they contain classified activities or classified material. The commanding officer should of course then be required to justify themselves through the chain of command to the Secretary of State. But if we do not provide them with that backstop authority, we are, frankly, hanging local commanders out to dry with the legislation as it now stands.

These amendments do not provide the solution that I see as necessary, but can the Minister undertake today to take away these very real and important concerns and consider how they might be addressed before we get to Report? I repeat what I have said earlier: I entirely understand that such conflicts are likely to be very rare. The commissioner is going to be engaged in looking at service accommodation and other general conditions of service, so most of the time they will not be seeking access to such sites. But it is entirely conceivable that he or she will need such access, particularly if they are considering thematic issues to do with working conditions—and just once is once too many when it comes to national security. I ask the Minister to reflect on this, and perhaps we can have some discussions outside Committee before we get to Report.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I shall speak very briefly to this set of amendments, really to provide some balance, because I feel that we should hear both sides of the argument. The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, in introducing these amendments, said that the commissioner should not be visiting without the Secretary of State being aware, and I entirely agree with that. Obviously, the Secretary of State is the person with political responsibility, who needs to know what is going on and whether the commissioner has identified a potential problem. However, not being aware is not the same as having seven days’ notice. There is a very large gap between those two things.

What we have just heard from the noble and gallant Lord about the commanding officer having the right to deny access is, I am aware, not directly in line with these amendments. However, on day one in Committee we talked about how the ombudsman, as structured, has not worked and has not had sufficient powers. We have to be careful to make sure that we are not putting a commissioner in the same position here. We have to be realistic: there may be a systemic issue, such as those we talked about on the previous day in Committee, and a concern about the treatment of female service people. We might hope that a commander would always want that issue to be exposed and understood, but we cannot guarantee that, and it is really important that we do not disempower the commissioner with changes to this Bill before they are even created and put in place.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, back to her place today; I know she was busy elsewhere in the House of Lords on our first day. It is welcome to see her here. Both she and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, asked about the opportunity to discuss the points that have been made, and we can of course meet between Committee and Report to do so. I can promise the meeting, but I cannot promise the outcome. To be frank, as noble Lords will know, that is how we in this House conduct business, improve legislation and achieve the objective that we all want: the commissioner being effective and having the appropriate powers to do the task they undertake.

As noble Lords know, I like to make some general remarks before making formal points; I hope that is helpful to the Committee. I understand the noble Baroness’s point about the balance between the powers of the Secretary of State and of the commissioner, and I will say something about that. We have tried very hard to balance those powers. I also hear the point made by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, about the importance of national security. There may be elements of a particular base that one would expect the commissioner to be precluded from visiting for national security reasons, even if it is not the whole base; there is also the role of the commanding officer to consider.

On the question of intention, if we take the example of a normal decision of the commissioner to visit a base, the noble Baroness and the noble and gallant Lord will see that there is a requirement in the Bill for the commissioner to notify the Secretary of State that they are visiting a particular base:

“If the Commissioner proposes to exercise the power under subsection (1), the Commissioner must give the Secretary of State notice of the proposal within such period before exercising the power as the Commissioner considers appropriate”.


The noble Baroness’s amendment would require that that happen at least seven days before the commissioner intends to exercise the power. The expectation would be that the Secretary of State would then tell the commanding officer that such a visit was to take place.

However, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, pointed out, under the Bill a confidential list will be drawn up saying where the Secretary of State believes it inappropriate for the commissioner to visit because of national security reasons. That will be shared with the commissioner, although it will remain confidential. But we will take up the point made by the noble and gallant Lord about how that will work with a base only a small part of which may be subject to national security concerns.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

The Minister said that, ordinarily, the commissioner will give notice to the Secretary of State. But equally—this comes back to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle—we know that, in order to be truly effective, in some circumstances the Armed Forces commissioner will need to give little or no notice. That is fine because that helps the effectiveness of the commissioner, but a commanding officer is then exposed to the possibility of the commissioner wanting access to a site to which he or she should not properly be allowed access, because of national security. So, in proposing that the commanding officer have a backstop ability to deny access, we are seeking to improve the power and authority of the commissioner, because that then reduces the need for undue notice on their behalf.

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[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich for putting his name to my Amendment 16.

At Second Reading, I expressed my concern about the position of Jaysley Beck, who tragically took her own life in 2021. The coroner had recently published his findings, which made for grim reading. Since Jaysley’s death, many far-reaching changes and improvements have been made; I know that because the former Secretary of State Ben Wallace drove them through and, as a Minister, I supported him in every way I could. There is encouraging evidence that these changes are yielding results. For example, a number of instructors have been summarily dismissed for inappropriate sexual relationships with students, and I believe that there have been other dismissals of personnel from the Armed Forces for inappropriate behaviour.

What was always much more difficult to assess was whether women were fearful to make a complaint in the first place for fear of prejudicing their careers. All the procedures, processes and structures in the world do not work if a scared woman feels unable to make the complaint in the first place. That, sadly, was the case for Jaysley Beck. I am concerned that women in our Armed Forces still feel inhibited from raising unacceptable behaviour. That cannot be tolerated; we need to plug that gap. We have to find a way of giving them a safe space so that they or their friends can let someone know what is going on.

This proposal seems to dovetail perfectly with the creation of an Armed Forces commissioner and the ethos of that office. If whistleblowing cannot be accommodated within his independent office, I do not know where it can be. The amendment provides for the commissioner’s functions in the Bill to include investigating

“any concern raised by a whistleblower”.

I have tried to keep it as simple as possible. I am told that the virtue of whistleblowing is twofold. First, it provides that safe—and currently missing—space for someone to raise a concern. Secondly, it makes it more obvious more quickly if a problem is emerging in relation to a particular location or individual because, where there is a problem, concerns are likely to emerge in a cluster pattern.

If we can plug this hole, using the creation of the new Armed Forces commissioner to such powerful effect, what a positive message that would be for the MoD. To have, under one umbrella, real action to support and help our Armed Forces women would be a striking, tangible piece of support. I feel very passionately about this: it is the missing piece of the jigsaw and I hope the Minister feels able to respond with some encouragement. I alert him that I am not giving up on this; I have got my teeth into it, and I will be back on Report. I beg to move.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, I will be very brief. I will reiterate to the Minister concerns I raised about an earlier amendment on recruits and their training. It is absolutely the case that in a military organisation, training must be tough and realistic—and, at times, discipline must be hard—if we are to have an effective fighting force. That means that there is a very clear risk that people could overstep the bounds. The risk is greater in that kind of environment than in most others; therefore, we have to be particularly vigilant in a military environment to guard against that.

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[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 17 is in the name of my noble friend Lady Goldie, and I have signed it. I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich for his support for it.

Amendment 17 would require the commissioner to include their view of the impact of general service welfare issues on recruitment and retention in any report published under new Section 340LA: “general service welfare investigations”. This amendment delivers a vital expansion of the requirements set out in the Bill as drafted. Currently, the Bill requires reports published under new Section 340LA only to list the individual findings of an investigation and the reasons for the commissioner’s findings.

Recruitment and retention are one of the most significant, if not the greatest, challenges that our Armed Forces face today. Frequent reports of poor-quality accommodation and shocking welfare issues are having an impact on service personnel well-being, and welfare issues are often cited by those personnel leaving our Armed Forces as a reason for their decision to leave, as I know only too well. The damaging publicity that these welfare issues cause is surely also having a detrimental effect on the number of people who are coming forward to start a career in our Armed Forces. The latest figures show that 12,850 people joined the Regular Forces last calendar year and that 14,830 people left, meaning a net decrease in the size of the Regular Forces of 1,980.

If the new Armed Forces commissioner is to be effective in resolving welfare issues—and, in so doing, contributing to the strength of our Armed Forces—they must put recruitment and retention both front and centre. Given that new Section 340LA grants the commissioner the discretion to produce the report or not, we feel that this additional duty to address recruitment and retention in those reports is not an overburdensome requirement. Ensuring recruitment and retention are addressed is of sufficient importance to warrant inclusion in these reports. I beg to move.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, I agree with much of what the noble Earl said, but this seems a rather strange amendment. In my view, it is axiomatic that the work of the Armed Forces commissioner, and the issues that he or she addresses, may have an effect on recruitment and retention in every instance—so that goes without saying—but I am not at all clear how the Armed Forces commissioner will determine whether they have an actual effect. It does not seem to be something that the Armed Forces commissioner can practically fulfil in the sense of the noble Earl’s amendment. I entirely endorse the sentiment behind it, but I simply do not see that it adds anything to the Bill.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, I feel it might be useful if I made some comments on her Amendment 18. I have not discussed this with her so, for the avoidance of doubt, I am in no way speaking for her.

This is an interesting and useful amendment to discuss, particularly in Committee. Clause 4(3) says that, after the commissioner has conducted an inquiry, they are required to offer a report. The amendment proposes that the commissioner should make an annual report on the work done to improve the welfare of service personnel and public awareness of the issues. The idea of an annual report is interesting. I am not entirely wedded to the word “annual”—