Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Lord Touhig and Earl Attlee

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I do not intend to repeat the very important questions put by other noble Lords. I just add one brief reflection. I spent a great many years when I served in the other place helping to deal with compensation claims from former miners for illnesses they suffered as a result of working underground. For several years, I chaired a committee set up by my noble friend Lord Murphy of Torfaen when he was Welsh Secretary and I was his deputy. We sought ways to speed up the system of payments. I had more than 500 cases in my own constituency of Islwyn and more than £50 million was paid out in compensation. We had to overcome all sorts of difficulties, but we worked at it and did it. However, that job was unfinished. Try as we did, we could not persuade the Government to compensate workers on the surface who were often exposed to more dust than those working underground.

I was moved at Second Reading when my noble friend Lord West of Spithead spoke for the small number of mesothelioma sufferers who did not meet the qualifying date to be included in the compensation scheme. It would now appear that that has been corrected, and I pay tribute to him and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for the work they have done on this. The Government have listened. That is not a bad thing. I am the first in line to congratulate them on listening and acting.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I am grateful for the progress that has been made by the Government in expanding the scheme. When I supported my noble friend Lord Freud with the Mesothelioma Act, I could not understand why it was not extended to MoD personnel. My question to the Minister is about research. Many noble Lords raised the issue of research, which could have very great benefits. What lines of research are available? When I was with my noble friend Lord Freud, I understood that there were not that many good avenues for research. I have not found any areas of research that might provide some benefits.

Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Lord Touhig and Earl Attlee

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Grand Committee

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, legally everyone has a commanding officer; someone somewhere is the commanding officer. The Minister said that commanding officers are given training. I agree that they are given a significant amount of training and that they have a significant amount of experience. The problem is that the powers of a commanding officer can be delegated to someone who has not had that training. Their commanding officer might be only a major and might be deployed to a desert island. That has happened to me. When I deployed on Operation TELIC, my commanding officer was the commanding officer of 1 UK Armoured Division and Signal Regiment. I never met him; I did not know him from Adam. I would suggest that many soldiers do not know their commanding officers from Adam because they normally deal with their officer commanding.

The Committee needs to understand the difficulties faced by a junior serviceman. In these situations they are often making a complaint about someone who is their immediate superior, and perhaps even in their chain of command. They might rustle up the courage to make a complaint, but when they find themselves being interviewed by the company sergeant major, who they might in any case have an issue with for other reasons, they may quickly withdraw the allegation even though it is well founded. I have to say that I am not absolutely convinced by the Minister’s response and we shall need to return to this issue at a later stage.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, we have had a good short debate and I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part, but I have to say to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, that I am so disappointed with his response. My noble friend Lady Gould spoke from a lifetime of experience of campaigning on matters of this kind, and some of the statistics that she afforded us are staggering. She mentioned that 20 soldiers are on the sex offenders register. Is that uploaded on to the MoD website, in which the noble Earl seems to put a great deal of faith? I do not know, so perhaps he can enlighten us.

My noble friend Lord West of Spithead spoke with the authority of experience as someone who has faced up to this, not quite realising what a big problem it is, and learned a great deal. He said that we have to change, and that is coming from someone who has served his country heroically and has taken great responsibility for the people under his command. He believes that we really do need to do something about this.

I could not improve on the remarks just made by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee. There will be inhibitions and people will not take things forward because of all sorts of consequences that they might face, so it simply is not good enough. In his earlier remarks he also asked the Minister whether the service police are recording all complaints. I hope that he will be able to tell us at some stage whether that is the case. The noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, was spot on. Parents need to be reassured. Later in Committee we will be considering issues affecting youngsters under the age of 18 joining the Armed Forces.