Armed Forces Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, regrets that he is in the other Chamber for a debate. I have also put my name to the amendment and shall speak to it. In a way, it is a probing amendment. On another amendment we have already discussed the need for service personnel who are injured or suffer harm during their service to have appropriate access to healthcare and to have the ability to follow up on their injuries on a long-term basis, and the Minister replied positively. The amendment merely proposes a way in which a defence counsel may facilitate that happening and give out a number that is linked to the NHS number. I know that all UK citizens have an NHS number, and having a number given to service personnel that was linked to the NHS number would enable the long-term tracking of service personnel, particularly those who needed to access healthcare or had been injured or suffered harm during their time in the service. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there has been a long-standing difficulty in being able to identify veterans within the general population. We have traditionally relied on organisations such as the Royal British Legion to help to understand their longer-term health needs. I agree with the noble Lord that there are clear benefits in being able to identify former service personnel to facilitate research and long-term studies into the health effects of service. In order to do so, it seems eminently sensible to use NHS numbers in England and Wales and equivalent patient tracking numbers in the other devolved Administrations.

Because we understand the importance of such identification, much activity has already taken place in this area. The Surgeon-General already has work in hand with colleagues at the Department of Health to determine the best means of identifying former service personnel through their GPs and NHS numbers. This is part of the wider work to inform GPs about the healthcare needs of veterans and their entitlement to priority treatment.

By coincidence, the Royal College of General Practitioners, in collaboration with the Department of Health and the Ministry of Defence, is launching an e-learning package next week that will also highlight to GPs what additional services are available for veterans. This will further encourage GPs to flag any individual’s veteran status on his or her medical record.

We are also putting in measures for the benefit of current members of the Armed Forces. The task of tracking those who are currently serving for the purpose of research is made easier by measures already in hand in the Ministry of Defence. Following agreement between the MoD and the DoH, any service person now referred to the NHS in England and Wales is provided with an NHS number. There is also an ongoing programme of work with the devolved Administrations that will provide an NHS number, or its equivalent in Scotland or Northern Ireland, to all serving personnel. The primary purpose of this is to provide service personnel with seamless access to secondary healthcare and other NHS services. However, it will also allow us to have a robust evidence base through which to understand the healthcare needs of service personnel once they leave the Armed Forces.

I must, however, disagree with the noble Lord on a couple of points. First, I do not agree that we would want to create a bespoke database to capture such information. There are likely to be more cost-effective methods of gaining such information through existing systems. There are also issues of confidentiality and the personal security of individuals that would need to be taken into consideration if such a database were created. I imagine that the noble Lord will understand better than I do the complexity and additional costs of establishing such a bespoke database.

Secondly, I understand that there is simply no need to legislate for such a requirement, and I am sure that none of us would wish to legislate where there was no need.

I trust that I have reassured the noble Lord and the Committee that work is already in train to achieve the effect that the noble Lord desires. I therefore hope that he will feel able to withdraw his amendment after these assurances.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I put my name down as opposing this clause purely as a formality. When I first looked through the Bill, it seemed to me that the clause effectively took away all consultation on the matter of the application of by-laws. This was discussed at a private meeting and I have received a very constructive response from the Minister. However, the procedure that the Minister describes is an administrative one, and I advised him—I hope he has advised his representative today—that I would be entirely satisfied if he were to read the appropriate assurances in the letter into the record. A letter is an ephemeral thing, whereas Hansard is permanent and more effective. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am happy to do that. Indeed, my speaking note covers one of these points. I respond by explaining that the Military Lands Acts 1892 and 1900 allow the Secretary of State for Defence to make by-laws to regulate the public use of military land and certain areas of the sea used for military purposes. Under the 1900 Act, by-laws affecting public rights of use of the sea and shore also require the consent of the Board of Trade. Therefore, one of these Acts referred to defence, the other to the Board of Trade.

Change is needed because over the years the wide-ranging responsibilities of the Board of Trade have been reduced and redistributed. Following transfers of functions, these responsibilities are currently held by the Department for Transport. The clause therefore amends the Military Lands Act 1900 in order to remove the requirement that the Secretary of State for Defence must seek the consent of the Board of Trade when he proposes to make by-laws in respect of certain sea, tidal water and shore areas that might affect certain public rights. The rights in question relate to navigation, anchoring, the grounding of vessels, fishing, bathing, walking and recreation.

As well as removing the requirement for the Board of Trade’s consent, the clause requires that, before making such by-laws in the future, the Secretary of State for Defence should take all reasonable steps to ascertain whether the by-law would injuriously affect existing public rights. If it would, he must satisfy himself that the restriction is required for the safety of the public or for the military purpose for which the land is used, and that the restriction imposed is only to such extent as is reasonable.

The procedure for giving public notice and allowing and considering public objection to any by-law currently runs under two different provisions: one for the Board of Trade—and so, now, for the Secretary of State for Transport—in the 1900 Act, and one for the Secretary of State for Defence through the 1892 Act. However, the provisions are almost identical in effect and the clause therefore provides for the repeal of the provision referring to consultation by the Board of Trade and leaves in place the provision exercised by the Secretary of State for Defence.

The clause will therefore not affect the consultation that is carried out before making military by-laws. As now, the legislation will require the Secretary of State to publicise his proposals, to give an opportunity for the making of objections and to consider those objections before deciding. The clause also amends the Military Lands Act 1892 in relation to the procedure for publishing by-laws once they have been made. The clause removes the requirement for the Secretary of State to publish the by-laws in such a manner as appears to him necessary to make them known to all persons in the locality, and replaces it with a requirement that he publish the by-laws in such manner as appears to him appropriate. This is because interest in the effect of by-laws is no longer limited to the immediate locality.

As part of this process of consultation, the relevant Defence Minister writes to the MP in whose constituency the site is located to tell them about the forthcoming public consultation. Advertisements are then placed on the Ministry of Defence website, in national and local newspapers, post offices and libraries, and on notices around the site. In addition, depending on the location of the affected site and the interests that are engaged, Ministry of Defence officials may contact the relevant devolved Administration; the county, district or unitary authority; the parish council, community council or parish meeting that covers the site; the police authority for the area, or its successor as agreed under the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill; all people who have expressed an interest; and a range of government and other organisations, such as the Health and Safety Executive, the Environment Agency, the Forestry Commission, the Civil Aviation Authority, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, the Crown Estate and, if church property is likely to be affected, the appropriate diocese.

Consultation normally runs for five weeks, although we would consider objections that were received after the end of the period as long as the by-laws had not yet been made. All comments are considered and, if possible, changes are agreed with the MoD site operator. All representations are summarised together with the department’s response and presented to the Minister before he is invited to sign to bring the by-laws into force. As a general rule, the Ministry of Defence consults more widely than we are required to do so by statute. We have no plans to reduce the amount of consultation that we usually undertake, and the provisions in the Bill will not alter our approach in this area.

In view of this full explanation, I hope that the noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Tunnicliffe, will agree with me that Clause 24 should after all stand part of the Bill.

Before I complete the contribution from the Government to today’s Committee stage, I should like to say a few words on a separate but related issue—the report on the Armed Forces Bill published by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee on 14 July. My noble friend the Minister has written to the committee chairman, my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester, with the Government’s response to the report. In doing so, he undertook to speak to one of the powers to which the committee drew attention. This was in relation to Clause 32, which deals with the commencement of the legislation, and in particular the transitional measures with reference to courts martial proposed in subsection (5). In his absence, I hope that the Committee will allow me to do so. The report noted that the House may wish to seek a further explanation and satisfy itself that the provisions of subsection (5) should require no parliamentary scrutiny. As the report notes, it is usual for the standard form of transitional power conferred in Clause 32(4) to be exercisable without parliamentary scrutiny.

Subsection (5) is not intended as an extension of the power in subsection (4) but is considered useful to make it clear that the power in subsection (4) will be needed to deal with particular situations that may arise under new Schedule 3A to the Armed Forces Act 2006. The situation that we have in mind is that, if an accused person elects trial by court martial instead of by his commanding officer, the court’s powers are limited to those of the commanding officer.

The Bill affects, but does not diminish, commanding officers’ powers of punishment, so it will be necessary to provide for the powers that the court martial will have in a trial after commencement of the Armed Forces Act in the case of an accused who had made his election before commencement. This is therefore very much a transitional measure. I reassure the Committee that our intention is to ensure that the court martial will not be able to impose a more severe sentence than that which a commanding officer could have imposed when the accused made his election. For those reasons, I hope that the Committee will accept that it is appropriate that provision under subsections (4) and (5) should be made by statutory instrument with no parliamentary procedure.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his full and accurate response on the matter of consultation and for reading it into the record. I am satisfied that the clause should stand part of the Bill. I shall read in Hansard with great care what he said on the Constitution Committee’s response and we will return to it if there is a problem. However, at first pass it seems that the matter is properly covered.