Defence Spending

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baron]

I will take further bids. For the moment, though, I will stick with my figure of 30. Have the threats declined since that defence review? No, not since we were recommended to have 30 surface ships. Our aircraft carriers are being built, but there is no certainty that the second one will see service. There is talk about it perhaps being mothballed. The other carrier will have to await fighter jets.

The situation is not much better in the skies. The F-35 fighter is beset with problems. Britain without a maritime patrol aircraft—that is an extraordinary position for an island nation such as ours to be in. We need to try to put that right.

I speak with a vested interest here, I suppose, but it is the Army that has borne the brunt of our short-sightedness. Cost-cutting plans to replace 20,000 regulars with 30,000 reservists will create unacceptable capability gaps in the short term and, I believe, false economies in the long term. Unfortunately, my attempt to get the Government to think again during the passage of the Defence Reform Bill fell on deaf ears, although Members of all parties made their views well known. It was, to a certain extent at least, a close-run thing, given the strong three-line Whip.

These legitimate concerns were echoed—in fact, I suggest, amplified—by an authoritative and critical report from the National Audit Office. It provides a list of critical conclusions, so let me read some of them. It states, for example, that

“significant further risks…could significantly affect value for money”.

Another conclusion was:

“The Department”—

it means the Ministry of Defence—

“did not test whether increasing the trained strength of the Army Reserve to 30,000 was feasible.”

It added:

“The Department’s recruitment targets for reserves are not underpinned by robust planning data”

and:

“Reducing the size of the Army will not alone deliver the financial savings required.”

It goes on:

“The Department did not fully assess the value for money of its decision to reduce the size of the Army.”

These are pretty damning conclusions. Another is:

“There are significant risks to value for money which are currently not well understood by the Department or the Army.”

It then states:

“The Department should reassess its targets for recruiting reserves.”

As I say, this is all pretty damning stuff. I believe that the decision taken in 2012 to cut the Regular Army by a fifth before the replacement reservists were even recruited has not gone well; in fact, it has been a shambles. The NAO has said that it does not believe that the MOD will be able to replace those lost regulars until 2025—a full 10 years away.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that with the MOD cutting the regulars, failing to recruit the reserves and continuing to recruit those under 18, many of those among the numbers quoted are likely to be under-18s and are thus incapable of being deployed?

[Mr Baron]

I share those concerns, and I shall share another one. I was not originally intending to raise it in my speech, but it is a significant concern. To get to the 30,000 reservists—or indeed 36,000 if we want 30,000 to be deployable—we will be heavily reliant on the existing Territorial Army. If we look at the age profile of the existing TA, we find that it includes regular infantry in their 30s, junior officers in their 40s and senior officers in their 50s. There is a demographic issue within the existing TA; it is not just about new numbers, so there are real concerns there.

The clear implication of the recent and critical NAO report is that the transition to 30,000 reservists may turn out to be more expensive than the steady-state costs of maintaining the 20,000 regulars they are replacing. The plan is complete and utter nonsense. We have seen not just a doubling of the ex-regular reserve bonus, the introduction of a civvy bonus of £300 and the equalisation of pensions, but the introduction of other financial incentives, bringing into severe doubt the financial logic and merits of introducing this plan. False economies loom, as acknowledged by the NAO, when it said that the plans could cost even more. We need to sit up, take note and ask questions. If this ends up costing more in the longer term, I really think heads should roll.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) for taking the lead in calling for this debate, and I entirely agree that we have far too few opportunities to debate these matters in the House. This debate has been long overdue. Indeed, any defence debate is long overdue, and certainly an opportunity to hold the Executive to account over defence is long overdue. Members might not be surprised to learn that my approach to this debate will be a little different, however, as I wish to look at a way in which the Ministry of Defence has used its budget and resources to avoid addressing a grievance.

Members of the armed forces have no contract of employment or access to employment tribunals, except in respect of equal pay and discrimination. The only other ways in which to redress a grievance are via a service complaint or judicial review, yet more than 1,400 service personnel were wrongly disciplined over a period of three years and the failure to give full answers to parliamentary questions on this issue has prompted me to speak in this debate.

A police caution is a warning given to people who admit to a minor offence. In November 2008, a change to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 meant that police cautions should be considered spent the second that they are issued. With no exemption from the law, the change meant that the armed forces should have stopped disciplining soldiers who had received police cautions. The Army, however, noted the change only in September 2011, by which point about 1,400 personnel had suffered a range of disciplinary actions, including loss of pay or promotion or even discharge from service.

In January 2013, a year after the MOD noticed the problem, Deborah Haynes of The Times revealed that the Army had recognised in 2012:

“There could be potential claims from those Armed Forces personnel who have been subject to administrative action as a result of a police caution since Dec 08, in particular from those discharged.”

The Times estimated that the cost of compensation would be in the millions of pounds. The MOD responded:

“It is completely untrue to suggest that we have deliberately stalled on alerting soldiers affected by this. A number of options are now being looked at and discussions are ongoing.”

The Army had failed to note a major change in the law and had failed to notify those who were wronged, many of them Afghan veterans, of the options for seeking redress. They took a head-in-the-sand approach, ignoring the problem. A passage from one briefing reads:

“We are offering reinstatement to all soldiers discharged following a caution who make an in time SC”—

or service complaint. It continued:

“The longer we take no action the fewer the ‘in time’ complaints about other sanctions there will be. MOD policy may be not to accept out of time complaints on this issue.”

At the start of this year I began asking parliamentary questions about what options the MOD had chosen. I asked what progress the Department had made on addressing its wrongful application of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act measure and was told that the MOD was aware of the issue and was exploring a range of potential options—the same reply as a year previously. I asked how much compensation had been paid and was told that no such compensation had been paid. I asked how many had lost out on promotion and was told that the information could only be provided at a disproportionate cost. I asked what steps had been taken to reverse sanctions and how many people had been sanctioned. No steps had been taken to reverse sanctions and information on the number of serving personnel affected could only be provided at a disproportionate cost.

I asked how many personnel were out of time to make an official complaint. I was told that a service complaint must normally relate to an event that had happened in the previous three months—by now we were over three years into the time in which the Ministry of Defence had realised its mistake. As it is no longer the policy to consider administrative action against serving personnel who are in receipt of a police caution, all personnel who would have been subject to such action in the past would now be out of time.

My parliamentary questions failed, so in April I took my common recourse, as I often do with the Ministry of Defence, and submitted a freedom of information request, asking for copies of the minutes of the Army Justice Board meetings where the issue of administrative action taken against serving personnel after a police caution were discussed. In her reply, the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) said:

“Whilst there is a public interest in transparency in the service justice system my officials have determined that on this occasion this does not outweigh the very strong public interest in allowing officials and military personnel to exchange full and frank advice”.

Minutes that were already in the hands of The Times were not to be allowed into the hands of a Member of Parliament. I found that particularly interesting as the Ministry of Defence had managed, in response to another FOI request, to release very quickly other minutes that criticised the Labour Government and the Welsh Assembly. Once the minutes could reveal difficulties in a Conservative Government, however, they were denied to a Member a Parliament.

Despite that, I somehow obtained a copy of the Army Justice Board minutes. Those of October 2012 told me that 1,300 personnel had been cautioned; 246 had received career sanctions; and an unknown figure had been discharged from the military. The minutes also said that anyone not serving will now have to “take us to judicial review” rather than make a service complaint because they will be out of time.

The right to operate a separate military justice system is granted to the armed forces by Parliament. It is a right given to no other Department of State, and yet here we have clear evidence of flagrant injustice and a refusal to provide an MP with information, both of which were argued on the basis of cost. Military justice must be fair and transparent if there is to be no access to an employment tribunal and the only other option is judicial review or a service complaint where a person is deliberately not told of the injustice.

I do not condone whatever minor actions led to the police cautions, but the law must be upheld, even by the Ministry of Defence. Fortunately, the Service Complaints Commissioner agrees with me, because as well as submitting my FOI request in April, I also wrote to Dr Atkins. In her reply to me, she said:

“My stance has been that the just and equitable test does preclude a service from relying on its own failure to inform service personnel of the correct situation”.

So although lack of awareness that someone could make a service complaint may not be sufficient reason, a lack of awareness because a service has failed to inform someone that they may have been, or had been, wronged would be sufficient. The three months in those circumstances should run from the date on which an individual found out the position and was able to make an informed decision on whether to submit a complaint. The armed forces must track down the individuals affected and advise them of their right to make a confidential complaint via the Service Complaints Commissioner setting out the facts of what has happened to them. This wrong must be righted, at whatever cost to the defence budget. I hope that the Minister, in winding up, will confirm that he will ensure that that happens.