Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Mark Francois and Rachel Taylor

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

I rise to speak to amendments 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, and new clauses 1, 2, 3 and 6, which appear in my name and those of my hon. Friends. I will say a little about each amendment and new clause in turn. I will also refer to new clause 5, which appears in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty), and say at least a little about the multiplicity of Government amendments that have just been tabled, in particular Government amendment 54 on the proposed Crown immunity for the defence housing service. By your leave, Madam Chairman, I propose to speak to the amendments first and then to refer to the new clauses a little later in the debate so as not to try the patience of the Committee with an inordinately long speech.

I hope that we have collectively done the House and, indeed, the armed forces a service in our scrutiny of the Bill so far. The Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill, most of whose members are here, held seven oral evidence sessions on the Bill’s contents, as well as making a fact-finding visit to the Defence Serious Crime Command in Fareham and to defence housing sites at Emsworth near His Majesty’s Naval Base Portsmouth. As a Committee, we received 47 pieces of written evidence and heard from 42 witnesses. Having held the evidence sessions, we then went through a detailed process of line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill and produced our subsequent report to the House, which was published on 29 April.

The Bill has already had quite a detailed amount of scrutiny; however, it is right that a measure of such importance is now in Committee on the Floor of the House. I reiterate my disappointment that Reform does not regard these proceedings as important. I am sure that the rest of us do; that is why we are here.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

I reiterate the fact that there are no Members here from the party led by the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), in particular because so many of the local authorities responsible for implementing the armed forces covenant are led by that particular party. It is grossly incompetent that they are not here to listen and learn.

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. May I reiterate the comments made by the Chairman of Ways and Means earlier? The point that the hon. Lady and others have raised is not in the scope of this Bill, so perhaps it is best if we move on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Francois]

Having addressed our amendments towards the opening of the debate, I will now speak to the new clauses. New clause 3 would create a veterans’ commissioner for England. My hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) made a good case for doing so during the Select Committee on the Bill, and did so again this afternoon. She received cross-party support—certainly in principle—from the hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur), who made an extremely thoughtful contribution. He also gave my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) some support for new clause 5, which I will come to in a moment.

When I was debating the Armed Forces Commissioner Bill—now the Armed Forces Commissioner Act 2025—with the Minister some months ago, he gave a commitment that the veterans’ commissioners for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would be mirrored by the appointment of a veterans’ commissioner for England. However, that has still not come to pass. Could he explain to the Committee where the Government now sit on this issue? When can we expect them to honour their pledge to create a veterans’ commissioner for England? Have they begun any interview process, to at least begin to identify a suitable candidate for the role? The Government gave their word on this. The Committee would be grateful for an update from the Minister on where the Government are with this matter.

I turn to new clause 5, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon, which has the support of over 20 hon. Members. The essence of the new clause is that no fees should be charged to serving or previously serving members of the armed forces, or their family members, who are applying for indefinite leave to remain under the immigration rules appendix for His Majesty’s armed forces. In practical terms, the new clause would amend the Immigration Act 2014 so that when members of the armed forces apply for ILR, in return for their willingness to serve the Crown, the attendant fees would be waived. This is a particular issue for Gurkha families, and foreign and Commonwealth personnel who are serving, or have served, in the armed forces.

[Rachel Taylor]

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Gurkha community. I want to pay tribute to the Queen’s Gurkha Regiment and the 30th Signal Regiment, based just outside my constituency. The Gurkhas who served are an essential and integral part of our community; they offer great value, and integrate into the community. I thank him for mentioning them, and for giving me the opportunity to pay tribute to those Gurkhas who live in or around my constituency.

[Mr Francois]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. I think she may have been here just a few months ago when we had a debate about the history of the Gurkhas in British service. I echo everything she said about the bravest of the brave. I therefore look forward to her supporting the new clause in the Division Lobby this evening.

The Royal British Legion and Poppyscotland have campaigned on this matter for a number of years. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon for taking up the cudgels so effectively on their behalf this afternoon. As he argued powerfully, Governments of both colours have indicated in the past that they were minded to make this change. Indeed, it is worth reiterating that this proposal was in both the Conservatives’ and Labour’s 2024 general election manifestos, but the change has yet to come to pass. Having re-examined the issue within His Majesty’s Opposition and consulted shadow departmental colleagues, I am pleased to tell the Committee that should my hon. Friend seek to press the new clause—and should you grant that request, Madam Chairman—we on the Opposition Front Bench will support it. We encourage all hon. Members to do so, too. There would be a cost to the process, but we believe that, in return for service to this country, the Ministry of Defence should absorb that cost in its wider budget. The annual cost would be a very modest outgoing, given the scale of the defence budget. In other words, the Department would bear the cost, not those who have served or their families. People should not be disadvantaged for having offered to serve this country in uniform.

My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon put the case very well, and I will not try the House’s patience by repeating it. Suffice it to say that I believe that there is a strong moral case for doing this, and I very much hope that the Government might be prepared to accept the amendment. If they are not, I hope that my hon. Friend will press his amendment to a vote, and in that case, I hope that the whole House will find it in their heart to support it.

New clauses 1 and 6 relate to the European convention on human rights and its effect on armed forces personnel, including, potentially, reservists who might be mobilised under the auspices of the Bill. How did we get to a situation in which the convention has spread to the battlefield, not just in Europe, but globally? The history is significant here; it lies behind why we tabled the two new clauses. This all came about because of something called the al-Jedda case, which was heard before the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords a couple of years or so before the United Kingdom Supreme Court was created back in 2009. The al-Jedda case was about the treatment of a prisoner detained in Iraq during Operation Telic, and was brought by a now disgraced lawyer called Phil Shiner. His name will be known to anyone who has ever served in the British Army. For the record, Shiner was subsequently convicted of fraud and struck off as a practising solicitor.

Phil Shiner instructed legal counsel to put forward his case to the House of Lords. The lead appellant in that case, before he became a Member of Parliament, was one Keir Starmer QC. The Minister for Veterans and People got into some trouble over that, because when we highlighted the matter in the Commons, she was adamant that he had not been working for Shiner. Unfortunately for the Minister, we had the court records from the House of Lords, which showed very clearly that Keir Starmer, as he then was, was the lead appellant appointed and instructed—that word is used in the records—by Phil Shiner’s law firm, Public Interest Lawyers. The Minister had the embarrassment of having to come to the Commons in February to correct the record and admit that our version of events, as explained to the Commons, was true.

Phil Shiner was a persistent man, particularly when money was at stake, so several years after losing in the House of Lords, he took the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. To be clear, Keir Starmer was not acting in that action. Shiner won, so the Strasbourg Court ruled that the European convention on human rights would then apply to any theatre in which British armed forces personnel were serving. Through that judgment, an industry was effectively created, which Shiner then massively exploited. He brought literally hundreds of cases against current and past British armed forces personnel. Many of the cases were funded by British taxpayers through legal aid, and were completely and utterly fabricated for money. It was the use of the ECHR that allowed him to do that.

In other debates in the Chamber, we have heard senior Ministers, including the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, say that there is no such thing as a vexatious prosecution. Self-evidently, there must be, because otherwise why was Shiner struck off and convicted of fraud by a court of law? There can be—in fact, there were—hundreds of vexatious prosecutions against British military personnel. It was, for the record, Johnny Mercer, a former Member of this House, when he served on the Defence Committee some years ago, who led a sub-Committee investigation into this issue. Its very powerful report helped to bring Shiner to book, no doubt saving the taxpayer a lot of money, and leading to Shiner’s career ending in disgrace.

To come to the present day, what if there were a ceasefire in Ukraine? Let us posit a situation in which, under the auspices of the coalition of the willing, British service personnel were deployed to Ukraine. If, by some happenstance, they became involved in a firefight with Russian troops who had made an incursion across the line of ceasefire, who is to say that years—maybe decades—later, those personnel would not end up in a court of law for obeying what they believed to be perfectly legitimate orders, after some second-guessing by a human rights lawyer, perhaps with Russian assistance?

In short, we cannot allow this Government’s obsession with human rights to put our armed forces at risk, either now, in the future or historically, and potentially force them to fight ruthless opponents with one arm tied behind their back. This issue will not go away, and at some point, the Government will be forced to address it, be it through the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill or some other mechanism. The purpose of these new clauses is to force them to address it today.

Armed Forces Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Mark Francois and Rachel Taylor

Select Committee stage
Tuesday 24th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Rachel Taylor]

The right hon. Member makes a very valid point. I invite him to submit his speech to the consultation on the Government’s White Paper on special educational needs. If he is going to withdraw the amendment, perhaps he would consider that, and then we could move on.

[Mr Francois]

Having been a Member of Parliament for 25 years in June, I have learned not to look a gift horse in the mouth. I say that in the nicest possible way, so I will take the hint, and having gone to the trouble of writing the speech, I will definitely submit it.

To continue, if a service family were based at Tidworth and, perhaps after some considerable time, had secured an EHCP from Wiltshire as the local education authority, but were then posted to Catterick, they would potentially have to go through the process all over again in Yorkshire. It could be another two years of agony to get back to where they already were before they moved.

As the Minister pointed out in his helpful letter to the Committee of 9 March, the Department for Education has produced—here is that word again—“guidelines” that should help facilitate the passporting, in effect, of EHCPs from one military garrison or equivalent airbase or naval base to another in a different LEA area, so there is already a process in place to do that. The problem, however, is that those guidelines are facilitative rather than mandatory. In other words, if the receiving LEA—in Yorkshire, in our example—was already under serious financial pressure and already had delays in its system for granting EHCPs, it is possible that, despite the armed forces covenant, the receiving LEA might yet be unreasonable and still force the service family to go back to square one and start all over again. Without taking the Committee for granted in any way, I strongly suspect that Members from all parties would find that situation highly undesirable.