Armed Forces Recruitment: Under-18s

Debate between Mike Penning and Steven Paterson

Tuesday 7th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Steven Paterson (Stirling) (SNP)]

I am grateful for the chance to speak and to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. The SNP’s position is that we recognise persons who have reached the age of 16 as old enough to leave school, marry, work and pay tax, and, despite scepticism from the other parties in Scotland before the independence referendum, we believe and have long believed that they have the right to vote as well. I am glad to say that we have won over the doubters on that particular campaign and I look forward to that example being followed down here.

Fundamentally, the SNP position on this issue reflects our ambition to empower young people—to trust them with responsibility in these areas and trust that they will take that responsibility seriously. It also reflects the legal position in Scotland under the Age of Legal Capacity (Scotland) Act 1991, which determines that a person has full legal capacity from the age of 16. For those reasons, my party backs the current position on recruitment age for the armed forces for those who are 16 or 17 and choose to serve their country.

The minimum age at which an individual can enlist is set down in the Armed Forces (Enlistment) Regulations 2009. In summary, the current MOD policy is that service personnel under 18 are not deployed on operations outside the UK, except where the operation does not involve personnel becoming engaged in or exposed to hostilities. Humanitarian operations, for example, might qualify. In addition, in line with current UN policy, service personnel under 18 are not deployed on UN peacekeeping operations. As has been mentioned, age restrictions also apply when it comes to Northern Ireland.

It is important that there is recognition that a special duty of care is owed to under-18s who choose to serve in the armed forces—not because they are not old enough to make that decision and take that action, but because inevitably they have less experience in the world of work and in life.

[Mike Penning]

I do not want the hon. Gentleman to mislead the House unintentionally and I may have misled him. The only unit in Northern Ireland that could not do what we are discussing—it has been disbanded now—was the Ulster Defence Regiment, because it was permanently on operations. There are recruits of 16 and over from Northern Ireland serving in the armed forces today.

[Steven Paterson]

I am grateful for that clarification—I am skipping through my speech rather quickly, because I do not have the time that I thought I would have.

As I was saying, we have a special duty of care to these young people because of their lack of experience of work and of life in general. Whenever that has been discussed in Parliament before, Ministers have been very clear that they accept that and that safeguards are in place.

I can attest to the excellence of the practice that I witnessed in this area when I visited RAF Halton last year. I was able to meet young recruits, hear about their experiences in initial recruit training and see them being put through their paces by the officers. The recruits were developing a range of practical and problem-solving skills that were no doubt essential for the career in the Royal Air Force that they hoped to pursue, but also transferable skills that could assist employers in other sectors in the future. My visit to RAF Halton and particularly the conversations with those recruits were a very positive experience. I am assured that the welfare of our youngest recruits is taken very seriously.

A number of safeguards are built into the recruitment process for 16 and 17-year-olds. First, parents and guardians are positively encouraged—in fact, required—to be part of that process, and their consent is sought. Once accepted into service, under-18s have the right of automatic discharge at any time until their 18th birthday. It is not in the interests of either the armed forces or the individuals themselves for people to be there if they do not want to be. I welcome the provisions allowing for early discharge if that is appropriate.

MOD policy is not to deploy personnel under 18 on operations. That is absolutely correct. Service personnel under 18 are not deployed on any operation outside the UK, except where the operation does not involve their becoming engaged in or exposed to hostilities. However, there is a recommendation, I think, that has not been actioned since the 2005 report of the Defence Committee, on armed guard duty. Perhaps that is something we could look at again. My understanding is that that is still allowable.

Finally, I will offer a few thoughts on the Medact report “The Recruitment of Children by the UK Armed Forces: a critique from health professionals”. For the reasons that I have outlined I do not agree with the use of the word “children”. We have taken a decision as a country—certainly in Scotland and, I think, down here too—that 16 is the age at which we consider young people to have moved from adolescence to adulthood. If that is the case, I would argue that it should apply across the board. We choose to draw that arbitrary line at 16. However, it is entirely right that we should ensure that there are safeguards for those for whom the armed forces are not the right choice, or who may not be ready at 16 or 17, and that those safeguards should be taken seriously by commanding officers. That was my experience from visiting the RAF base.

I am open, however, to considering whether more can be done to improve the duty of care for under-18s—I have already mentioned guard duty. I am also open to any review that looks at educational attainment, as has been alluded to. Where we can demonstrate that better outcomes could be achieved, we must build on what there is, and make sure that those outcomes are realised. I would also welcome further consideration of the messages that the Ministry of Defence uses in recruitment drives, so that in addition to the many positive opportunities offered by the armed forces, the reality of the danger that serving can entail is clear and understood. It is because of the danger that members of the armed forces put themselves into on our behalf that we owe them the respect and gratitude that they have from us.

Football Hooliganism

Debate between Mike Penning and Steven Paterson

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Steven Paterson]

That is an important point. The world of football must take a collective view that such behaviour is not acceptable, and it must work together. It is undoubtedly true that the recent headlines have been predominantly about Russian and English fans, but those are not the only incidents. Incredibly, flares have been set off during many games at the current tournament, and that is just not acceptable. Some of the things we have seen during the tournament in the media and on social media, particularly from fans of England and Russia but from others too, are violent and unacceptable, and we must stand together and oppose them.

Closer to home, we have recently seen hooliganism in my country, Scotland. There were unsavoury and unacceptable scenes at the Scottish cup final at Hampden Park. I do not stand here to say that we do not have any problems in Scotland, because we do. We share this problem, and we must stamp it out.

My wish to take part in the debate was based on my experience of following Scotland abroad since the 1990s. I have been to the majority of European countries and capitals. The team has not always been successful on the pitch, I must admit, but the supporters’ behaviour off the pitch has been impeccable. One point that I want to make, based on my observations across Europe and as far afield as Japan, is about effective policing and organisation—or the lack of it. That is a huge determinant of whether events are peaceful and successful. If the policing and organisation are found wanting when it comes to dealing with well-behaved supporters on the international scene, such as the Scottish, that flags up the possibility that real problems may arise with supporters among whom there is trouble and a more unacceptable side.

Well planned matches, where fans are told clearly where they should go and there is ample room for ticket checks and searches of bags—or sporrans—are the successful ones that go without a hitch. It beggars belief that so many fans have managed to get fireworks into the grounds during the tournament that is going on in France. That can only represent a serious failure on the part of the organisers and the police, and we should say so.

[Mike Penning]

Colleagues are being generous in giving way. I would like to raise two points. First, everyone seems to think that flares are fun, but they are enormously dangerous. They burn at some 2,000° C, and as a former firefighter I have seen the damage that flares can cause to human flesh. That is why they are banned across Europe, and particularly in our stadiums. We saw some flares at Glastonbury, and I hope that they will soon be banned at music festivals as well.

Secondly, I refer the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) to the fact that although arrests have been predominantly of English fans, of the 65 UK supporters who have been arrested, 11 are from Northern Ireland. Two have been arrested for criminal damage, two for public order offences, one for drunkenness, four for assault, one for ticket touting and one for pitch invasion. That is probably nowhere near representative of what actually went on, but I thought that it should be put on the record that although some English fans were really bad, there was sadly Northern Irish involvement as well.

[Steven Paterson]

On fireworks, I am sure that we all remember the Croatia game, when a flare came on to the pitch and nearly exploded in the face of a steward—it could have blinded that gentleman. That is unacceptable. Flares are not fun, they are not toys, and we must clamp down on them. The Minister’s second point goes back to my overriding point that this is not a problem that one country has and another does not; it is a problem that football has, and we must work together to be rid of it.

I have had good and bad experiences of organisation at Scotland games. I remember trying to get into a game at Kaunas in Lithuania and being shouted at by a policeman with a machine gun for being in the wrong place when I was actually in the place that another policeman with a machine gun had sent me to. That demonstrates a lack of organisation—it is simple stuff that we take for granted, but it can cause real problems, as it nearly did that night. Doing the right thing and attempting to get into a ground with a ticket can be problematic, and it goes back to the issue of searches and how fireworks get into grounds.

In certain stadiums, including in my last experience in France, people cannot even get into the stadium with a bottle of water, which is as it should be. That means the job is being done properly, so I cannot understand how fireworks are getting in. The last time I was in Macedonia, the police seemed overwhelmed by a few thousand Scottish fans coming to the stadium with 20 minutes to go to get in. There was one turnstile and no plan whatever. I actually had to balance my way along a ledge and under a railing to get into that game, which I had a ticket for. It was just not well organised, which can cause real problems.

I move on to the more serious and insidious problem that we are talking about today: those who follow a football team in order to wilfully engage in hooliganism and violence. In the modern age, the internet and social media make that much easier to organise than ever before, including when hooliganism was at its height a few decades ago. We face a different challenge now, because hooliganism can be organised differently and much more effectively. We have to take that seriously. My understanding is that banning orders are currently used for those convicted of football-related offences, as the hon. Member for Dartford said. That happens under legislation in Scotland, England and elsewhere. I certainly support that as far as it goes, but I wonder whether it is adequate to deal with what we have seen in recent weeks.

Many incidents take place abroad, which, as has been said, poses different challenges. It is perhaps unfortunate that we are talking about the issue after last week’s referendum result, but surely we should work on a pan-European basis to deal with it by sharing police expertise, information and intelligence and by making sure that what we know about the thugs is shared so that action can be taken.

We should think about the problem in a similar way to how we consider gang culture, because it is not all that different. After all, we are talking about violence and disorder that is clearly well organised, territorial and tribal, so maybe we should deal with it in a similar way. I also want careful consideration to be given to how, as has been mentioned, evidence from social media can be used to identify and prosecute thugs for offences committed abroad and to ensure that lifetime bans can be implemented.

It seems to me there is a widespread feeling that loutish and criminal offensive behaviour committed abroad somehow does not count—that it is okay for someone to do it abroad, because it does not come back to bite them. That may explain why so many of these imbeciles seem happy to be filmed on mobile phones and have their appalling and offensive behaviour put up on social media for the world to see. For our measures to be effective in stamping out that type of behaviour across Europe, we need the co-operation of our colleagues across Europe and other in football-loving nations of the world, backed up by effective sanctions for anyone who engages in hooligan behaviour associated with football. Otherwise, I fear that we will see regular repeats of the wanton thuggery that has been in the news and all over social media. That would be to the serious detriment of the beautiful game and to the real supporters, who want to see games, enjoy them and see the best team win.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mike Penning and Steven Paterson

Monday 6th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

I do not know if the hon. Gentleman has noticed, but since 2010 crime in his constituency has fallen. That is because the police are doing fantastic work and a great job with less assets and less money.

[Steven Paterson (Stirling) (SNP)]

12. What recent discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills on the potential effect of the Government’s immigration policies on the number of international students enrolling in UK universities.