Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill (Fifth sitting)

Sarah Dines Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 14th October 2020 Public Bill Committees

If we were to deal with the matter next year as part of the armed forces Bill we would look at the situation in the round, in terms of not just prosecution but investigations. There may be a view that it is possible to do things in isolation in this regard, but it is not. We have already seen the implications that changing one thing will have elsewhere. Ideally it would be best to act next year.

[Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. The scope of the Bill clearly does not encompass a wide-scale investigation of the present investigation process. Will the right hon. Gentleman explore a little more and explain what he did in his tenure as a Defence Minister to look into the matter?

[Mr Jones]

I will say this to the hon. Lady: if she wants a long rundown of the positive things that the Labour Government did for the armed forces I can start with the Armed Forces (Pensions and Compensation) Act 2004.

[Miss Dines]

But on investigations?

[Mr Jones]

It is related, because it is related to people who were serving on operations. For the first time ever it brought forward a modern system of lump sum payments, which were never there before, for Falkland veterans or anything else. I actually extended that in 2007 to cover issues to do with mental health provision. Our record was that each year but one of that Labour Government we accepted the finding of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body, as opposed to the Conservative Government’s cutting pay. We maintained our armed forces spending at a level above inflation. The 2010 Conservative Government cut the defence budget by 16%.

We also had the armed forces welfare pathway, which I started in—