Armed Forces

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Tuesday 25th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my interests as a member of the reserve forces.

I start by paying tribute to all our armed forces, all who support them and, given the flavour of previous speeches, to the awesome Portsmouth military wives choir, but it will be no surprise to the Minister that I wish to focus my speech on the issue of the Service Complaints Commissioner. I am extremely pleased with the work that Ministers have done on this, and with their recognition of the importance of the role and of the fact that it must be reformed. It is vital that we get this to work, especially in very serious cases such as physical and sexual assault, or where psychological and medical help is needed, or where the family is in need too.

In one case I have dealt with, the armed forces completely failed a young soldier who was beaten, burned and sexually assaulted by men in his unit and, after making a complaint, was placed back in the unit with the assailants. He received no help, despite two suicide attempts. When he was returned to his parents’ home, the family were unable to cope with his considerable distress and no help was made available to them.

This experience, and evidence gathered by the Defence Select Committee, has led me to conclude that the role must be able to compel the armed forces to act. The commissioner’s role must be to intervene when a complaint is live, to be proactive and to be able to spot trends, act on them and head off trouble. Arguments deployed against the Service Complaints Commissioner having an ombudsman role have included that it would interfere with the chain of command and that the role would constrict the complaints commissioner from acting on live complaints. The Defence Committee has outlined how both of these concerns can be met within an ombudsman role.

I am pleased with the work that Ministers have done on this issue and that they have made it a priority. I believe that they are extremely sympathetic to reforming this position, but I know from the few years that I have spent in this place that a Minister knowing the right thing to do is the easy part; it is making it happen that is the tough part.

May I take this opportunity to urge the ministerial team to pursue the request to beef up the role? The British Legion has highlighted that an ombudsman role would be much better understood by service personnel themselves. It must be able to act on live complaints and to compel the armed forces to act and a complaint must not necessarily close if a service man or woman is killed. Where there are systematic problems in our armed forces, they must be dealt with proactively. Our armed forces have nothing to fear from an ombudsman role and everything to gain. I urge Ministers to pursue this agenda relentlessly. We must settle it way in advance of a new Service Complaints Commissioner coming into post.