Armed Forces Bill

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

Just as the Armed Forces Act 2001 required a degree of discussion, agreement and devolution to the devolved Governments, including in Northern Ireland, so too will this Bill. Our officials are in deep discussion with Northern Ireland Office officials. The Minister for the Armed Forces has written to Ministers in the devolved Administrations, and I am confident that, following the passage of the Bill, we will have arrangements in place allowing the proud armed forces covenant to be fully implemented in legislation at every level of government: the UK national Government, devolved Governments and local authorities across the UK.

[Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Further to the previous intervention, the covenant is predicated on veterans not being disadvantaged by their service, as the Secretary of State will know. However, Northern Ireland veterans will be subject to records that do not apply to civilian terrorists. Will he confirm that there will be no disadvantage to Northern Ireland veterans, and that the covenant will apply to them as originally intended?

[John Healey]

The right hon. Gentleman knows that he is speaking about the legislative provisions of a different Bill that is before the House. We will deal with that and strengthen protections for veterans. Successive Governments have failed because it has been too difficult, but, with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland leading the way, we will finally have a settlement that allows the full implementation of the Good Friday agreement.

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[Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The Defence Secretary opened the debate by talking about the Bill taking significant steps to improve service lives, but the reality is that the rhetoric is not matched by the record.

Let me take as an example the significant section of the Bill that is devoted to reservists. There are measures that I have no objection to: it allows the recall of those in their early 60s; it aligns the provision across the three services; and it has a new, lower threshold to recall based on warlike conditions, although it does not explain to employers what “warlike” constitutes so that they can know on what basis their staff might be called up. But the reality is that under this Government the number of reservists has actually fallen. It was over 32,000 in October 2023 and under 32,000 in October 2024. The number of training days has also fallen, from 1.3 million in 2023-24 to 1.17 million in 2024-25. The Minister for the Armed Forces, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) said that our reservists “are critical” and “absolutely central”:

“Without them we cannot generate mass, we cannot meet the plethora of defence tasks”.

If that is his view—and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat) spoke about increased risks and the action being taken by other countries—then why is the number of reservists not increasing significantly?

There might be those on the Government Benches who say, “Well, perhaps our record so far hasn’t been great, but don’t worry—the strategic defence and security review promises a 20% increase in our reservists, so perhaps it will improve in future.” First, that starts from a very low base of 32,000, so a 20% increase is around 6,500. Let us put that in context. Even the French—the French, Madam Deputy Speaker!—are more than doubling their number of reservists, and from a higher starting point. They are going from 46,000 to over 100,000 in the next decade. Many other countries have already taken action. The US has half its army and over a third of its air force in its guard or reserve units. Scandinavian and Baltic countries have also taken action. If we want to see what other countries are doing, we can look at the action the Germans are taking, as my right hon. Friend talked about, or at Poland’s defence spending

We have a very weak target of 20% on a low threshold. What is worse is that the funding commitment to that is almost non-existent. The strategic defence and security review has no hard deadline, and it has the caveat

“when funds allow, most likely in the 2030s.”

Some might say, “Well, isn’t that just my view?” It is actually the view of the cross-party Public Accounts Committee. There are 10 Labour Members on that Committee. It is worth pointing out what that cross-party Committee said just a few months ago, in September:

“The Strategic Defence Review (SDR) sets out the Department’s ambition to significantly expand the reserves’ role, including a 20% increase in numbers from the current 32,000 reserves when funding allows, most likely in the 2030s. However, the Department does not currently have funding or a detailed plan for how it will achieve this expansion.”

That is a report from a Committee with a majority of Labour Members of Parliament.

Let us be honest: it is not just on the issue of reservists that there is no action and little transparency on the funding. To give another example, we do not even have the defence investment plan published—it was promised last year. Given what my right hon. Friend said about the funding steps being taken by other countries, let us put that in context. How much money are we talking about? Spending on reserve pay last year, 2024-25, amounted to £135.3 million, with a further £32 million for bounty payments. The Department’s budget is over £60 billion. A 20% increase in pay and bounty payments would be £33.6 million. We have Government Front Benchers saying that this is critical, central and urgent, but we cannot find low tens of millions until the 2030s.

[Luke Akehurst]

It is an honour to serve under the right hon. Gentleman on the Finance Committee, where we look at slightly smaller-scale issues on spending. He appears to be questioning the Government’s political commitment to find the funding necessary for defence. Does he accept that the downpayment on that political will was the very tough political decision of the Government to take an axe to international development funding, something close to the hearts of many Labour Back Benchers, to provide additional funding for the MOD? If a Labour Government are prepared to take a step with that political courage, he should be in no doubt that, as the years go forward, we will find the funding that is essential to deal with the future defence threats we face.

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Gentleman is one of the most astute commentators on the Finance Committee, so I always genuinely listen to what he says. However, the point I am making is on the urgency to address this now and the relative modesty of the sums we are talking about to significantly increase the reserves. We are talking about tens of millions in a budget of over £60 billion. Therefore, if the rhetoric that this is central to our national security is meant, why is the action being delayed? To the hon. Gentleman’s point on funding, as a Former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, I know that pages 141 and 142 of the Red Book deal with the resource departmental expenditure limit, which I think is at £1.1 billion this year in cash terms, and the capital departmental expenditure limit is at £0.4 billion—so there is more money. From that £1.5 billion, if I was back in the Treasury I would be asking why tens of millions cannot be prioritised for this, if it is indeed a priority?

If we do not want to look at the MOD budget, we could look at the £27 million the civil service spends on diversity and inclusion officers, or some other areas, such as the over £100 million a year those on the Government Benches voted to spend as part of the Chagos islands giveaway. My point is that these are relatively small sums, which give us scale in terms of our ability to respond at pace.

Ministers are right to say that the reserves are critical, but their record is one in which they have failed to act, and there is no timescale to address those points. Just last month, the Minister told journalists that the UK is “rapidly developing” plans to prepare the country for war, and he warned that:

“the shadow of war is knocking on Europe’s door once more”.

How is that aligned with the approach of the Government in terms of failing to scale reserves, and in allowing their numbers to stagnate or even fall?

I have a specific question to ask the Minister with regard to the article 3 commitment under NATO, on our ability to defend the UK. Will he confirm that for the duration of this Parliament the current level of manpower available in our reserves is sufficient to meet article 3 and cover all our critical national infrastructure, and that in reaching that judgment, he is not double counting reservists—such as those who are police officers, doctors, nurses or work in our NHS—who could be counted as essential in those tasks as part of our article 3 requirements?

[Dr Arthur]

The right hon. Member is being generous with his time, but I feel that he is giving a glass-half-empty speech. He will know that overall recruitment to the armed forces has increased substantially. The latest figures, published in December, are 13% up, and the number of people leaving the forces is dropping. We heard from the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) that when he was Defence Minister he argued inside Cabinet for more money to go to defence. As the right hon. Gentleman was in the Cabinet at the same time, was he joining in those calls?

[Steve Barclay]

When I was in the Cabinet we were also responding to a global pandemic and to the energy inflation as a result of Ukraine. What I am highlighting is that we have an Armed Forces Bill under the hon. Gentleman’s Government in which the Minister is saying that reservists are critical. I am simply pointing to their record and their future plans.

I am conscious of time, so I will move on to housing, which is covered in clause 3. Colleagues will know that just last April The Guardian reported the Prime Minister as telling the Cabinet that he wanted to stop outsourcing decisions to quangos, so it will come as no surprise to colleagues across the House that the Bill sets up yet another quango. In fact, the last Armed Forces Bill took a year to pass, so this quango will not be in place until more than halfway through the Parliament, on an issue which Ministers themselves could be making decisions on. The Prime Minister is telling his Cabinet one thing, and the Bill is doing the exact opposite.

More importantly, the hon. Member for Lewes (James MacCleary) spoke about how Ministers will have oversight of the new body in terms of the targets. I am afraid I have some news for him: I struggle to find any targets in the Bill. I asked the House of Commons Library what the targets were for this Parliament on housing, and the answer came back that there were none. There are no targets, and yet housing is apparently a huge priority. One could perhaps take comfort at least from whom the Government have put in charge of the housing improvements, as they have appointed a new permanent secretary, but the cross-party Public Accounts Committee published a report just last week—I have not had to go through the archives—in which its Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), says:

“I have served on the Public Accounts Committee for twelve years. In all that time a 98% failure rate in a public sector initiative amounts to the most catastrophic fiasco that I have ever seen on the Committee”.

The report itself says:

“The Department designed the schemes in a way that exposes it to both poor quality work and fraud…There was virtually no attention from senior officials and the Department did not know whether the scheme as a whole was or was not working for at least two years”.

It therefore seems a surprise that just three months ago, the Defence Ministers appointed the permanent secretary of that Department to be the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Defence, in charge of its flagship programmes, including a housing programme. I ask the Minister, had he read the National Audit Office report when the permanent secretary was appointed?

I have a specific question for the Minister regarding clauses 28 and 29. Can he confirm whether any review has been conducted of Army discipline since the general election? If so, was it published, and if it was not, why not and will it be published before Committee stage? In his summing up, can the Minister explain how a Bill that speaks so much about the importance of the military covenant is consistent with removing protections from our Northern Ireland veterans?

On the issue of veterans, the Minister announced Operation Valour last May. The Department took six months before it put out a job advert, and it has still not appointed or announced anyone in that post. Can the Minister advise the House why it has taken nine months to appoint someone and when that appointment will be made? Finally, where are the incentives in the Bill? Where are the incentives for employers to recruit reservists —where are the tax incentives and the join-up across Departments?

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[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)]

It is a true honour to close the debate. I thank hon. Members across the House who have spoken well in support of our brave servicemen and women, upholding Parliament’s proud cross-party tradition of expressing our profound gratitude to those serving in the UK’s armed forces. It is not lost on me who is not here today.

I appreciate that some in this Chamber have raised questions about the measures in the Bill or about defence in general, so let me address some of the questions. The hon. Members for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) and for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) and the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) rightly mentioned our service in Afghanistan, as did many others in the House. It is not lost on me that when 9/11 took place, it is the only time when article 5 has been called. The US relied on us collectively not just for a military response, but for an inter-agency response to build the functions and capability to deal with terrorism, which is so successfully dealt with today. It is also not lost on me that per capita, the Georgians, the Danish and the Estonians lost a significant amount of souls in that conflict. I often say that those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it, and I think we saw an example of that.

The hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade) highlighted issues with the covenant, but also highlighted accommodation and the move towards the next phases of any review. The single living accommodation strategy is well under way. On that note, I pay tribute to Natalie Elphicke and the whole team, who put an in amazing effort on the defence housing strategy, which has resulted in some of the findings, in particular the creation of the Defence Housing Service, which will alleviate for the Defence Infrastructure Organisation some of the pressure of looking after housing and professionalise the service as we move forward. I also support the hon. Member in her support for Toby Gutteridge, an individual I know well and who needs our support as he continues with his standard of life.

I welcome Opposition Members’ comments on Ukraine. This is a bipartisan issue—it is an idea bigger than ourselves. We welcome and thank them for their support on Ukraine in the early days, which we took on and have continued after the change in Government.

My hon. Friends the Members for Slough (Mr Dhesi), for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin), for Barrow and Furness (Michelle Scrogham) and for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) all highlighted issues with the covenant, as did many others. The reality is that it is moving from three areas of Government all the way to 14. It will be significant, but it will take time to put it in place. We have to accept that at the moment, the execution of the covenant results in a postcode lottery across the United Kingdom, but there is a requirement of adherence to the legal duty. There will be a communication and education plan to ensure that everyone knows the standards we need to live by. There will be statutory guidance, training and briefings. Indeed, some of the other projects like Operation Valour that we are rolling out will help us police the delivery of the covenant across those councils.

I have been a long-standing fan of the reserves, and I have to admit that I have a conflict of interest: I am a reservist. The Army, Navy and Air Force always respond to crisis, but the reality is that economies, industries and societies win conflicts. We can all learn the lesson from Ukraine that reservists often fill the ranks more the longer a conflict goes on. I will come later to comments about how reservists are being funded and how we will improve that process to ensure that the nation is ready should a crisis befall us.

I turn to the fitness application. I have met individuals who have destroyed a hundred tanks and individuals who have killed hundreds of Russians who could not pass a fitness test in their life. The reality is the changing character of conflict requires different skills. That is why things like cyber direct entry and different skills are just as applicable as being able to run or do pull-ups and push-ups. We have already got rid of 100 outdated medical requirements on the medical test. There is a long way to go on that, and I would like to see us open it up as we move forward, and we will see some of that in the Bill as it progresses.

I welcome the support from the hon. Member for Lewes (James MacCleary) on housing. The scrutiny and governance of that will absolutely be controlled by our Secretary of State. Within the covenant, the ability for us to produce an annual report to ensure that we are reporting to Government on the standards of adherence to the covenant and legal duty will be pushed every year. He mentioned a cultural change in the service justice system, which is far broader than what is in the Bill and is required. It is worth noting that Raising our Standards, the violence against women and girls taskforce, the zero tolerance policy and our tri-service complaints process are just some of the things that we are progressing outside legislation. The Bill goes further within legislation. Individually and collectively, the measures will be significant.

The right hon. and gallant Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat) mentioned several speeches in Davos. There are two quotes that I think it worth repeating here:

“A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable”,

and we must not

monetise…relationships. Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty.”

Those two quotes from Davos are worth remembering. We have an idea far bigger than the dollar sign, the euro or the pound, which is a moral obligation towards decency, transparency, the right to self-determination and, of course, democracy.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) for his tribute to the armed forces and in particular for mentioning Combat2Coffee and its indomitable member Terry Butcher, who pushes so hard to support the armed forces. More importantly, I would like the Combat2Coffee shop in the Ministry of Defence to be replicated in all Government Departments—perhaps we can take that on as a separate little task.

I thank the hon. Member for North Devon (Ian Roome) for his support for the Defence Housing Service. The House will be delighted to know that family satisfaction with defence housing has gone up to the highest level since 2021. There is a long way to go, but we are heading in the right direction. Similarly, recruitment is up 13%, and outflow is down 8%.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) for her constant support for all varieties of veterans across her constituency, and for being the MP of a constituency neighbouring mine. When people question whether we were on the frontline in Afghanistan or in any other conflict, I suggest one visit: to Birmingham’s Selly Oak hospital. The nurses, doctors and carers are second to none, and they have seen stuff that would shock us all. If there were any need for better validation of who has been on the frontline and who has not, Selly Oak hospital is the place to go.

The right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) highlighted that the rhetoric is not matched by the record on reservists. I would say that, in some cases, his narrative is not matched with his experience. All the facts are useful, but unless he connects them together, he does not necessarily have the understanding. Some of his comments were absolutely on the money, but one of the biggest problems with the reserves is to do not with finances but with the complete and utter mess of bureaucracy when trying to join the reserves.

[Steve Barclay]

Does the Minister not accept that the number of reservists and the number of training days have both fallen on his watch, and that the sums of money to significantly increase them is modest relative to the £60 billion-plus that the MOD spends?

[Al Carns]

In the strategic defence review, we have committed to an increase of 20%. First, reserve spending went up in 2023-24 from £189.9 million to £202.4 million, so what the right hon. Gentleman says is factually incorrect. Secondly, on personnel statistics, in the last quarter our trained strength in the reserves has risen from 28,000 to 29,000. I think we need collectively to check our statistics.

The right hon. Gentleman will know that to stand here and tell the world about our ability to respond to article 3 would be slightly misguided. He mentioned the creation of quangos, but if he had read the Bill fully he would recognise that the reserve forces and cadets associations are going from 13 to one so-called quangos, with an increase of one in the Defence Housing Service, which is absolutely required to deliver an effective housing service. He will also know that Op Valour means more money for veterans than ever before. Tranche 1 of the funding has now been closed, and recruitment is fully under way. If he would like to talk through why the recruitment has been paused in the past, I am more than happy to talk about that offline, but I want to ensure that the right person is in the right job, so that the programme is a success.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Alex Baker) for her passionate and unrelenting support, which is not lost on me—it is second to none and super impressive. My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) has such a resounding history in the armed forces—it really is impressive. I know that supporting everyone in that constituency is a passion of his.

Will the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) please write to me about the issue with Pauline? I would like to look at it in detail, as I know would my hon. Friend the Minister for Veterans and People. My hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor) welcomed the support for Op Valour. Her support for the Bill as it progresses is useful, and she always champions our armed forces constituents.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was, as always, articulate and to the point. I have spoken to Ministers in Northern Ireland and to the armed forces Veterans’ Commissioner, and while the covenant is applicable to the whole United Kingdom, we must consider how it is executed within the devolved Administrations. I am willing to work with the hon. Gentleman and a collective group of Northern Ireland MPs to ensure that we implement it as best as we possibly can, while accepting that there are nuances with security and how it needs to be implemented as a whole.