Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Bill [Lords]

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 29th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

rose—

[Mr Ellwood]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the Chamber.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I remember the Minister bringing the Second Reading debate to a conclusion 40 minutes early. I just want to touch on what he said about looking at evidence. The 2015 peer review body highlighted in its evidence that people sometimes join the forces to get skills before moving on to better-paid jobs elsewhere. One of the ways around that would be to give them a decent pay rise. Will he commit to that?

[Mr Ellwood]

If the hon. Gentleman had been here at the start of the debate, he would have heard me say that a pay rise is being considered by the Armed Forces Pay Review Body. The 1% pay freeze has been lifted, which is good news, and we look forward to the recommendations that will be made in March.

The MOD already gathers evidence on the impact that new forms of flexible working will have on our people. We think that that will provide more value than any evaluation from an independent contractor. We do not need to introduce more evaluation, further levels of statistics or additional reporting. It remains our view that imposing new statutory obligations would be unnecessarily costly, delay the introduction of the new measures and benefits for our people, and add little value to what we are trying to achieve. As I have said, we recognise the importance of keeping the effects of these changes under continuous review, in terms of the benefits to personnel and the impact on recruitment and retention.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

It is a pleasure to speak on Third Reading. I am slightly concerned that there will be a diminution now in the regularity of what seems to be our weekly defence meetings, as this was the only Defence Bill in the Government’s Queen’s Speech for this two-year Parliament. However, it has been a good Bill and I thank the Minister for his kind words about my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) and the way she has engaged with it on behalf of the SNP. He and the House know of her long association with the armed forces, of which she is rightly proud, and she better informs all of us whenever she takes part in these debates.

I wish to pick up on what the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon), said about the fact that there is now no woman in the ministerial team. There are no women serving as heads of the armed forces of course, and there is unlikely to be one any time soon. Only three of the 12 senior managers who make up the senior civil servants at the MOD are women. I think I am right in saying that that makes the MOD the only all-male-run Department in terms of ministerial faces. I invite the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks or one of his esteemed colleagues to intervene on me to save a recommendation, which I fear might have the opposite effect, that I made last time for the promotion of the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan). I fear my recommending her promotion is perhaps the kiss of death, so I invite the right hon. Gentleman or someone else on the Conservative Benches to redeem that recommendation, if not now, certainly behind the scenes.

I feel as though I am repeating myself—forgive me for this—but I want to pick up on some of the things the Government have not brought forward. If they do bring them forward, however, they will find 35 Members of the SNP willing to support them. One of those things is an end to the Capita contract, as mentioned by the shadow Secretary of State. It is a rip-off and it is farcical. We largely agree across the House that it is farcical and it needs to come to an end. It does a disservice to those who serve in uniform.

I mentioned the issue of housing to the Minister at the recent Defence Question Time. The housing is in a dreadful condition. Carillion receives 1,500 calls a day in complaints from people living in the CarillionAmey estate up and down the country. We can read all about that. It goes beyond broken lightbulbs. We are talking about boilers remaining broken down for weeks on end and people moving into accommodation whose kitchens have no units or cookers. They deserve so much better. Frankly, some of the standards would not pass the social housing standards of the 1970s and 1980s. If the Government were minded to resolve that issue, they would have the support of 35 SNP Members of Parliament, of many on their own Back Benches and of many, if not all, on the Labour Benches.

My last point relates to pay. I accept that there is an independent pay review body and that the 1% cap has been lifted. That is to be welcomed. However, the review body only makes recommendations to the Government and the Government can of course go much further. I understand that they could go further right now and that they do not need to wait any longer.

It is regrettable that members of the armed forces and other public sector workers across the board have had a real-terms pay cut because of the freeze and because of inflation. It would show a bit of goodwill to give those people a decent pay rise. If the Government were minded to do that, they would have our support.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

There are a lot of good things in the Bill, but one of the tests to determine whether the Government value the public services and the armed forces will be whether they award them a decent pay rise. Obviously that has to be negotiated. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that a recommendation from the pay review body is simply for a minimum and that the Government could go a lot further.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. We have previously had a debate on pay. I accept that it is not the dominant issue for members of the armed forces, but we would be kidding ourselves on if we did not accept that it was a major factor in recruitment and retention, as the pay review body’s own evidence suggests.

[Kirstene Hair]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that it is regrettable that the Scottish Government increased the income tax for servicemen and women?

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I am amazed that it took the hon. Lady so long to make that point. As she knows, because she attends these debates—sometimes—the changes in taxation have actually brought in a tax cut for the vast majority of serving personnel in Scotland, including some in her own constituency. They are among the lowest-paid members not only of the armed forces but of the public sector across the UK. By contrast, the pay freeze for someone on, say, £21,000 represents a cut of £400. I am willing to engage in a debate on pay, and I am happy to defend my Government’s record, but would she accept that it is time for the pay cut imposed by her Government to go? Nothing?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman cannot really ask questions across the Floor of the House if the hon. Lady is sitting there being quiet and well-behaved.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I think there was some looking at the feet there, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I take your point.

It has been mentioned that members of the armed forces do not have a body like the Police Federation to advocate on their behalf, so it falls to Members of this House to do so. Some Members of the party of government —albeit a minority—seem unwilling to take on Ministers about this, although I commend Conservative Members who are not backward in coming forward in that regard. We do our armed forces a disservice if we do not do that. So let us be radical and follow the good practice that we see elsewhere. Let us give them a body on a statutory footing to make sure that they are represented around the table.

[Mr Ellwood]

I could not resist intervening on the hon. Gentleman. To suggest that Ministers are not making the case, along with Back Benchers on both sides, for funding for the armed forces in the defence budget is to misunderstand and indeed to be asleep in the debate that has been taking place over the past couple of months. He is also completely ignoring the banding and the progressive pay scales that are in place. It is absolutely right to have a debate about pay, but he must recognise that the banding does not mean that there is a pay freeze. He is missing out a chunk of understanding about armed forces pay.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I almost do not know where to begin with that. As I have mentioned, there was a debate in this House specifically on armed forces pay, and I am well aware of the banding that is in place, but the Minister has the power to offer a pay rise. He does not need to wait for a recommendation or to take the recommendation from the pay review body. It is after all only a recommendation. I know that he fights his hardest for cash for his Department and for the armed forces—I read about it in The Times newspaper on a daily basis—but let us be honest: the defence review has been kicked into the later part of the year, the Government have apparently removed its fiscally neutral element, and from what I can see, three of the four announcements made by the Secretary of State on Thursday are going to amount to more cuts in capability elsewhere. I do not doubt that he and other Ministers do their best to take on what the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) described as

“the pinstripe warriors at the Treasury”.—[Official Report, 24 January 2018; Vol. 635, c. 128WH.]

However, it is about time that we started to see some of the fruits of their labours and of those who sit behind them on the Back Benches.