Women in the Armed Forces

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to participate in this important debate, Dr Huq. It follows on from the statement that was made earlier. I join others in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton) on putting together an incredible report and on leading the Sub-Committee, which provided some of the solutions that we are looking at here today.

I start by touching on the bigger picture, because we are rightly proud of our armed forces. One question we posed in this inquiry was to ask those who participated in it whether they would recommend joining the armed forces to others. The underlying answer was absolutely yes, but that does not disguise the deep and concerning problems that we are just starting to discuss here today.

It is worth outlining the important societal bond that our military have in the United Kingdom, which is arguably unique in the world. We recruit from the gene pool of the general public. If it is not attractive, does not reflect society or if we are not able to take advantage of the skill sets out there, we will not have a professional Army, Air Force or Navy. When we recruit, it is important that the rest of society sees how well we treat those who serve, whether they be reservists or regulars, and how well they are then looked after when they pack up their uniform for the last time, slide it across to the quartermaster and become a veteran. So, it is important that we look at the questions posed here and some of the concerning answers that have already been touched upon.

As we deal with these issues, my concern is that it is not the first time that they have been raised. We have spoken about the Wigston review and we had the Lyons report. This is not the first time that we are addressing these issues, but this is a comprehensive report. I hope that, in his response, the Minister will recognise why we need not just answers but to see the changes taking place, so that in a year’s time the Defence Committee does not have to undertake another report or call upon another independent study, as I had to call upon the Lyons report about justice only a couple of years ago.

The world is getting more dangerous; we are aware of that. The integrated review confirms the fact that the threats are increasing, and that there is an increased ambition for us to play a role on the international stage. To do so, we need to ensure that we attract the best. It is wonderful to see that every single role in the Army, the Air Force and the Navy is now open to both males and females. Whatever their sex, people can still do whatever role they want to do, whether they want to fly a plane or drive a truck or a tank. They are no longer prohibited from making their mark in whichever area they wish.

I will take advantage of the debate to say that this is probably the wrong time to be cutting the Army by 10,000, but ultimately that is for another day. In attracting the best, we want more women to come forward. I hope the Minister will acknowledge that the ambition for 30% of our armed forces to be female will be a challenge and a struggle; but if we answer some of the issues that we are dealing with today, that target will be a lot easier to secure.

I praise my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham for doing such a superb job. The fact that we had more than 4,000 participants come forward to share their stories, some of them very harrowing indeed, is a testament to how important the inquiry has been.

I pay tribute to the MOD as well. Every time our Committee produces a report there is an obligation for the Department to reply, but rarely do we get a 40-page document of such detail. It is good to see that 33 of the recommendations have automatically been accepted. Others have been looked at with interest, but there are a couple that concern us that have already been touched on, and I will come to those in a second. As a summary of the work-life balance and the challenges facing women in the armed forces today, the report is an incredible outline of where we are.

Participating in some of the groups was very moving, but it is disturbing that our armed forces today are still subject to some of the prejudices and behaviours that I thought had disappeared long ago. I am very grateful to all those brave people who stepped forward and shared their individual stories.

The issues I have are, first, to do with flexible working. The Minister is aware that we now offer that, so that we can strike a better work-like balance, but it is subject to operational commitments. The studies of my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham on the Sub-Committee show that although flexible working is there on paper, in practice it is not taken up. Does the Minister have figures on what percentage of the armed forces take advantage of that?

Secondly, I echo what has been said about the serious offences. When I was sitting in the Minister’s seat, it was my view to honour the reflections of the Lyons study. Justice Lyons said that it was better for the serious cases of rape and serious assault to be moved to civilian courts, where there is the expertise, understanding and appreciation of how to deal with those offences. The military courts do not have that experience. They do not come across such events frequently enough to make the wisest of judgments. That is why we wanted the report to go forward.

Again I iterate what I said in the Chamber today. It was very brave, when the Lords amendment came up at the beginning of the week, for my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham to vote in favour of supporting it, only to be punished by the Whips Office because she stayed loyal to the report and recommendations that the entire Committee supported. I hope that, in their wisdom, the Whips Office will recognise that it is a little bit churlish and silly to go down that road. She had no choice but to do that, as did others, and I hope we will see her back in her role as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the very near future.

The issue of uniforms fitting is critical. We should be able to get that right in this day and age. I can remember when MOD ’95 came in. The Minister might recall from his own experience the big change that took place in equipment. It was quite a dramatic upgrade in what we had on the battlefield as infanteers. There was an awful lot more flexibility, but it was designed for men, not women, and that needs to change.

We need another revolution in how we are able to recruit and look after women in our armed forces. Historically, there have been some major changes—advances, even—not only in how the armed forces were seen, but in how they were perceived to operate. We had the Cardwell reforms of the 1870s and the Haldane reforms prior to the first world war. We now need another gargantuan step forward that embraces the offering that women bring to our armed forces. The statements that we hear frequently about global Britain, as outlined in the integrated review and the Ministry of Defence’s own mission statement, refer to our being a

“problem-solving and burden-sharing nation”.

Let us be that exemplar, and let us show how we mean to go forward in getting the best from our society and allowing them to serve our nation with pride.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Defence People and Veterans (Leo Docherty)]

I am pleased to respond to this debate and acknowledge the huge importance of the work carried out by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton). It was good to hear her speak in the main Chamber earlier.

We institutionally acknowledge that this is a groundbreaking piece of work, and we will use it as a positive lever, as I have said, to accelerate the necessary institutional change in support of all women serving in the armed forces. I note that the scale of the involvement of former and currently serving female service personnel was significant. The historical arc that their service represented, reaching back to Aden and going through to the 1990s and very recent years, was extremely useful. I hope that the report pointed out some positive improvements, but of course it also illustrated very clearly the huge amount of work that needs to be done. I reiterate that we see this as a very positive opportunity to drive change. That was why the Defence Secretary, when he was approached by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham, was very keen that serving female personnel be allowed to give their testimony. He thought that that was a necessary factor in improving the utility and currency of the report, and we are very pleased to see the outcome.

I am grateful for the several contributions in the debate. As well as the speech from my hon. Friend, I was very pleased to hear from the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck), my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) and the hon. Members for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) and for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock). I will quickly address some of the questions before making some broader remarks.

I will address the issue of concurrent jurisdiction straight up. It was a common theme of today’s debate and was, of course, before the House on Monday night. Regarding some of the statistical analysis that has been done this afternoon, I think it will be useful if I point out that according to MOD figures, from June to November this year, there was a 50% conviction rate within the service justice system for rape offences. Over the past six months, of the 13 individuals tried at court martial for rape, six were found guilty and seven were found not guilty. That is why we have confidence in our conviction rate, but of course, we entirely acknowledge that it is too low, and that we must have a wholehearted institutional drive for better outcomes.

In the broader context, though, we regard it as important that we maintain concurrency as part of the service justice system capability. We are cautious, lest salami-slicing capabilities from the service justice system undermines the viability of the whole organisation. That is particularly the case because, as defence, we are expeditionary by design—designed to travel the world and war fight on behalf of the state—and we need an expeditionary justice system to travel with us. Of course, the numbers are very small and the scenarios often unique, but given that we are expeditionary by design and are sometimes required to operate in ungoverned spaces where there is no legal framework, we regard the ability to have an expeditionary service justice system as an important component, which we do not want to undermine by removing concurrency.

[Mr Ellwood]

The Minister is aware of the yellow card procedures and what happens in an operational environment, and he is absolutely right that conduct in those environments needs to be dealt with from a different perspective. The issue that we are trying to shed light on is what happens here in the UK. It is not salami-slicing. As we have said, it is clear that there is expertise in the civilian courts, so let us shift those cases across to the civilian courts, which have the experience that military courts do not. Justice Ministers have called for this in the past, and we are doing so here today.

[Leo Docherty]

I thank my right hon. and gallant Friend for that intervention. Of course, the jurisdiction is concurrent, so the choice of where these cases are best heard remains with the civilian prosecutor. I am not saying that we should have an absolute approach to this: my point is that we need to retain concurrency because of the essential expeditionary nature of our work. However, in simple terms, the civilian prosecutor will always have the final say, and it is quite right that that is the case.