Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to his Department’s response to the Defence Sub-Committee’s report, Women in the Armed Forces: From Recruitment to Civilian Life, published on 2 December 2021, if he will take steps to ensure that new measures are developed by the single services to ensure that commanding officers who, when found by the Service Complaints Ombudsman to have fallen short of expected standards in handling service complaints, receive appropriate, consistent and robust consequences that appear on their employment records.

Defence is committed to ensuring that there are tangible consequences for Commanding Officers when they have fallen short of expected standards in their handling of a Service Complaint. A tri-Service policy is being developed and will come into force in August 2022.