Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many more service complaints they expect to receive following the enactment of the Armed Forces Commissioner Bill and its provision for families to submit such complaints; and what estimate they have made of the budget uplift required to deal with any such increase.

While the Armed Forces Commissioner will absorb the functions of the existing Service Complaints Ombudsman for the Armed Forces, the Bill does not make any substantive changes to the Service Complaints System. Families will not be able to access the Service Complaints system, which is specifically designed for serving personnel. The Bill focuses instead on the additional powers and functions the Commissioner will have to launch and report on investigations into general service welfare matters.

The Commissioner will be a direct point of contact for service families, providing a route for families to raise concerns on matters which could form the topic of a service welfare investigation. The financial implications of establishing and maintaining the office of the Armed Forces Commissioner, with their additional functions, are estimated to be within the range of £4.5 - £5.5m per year. This is only an initial estimate and represents a significant uplift on the annual running costs of the Service Complaints Ombudsman. The 2023 expenditure for the Service Complaints Ombudsman was in the region of £1.8m.