John Healey
MP for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough · Labour · United Kingdom
“Mr Spock, I think some would say, Mr Speaker! My hon. Friend is right. Despite global conflicts, trade tensions and rising threats in the world, which are pushing up inflation, bearing down on growth and pushing up borrowing costs, the UK economy is demonstrating huge resilience.”
“The Prime Minister and I have been clear that we must cut the costs of welfare. On levels of taxation, we had a period of Conservative Government, with low growth and high debt. They crashed the economy with the mini-Budget, and we had levels of taxation that were putting pressure on business, adding to the cost of living.”
“The hon. Lady is talking to the person who led the work to establish a defence and security partnership with the European Union and bilateral agreements with other countries, on which we now build both our economic strength and our national security strength. On the question of the Budget, I ask the hon.”
“Since day one in the job, the Prime Minister and I have been in lockstep in our determination to meet Britain’s fiscal rules. This is the bedrock on which we build good growth and help give a bit of breathing space to families and businesses.”
“May I start by paying tribute to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West and Pudsey (Rachel Reeves)? I am proud to have been a member of a Government with the first female Chancellor in 700 years.”
“My hon. Friend speaks up very strongly for his local area. He is right about the importance of pubs, social clubs and live venues, and about the importance of the 20% cut that we announced in July. These are the things that make the places where we live the places that we also love.”
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“That in itself reinforces the warnings in the Defence Command Paper, which said: “Russia continues to pose the greatest nuclear, conventional military and sub-threshold threat to European security.” That heightens the widening concerns about cutting the strength of the UK’s armed forces in the face of growing global threats, instabilities and uncertainties. There are so many serious flaws in the defence review and the industrial strategy. There is no assessment of current or future capability, no strategic principles or assumptions and nothing about how the Ministry of Defence should be structured or staffed in order to best provide national security.”
“He may take the pledges that he makes to our armed forces and the public lightly; we do not. The integrated review confirms: “State threats to the UK…are growing and diversifying”, yet the defence review is a plan for fewer troops, fewer ships and fewer planes over the next three to four years. I am disappointed that the Defence Secretary cannot be here to answer the growing chorus of concerns about his defence plans, but for today we entirely accept his attendance at the NATO special meeting on Ukraine.”
“Our thoughts across the House today are with the Queen and the royal family as they prepare for the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral on Saturday. His distinguished wartime career in the Navy was followed for decades by that same dedication to serving his country at the side of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. We have called this Opposition debate for Members from all parts of the House to debate the Government’s defence and security plans as set out last month in the integrated review, the Defence Command Paper and the defence and security industrial strategy. Our starting point is the Prime Minister. He said at the launch of his 2019 election manifesto on behalf of all Conservative Members here: “We will not be cutting our armed forces in any form. We will be maintaining the size of our armed forces”.”
“I beg to move, That this House notes the Prime Minister’s 2019 election pledge that his Government would not cut the Armed Services in any form; further notes with concern the threat assessment in the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, that threats from other states to the UK and its allies are growing and diversifying; calls on the Government to rethink its plan set out in the Defence Command Paper, published in March 2021, CP411, to reduce key defence capabilities and reduce the strength of the Armed Forces, including a further reduction in the size of the Army by 2025; and calls on the Prime Minister to make an oral statement to Parliament by June 30 2021 on the Government’s plans to reduce the capability and strength of the Armed Forces.”
“Sadly we are nowhere near another election at this point. We are at this stage in the parliamentary cycle with these plans on the table, and our interest is in the Government getting this right. The decisions taken now will set the shape of our defence forces for the next 10 years. The decisions taken now will be the framework with which a future Labour Government, after the next election, will have to live.”
“So I say to the Minister: get to grips with the budget, consider the concerns raised, rethink the plans and report back to Parliament before the end of June. Britain was promised better, Britain deserves better and Britain needs better from its Defence Department.”
“Ministers talk about the rise in capital funding but not the real cut in revenue funding over the next four years, which means less money for forces’ recruitment, training, pay and families. It means a possible cut of 40% to the budget of the Office for Veterans’ Affairs. Worse still, over half this year’s £16.4 billion defence equipment budget is revenue-based for equipment support and maintenance. This revenue cut is the Achilles heel of defence plans. No other Whitehall Department is projected to have a cut in day-to-day spending between now and 2024-25. The Defence Secretary should never have agreed it. This defence review and the defence and security industrial strategy announce nothing new that Ministers are doing to get a grip of the MOD’s budget failings and to make the most of this big, one-off opportunity from the extra funding.”
“But I guess it is not hard to see why. The defence budget was balanced in 2012, and the equipment programme was fully funded, but Ministers since then have lost control. The National Audit Office has now judged the defence equipment plan unaffordable for the last four years in a row and reports a black hole of more than £17 billion over the next 10 years. This black hole in the defence budget has grown by £4 billion in the last year, on this Defence Secretary’s watch. The MOD’s annual report and accounts suggest that the annual marginal cost for 10,000 Army personnel is around half a billion pounds. This deficit alone each year could cover the cost of maintaining Army numbers three times over. The new defence budget is not all it seems.”
“After a decade of decline since 2010, which the Prime Minister called an “era of retreat”, the Defence Secretary promised that this defence review would be different from the last two Conservative defence reviews, which weakened the foundations of our armed forces. They were driven by finances, not by threats, cutting full-time forces by 45,000 and cutting critical defence capabilities and upgrades, alongside plans for full capability forces in the future that have not been fulfilled. I fear that this defence review simply makes the same mistakes of the past. Fourth and finally, in November, when the Prime Minister announced the extra funding as part of a four-year funding settlement, we welcomed it as promising a long overdue upgrade of Britain’s defences, so we are dismayed now by more defence cuts, despite this £16.5 billion boost.”
“In the face of growing threats and the increasing ambition for the global role that our armed forces will play, there is a strong case against, not for, some of the Government’s short-term capability cuts. Taking two Type 23 frigates out of service in the next two years will reduce the Navy’s anti-submarine strength. Ending the RAF’s E-3 planes will leave a two-year gap in airborne early warning before the E-7 Wedgetails come into service in 2023. The Army is losing nine Chinook helicopters, 14 Hercules transporter planes and 20 Puma support helicopters. The third argument is one that I am sad to have to make, and it is this: we are faced now with more of the same.”
“The current Chief of the Defence Staff said in 2015 that the ability to field a single war-fighting division was “the standard whereby a credible army is judged”, yet the fully capable division mandated then, including a new strike brigade, will not be battle-ready for another 10 years according to evidence that the MOD gave to the Defence Committee in the autumn. A former CDS, General Sir David Richards, has said that further cuts to the Army would mean that the UK was “no longer taken seriously as a military power” and that this would “damage our relationship with the US and our position in NATO”. My second argument is that this is not just about numbers.”
“The rapid response required to the unexpected also requires highly-trained, adaptable, cohesive combat troops, which even the best reserves, called up as last-minute reinforcements, cannot provide. The third “R” is renewal. The fewer troops and full-strength battalions we have, the less able the Army is to sustain long campaigns. Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq all required the long-term rotation of troops. We are a leading member of NATO. We are one of the P5 countries at the UN Security Council. We may again be called on to deploy and sustain forces away from the UK. We may not seek a major crisis, but we may well face a major crisis that comes to us. The final “R” is reputation.”
“They do not see this as a “manpower or machines” question, but as personnel and technology together. Although high-tech weapons systems are essential, highly-trained personnel are simply indispensable, and size matters. These planned cuts are damaging for four reasons. Let us call them “the four Rs”. The first is resilience. Cutting Army numbers reduces the UK’s national resilience by reducing our capacity to react to unforeseen circumstances at home and abroad—not just major wars, but insurgencies such as Afghanistan, international interventions such as Sierra Leone or Kosovo, and emergency support operations such as post terrorist attacks or during covid. The second “R” is readiness.”
“My right hon. Friend is right, of course. There has been an £8 billion real-terms cut to the defence budget since 2010. That is part of the reason that we have seen 45,000 full-time forces cut over the last decade. I will return to some of those points. For now, I want to make this point: we can destroy enemy forces with technology, but we cannot seize and hold ground without troops. Drones and robots do not win hearts and minds; they do not mend broken societies; they do not give covid jabs. These deeper cuts now planned could limit our forces’ capacity simultaneously to deploy overseas, support allies, maintain our own strong national defences and reinforce our domestic resilience, as we have seen our troops do to help our country through the covid crisis. Other countries have expanded troop numbers even as they develop technology.”
“Yesterday, the Defence Secretary asked our forces to do more with less. Today, the Minister is asking industry to do more with more. This is a big, one-off opportunity. Ministers have got to get this right. It is no good if in two years’ time the NAO still says that the military equipment plan is unaffordable and still says there is a black hole in the defence budget. Does the Minister accept that the single challenge for the MOD now is delivery, delivery, delivery? On behalf of the British people and British forces, we will hold them hard to account for exactly that.”
“Only three of the MOD’s 30 major projects have a clear Government green light on time and on budget. The Prime Minister told the House: “We are setting up a unit to ensure that we get value out of this massive package.” —[ Official Report , 19 November 2020; Vol. 684, c. 499.] I have tabled the same set of questions to the Minister twice now about the progress, powers and personnel of this unit, and he has given the same evasive non-answers both times, so now is a good time for him to level with the whole House. Will he admit that there is no unit and no plan for a unit? The Prime Minister was making it up, was he not? The important point is this: without a revolution in the way that the MOD controls procurement costs, we are doomed to see it repeat the mistakes of the past.”
“We welcomed the Prime Minister’s extra £16.5 billion in capital funding after the last decade of decline, and we welcome the detail set out by the Minister today, but 30,000 jobs in the defence industry have gone since 2010, and nearly £420 million in real terms has been cut in defence R&D, so in many UK regions the money promised today will still be well short of what has been taken away over the last decade. With the National Audit Office reporting a black hole in the defence budget of up to £17 billion, and with the permanent secretary telling the Public Accounts Committee that not all is “going to go on new and revolutionary kit”, exactly how much of this extra money will be swallowed by the black hole in current programmes? The MOD’s bad habits run deep.”
“Will the Minister state today, in the clearest possible terms, the Government’s commitment to build in Britain? How will this strategy strengthen the UK’s defence resilience by growing our sovereign capacity to replace equipment if it is lost in conflict? What is the strategy to boost Britain’s foundation industries linked to defence, such as steel? This strategy demands a massive change in mindset in the MOD and the military, which only Ministers can lead, so will the Minister commit to publishing an update on progress, with another oral statement to the House one year from now, not least so that we can judge the Prime Minister’s boast in launching the integrated view that we will open up “new vistas of economic progress, creating 10,000 jobs every year”? —[ Official Report , 19 November 2020; Vol. 684, c. 488.] Let me turn to the money.”
“We also welcome the change to naval procurement policy, and we welcome the commitment to invest £6.6 billion in defence research and development over the next four years. However, there is a question at the heart of this strategy: is this the start of a new era, with the aim not just to make in Britain and maintain in Britain, but to develop now the technologies and companies that we will need in 10 years’ time to procure in Britain? Labour’s determination to see British investment directed first to British industry is fundamental. When done well, that strengthens our UK economy and, as covid has exposed the risks of relying on foreign supply chains, it also has the potential to strengthen our UK sovereignty and our security. We therefore want a higher bar set for any decision to procure Britain’s defence equipment from other countries.”
“On this day, when we mark a full year since the country first went into lockdown, may I use this opportunity to pay tribute to the men and women of the armed forces, who have done so much to help the country through this pandemic? I also pay tribute to the men and women who work in our UK defence sector. They, too, responded rapidly, making personal protective equipment and ventilators, and they play a vital part in designing, producing and maintaining the equipment our forces need. Labour welcomes the publication of this strategy; indeed, the very use of the term “strategy” is something of a victory in itself. We welcome the confirmation that global competition by default, begun by the White Paper in 2012, has gone; it is high time we put an end to a British Government being just as happy buying abroad as building in Britain.”
“Our highest priority must therefore be Europe, the north Atlantic and the High North—our NATO area. While the Prime Minister talks up Britain’s Indo-Pacific focus, how does the Defence Secretary reassure NATO that we are not neglecting the leading role that our alliance countries, including the US, continue to require of Britain? We want to see this defence review succeed, but there is a growing gulf between the Government’s ambitions and their actions—a gulf that we will challenge hard in the months ahead, and that the Secretary of State has much more to do to close.”
“The White Paper also has little to say on the lessons from covid. Pandemic was indeed identified as a tier 1 threat in 2015 and 2018, but no preparation was done, and when the virus hit, less than 1% of our personal protective equipment was sourced in the UK. Full-spectrum society resilience requires training, planning and exercising that must be led by the Government and involve private industry, local agencies and the public. Some countries are ahead of us with such civil-military strategies for the grey zone. Why does the White Paper have nothing to catch Britain up? Finally, on the principal threats, China is certainly a great and growing power challenge that the US, backed by democratic countries such as Britain, must meet. However, the White Paper rightly confirms that Russia remains Britain’s greatest state threat.”
“The Secretary of State’s new Office of Net Assessment and Challenge will deal with policy but not money or delivery, so will he commission a special capability review of the MOD, conducted by a top team of internal and external experts, backed by the NAO and reporting to this House? On nuclear, Labour’s commitment to the renewal of our deterrent is non-negotiable, alongside our multilateral commitment to nuclear disarmament and greater arms control. The Secretary of State made no mention in his statement of reversing 30 years of proud non-proliferation policy in the UK under successive Governments, and the White Paper does not come close to explaining, let alone justifying, this change. Parliament, the public and our allies are owed a much fuller account of this decision from Ministers.”
“How much of this extra money will be swallowed by the black hole in the current programmes and not used to fund the new ones that the Secretary of State has announced today? Ministers talk about the rise in capital funding but not the real cut in revenue funding over the next four years. That cut in day-to-day spending is the Achilles heel of defence plans. The Secretary of State should never have agreed it. Will he today spell out the consequences of that real-terms cut in revenue funding for forces recruitment, training, pay and family support? The MOD’s bad habits run deep. Only three of its 30 major projects, together worth a staggering £162 billion, have a clear green light, and are on time and on budget. It is clear to me that Parliament needs a system of special measures for the MOD.”
“Finally, on funding for single living accommodation, I was not going to raise this, but the Secretary of State said today that, as the Ministry of Defence has told the National Audit Office, the plan is for £1.5 billion over 10 years. However, page 36 of the White Paper says £1.3 billion. Is that a cut, or is it an error? The finances for the last defence review were a fiction. The MOD’s budget was balanced in 2012, but the NAO has now judged the defence equipment plan “unaffordable” for four years in a row, and it reports a black hole of up to £17 billion. We welcome the Prime Minister’s extra £16.5 billion, but there is a risk that we will be throwing good money after bad.”
“We welcome the plans announced today for cyber, for space, for defence science, for artificial intelligence and for the next generation of fighter jets, but these new technologies may take years to come on stream, so this is a plan for cuts now with a promise of jam tomorrow. Let me ask the Defence Secretary a series of questions. When will the war fighting division promised in 2015 finally be battle-ready? When will we have enough British F-35 jets to fly from our aircraft carriers? Will there be any short-term cuts in anti-submarine warfare capabilities? How will the new Ranger regiment be recruited? Where will it be based, and when will it be fully operational? Will the plans for the combat service support battalions mean any reduction in the number of Army medics?”
“How can he argue that these deeper cuts will not limit our forces’ capacity to simultaneously deploy overseas, support allies, maintain strong national defences, and reinforce domestic resilience, as they have done in helping our country through the recent covid crisis? What does he say to the ex-Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir David Richards, who recently said that further cuts to the Army would mean the UK was no longer taken seriously as a military power, and that this would damage our relationship with the US and our position in NATO? What does the Defence Secretary say to each and every voter who heard the Prime Minister say this at the launch of the Conservatives’ 2019 election campaign: “We will not be cutting our armed forces in any form. We will be maintaining the size of our armed forces”?”
“The strength of our armed forces is being cut again; crucial military capabilities are cut again; and there are plans to complete a full overhaul of the Army in 10 years’ time—again. How do the Government square this circle? The threats to Britain are increasing, and our forces will be forward deployed further from home, yet this is a plan for fewer troops, fewer ships and fewer planes over the next few years. Our armed forces are rightly respected worldwide for their professionalism and all-round excellence, but size matters. Our full-time forces are already nearly 10,000 below the strength that Ministers said in 2015 was needed to meet the threats Britain faces. The Defence Secretary goes further today, confirming that the Army alone will have its established strength cut by 10,000 to just 72,500 over the next four years.”
“In the defence review, the Secretary of State was right to set out that grey zone warfare, terrorism, climate change and organised crime mean that the threats to our national security and international stability are becoming less conventional, less predictable and more continuous. We need this reassessment, because the last two Conservative defence reviews have weakened the foundations of our armed forces—they cut our full-time armed forces by 45,000, cut the defence budget by £8 billion, and cut critical defence capabilities and upgrades, largely to deal with budget pressures. The Prime Minister promised an end to this era of retreat, and the Defence Secretary pledged that this defence review would be different, yet I fear that it is set to repeat many of the same mistakes.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for an advance copy of his statement and an advance copy of the White Paper a little earlier, although I believe, Mr Speaker, that the House will share my dismay that so much of the content of the White Paper has been given in advance to the media over the past week, despite your warning to the House and to the Defence Secretary last Monday. Our forces deserve better, as do the public and Parliament. This defence review could not be more important. Last year we were promised “the most radical reassessment of” the UK’s “place in the world since the end of the Cold War”; we need just that. The integrated review last week confirmed that “State threats to the UK, and to our allies, are growing and diversifying”.”
“May I, on behalf of the official Opposition, offer my tribute to the service of Sergeant Gavin Hillier and say to his family, his friends and his comrades that our condolences are with them? I certainly welcomed the weekend news that the integrated review will commit the UK to full-spectrum cyber, as the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) has just said, although I strongly feel that announcements of important Government policy such as that should be made in Parliament and not in the press. Is not the wider security lesson from cyber and other grey-zone threats that more civil and military planning, training and exercising is required? Given that some countries are well ahead of us, will the integrated review catch up with the need for full-spectrum society resilience?”
“Why are Britain’s full-time armed forces still 10,000 short of the numbers that the last defence review, in 2015, said were needed to meet the threats and keep the country safe, which the Defence Secretary’s Government pledged to meet?”
“The Secretary of State may want to check the numbers. I was talking about the full-time armed forces, not the full-time Army numbers. He has rightly said before that our forces personnel will go to war alongside robots in the future, but robots do not seize and hold vital ground from the enemy. They do not keep the peace or rebuild broken societies, and they do not give covid jabs. Size matters and no Government can secure the nations with under-strength armed forces. Is it not the truth that over the past decade we have seen our armed forces run down—numbers down, pay down, morale down—and that all the indication from stories ahead of tomorrow’s integrated review is that Ministers are set to make the same mistakes as in the last reviews, with our servicemen and women paying the price for cuts and bad defence budgeting?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The ministerial code is clear that “When Parliament is in session, the most important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance, in Parliament.” I know that you believe this principle to be fundamental to the proper role of Parliament and the accountability of Ministers. We look forward to the Prime Minister’s statement tomorrow on the integrated review, yet over the last week there have been a series of detailed media briefings about decisions in that integrated review. With the Defence Secretary in his place, can you offer guidance to the House, ahead of the follow-up Command Paper on Monday and the defence industrial strategy on Tuesday, so that we do not have the same serious disregard of the ministerial code and disrespect for Parliament?”
“In fact, in 2009 Labour in government consulted on introducing legally enforceable rights for the forces, their families and veterans, and our 2010 manifesto proposed to enshrine those rights in the armed forces charter. I am therefore pleased that the Secretary of State could say on publication of the Bill at the end of last month: “For the first time ever we are putting into law the Armed Forces Covenant.” The Secretary of State might just want to let David Cameron know that. In fact, he might be surprised to learn it, because he boasted in 2015 that he had already done so, saying: “We are the first Government to put the military covenant properly into law”. —[ Official Report , 4 November 2015; Vol. 601, c. 961.]”
“The Bill rests on the groundbreaking Armed Forces Act 2006, which consolidated half a century of service law. To stress the point, on Second Reading of that Bill, in 2005-06, a Government Back Bencher made a strong argument for a service complaints commissioner, which at first was knocked back by the Secretary of State, John Reid. However, by the time the Bill became an Act, the proposal from my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) had been incorporated fully into the legislation. He will no doubt have fresh proposals for this Bill to put to this Secretary of State. On clause 8, we stand fully behind the armed forces covenant and the aim to give it full legal force.”
“As it stands, this Bill is a big missed opportunity—the opportunity to make good in full on the commitments in the armed forces covenant, so that Britain becomes the best country in the world to serve and to be a veteran; the opportunity to fix long-run problems for forces personnel, their families and veterans, which have become so clear over the last decade; and the opportunity to set a framework for the armed forces that is fit for the challenges and complex threats that Britain must face. Let me make this point about the Armed Forces Bill, in particular to Government Members who are used to toeing the line on legislation. This Bill is different. This Bill is bipartisan and goes next to a Select Committee, not a Public Bill Committee. The Bill can be improved from all sides as it goes through Parliament.”
“This Armed Forces Bill renews the legal basis for our armed forces and system of military law, and in turn also renews the nation’s commitment to our forces personnel through the covenant; and, with almost 70 speakers from all parts of the House, it is quite clear this afternoon that the House is determined, together, to do exactly that. Labour supports this legislation. We share that aim, and we welcome the order that will follow this debate to extend the present Armed Forces Act from the end of May until the end of December, so that Parliament has the time to give the proper scrutiny to improving this Bill.”
“I join the Minister in his tribute and thanks to the men and women of our armed forces—those deployed to standing commitments, from Cyprus to the Falklands; those serving as part of our NATO defences in Estonia or the UN peacekeeping in Mali; and of course those who are part of the largest ever peacetime deployment in this country, helping this country through the covid crisis. British forces are respected worldwide for their professionalism and for the values that we most admire: integrity, loyalty, discipline and service.”
“It rightly says that a decade’s experience of the covenant confirms that, “the range of policy issues that have a significant impact on the Armed Forces community is wide and ever-changing: including health, housing, employment, pensions, compensation, social care, education, criminal justice and immigration”. The Bill is too narrow. It covers only aspects of health, housing and education. The Bill creates a two-tier covenant. It applies only to local councils and local agencies, not to national Governments. The Government are letting themselves off the hook entirely when, as the Legion says, many of the areas in which forces personnel and veterans have problems are the responsibility of national Governments or are based on national guidance to delivery agencies.”
“Members on both sides who have championed the cause, of councils and local agencies that have delivered services to our veterans, and of service charities such as the Royal British Legion, Cobseo, the Confederation of Service Charities, the RAF Families Federation, SSAFA, the Armed Forces Charity and Help for Heroes, which have hugely improved Government policy, advanced public understanding and developed direct support for forces and veterans. Those charities welcome the Bill, as I do, but they are disappointed by the limitations of the legislation, as I am. I must say to hon. Members that, if they read one background briefing for this Bill, they should make it the background briefing that the Royal British Legion has sent to us today.”
“My right hon. Friend is right, of course. I want to stress, to the extent that I can, the cross-party, long-term and long-run support for many of these provisions. He is right that the covenant has its roots in the previous Labour Government—we called it a charter then, rather than a covenant—but over the past two decades, I believe we have made great strides in providing better services, support and opportunities for service personnel and veterans. That is to the credit of Ministers who have made it their personal mission, of hon.”
“I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s interest in this. I think there is potential, as he indicates, for cross- party support for doing more than is currently in the Bill on the implementation of the covenant. The problem is not that it is prescriptive, but that it is prescriptively narrow at present, directed only at local councils and local agencies and not the responsibilities or services of national Government, and that it is too narrow, in that it mentions three areas when the lived experience of armed forces and veterans quite clearly raises problems on a wide range of other fronts. That is the lesson of the experience of the past decade and more—that is the challenge we must meet. This is a once-in-five-years piece of legislation and I want to ensure that we on the Opposition side play a part in helping Parliament to meet that challenge.”
“First, Ministers are missing the opportunity to improve confidence and results in cases of murder, manslaughter and rape committed by service personnel in the UK. As the Minister has conceded, Lyons recommended that those cases should be dealt with by the civilian justice system. He pointed out that the military courts secure convictions in only one in 10 cases of rape, while Crown Prosecution Service figures show that the civilian rate is around 50%. Such a move would restore the position that Parliament intended when the principle of concurrent jurisdiction was first introduced in the Armed Forces Act 2006. The Secretary of State has so far just said no but has offered no rationale for rejecting that recommendation, and the Minister this afternoon has again offered no justification for rejecting that recommendation.”
“Lyons rightly said: “Independent oversight is a critical factor in bringing transparency and building confidence in policing.” We welcome the new Service Police Complaints Commissioner, modelled on the civilian police’s Independent Office for Police Conduct. We will want to ensure in the Select Committee that the Government get important details right on matters such as time limits for bringing complaints, protections for whistleblowers, scope to consider super-complaints and respective remits for the commissioner alongside the Service Complaints Ombudsman. We also welcome the expansion of the courts martial boards, with new rules on reaching qualified majority verdicts. However, there are two big gaps.”
“When only one in 10 judicial reviews succeed and the cost of unsuccessful judicial reviews is upwards of £80,000, proposals for easy, accessible redress beyond a judicial review are also essential before the Select Committee stage. I trust that all Members on the Select Committee will want to pursue those shortcomings with the Minister. Let us not allow this golden opportunity to reinforce the covenant remain a missed opportunity, as it is in the Bill. I turn to the service justice system and clauses 1 to 7. In the five years since the last Armed Forces Act, the Government have extensively reviewed the service justice system, with his honour Shaun Lyons reporting early last year, backed by a service policing review carried out by Professor Sir Jon Murphy. Many of the recommendations from those reviews are in the Bill.”
“My right hon. Friend is right. He mentions teeth, and I will come to that in a moment. Members on both sides of the House and the Select Committee can help the Minister with his personal mission to do best by forces personnel and veterans. We can make this stronger and better than the missed opportunity that the provision in clause 8 represents. It is too narrow. It creates a two-tier covenant, and it is too weak. It offers no definition of what “have due regard to” the covenant means, and it offers no enforcement for members of the armed forces community who feel they have been let down. That makes the statutory guidance that the Minister promised at oral questions last week essential before the Bill’s Select Committee scrutiny stage.”
“In conclusion, the Minister has said to the House that he is open to proposals to improve the Bill. We will take him at his word. We will at times test his word, but we will work with the Minister if he will work with us. We will work cross-party and with a range of interests beyond Parliament to build consensus so that this Bill, when it becomes an Act, really does make the most of this opportunity to strengthen the nation’s commitment to our forces, their families and veterans.”
“Their service to our country earns them the right to live in our country, yet the Government charge huge fees to apply for British citizenship, so someone leaving the forces now with a partner and two children has a bill of almost £10,000. It is unjust; it is un-British. I want to see Parliament use the Armed Forces Bill to get Ministers to scrap these unfair fees. Finally, on the role of reservists in our armed forces, covid has made it clear that our military are essential to our national resilience, not just our national security, and that reservists will contribute more in future to our defence capabilities. While the Government’s moves to make reservist training more flexible are sensible and welcome, I want to see Parliament use the Armed Forces Bill to deal with other problems they face, especially with employers.”
“I want to see Parliament use the Armed Forces Bill to mandate Ministers to report to Parliament each year on the fighting strength of our armed forces. On maintaining the pay of our armed forces, the decade of decline since 2010 has seen military pay fall behind and with it, by the way, morale and retention. For instance, last year an Army private was getting almost £2,000 a year less than they would have done if the pay had kept pace with inflation. I want to see Parliament use this Armed Forces Bill as the basis for a debate about making the recommendations of the independent Armed Forces Pay Review Body binding on Ministers. On justice in our armed forces, more than 6,000 personnel serve in Britain’s armed forces from overseas, mainly from the Commonwealth.”