It is a pleasure to speak from the Dispatch Box on this important legislation ahead of Armed Forces Day on Saturday. This Armed Forces Week is a chance to recognise and celebrate the service of our nation’s forces at home and abroad, past and present. Up and down the country, physical and virtual events will be held while the Armed Forces Day flag is flying proudly on buildings and famous landmarks around the UK. I was delighted to attend the flag-raising ceremony here in the House on Monday, where Mr Speaker set an example by signing the covenant. I look forward to events this weekend in my home city of Portsmouth, the heart and home of the Royal Navy.
Today is also Reserves Day, so I would like to take the opportunity to celebrate their contribution to our national defence and resilience. This year in particular has seen reservists contribute to the covid support force, providing medical and logistical support, as well as deploying skills from their professional lives. They remain a unique asset, the hidden heroes among us, balancing work and training. It is vital that they are better integrated into our forces.
It is timely that the Bill comes back before the House today. Labour supports our armed forces and welcomes the principles behind the Bill, which provides a rare opportunity for the Government to deliver meaningful improvements to the day-to-day lives of our forces’ personnel, veterans and their families. Its unusual legislative journey means that we have had a chance to consider it in detail and have a genuine cross-party discussion on how improvements can be made. That is the spirit in which Labour has approached the Bill. We have worked with service personnel, veterans, service charities and colleagues from across the House to get the very best for our forces in this once-in-a-Parliament piece of legislation.
I want to pay tribute to the local authorities, service providers, charities and voluntary organisations that are working hard to make the covenant a reality across the United Kingdom. I also want to thank those who served alongside me on the Bill Select Committee and the hon. Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) for his leadership in the Chair. Despite that considered and expert input, however, the Government have consistently refused to hear and address fundamental concerns about the Bill. In doing so, they are missing an opportunity to deliver real improvements to the day-to-day lives of service personnel, veterans and their families. Labour’s amendments offer Ministers a fresh opportunity to get that right.
Turning to amendments 1 to 4 and 6, first, evidence from charities such as the Royal British Legion and those delivering services for veterans on the ground has reinforced Labour’s concerns that the Bill is too weak and too narrow. The Bill piles new and vague legal
responsibilities to deliver the covenant on a wide range of public bodies, but mysteriously they do not apply to central Government. In practice, this would create a farcical reality where a chair of school governors has a legal responsibility to have due regard to the armed forces covenant, but Government Departments, including the Ministry of Defence, do not. As the Legion itself has pointed out, many of the policy areas in which members of the armed forces community experience difficulty are the responsibility of national Government or based on national guidance. Ministers must not be allowed to outsource the delivery of important promises in the armed forces covenant. Also, the Bill’s limited focus on housing, healthcare and education risks creating a two-tier covenant. This could start a race to the bottom on standards in other areas and will bake in the existing postcode lottery on access to services. Social care, pensions, employment and immigration are among the long list of areas we know will not be covered by this once-in-a-Parliament piece of legislation as it stands.
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The exclusion of the Ministry of Defence from the responsible public bodies also means the Bill offers little to actively serving personnel, who have gone above and beyond to support our frontline response to a pandemic in the past year. This Government will thank them by missing this crucial opportunity to make long overdue improvements in the standard of service accommodation and handing most of them another real-terms pay cut this year. Labour’s amendments 1 to 4 would force Ministers to take the same legal responsibility for delivering the promises of the covenant as is placed on other public bodies, and amendment 6 would compel the Secretary of State to set out how and when he plans to use powers granted to him by the Bill to widen its scope.
Turning to new clause 7, the Bill does nothing to address the shameful scandal of visa fees for non-UK personnel. Under current rules, Commonwealth personnel face a fee of £2,389 per person to continue to live in the UK after having served at least four years. To add further insult, they are given just 28 days following their discharge in which to pay it. This leaves many facing financial ruin and feeling abandoned by the country that they served with courage and distinction.
During the Bill’s Select Committee stage, we heard evidence from Citizenship 4 Soldiers, which has been a tireless advocate for non-UK personnel. It described how such personnel have had to get second jobs if they want to bring family members over, or are simply priced out of being able to stay in the UK. Those without indefinite leave to remain have no recourse to public funds, leaving them destitute and desperate. It was aware of at least one case where a veteran was forced to live in his car in a Tesco car park. Others have had to return to their home countries where standards of post-combat healthcare do not match our own. These concerns continue to be echoed in the House by colleagues from all parties, including my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), among others. It is dishonourable, unfair and certainly no way to repay the bravery and sacrifice of non-UK service personnel.
Disingenuous proposals from Ministers currently under consultation would help just one in 10 of those affected. Figures from the MOD suggest that this would apply to just 20 of the 200 non-UK personnel who left the regulars in 2019-20, with the majority serving between
four and 11 years. To put that into further context, if the average length of service for all UK armed forces leavers has been 10 years since 2015, why should non-UK service personnel have to serve two years longer than the average length of service across all forces to earn the right to live in a country for which they have fought? Labour’s new clause 7 would see those who have served more than four years pay only the cost price of their application for ILR—£204, down from £2,389. That is a 90% reduction, and a long overdue step towards ensuring that these veterans can live in the country they fought for.
The new Veterans Minister proudly supported similar proposals as a Back Bencher. In 2019, he signed a letter with more than 60 Conservative MPs urging the then Chancellor to drop the fees. Our new clause 7 gives the Minister the chance to deliver on his promise to veterans, so I wonder whether he and others who I know are sympathetic will keep the courage of their convictions when they come to vote this afternoon.
Amendment 7 is on access to justice for service personnel, and I want to focus on this important part of the Bill. Labour has welcomed efforts to implement key recommendations of the Lyons review, but the Government continue to oppose the recommendation that civilian courts should have jurisdiction in matters of murder, rape and other serious offences committed in the UK. Civilian courts have a much better record of trying such cases, and adopting the Lyons recommendations would align the UK with other comparable service justice regimes in Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
Ministry of Defence figures show that, between 2015 and 2019, the conviction rate for rape cases tried under courts martial was just 10%. During the same period, the conviction rate was 59% in civilian courts, with considerably more cases being tried each year. Almost half the sexual assaults in the armed forces in 2019 took place in the UK and more than three quarters of the victims were women. Almost half the victims held the rank of private. Emma Norton from the Centre for Military Justice, whose advocacy for victims has been inspirational, rightly pointed out the contradiction that sudden-death cases are dealt with by the civilian police while other serious offences remain under the jurisdiction of courts martial. The only group on the other side of this issue are Ministers in this Government and senior figures in the service justice system itself.
Labour’s amendment 6 challenges the Government to recognise the weight of evidence from the figures, the experts and campaigners. Trying the most serious offences in civilian courts would help to improve conviction rates, but Ministers refuse to recognise this reality and seem content with a fudge that will leave personnel vulnerable. Only Labour’s proposals will provide appropriate support, protection and access to justice for all our armed forces.
With regards to reducing the appeal time limits, I draw attention to the proposals in clause 10(4). That provision reduces the time that service personnel have to make appeals in service complaints cases from six weeks to two weeks. Evidence from the survey of armed forces communities, including in the Bill Select Committee’s work plan at Labour’s request, emphatically rejected those proposals. Almost half the 3,307 service community responses to the survey said that the provision would remove the safeguards needed for fair treatment. I note
that, since then, Government amendments 10 to 16 have built on those commitments and seem to give Ministers the ultimate responsibility to arbitrate on appeals. I hope that they will be picked up by colleagues in the other place so that we can continue to protect the rights of service personnel.
I turn to new clause 2 on the duty of care to service personnel. While ensuring that we have the personnel we need to keep our country and the world safe, we must protect them as they do so. New clause 2 would establish a
“a duty of care standard in relation to legal, pastoral and mental health support provided to service personnel involved in investigations or litigation arising from overseas operations”.
For too long, forces personnel and their families who have been put through the trauma of long-running investigations have been offered little to no legal or welfare support from the MOD. There is no effective duty of care recognised by the MOD to service personnel who are subject to legal action. The Government’s flawed Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021 failed to prevent the cycle of reinvestigations; it dealt only with prosecutions. Of the more than 4,000 criminal investigations and allegations arising out of Iraq and Afghanistan since 2000, only 27—less than 1%—ever got to prosecution and all 27 were brought within three years. At the same time, of the approximately 1,000 civil claims out of Iraq, only a third were struck out or withdrawn. The rest were settled or are under investigation. That Act would do nothing to help personnel in these cases.
I think that all Members would agree that vexatious claims and repeated investigations against British personnel have become a problem. Labour wants to see that fixed in a lawful and effective way, yet the Government have so far failed to do so. In the meantime, the duty of care outlined in new clause 2 is essential if the MOD is to be a responsible employer.