UK Parliament / Open data

Armed Forces Bill

Proceeding contribution from Johnny Mercer (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Monday, 6 December 2021. It occurred during Debate on bills on Armed Forces Bill.

That is a really fair point. Such provision has not existed before and it is always dangerous when we start going down that route of bringing in new protocols specifically to deal with the challenges of sexual assault that we have here.

I plead with those on the Front Bench: the issue of the female experience in the military defines what we do. I note that the response, last week, was to double the number of females in the military. The only problem is that we have already missed our target for doing that in the first place. It is pointless to give strongly worded statements to the chiefs or to say that we are going to double the numbers if so many people—the young women we saw in the work from my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham—simply do not come forward because they do not think they are going to have any fairness, any rigour or any real prospect of a conviction for their horrendous experience.

Members will find no one prouder of the military in this place than me but there is a singular problem. I do not buy this stuff about a culture problem—I am afraid I am on the other side of the fence on that: the military is the most wonderful life-chances machine this country has—but there is a problem with holding our people to account, whether in respect of lawfare or other issues. It is exactly the same here. If we do that and hold our people to account, we will get on top of this problem without losing good people like my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham, whose work I commend. I am incredibly proud of her; the Government should be as well and should implement all her recommendations.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

705 c106 

Session

2021-22

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber
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