My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Hollis for tabling the amendment, for the very reason that it allows your Lordships’ Committee to engage in this important issue. As we have already heard, successive Governments have committed to end any disadvantage that armed service causes members of the Armed Forces and their families—a group of people who have come to be known in these circumstances as the service community.
In July 2008, the Government set out to put flesh on the bones of that commitment in a command paper entitled, A Nation's Commitment: Cross-Government Support to our Armed Forces, their Families and Veterans. In pursuit of the ambition of that document, the
DWP announced and introduced on 6 April 2010 new rules that allow spouses and civil partners accompanying service personnel serving overseas outside the United Kingdom to be eligible to claim class 1 national insurance credits during such periods.
In certain circumstances, spouses and civil partners may get credits on their national insurance contribution record for state benefit purposes, and as my noble friend Lord McKenzie pointed out, that helps protect their eligibility to a state pension and contribution-based benefits. Application for the credit is made at the end of each accompanied assignment outside the United Kingdom, but there are complications about that. My noble friend is right to say that it has to be claimed. I understood that the services had in place default arrangements to ensure that everyone who could be entitled to make such an application was advised fully of that. Can the Minister elucidate the current situation?
I do not think that one need go into the complications that service abroad generates for service families, but one can imagine that service abroad may mean that the family is split up. For example, some of our troops are based in Germany, or the families may be there but the service member might be serving somewhere else overseas. All of these complications are accommodated. Indeed, circumstances may arise where there is a need to make an application part way through an assignment, and provision is made in the regulations to facilitate that. There is helpfully discretion—and the DWP is to be commended for this—as to the time that an application can be made. It is already provided for to accommodate the lifestyle of the armed services community. Importantly, however, this improved benefit was not made retrospective.
We have already heard from my noble friend Lady Dean’s experience of her engagement with the service community the sort of circumstances that can lead to the need for this provision. At the heart of it, there is a clear and good reason why we need this. Members of our Armed Forces are commanded to work in overseas environments. If they stay in the services, they have no choice where they work, and often they are there for extended tours. Often their spouses and civil partners are unable to accrue a full national insurance contribution record because of that. Fairness demands that they not be disadvantaged by that service in so far as is possible.
When my noble friend Lady Hollis introduced this amendment she described it as simple, but it has become slightly more complicated in the debate. I am not seeking to complicate it because it is a relatively simple policy issue, although it may have complex consequences. She implied that the trend would suffer regression as a consequence of implementation of the Bill. My noble friend Lady Dean specifically said that the Bill would have a consequence of regression in relation to the position of service wives in particular. It is important for the Minister to address that position. If it is indeed the case that the direction of travel is being regressed as a consequence of the Bill, that needs to be identified. I am sure that all parties, including the coalition parties in the Government, would wish to deal with that situation in the context of this Bill. I do not think that there will be any division, in terms of policy, in relation to ambition here.
Unfortunately, when the change was made in 2010, it was realised that this was a “start”. My noble friend Lord McKenzie has identified, with his characteristic care in these matters, that there has already been a minor change in relation to this provision to improve it. Indeed, the coalition Government are to be congratulated: they have built on the work of the previous Government in pursuing the commitment of “no disadvantage” which is at the heart of the military covenant. In May 2011 they published the Armed Forces covenant. In paragraph 5 on page 7, under the heading “Scope of Covenant”, it states:
“Members of the Armed Forces community should have the same access to benefits as any UK citizen”.
Page 33 of the guidance document that accompanies the covenant, The Armed Forces Covenant: Today and Tomorrow, states that,
“the Government has no plans to make further adjustments”,
to the benefits rules. Importantly, however, it goes on to say that they will,
“keep this issue under review”.
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On the issue of costs I would simply observe that, interestingly, the Government have created a special fund of £35 million from the fines levied on the banks for attempting to manipulate LIBOR, created for the MoD to use in supporting the covenant and the armed services community with the explicit purpose that members of our Armed Forces community should not face disadvantage in comparison to other citizens. So there is a perfect cohesion between the source of funding and an ambition.
Perhaps ironically in the context of our debates and some of the amendments which we will engage with in your Lordships’ Committee, in this case we on this side seek a review to which the Government are already committed, and on which they can point to at least a potential source of finance—I am not saying that this is the answer, but there is an established potential source—should that review recommend action which has spending consequences, without the normal criticism that this has not been budgeted for.
So my simple question to the Minister in relation to this simple amendment is: is he willing to go back to his department and recommend that while this Bill is before Parliament, the review to which the Government are already committed should be concluded to some extent, or conducted and concluded, completed and reported, so that, if necessary, steps to ensure that the direction of travel to which we are all committed continues in relation to this important provision?