Armed Forces Bill

My Lords, as the Minister said, this is a substantially smaller Bill than that brought forward in 2006 at the previous quinquennial review, when a major revision was made to the administration of justice within the armed services. Nevertheless, I agree that the 2011 Bill contains some important provisions. Perhaps the one that has attracted the most notice, and I expect will attract much comment today, is Clause 2, which seeks to enshrine the military covenant in statute. This, to my mind, is a very welcome gesture, but is it anything more than a gesture? In order to answer that question, we need to understand the nature of the lacuna that Clause 2 seeks to fill. The noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, referred to the service personnel Command Paper which her Government published in 2008. All of us who are concerned with the welfare of people in the Armed Forces saw it as a very positive step in the right direction, but it was only a step. Some of the changes set out in the paper were, as we have heard, implemented quickly—for example, the doubling of Armed Forces Compensation Scheme payments for the most seriously injured—but others were clearly going to require much more work. This was because many of the issues that over the years have bedevilled military personnel and their families centre on the availability of public services that are outwith the control of the Ministry of Defence. These include things such as access to NHS dentists, places on NHS waiting lists, access to social housing, provision of school places, and many others besides. The enforced mobility to which service personnel are subject put them consistently at a disadvantage in this regard when compared with the majority of their civilian peers. In 2008, the Command Paper did no more than commit the relevant government departments to working together to find solutions to these problems. The caveat that many of us appended to our welcome of the Command Paper was, therefore, that it not only promised the right things but that it was consistent and sustained the delivery of solutions that really mattered. An external reference group was indeed set up to monitor that delivery. It included representatives of the services' families federations and the leading charities, as well as members of the relevant government departments. Its first report, in 2009, concluded that progress had been made, but that there was still much to do. As of today, that progress continues. There has been considerable good will, and much good work, between the various ministries, and the people involved deserve great credit for this. However, our society's obligation to treat its Armed Forces fairly should not depend on the good will of the moment. It should not depend on how much—or how little—the military is in the public eye and mind over any given period. Nor should it depend—and forgive me if I seem slightly cynical—solely on a calculus of how much political gain or harm would attach to any given course of action. I do not wish for one moment to impugn the motives of anyone acting today. I believe their collective heart is in absolutely the right place, but these are exceptional times. One cannot help remembering, with Kipling, that: "““For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' ‘Chuck 'im out, the brute!’""But it's ‘Saviour of 'is country’ when the guns begin to shoot””." It is worth remembering the perceptive last line of that poem: "““An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool—you bet that Tommy sees””." The Minister has implied that the current levels of interest and support will continue. He has said that the people of this country know how their Armed Forces should be treated. This may be so, but it has not prevented the issues that I have outlined from being persistent problems over a great many years. We need a formal undertaking in which military people and their families can have confidence and which they see will be upheld and sustained when the guns have ceased to shoot. To that extent, the proposed inclusion of the military covenant in the Armed Forces Act must be welcome, but what sort of an undertaking are we talking about here? How effectively will it deliver solutions to the kind of problems that I have described? A key reason for enshrining an undertaking in legislation is surely to give people some recourse if that undertaking is not met. In this case, such recourse is not available. Instead, the Secretary of State for Defence is called upon annually to explain himself before Parliament. I accept the arguments that the services themselves have made—that formal legal redress would generally be neither desirable nor even helpful to their people in such cases—but I have two particular difficulties with the alternative that is proposed. The first relates to the point that I have already made—that the Defence Secretary is not responsible for delivering the services that are at the heart of many of the most difficult and intractable issues faced by the military community. Surely, if Parliament is to probe such matters deeply and effectively, it must do so with those who are directly responsible for the provision in question. If the need to explain actions personally and directly to Parliament is the means by which good behaviour is encouraged, surely the explanations should be required from those responsible for the behaviour, and they should not be able to use the Defence Secretary as a kind of air raid shelter. Secondly, the Bill seems to leave a great deal to the discretion of the Defence Secretary. Phrases such as, "““as the Secretary of State considers,””" or, "““as the Secretary of State may determine””," crop up quite a bit in Clause 2. Now, I am not suggesting that all boundaries should be set out in the Bill. Such an impractical result is, I presume, what the current wording seeks to avoid. However, is not allowing the Secretary of State alone to define all the parameters as he goes along a little like making him a judge in his own cause? Surely we need some kind of audit function to ensure that the character and scope of the standards to which the Secretary of State—or, as I hope, Secretaries of State—report attract a degree of consensus that goes beyond simply the ministries being judged. While I therefore welcome the inclusion of the covenant in Clause 2, the undertaking given there is not yet firm enough for Tommy or Tommy’s family to rely upon with confidence through changing times, and I hope that this can be addressed as the Bill goes through its other stages.