Good afternoon, my Lords. I look forward to continuing the interesting debate that we have had on the Bill.
As I know all Members of the Committee will agree, these are extremely important amendments. We can see their importance not only because of the concerns that all of us have raised in Committee and beyond, but because, as we read last week, the Defence Secretary himself has written to Armed Forces chiefs, asking to meet them to discuss his concerns over the progress of the implementation of various recommendations. I understand from press reports today—perhaps the Minister will be able to update the Committee on this—that the Defence Secretary is meeting them to discuss some of the issues raised in the amendments. The BBC says:
“The defence secretary told the BBC it was ‘really important we get the culture right’ in the Army.”
We all agree with that.
The purpose of the amendments is to try to understand how the Government intend to deal with some of the concerns that have been raised and some of the serious issues that various reports have highlighted, including media reports that we have read in our papers, and to move forward on them. The evidence for and recommendations in the amendments are based on the Defence Select Committee’s report that was published just a couple of months ago; it is also the source of some of the data that I will quote and is the basis of the amendment before the Committee. It is therefore incumbent on us to understand what, if the Government say that the amendments are unnecessary, they will do to achieve the effect of the recommendations. Clarity from the Minister on that would be welcome to us all and those outside who read our proceedings.
I beg to move Amendment 53, and will speak to Amendments 54, 55, and in particular, 66B. They are all amendments based on an excellent recent report from the Defence Sub-Committee into women in the Armed Forces. The report stated that it was
“disappointed … with gaps between the many policy documents”
on women in the Armed Forces
“and practice on the ground”.
It added that
“the 2021 Armed Forces Bill”—
in other words, what we are discussing—
“may represent a missed opportunity to address critical issues.”
So here we are with these four amendments, which seek to understand from the Government what has actually happened.
Some of the report’s conclusions were that:
“Services are failing to help women achieve their full potential … barriers still affect female recruitment, including an impression that it is harder for women to thrive there … Within the military culture of the Armed Forces and the MOD, it is still a man’s world. There is too much bullying, harassment and discrimination—including criminal behaviours”,
which we discussed earlier in Committee,
“like sexual assault and rape—affecting Service personnel … Juggling Service life and family life can be hard for all Service personnel, but especially for military women”.
These were the conclusions of that Sub-Committee and are the sorts of things we need to hear about from the Minister. How are the Government going to seek to address them? Nobody would want to read about some of those things; all of us want them addressed. We need a clear plan of action. We need bold and unequivocal action from the Minister in solving these challenges.
In 2019, the Wigston review identified a
“pressing need to reform the Service Complaints system”,
echoing the findings of the ombudsman that BAME and female personnel were disproportionately affected by such behaviours. Wigston made 36 recommendations, all of which the Government, to their credit, accepted. But the question two and a half years on is: where are we on the implementation of those recommendations?
The Defence Sub-Committee’s recent report said that the recommendations in the Wigston review were “positive” but that
“progress is slow, and frequently there is a gap between the raft of policy documents in place and actual practice on the ground.”
Many of us, if not all of us, in the Committee would welcome a statement from the Minister as to how the Government intend to accelerate this progress so that we do not read in another report in a year or two that progress has been made but it is slow.
The most recent Service Complaints Ombudsman annual report found that female personnel were overrepresented in the service complaints system—21%, compared with their representation in the UK Armed Forces of 12%. What do the Government intend to do to rectify that situation? In 2020, female service personnel were disproportionately represented in the service complaints system. Female personnel had nearly twice the rate of service complaints that males had. Although this overrepresentation was found in all categories, it was primarily driven by differences in levels of bullying, harassment and discrimination. The rate at which female service personnel raised bullying, harassment or discrimination service complaints was four times the equivalent figure for male service personnel.
The Defence Sub-Committee made a number of recommendations and we have tabled amendments to raise some, but not all, of the most important of them. Amendment 53 forces a Minister of the Crown to
“make provision to improve the uptake and use of the Flexible Service scheme, for both women and men, and report its progress by the end of 2022.”
Amendment 54 forces the Secretary of State to make recommendations of the Service Complaints Ombudsman binding on the Armed Forces and the
Ministry of Defence, and Amendment 55 ensures that the covenant annual report includes a metric to monitor the experiences of veterans by sex or gender and by other protected characteristics.
I say again to the Committee, to reinforce the point, that these are not my recommendations; they are based on the Defence Select Committee report. It would be interesting to know whether the Minister believes that the amendments are unnecessary and not needed, and, if so, why that is.
Amendment 66B seeks to establish a defence authority responsible for cultures and inappropriate behaviours that is outside the chain of command. Again, this was a direct recommendation from both the Wigston review and the Defence Select Committee. I say to the Committee that we have tried very hard in the amendment to be reasonable and to understand why the Government or others might object to that. That is why we have put that the Secretary of State must review whether it is desirable to establish an independent defence authority. If it is not desirable, why is it not, and why would the things identified in the various Defence Select Committee reports and in the Wigston review and in many other reports, including the experiences of personnel who gave evidence to these various committees, mean that such an independent authority is not needed, and how can the people who have made those significant complaints in many areas of service life be reassured that their concerns can be dealt with and things can be improved without the establishment of such an authority?
I say to the Minister that there may be flaws in the amendment, and the Government might say “Item C doesn’t work with respect to legislation, it’s not needed, it’s not drafted correctly” or whatever, but two or three of us have tried to put these things together without the legal expertise of the MoD, and what they seek to do is represent the spirit of the various committees that have reported, to try to deal with concerns that have been raised.
As I said, the Defence Secretary himself is clearly worried and concerned by the various problems that have arisen and that we have read about in our papers recently. None of us in this Committee would try to justify any of that; all of us would want something done about it. But what I am saying to the Minister is that “We need to do something about it” is not good enough. What is it that we are going to do? What practically is going to happen? What policy changes are going to take place? What sense of urgency is being put in place at the MoD to drive this on?
Clearly, if the Defence Secretary himself has written to defence chiefs to say “I want to see you to understand why there are problems and these problems are not being fixed as quickly as I would want”, this is now an opportunity for the Minister to reassure the Committee that the Government have a grip on this and “This is what the Government intend to do”. If these amendments are unnecessary, “This is why they are unnecessary, because this is what the Government are doing to take into account all the various recommendations”.
I thought the Defence Select Committee report was a very sobering document. I am not a military person, but in any walk of life, if you read that two-thirds of the 4,000 women who gave evidence had experienced
bullying, sexual harassment or discrimination during their time in the Armed Forces, it does not matter what the organisation is. It is not an attack on the Armed Forces; it is not an attack if you are talking about this as a Civil Service or as a police force or as an industry. There is something that really needs looking at, to understand how it is possible that of the 4,000 women who came forward to give evidence to the committee, two-thirds reported that there had been a problem.
None of us would want that. None of us condones that: of course not. But the question is, what are the Government doing about it? That is the purpose of the amendments before the Committee today—to try to put some meat on the bones and say “These are some of the ways that were recommended by the Defence Select Committee as ways of helping with respect to this particular problem”. The Defence Secretary thinks there is a problem. I think there is a problem. I am sure that many noble Lords in the Committee think that there is a problem. But we want to understand what the Government are going to do to tackle these very real issues. That is the purpose of the amendments before us.
4.45 pm