Armed Forces Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-11
Topic: Defense
David John Ramsbotham (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, it is a great pleasure and privilege to be the first to thank the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, and to congratulate him on his outstanding maiden speech. It is very appropriate that he should have made it during the processing of the Armed Forces Bill because of the many years of outstanding service that he gave to the Royal British Legion. As he mentioned, I have particular reason to be grateful to him for his tireless and comprehensive briefing of those of us who were fighting for the retention of the post of chief coroner because, as he said, that retention has been responsible for an improvement in the conduct of military inquests. As the noble Lord has proved today, he has a deep understanding of veteran affairs, from which I am sure the whole House will benefit in future, as will the veterans whom he has served so well As the Minister said in his introduction, this is a very modest Bill and I propose to concentrate on three subjects that I hoped it would contain and on which I would be grateful for the Minister’s comments. The first concerns the Armed Forces covenant, which was made statutory in the 2011 Act. History suggests that now that our Armed Forces are no longer on active service in Iraq and Afghanistan, they will fade from the public eye, which will result in the plight of veterans, particularly gravely injured veterans, becoming less and less a matter of immediate public concern When the covenant was first proposed, I wrote twice to the Prime Minister, as well as repeating the plea that I made to him during the processing of the Act; namely, that the Minister for Veteran Affairs be removed from the Ministry of Defence and placed in the Cabinet Office. My reasoning for that was that no junior Minister operating from the MoD silo, responsible for the day-to-day affairs of those currently serving in the Armed Forces, cuts any clout in ministries such as the Department of Health, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice, which have day-to-day responsibility for matters affecting veterans. However, if the Minister operated from the Cabinet Office, where the Armed Forces Covenant Committee is based, he or she could speak to them with the authority of that office, and oversee the focus on veteran affairs I appealed also that the statutory annual statement on the covenant required of the Secretary of State for Defence should include statements from all ministries involved in veteran affairs, listing what they had done for veterans during that year. I wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, when he was the MoD Minister in this House, hoping that this annual statement would be made verbally in both Houses so that Members could have an annual opportunity to check on progress by asking specific questions. My motive for that was and remains my fear that unless there is a regular opportunity to ensure that momentum is being maintained, undertakings, however well intentioned when made, risk being dropped and forgotten. I have two areas of particular concern First, there is no doubt that in future years an increasing number of veterans will suffer from mental health problems, including PTSD. For example, it is most important that anyone involved in an IED incident should have that fact recorded on their medical documents because history proves that they may well suffer flashbacks, which doctors can deal with appropriately if they know what a person has been through. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger, I am not convinced that all that could be done to ensure that veterans’ mental health problems are being looked after in the same way as physical health problems is being done, and would like an annual opportunity to keep pressure on the authorities responsible for provision and improvement Secondly, too many veterans come into the hands of the criminal justice system, unfortunately. Times without number since I first became aware of the problem in 1996, I have appealed, first to the Home Office and then to the Ministry of Justice, for someone to be made responsible and accountable for veteran affairs in prisons. But that plea includes both police and probation, and there have been calls for the establishment of special veteran courts, as exist in America There have been numerous studies and reports on veterans in the criminal justice system by bodies such as the Centre for Mental Health, the Howard League for Penal Reform and, most recently, a commission sponsored by Lord Ashcroft, of which I was a commissioner. But despite the report of our commission receiving an official response from the previous Secretary of State for Justice, nothing has happened. We called for everyone entering the criminal justice system, initially via the police but later prison or probation, to be asked whether they had served in the Armed Forces so that appropriate action could be taken to help them both while serving their sentence and, most particularly, on release. Admittedly a number make bogus claims to have served, but the validity of such claims can soon be checked, as was proved by the police in Kent. What I am concerned about is the treatment of the depressingly large number of genuine veterans who are sentenced to either imprisonment or supervision in the community, with whose rehabilitation service charities and other ex-service organisations could be involved, if only they were alerted. This is, again, something that Parliament could and should chase up, which is why I appeal to the Minister that the annual statement on the Armed Forces covenant should be made verbally, by statute My second concern may seem like a small matter, but I think that it has a wider significance. At present, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales formally inspects—as he does every other prison—the Military Corrective Training Centre in Colchester every five years, but by invitation only. At a recent seminar, attended by the Secretary of State for Justice, the recently retired chief inspector said publicly that the MCTC was the best prison in the country, and a living example of how prisons should be run. This is partly due to the experience of its staff, no one being allowed to join the Military Provost Staff Corps until they have proved themselves to be capable soldiers. The remit of the Chief Inspector of Prisons includes both police and court cells but, now that the MPSC is to be responsible for running regional detention centres, which will replace the old regimental guard rooms, I believe that they too should be added to his list. Therefore I appeal to the Minister that this requirement should be made statutory in this Bill It is not as easy to be so specific about my third concern. Many other noble and noble and gallant Lords have already referred to the clash between human rights legislation and those involved in armed conflict. I personally despise the actions of British lawyers who have gone out to Iraq and Afghanistan touting for business that seeks to undermine the credibility and reputation of their Armed Forces. I agree with all those who have called for this to be urgently looked at, and I shall inform the Minister of one experience when I was Adjutant-General. The Second Permanent Under-Secretary came to the three officers who were responsible for personnel in their services and told them that they had to work out how industrial tribunals would be included in service discipline chains. When we asked whether such industrial tribunals came before or after the Queen, we were told that that was totally irrelevant because the Bill including this requirement had already had its First Reading in the House. We had not seen the Bill and when we sent for it we found that there were such ridiculous things in it as, if a person were ordered by his employer into a place of danger, he could seek an industrial tribunal. I wondered whether the OC B Company could take his commanding officer to an industrial tribunal if he were told to capture a hill. We discovered that this followed an instruction from Brussels—at least that was what was alleged. When we asked what our NATO allies—the Germans, French and Italians—had done about it, they said that their Governments had sought dispensation from this ruling. Our Government had not To what has already been said to the Minister, I add my hope that the assault on the clash between human rights legislation and those involved in armed conflict will not be conducted in isolation just in this country but will include our NATO allies, all of which have armed forces involved in the same dilemma. I hope very much that, rather than the modest Bill that the Minister has announced, the opportunity can be taken to include in it the very real action that is needed to solve what my noble and gallant friend Lord Boyce described as the lawfare question, which is one that I know worries the minds of every serving member of the Armed Forces at present.