Armed Forces (Service Complaints and Financial Assistance) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-02-02
Topic: Defense
Madeleine Moon (Labour, Centre-left): It is a great pleasure to follow my friend the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), who made a calm, measured contribution, and who showed amazing leadership as Chair of the Select Committee on Defence. As a new member of the Committee, I certainly found he set the tone for our many deliberations, and he had, I must admit, a calming effect on some of my more vociferous opinions. The House will miss him for his dedication, his belief in public service and his belief in the defence of the United Kingdom This Bill, and this day, have been a long time in coming. A whole decade has passed since the Deepcut review by Nicholas Blake QC and the Defence Committee’s "Duty of Care" report, both of which recommended the establishment of a service complaints ombudsman. In that report, the Committee found that the resolution of complaints was slow and may not always be perceived as accessible and fair Much has been said and done during the decade of piecemeal reform, but the underlying inadequacy of the system remains unaltered. In 2008 the newly established Service Complaints Commissioner, Dr Susan Atkins—I will not add to the praise heaped on her for her work, because enough has been said, but I totally endorse every word that has been said—said in her first annual report that while progress had been made, "performance is generally poor". In 2009 she said the system was not working "efficiently, effectively or fairly." She reported the same thing in 2010, 2011, 2012 and in 2013. In that report she said: "Since the role of Service Complaints Commissioner was established in 2008, she has not been able to report to the Secretary of State that the Service complaints system operates efficiently, effectively or fairly. This has been because of a lack of confidence in the system, unreasonable delays in the resolution of complaints and a lack of accurate data on how complaints are handled." If this Bill does not tackle those complaints, we are wasting our time. Dr Atkins’s seventh and final report is due in the next few weeks, and I think it is relatively safe to assume that the pattern is not going to be broken. This Bill must change that pattern The commissioner has pinpointed three main problems. First, there is a "lack of confidence in the system" from the very people it is designed to help. In the latest report, the commissioner points out: "Service personnel have a low level of confidence in the current system which does not offer all complainants the assurance of an independent person overseeing their complaint outside the chain of command in any effective way." This low and decreasing level of confidence that personnel have in the system can be seen in the armed forces continuous attitudes survey, which shows dissatisfaction increasing in relation to the time taken, being kept informed, and support from assisting officers. For example, the survey asked those who said they did believe they had been the subject of discrimination, harassment or bullying in the last 12 months why they had not made a formal complaint. The reasons given included, "I did not believe anything would be done if I did complain"— 54%— "I believed it might adversely affect my career or workplace"— 53%— "I was worried that there would be recriminations from the perpetrators" —30%—and "I did not want to go through the complaints procedure"— 23% The commissioner also points to a "lack of accurate data". In last year’s report the commissioner found that the data provided by the Army and the RAF contained a number of serious gaps and inconsistencies. Only the naval service was able to provide her with confidence in the accuracy of the data it was providing. That is fairly shocking in the days of electronic data. The inaccuracy of the data coming from the Army was particularly alarming, with the commissioner drawing attention to the Army’s failure accurately to record allegations of indirect discrimination. For an organisation as committed to ensuring diversity and inclusion as the Army, the loss of this crucial data is distressing. As the commissioner points out, these elementary recording failures not only undermine confidence in the efficiency of the system but hamper the shared aim to use "Service complaint data, together with data on discipline and administrative action, plus information from Service Inquiries, to identify areas and units which have problems and which may affect operational performance." Thirdly—this is by far most important point—the commissioner highlights the chronic delays that riddle this system from beginning to end. Delay is by far the biggest and most corrosive problem. It exacerbates, and in part helps explain, the two previous problems The evidence on the extent of delay in the system is damning. In 2013, aware that they had this problem of chronic delay, the MOD and the services agreed to meet a time limit of 24 weeks to resolve at least 90% of their complaints, and any complaint not dealt with in 24 weeks would be "red flagged". So there was a recognition that there was a problem, and a solution, thanks to the work of Dr Atkins, was put in place In 2013, however, only 25% of cases "were resolved within the 24-week target", and: "Only 26% of complaints made in 2013 were closed during the year." In January 2013, 325 complaints had a "red flag". By December 2013 this had swelled by over 50% to 500 complaints One need only look at the case of Parachuter Lance Corporal Tom Neathway to see the harm delay can do, and not only to the lives of our armed forces personnel. His story also stands as a textbook example of the structural flaws that any future system must avoid In July 2008, Corporal Neathway, while serving in Helmand, lost both his legs and an arm when a booby-trapped sandbag exploded beneath him. Over the next three years—not 24 weeks, but three years—through sheer guts and determination and with the support of the armed forces, Corporal Neathway rebuilt his life and his career, and I pay tribute to that because the work the armed forces have done with seriously injured personnel is amazing. His story became a case study of how injured personnel can recover and overcome their injuries: he took part in the Olympic torch relay in 2012 and starred in the BBC series "Wounded", showing the fantastic work done with our injured personnel. Sadly, however, in 2011, while at the parachute training support unit at RAF Brize Norton, where he had been based since returning to work in 2009, he was subjected to increasingly serious bullying by Regimental Sergeant Major Alistair Hutcheson, who at one point told the triple amputee: "You’re not much of a paratrooper any more" Corporal Neathway did the right thing: he lodged a complaint to seek redress against an instance of bullying. That the complaints system failed him is an understatement. He had to endure a three-year ordeal in the search for justice from the British Army, facing a series of unacceptable delays that held him up every step of the way. When Corporal Neathway finally secured justice at the service complaints panel in October last year, the verdict was damning. The panel found definitively that the initial investigation by his commanding officer, Major John Chetty, constituted a professional failing. His questioning of witnesses was wholly inappropriate, and a review, by Brigadier Greville Bibby, which held up Corporal Neathway’s search for redress, was also discredited, with the Brigadier leaving the Army. As Corporal Neathway has said, the Army "had to be dragged kicking and screaming to an oral hearing. They had told so many lies and finally it all unfolded" I am unfortunately someone who is often contacted by people when the system fails, so the Minister knows—we have discussed this many times—that I perhaps have a jaundiced view. I tend to hear from the people who are failed by the system. I do not dispute that the system works for some people, but I regularly hear from people who face similar failures to the one that Corporal Neathway experienced. To hold someone in a complaints system for three years is shameful—