Armed Forces Act (Continuation) Order 2022 — House of Lords, 2022-07-05
Topic: Defense
Annabel Goldie (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank your Lordships for the warmth of sentiment. I think we articulate a conjoined view of admiration for our Armed Forces. It is very important to our Armed Forces to know that these sentiments come from all quarters of the Chamber. It is important that they are aware of that and know that they are valued right across the political spectrum. I thank your Lordships for making that so clear The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, raised a number of points. He correctly raised the need to continue to explain to the public the importance of what we are doing to support Ukraine. I absolutely agree with that. As I think we all understand, what we are doing to come to the aid of Ukraine and to assist in its self-defence, along with our NATO allies and other partners, is, frankly, a fundamental fight for the preservation of freedom, sovereignty and respect for international law, which we have seen so appallingly traduced in recent months. I entirely agree with his sentiment, and there are probably various ways in which we can apply our minds to how we might continue to do that, and maybe do it better, so I thank him for raising the point. As he indicated, it extends not just to the United Kingdom but to our NATO allies. The NATO summit did its own bit of dissemination of information, because it garnered a lot of publicity and interest. It was largely all about how we in Euro-Atlantic security recognise what has been happening and then pool our resources to make sure we have a really impressive and robust facility to deter any further illegal activity The noble Lord raised a technical point that I understood, but it bewildered me because I did not have an answer to it. I am grateful to him for raising the point. I am informed by my officials that the Armed Forces Act 2006 itself does not extend to Gibraltar and the Channel Islands. I think that is because of their particular Administrations and regimens within their jurisdictions, but apparently they can apply the Act using their own legislation. It seems that technically they are outwith the scope of the Act but that if there are parts of the Act that they wish to invoke, they can use their own legislative powers to achieve that The support of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for the Armed Forces was also very welcome. I rather shared her sense of déjà vu about the recurrence of Armed Forces legislation. We all agree that it is important, but we have been seeing it quite regularly in the legislative programme. It matters and it is probably refreshing for us all—not least for me as a Minister—to be constantly reminded of things we must keep an eye on I wish to reassure the noble Baroness that the SI we are dealing with is of course very important. She mentioned the paucity of personnel on the Front Bench. I think earlier matters completely consumed your Lordships’ attention and probably exhausted their appetite for further discussion. I was very nearly not here myself, so it was a great relief that I came panting in at the 11th hour. I hope the Secretary of State for Defence remains in post; he and I have a good relationship and I think he is doing a first-class job The noble Baroness raised the important issue of what the Government are doing to value our Armed Forces and to be sure that we are allocating to them the resources they require. She raised a number of important specific issues, such as health and safety, morale and troop numbers, which I know is a subject of interest to your Lordships. With the recent budget settlement, a lot of expenditure is now being allocated to the very sorts of things she is concerned about, whether that is improving uniforms—not least for women, interestingly—or looking at upgrading service families’ accommodation and making sure it is much more modern and acceptable. There have been issues with some elements of that accommodation but that is currently very much under active review.