Mark Francois MP: speeches 2024

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Speeches

12 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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I thank the hon. Gentleman for his very pithy intervention. He pays me a back-handed compliment. How outrageous that His Majesty’s Opposition should try to raise a difficult issue in the middle of a Bill Committee; if I were to go back through the annals of Hansard down the centuries, I am sure there would be some precedent for that. This was a timely opportunity, if I can put it like that, to table the issue. There is a consultation coming up, and I suspect, looking at his face, that the Minister was not really au fait with this issue—I am not being rude to him—but he is now, and I will be very interested to hear what he has to say. The key point here is that death in service benefits have traditionally been payable if someone dies while in the armed forces or in the service of the Crown, whether or not they were on active service. A person who died back at home with their family would still qualify for the money. Under the armed forces pension scheme, they would still qualify if they had a regular partner. Under the Bill, however, because we are now dealing with the inheritance tax rules, unless the individual is married or in a civil partnership the exemptions do not apply. That is the critical point. I suspect the Ministry of Defence had not picked up on it. The Forces Pension Society, which exists for exactly this kind of eventuality, has done what it says on the tin and raised an issue that could materially affect armed forces pensions. In some ways, I am acting as their factotum this afternoon in tabling the issue.
12 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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I am trying to wind up, but I will give way if the hon. Gentleman wishes to make a point. This is an important topic.
12 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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The hon. Gentleman anticipates me, because if he looks down the list of amendments, he will see that new clause 2 talks specifically about veterans’ commissioners. Perhaps at that point he might want to intervene on me again, as long as it does not mean Mr Betts misses his train. I hope that I have made my point. I shall be interested to hear what other Members in the Committee think, and particularly what the Minister’s view is.
12 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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I think it is. Those who have left the service, are by definition no longer subject to service law; they are subject to the laws of the country like any other civilians, as that is what they have become, albeit they are civilians with the special status of being a veteran, which we should respect. But they are no longer serving in His Majesty’s armed forces. The amendment would allow the commissioner to expand their remit little bit in order to look at pension-related issues, which are something that armed forces personnel regard as part of their general service welfare. When they are taking that stick or twist decision, weighing up the pluses and minuses of whether to stay or leave—particularly if they have been in the service for some years and have accumulated a reasonable pension pot—that is definitely something that they will take into account.
12 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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During the public evidence session, several of our witnesses—including those from the three service families federations—raised the question of special educational needs provision for the children of armed forces personnel. That provoked a number of questions to witnesses from members of the Committee, including some from me. I gave the Minister and the then Chair notice that I would seek to provoke at least a brief debate on education, and on special educational needs in particular. Having taken advice, I seek to do so under clause 4 stand part. I will try to summarise the issue succinctly. Because of the nature of service life, service families often have to move locations, for example from one Army garrison to another or from one RAF airbase to a different one. Not only are their partners encouraged to “follow the flag”, as the old saying has it, but their children are expected to do so as well. As the witnesses highlighted, including the two generals, as I like to call them—Lieutenant General Sir Nick Pope and Lieutenant General Sir Andrew Gregory—that often presents a number of challenges, not least for spousal employment. Partners of armed forces personnel sometimes find it challenging to pursue careers of their own if they are asked to move frequently. It can present other issues as well, such as access to medical and dental services, with people having to register and re-register as they move from one military patch to another. Here I hope I am keeping my word to the hon. Member for Broxtowe and raising a number of issues aside from pensions. [ Interruption. ] She smiles benevolently at me in return, and I thank her. However, there is a particular issue regarding children’s education. It is not my purpose this afternoon to provoke a major debate on VAT on school fees and the continuity of education allowance, although I note in passing that some witnesses raised that on Tuesday. Having seen the uplift in CEA rates, which I think was published on Tuesday, I fear that it will not be enough to compensate for the 20% increase in school fees. That may have a detrimental effect on armed forces retention, not just for officers but for senior NCOs in particular. I cite one brief example. When I was doing the “Stick or Twist?” study about five years ago, I spoke to one RAF senior warrant officer who said to me: “If you screw around with CEA, Sir, I am off, and so is my husband, who is in the service too. It is really the one thing that keeps us both in—we are doing it for the education of our children.” I wanted to highlight to the Minister and the Committee the potential effect on retention of not fully compensating armed forces personnel for the increase. Having done that, I move on to SEN. As many Committee members know from their constituency casework, in the civilian world, if a child is diagnosed with special educational needs, it can take up to two years to achieve an education, health and care plan—what was in old money a statement of special educational needs—from the relevant local education authority. For the avoidance of doubt, that can be the case under Conservative, Labour and other administrations. The issue is not particularly confined to local councils of one party colour or another; the process is just very complex and time-consuming.
12 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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On the point about recruitment, I hope the Minister, who is fair-minded, would be prepared to attest that in the previous Government, when I was on the Back Benches, there was no fiercer critic of Capita than me. I wish the previous Government had done something about their poor record and I invite the new Government to do something about that—the sooner the better.
12 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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I am grateful to the hon. Lady. She will know, not least from her service on that important Committee, of what is called the statutory override. In a nutshell, local authorities must produce a balanced budget each year, but, because of the very great pressure on local authorities that are also LEAs, they have been allowed to overspend on SEN for several years because it is such a big pressure. Bluntly, it would have bankrupted some of them otherwise. She may be able to update us, but I understand that the default position is that the statutory override is due to expire in March 2026. In other words, when local authorities are planning their new budgets for the ’26-’27 financial year, those budgets will have to balance. I served on the Public Accounts Committee for a couple of years in the previous Parliament. About a month ago, the National Audit Office produced a report, which I am sure the Education Committee will look at, basically saying that the current system is unsustainable. This will be a challenge for the new Government. I am not trying to make a partisan point here, but it was a challenge for the previous Government and it will be a challenge for the new Labour Government, too. I mention that just to drive home the scale of the SEN challenge. There is no evidence that armed forces personnel are proportionately more or less likely to have a special needs child than members of civilian communities, so statistically it is a big problem for them, too.
12 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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I thank the Minister for his compliment about my “artful cheekiness”. I am rather hoping that the Whip will have written that down. Again, quoting from Larisa Brown’s article, “It is understood that inheritance tax would apply to service personnel who are killed while off duty, for example if they are driving to and from work.” She also includes a comment from a spokesman from the Forces Pension Society, who said they believed it was an “unintended consequence”— we are trying to be fair to the Government—but added, “For the military, death is an occupational risk, so we also believe this is a breach of the armed forces covenant, which says that service personnel should not be disadvantaged by virtue of their service.” I understand what the Minister has said, and I know there is a technical consultation, but this is important not just to us and to the Forces Pension Society; it will genuinely concern armed forces personnel and their families.
12 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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I beg to move amendment 12, in clause 4, page 2, line 35, at end insert— “(2A) A ‘general service welfare matter’ may include issues relating to the provision of pensions and other related benefits to serving and former members of the armed forces.” This amendment would enable the Commissioner to include matters relating to pensions and other such benefits in their investigations of general service welfare matters. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I hope we shall not inconvenience you too much with regard to your journey back. The purpose of amendment 12 is to confirm in the Bill that pensions would be among the topics that the commissioner can investigate under the heading of “general service welfare matters”. This is obviously a matter of keen interest to service personnel and their families, and having good pension provision for serving in the armed forces has always been an aid to both recruitment and particularly retention, especially for non-commissioned officers and officers as they progress in their careers. I have often felt—and I include the time when I served as a Minister in the Ministry of Defence—that we have not really done enough to successfully market the value of military pensions as part of the wider service offer in order to convince people to join and then remain in the armed forces. In my experience, even many armed forces personnel did not appreciate that they had one of the few pension schemes across the entire public sector that was effectively non-contributory. In other words, their employer paid a contribution into their pensions, but they did not. In comparison, the last time I checked, most serving police officers pay something like 14% of their salary into their pension, whereas serving personnel still do not have to pay anything. Historically, the pension has always been—certainly as people become more experienced, get older and think more about their pension provision, much like the rest of the population—a vital tool in keeping people in. I would like to raise with the Minister one particularly pressing pensions matter, which provides a classic example of the sort of issue that the Armed Forces Commissioner should be empowered to investigate. In essence, it relates to the potential liability for inheritance tax, relating to death in service lump sum payments. This follows on, unfortunately, from the IHT changes announced in the Budget. I will refer to a briefing that was recently provided to me by Major General Neil Marshall OBE, the chief executive of the Forces Pension Society, which, I hope the Minister and Committee will accept, is the absolute gold standard expert on any matter relating to forces pensions—the sort of Office for Budget Responsibility of armed forces pensions. The AFP note summarises the issue as follows: “Death in service benefits affect those who die prematurely. While benefits pay to spouses or civil partners will be unaffected by IHT, we understand that under the Government’s proposals, death in service lump sum payments for service personnel who die in the service and are not married or in a civil partnership would be liable to IHT. This would lead to military personnel being disadvantaged compared with their civilian counterparts”, not least because their civilian counterparts would be “able to place such benefits in trust and therefore outside of the deceased’s estate.” The note continues to say that the introduction of the armed forces pension scheme 2005 and subsequently the armed forces pension scheme 2015—AFPS 05 and AFPS 15, as they are colloquially known— “saw eligible partners recognised as dependents and therefore eligible for benefits.” Under AFPS 05 and AFPS 15, personnel do not need to be married; they need to have an established partner. The note continues: “This was in addition to married couples and those in civil partnerships. This was a welcome reflection of societal changes over the past 30 years or so; introducing a potential inheritance tax charge on death in service benefits for those military people who are not married or in a civil partnership is at odds with the extant policy.” To put in this in layman’s English, because in my experience anything to do with pensions does tend to be quite complicated: if Corporal Thomas Atkins of the 1st Battalion the Lone Shire Regiment were walking down his high street tomorrow—not on active service—and unfortunately dropped dead of a heart attack, even if he had a long-term partner and perhaps three children but was not married or in a civil partnership with that partner, then his family would be liable for a potential inheritance tax charge on his death in service benefit. Not only is there the risk of the financial penalty—I will come on to a case study in a moment to illustrate the dilemma—but the bureaucracy could result in payouts from the estate being delayed while the liability for IHT is being calculated. The Forces Pension Society summarise the issue in its very good briefing note as follows: “At a time of extreme vulnerability, these lump sums need to be paid promptly, as they currently are. If death in service benefits become subject to IHT there will be a delay to the benefit being paid both while the estate is assessed for IHT and while the amount of IHT attributable to the DIS [death in service] benefit is assessed and the scheme administrator (Veterans UK) pays the tax charge.” As the briefing note then goes on to explain: “Many who would not previously have been caught with an IHT liability will find themselves in a very bureaucratic process that will slow down the already lengthy process of sorting out the financial affairs of an individual at what is a very difficult time.” The Forces Pension Society gave several examples of how this could affect personnel in practice. For the sake of brevity, I will just give one, which I hope is sufficient to illustrate the point. Take the case of an OR-9 equivalent—a senior warrant officer at the top of the non-commissioned rank structure. This individual has a partner to whom they are unmarried, and on death leaves an estate worth £400,000 and death in service benefits of £248,292—four times their salary of £62,000. They would pay 40% inheritance tax on the non-pension assets, resulting in an IHT liability of £30,000, but after April 2027, if the DIS benefits were included in the estate, that would increase the estate’s value to £648,292. The IHT liability will therefore increase accordingly to £129,316. That represents an increase of around 330%. In fairness, we on the Conservative Benches suspect that this is an example of the law of unintended consequences in action. We do not believe that the Government deliberately brought in these changes with the specific intention of targeting armed forces personnel. There is a debate about farmers and other groups in society, but I am focusing today on armed forces personnel and their families. To be clear, we are not saying that the Government did this deliberately in order to damage those people’s interests. Nevertheless, the default position is that they would suffer in the ways I have just outlined, unless something is done. Indeed, the Forces Pension Society summed up the problem as follows: “We believe the Government has made an error and would not knowingly implement a policy that runs counter to the spirit of the armed forces covenant. The situation is recoverable should they act now.” We on the Conservative Benches support that plea. I hope that when the Minister replies, he will assure us that, following the consultation on these proposals—which will be overseen by His Majesty’s Treasury, not by the MOD, because it is a consultation on the IHT changes in general—he is confident that armed forces personnel and their families will be exempted from any potential inheritance tax liabilities on death in service payments, whether or not those armed forces personnel die in active service. I hope that I have managed to explain that in terms that the Committee can follow.
12 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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He has nothing to fear!
12 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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I understand the thrust of the hon. Gentleman’s question. What it has to do with the Bill is that this issue cropped up quite a lot in the public evidence session. I respectfully refer him to the Hansard report of Tuesday’s proceedings. A number of witnesses raised the veterans issue, and I believe a number of members of the Committee followed up with questions. We had tabled the new clause by Monday night because we knew that there was concern within the veterans’ community about the independence of the OVA and therefore the independence of the Armed Forces Commissioner, which to be fair is a theme that we have discussed repeatedly today. That is the context in which the new clause was tabled on Monday evening, but it is worrying that one of the three veterans commissioners apparently felt compelled to resign because some in Government were seeking to crimp what they were trying to do on behalf of the veterans they were appointed to serve. Now that the OVA is back within the MOD, and given that the decision was taken on the Government’s watch, I would like some reassurance from the Minister—we have a MOD Minister here, not a Cabinet Office Minister—that there will be no further attempts to impinge on the independence of any veterans commissioner by anyone in Government, any more than we would want them to impinge on the independence of the Armed Forces Commissioner. I have three very specific questions to that effect; then I will allow the Minister to reply. First, where is the veterans commissioner for England? We were told, when I raised this issue on Second Reading, that the Department was working on it. At one point, there was going to be a UK-wide veterans commissioner, which then seemingly morphed into a veterans commissioner for England. We have one for Scotland and one for Wales—we had one for Northern Ireland too, but he resigned—so where are we on the veterans commissioner for England? Why should English veterans be at any disadvantage compared with their counterparts from the other three nations of the awesome foursome? Those English veterans served the Crown too. Where is their commissioner? Secondly, what is the timetable for replacing the Northern Ireland Veterans Commissioner? Presumably the Government do not want that post to remain vacant for long, particularly with all the utter chaos over the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. Thirdly, what formal assurances can the Minister give on the record that this will not happen again? Those are my three questions.
12 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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I will in a moment. I hope that, as an act of good will, the Minister will be minded to accept the amendment to remove any doubt about the ability of the Armed Forces Commissioner—who, as we heard this morning, will end up being appointed in early 2026, a year before these proposed changes are due to come into effect—to look in detail at this issue. Given the rightful concerns of the Forces Pension Society, I must tell the Minister that I am minded to press the amendment to a Division if he does not do the right thing. Having hopefully explained what is admittedly a slightly complex issue, I very much look forward to the Minister’s response, but before I sit down, I will gladly take the hon. Lady’s intervention.
12 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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To begin on a light-hearted note, I thank the hon. Member for Portsmouth North for pointing out that I do not sit in the shadow Cabinet. If she wants to drop my leader a note recommending that, I promise not to stand in her way. Bless you—have a good weekend! On a more serious note, there is concern, which I hope I have managed to evidence, about the decision to move the Office for Veterans’ Affairs into the MOD. I think that point has been made, but now that it is the MOD’s responsibility departmentally it would be very helpful if, when the Minister writes to me—obviously, he will write to every member of the Committee; it is copy one, copy all for anything that relates to a Committee proceeding, as you will recall, Mr Betts—he gives some detail in reply to the questions I have asked. Where is this English and/or UK veterans commissioner? We raised that question on Second Reading, so when the Minister replies, perhaps we could be updated and given a date for when that is actually going to happen. If it is not going to happen, perhaps we could be told why. Perhaps we could also have some response to what has clearly happened in Northern Ireland, which is obviously undesirable. Perhaps in his note, the Minister could also explain the Government’s conception of how the Armed Forces Commissioner will relate to these three, possibly four—hopefully four—veterans commissioners. When somebody makes the transition from being a serviceperson to being a veteran, that is a big thing in their life, particularly if they have served for quite a number of years. When they hand back their MOD 90 ID card—which as the Minister knows, servicepeople are supposed to do, but some forget—and get their veteran’s ID card in return, that is a big thing in their life, particularly if they have served for 22 years, say. That is a massive transition, so if the Armed Forces Commissioner is going to do their job effectively, remembering what armed forces personnel go on to do and the changed status they have is something that should legitimately be at the forefront of their mind. There should be some mechanism whereby they can interact with the veterans commissioners around the United Kingdom, so I do not think it is an unreasonable ask.
11 Dec 2024 · Explosive Ordnance Disposal Community · Hansard source
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Dowd. Having read my Order Paper over coffee, may I offer you my congratulations on your appointment to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee? It is an extremely responsible post in which we all have utter confidence that you will do very well. Good luck, Sir.
11 Dec 2024 · Explosive Ordnance Disposal Community · Hansard source
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I thank the hon. Member for his kind words about my father. I absolutely agree with him about the very important role played by the Royal Navy in maritime bomb disposal, including by the brave divers he alluded to. For completeness, as the hon. Gentleman is a former RAF officer, we should place on record that a great deal of work was undertaken in the second world war defusing German bombs that had landed on RAF airfields, perhaps most famously during the battle of Britain—so the Royal Air Force played its part in the battle against bombs as well. I turn to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the involvement of Britain’s armed forces, particularly the Army, switched from Northern Ireland through the Balkans and then into the middle east, including the first and second Gulf wars and the war in Afghanistan, again the threat from bombs—often referred to at that time as improvised explosive devices or IEDs—remained ever present. As General Sir Richard Dannatt, a former Chief of the General Staff, recalled in his memoir “Leading From The Front”, “Initially the Taliban had taken us on with small arms, machine guns and rocket grenades, but as they tired of being killed in large numbers they resorted to the classic insurgent tactic of avoiding direct combat and attacking us instead with IEDs, in exactly the same way as the Iraqi militias and the provisional IRA had done before them.” The Minister himself served in Afghanistan, and we pay tribute to him for his service. The need to respond to the IED threat, which was eventually responsible for a large number of casualties—both fatal and non-fatal, but none the less in many cases life-changing—was an important aspect particularly of Operation Herrick, the allied campaign in Afghanistan. As Simon Akam explained in his challenging book “The Changing of the Guard: the British Army since 9/11”, “The IED became the signature weapon of the Helmand Conflict. No longer could troops move freely; instead they adopted the ‘Afghan snake’, painstakingly walking in a line behind a young soldier holding a Vallon Mine Detector.” Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton, a former Milton Keynes MP and a previous Minister for the Armed Forces, worked on EOD disposal during Operation Herrick. We pay tribute to him and all his EOD colleagues for their service. Even today, the task of explosive ordnance disposal—now carried out principally by 11 EOD regiments of the Royal Logistics Corps—remains as vital as ever, both in protecting our civilian population from domestic acts of terrorism and in permitting the conduct of military operations. Some of the savage fighting in Ukraine has included the widespread use of booby traps and other IEDs, and therefore the threat remains as live as ever on the modern battlefield. Indeed, in its helpful briefing note for this important debate, the Mines Advisory Group highlights that the Ukrainian Government estimate that about a third of their territory, or 156,000 sq km —an area bigger than England—remains potentially contaminated with explosive ordnance. For the record, the previous Government invested in the latest EOD technology for our own armed forces, including the Harris T7 bomb disposal robot, which is the successor of the iconic Wheelbarrow from Northern Ireland, and, more recently, the T7’s highly nimble little brother, the Harris T4—a programme that was encouraged by my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) when he was the Procurement Minister at the MOD. Let me turn directly to the speech by the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell, who summarised very well the challenge still posed by unexplained ordnance in the present day—not just, as she pointed out, in Ukraine, but in a number of other countries around the world, including Laos and Lebanon. We should pay tribute to the work of two UK-led organisations, the Mines Advisory Group and the HALO Trust, which have led the world in seeking to step up and to address the challenge. Given all this, in addition to responding to my point about the legacy Act, will the Minister answer three specific questions? First, are the Government minded to continue spending at least the same amount on overseas mine disposal in 2025-26 as they are spending in 2024-25? Secondly, much of that spending is deployed via the FCDO’s GMAP and the UK’s integrated security fund; is any of that funding from the MOD budget, and if so, could it be vulnerable to the strategic defence review? The third question is related to the second: when do we expect the outcome of the SDR to be published? I ask that this morning because rumours are now circulating that it could be as late as June 2025. While we have the Minister’s company this morning, could he provide an update about the likely timing of the publication of the SDR? As he knows, it is keenly anticipated. In conclusion, I pay tribute to all those personnel, be they from the armed forces or civilians, who have had the courage to take part in the extremely dangerous task of explosive ordnance disposal across the decades. It is harrowing work, and not for the faint hearted. In risking their lives, they have helped to save the lives of countless others. Sadly, a number of those employed in that highly dangerous line of work made the ultimate sacrifice, and we rightly pay tribute to them this morning as well. We will remember them.
11 Dec 2024 · Explosive Ordnance Disposal Community · Hansard source
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Before the hon. Gentleman moves on, I would like to say that he has spoken powerfully about the work that was undertaken by British armed forces personnel during the troubles, and subsequently in addressing the unexploded ordnance threat in Northern Ireland. When I was the Armed Forces Minister, I had the privilege of visiting one of those units and seeing for myself the incredible work that it did. Would he join me—and, I am sure, all Members this morning—in paying tribute to those incredibly brave men and women who risk their lives day after day to uphold the rule of law in Northern Ireland?
11 Dec 2024 · Explosive Ordnance Disposal Community · Hansard source
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Perhaps I should begin by declaring a personal family interest in this subject. My late father, Stoker First Class Reginald Francois, served on a minesweeper named HMS Bressay from 1943 until the second world war ended, so he was involved in bomb disposal of a sort. Perhaps more accurately it was mine disposal, but nevertheless he personally faced a threat from large explosive devices, albeit in a maritime context. As his son, I am proud to speak on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition on this very important subject this morning. I congratulate the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) on securing this important debate and, if I may say so, for introducing it so ably. She made a very knowledgeable contribution, no doubt drawing on her own military experience. In particular, she illustrated the challenge posed to the international community by the sheer scale of this problem around the world. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke powerfully about the threat from terrorist bombs in Northern Ireland, which is a subject to which I would like to return. The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Calvin Bailey)—an RAF veteran, if I may call him that—also addressed the international scale of the challenge. Last but not least, I am supported by our shadow Defence Parliamentary Private Secretary this morning, my hon. Friend the Member for Exmouth and Exeter East (David Reed), who as a former Royal Marine, like the Minister, understands quite a lot about the subject. I would like to begin my own contribution with a historical perspective on bomb disposal operations in the British armed forces, before moving on to address both military and, increasingly, civilian operations in this crucial field of activity, right up to the present day. Bomb disposal, or, to give it its more formal title, explosive ordnance disposal—EOD for short—can be traced back for over a century. During the first world war, squads of men were assembled to help deal with unexploded bombs left after raids on London and the south east by German zeppelin bombers and their Gotha Giant aircraft counterparts—a bombing campaign that was very well summarised by Neil Hanson in his book “First Blitz”. In addition, with the advent of truly industrialised warfare in the first world war, teams of engineers were needed to dispose of unexploded munitions, particularly high explosive shells that had fallen among the allied trenches on the western front but failed to detonate. Even at that time, this was highly skilled and extremely dangerous work—a characteristic that has remained true right through to the present day. By the time of the second world war, although the need for bomb disposal on the battlefield was undiminished, with the advent of the mass bombing of civilian targets, the need for bomb disposal on the home front expanded accordingly. This led to a high death toll among those brave enough to undertake the task of dealing with unexploded bombs—or UXBs, as they were characterised at that time. Juliet Gardiner, in her book entitled simply “The Blitz”, describes the losses in the following terms, which I think are quite evocative: “Sometimes a UXB might embed itself a few feet in the ground, or fall into a static water tank or a gasometer but many penetrated deep below the surface and were difficult to get at. The defusers’ survival would have depended on staying one step ahead of German technology, since as soon as they learnt how one time delay mechanism worked, it would be replaced by another. By the end of 1940, 123 officers and men of the bomb disposal squads had been killed and 67 wounded. The deaths did not cease with the end of the war, as UXB’s continued to be uncovered. By 1947, 490 had been killed in the battle to extract these great torpid iron pigs from their holes and render them harmless.” The need for EOD workers continued as a facet of British military operations since the end of the second world war, right up to the present day. For instance, dealing with both republican and so-called loyalist bombs was a key facet of Operation Banner, the British Army’s campaign to support the civil authorities during the period of the troubles in Northern Ireland. A number of bomb disposal officers were killed and many were wounded during the course of the troubles, as the hon. Member for Strangford rightly reminded us. The scale of the task that they were up against was well summarised by Desmond Hamill in his book “Pig in the Middle” about the British Army’s role in Northern Ireland. He summarised the challenge as follows: “Over the years the Provisionals have become expert at designing and manufacturing booby-traps. Only the week before, a bomb disposal sergeant had been killed by a bomb within a bomb in County Fermanagh. It had been packed into a milk churn, and when the sergeant had cleared the timing device and was lifting it out, a detonator underneath set off the second bomb which exploded.” As the author went on to explain: “The bombs were often very simple and very deadly. The components were readily available—a few pounds of explosives, a detonator, a battery and a couple of feet of wire. The triggering device could either be a plate buried in the ground or even a clothes peg.” As the Minister will be well aware, hundreds of thousands of British soldiers served on Operation Banner during the troubles. Hundreds were killed, not just in bomb disposal, and many thousands were maimed or had life-changing injuries, from both republican and so-called loyalist terrorism. Perhaps when he sums up, the Minister could say a few words about why the Government still intend to abolish the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, which will leave many Northern Ireland veterans open, yet again, to an endless cycle of reinvestigation, much of it politically motivated at the hands of Sinn Féin. Our veterans, who faced the threat of terrorist bombs every day of their service in Northern Ireland, really do deserve better than this from their Government. Let me turn to the Falklands. Diffusing unexploded bombs is not just a challenge on land, as pointed out by Lord Ashcroft in his book “Falklands War Heroes”. During the 1982 Falklands war, chief marine engineering mechanic Michael Townsend was awarded the distinguished service medal for his role in assisting with the disposal of two bombs that had hit his ship, HMS Argonaut. The principal bomb disposal task with which he assisted was undertaken by Staff Sergeant Jim Prescott and Warrant Officer Second Class John Phillips, both of the Royal Engineers. Assisted by Townsend and several of the crew, the two bomb disposal experts succeeded in disarming and disposing both Argentinian bombs that had landed on the Argonaut. Unfortunately, however, Staff Sergeant Prescott, from 49 Squadron Royal Engineers, was killed two days later while attempting a similar task with two further unexploded bombs that had landed on HMS Argonaut’s sister ship, HMS Antelope. His colleague WO2 Phillips was badly injured, losing one of his arms in the latter attempt. I mention that particular example not just to pay tribute to the extreme bravery of all three men involved, one of whom sadly lost his life, but also to point out that dealing with ordnance of this type is not purely confined to the land domain.
11 Dec 2024 · Explosive Ordnance Disposal Community · Hansard source
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My father.
10 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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The Royal Air Force, what about you? It will be interesting to see whether we have a hat trick. Will you give us your top one or two? Maria Lyle: You nearly have a hat trick. You say that we represent families, which we absolutely do. We represent serving personnel as well, which is why I will mention housing in terms of houses, but also single-living accommodation. We had 650 people who came to us this year on that issue, before we get going on housing itself. My second one—we have a much smaller non-UK population in the RAF because we recruit differently—would be education and childcare. That is what people come to us about in its various forms and facets.
10 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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Q To be really clear, is it both? If Corporal Atkins has exhausted the service complaints process but still feels deeply aggrieved and is convinced that it has not adequately dealt with his issue, he could still go to the commissioner, and the commissioner would have the discretion, just as the ombudsman always had, to take up Corporal Atkins’ complaint and look into it in more detail. Luke Pollard: Exactly right—all the SCOAF functions move in their entirety. The only change we are making to the SCOAF functions is a very slight and minor one: at the moment, you need an officer to decide validity or eligibility, but that is being changed to an official. Apart from that, the entire SCOAF system is deliberately unchanged, because the place for any revisions to the functioning of the service complaints system would be the armed forces Bill, which will come in about two years’ time. The Bill gives the commissioner the ability to be informed by the service complaints system, as well as anything else they may receive, when deciding on thematic investigations or areas they want to look at.
10 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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Q You mentioned that you have 38 years of service, so you would be perfectly human to be thinking about pensions. There is very little reference to pensions in the Bill, but you could argue that if you are looking at issues of general service welfare, what happens to a service person’s pension is very important to them and their family. Do you think it a weakness in the Bill that it does not say much specifically about pensions? Would you like to see that specifically included? Col. Darren Doherty: It is not an area of expertise for me. I think the provision of pensions and advice on pensions—this is from my personal experience of having just gone through it—is adequate, with the support of great institutions such as the Forces Pension Society as an additional advising actor. I am not sure that it is something that would require specifically laying out in the Bill. That is my own opinion.
10 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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The pressure on family life, as we have already heard today, is the single biggest reason why people leave, but when we went round a number of military bases, we found it was often an amalgam of reasons. Sometimes there would be a pressure cooker effect over several years, and then one thing might become, in colloquial English, the straw that broke the camel’s back. Sometimes it is that cocktail that just becomes a bit too much. Is that a fair characterisation? [ Interruption. ] I can see some heads nodding, so that still holds good five years on. Thank you very much. You have been generous with your time, Mr Efford—thank you.
10 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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Q Anecdotally, if colleagues will forgive me, I remember going to RAF Digby about a decade ago, where there were some very highly-qualified communications specialists, who do important work, living in what were virtually demountables, to use a colloquial term. These people are massively employable in industry and then we wonder why they leave, so I sympathise with your raising that issue. Again, this is a bit of a hot button of mine, but you also mentioned educational need. Does that include special educational needs, and if so, could you elaborate on that slightly? Maria Lyle: It does. That is the very sharpest end of the wedge when it comes to challenges for military families. If they are moving, picking up that provision and replicating it in a new area is not always possible. I would say that they are the most vulnerable—the ones who have the biggest challenges to overcome in our systems.
10 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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Q Some of your colleagues down the years have told me that knowing the TACEVAL team could turn up at almost any moment very much concentrated minds. It kept people sharp, is how one person put it to me. It is a slightly different situation here, but most people seem to think it is good to have those powers in the Bill. We will move to the Royal Navy—apologies for leaving the senior service until last, Ms Harding. On the housing side, in my experience all three services tend to treat service housing slightly differently. From memory, quite a lot of service personnel live off base and tend to commute to their place of work. Quite a few of them actually buy a property rather than live in a quarter. Obviously, housing is one issue that the commissioner will look at. Are you happy that the powers in the Bill are sufficient for the commissioner to investigate that issue? I am thinking particularly about the ability to produce thematic reports, and housing is an obvious issue for an early report. Do you have a particular view on that? Mandy Harding: From what I have read of the Bill, my understanding is that the Armed Forces Commissioner will have the power to investigate and look at issues that are arising. In our charity’s line of work, we come into contact with beneficiaries and we get reports in through the partners and organisations that we fund. In direct work with the people we have been supporting, particularly on neurodiversity and special educational needs and disabilities, housing does crop up. That is the exciting part of having an Armed Forces Commissioner—somebody who can hear from different areas and connect the dots to realise what is happening in different places. There is an oversight role there. That is incredibly useful to us as grant funders. We do our grant funding based on need, so if need is identified, that is where we can bring that wraparound support to families.
10 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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Q I wrote a paper about retention, called “Stick or Twist?”, for a previous Prime Minister. Collette Musgrave: Indeed you did.

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