Armed Forces: Redundancy

Debate between Lord Astor of Hever and Lord Laming

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, the noble Viscount said that we give the appearance of wanting to get this lot out of the way. That is not the case. As the noble Viscount knows, we value all members of the Armed Forces. I understand that several service men and women will come forward for voluntary redundancy. The noble Viscount mentioned people slipping through the net. If he knows of any such cases, I would be very grateful if he could bring them to my attention.

As far as the military covenant is concerned, we are writing into law, through the Armed Forces Bill, the commitment that the Secretary of State for Defence will lay before Parliament every year a report on what is being done to live up to the covenant. We are committed to rebuilding the covenant to improve support for service personnel. We are doing everything we can to provide them with the right support, focused on the most important areas, despite the financial situation we inherited. We will soon publish a new tri-service Armed Forces covenant—the first of its kind. This will set out the relationship and obligations between the Armed Forces community, the Government and the nation. The report will also set out how we are supporting our Armed Forces, their veterans and families in such key areas as healthcare, housing and education. This will ensure that all future Governments must stand up for the Armed Forces.

[Lord Laming]

Could we return to the terms of redundancy? I am somewhat confused about the meaning of “meanness”, compared with the meaning of “fairness”. An earlier question was asked about meanness and the noble Lord described the terms as being fair. The question is: fair to whom? I simply ask whether the terms of redundancy are the same as before—the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, referred to them—or different.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I cannot add anything to my earlier answer. We have looked very carefully at this whole issue and we consider that these amounts are fair.