Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Penn

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 56 from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, which would waive fees for indefinite leave to remain applications for spouses and immediate family members of serving personnel and veterans. I have tabled Amendment 66, which seeks to achieve the same outcome through a slightly different route: by requiring the Government to bring forward secondary legislation within a specified timeframe. My amendment is designed to address some of the concerns raised by Ministers in the other place around specific approaches and wording.

Frankly, I do not mind what legislative approach is taken provided the issue is resolved. I do not need to add to the noble and gallant Lord’s exposition of the issue, but I say to the Minister that, typically, the Immigration Rules are changed twice yearly, with the next set expected in October. Can he provide greater clarity on the Government’s timetable for action? Can he reassure military families that this commitment—by all three major parties—will finally be delivered in the forthcoming changes this autumn?

I turn to Amendment 57 in my name and that of the noble Baronesses, Lady Smith of Newnham and Lady Bennett, and my noble friend Lord Harlech, to whom I am grateful for their support. At the heart of this is how we support military families, but it is also about military capability. The strategic defence review identified a workforce crisis. When our Armed Forces depend so heavily on experience and invest so much in their personnel, retention matters as much as recruitment. That is why I welcome the many provisions in the Bill designed to strengthen service life. Amendment 57 proposes a relatively small change, but one that could make a meaningful difference to military families and retention.

The recently published Tri-Service Families Continuous Attitude Survey underlines the reality for families. Some 78% of service families have children, and one in five have children who are under two years old, yet a quarter of service families live apart during the working week, rising to almost 40% in the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines. Nearly three in 10 families experienced separation of three months or more during the past year.

At present, serving fathers receive two weeks of paternity leave at full pay. However, for military families, returning to work after two weeks is not a return to a normal commute; it means returning to a posting many hours away, or to months of separation. That is why this issue matters so deeply to those who serve. One serving soldier told the Dad Shift:

“Being posted 4 hours away from my child when she was born was tough, only having 2 weeks to bond before I was back to being 200 miles away with limited time to travel back and see her was tough and has definitely caused irreparable damage to our relationship, ultimately leading to the collapse of my relationship with her mother too”.


These challenges are reflected further in the Tri-Service Families Continuous Attitude Survey: 52% of spouses disagree that they feel valued by the service, 34% say they would feel happier if their partner left the military, while 44% have at some time in the past year encouraged their partner to leave.

The factors driving dissatisfaction are revealing. The impact on careers, the amount of separation from spouses and the effect on children are the top three reasons. Improving paternity leave is not a silver bullet, but the evidence consistently shows that it supports maternal employment, strengthens family relationships and improves outcomes for children. At a time when retention is a strategic issue, we should take seriously reforms that strengthen the family life of those who serve. The experiences of serving personnel illustrate why. One RAF officer recalled:

“Both children saw us remain in hospital with our newborn for 3-4 days due to challenges with feeding and jaundice ... With only two weeks available, time spent dealing with complications or hospital stays can consume a significant proportion of the leave itself”.


The Minister may point to shared parental leave or the possibility of additional compassionate leave as options to resolve this. However, service families often describe those options as difficult to access and inconsistently applied. One army officer reported:

“I pushed and took Shared Parental Leave but I had to threaten a Service Complaint to do so with my work at the time”.


He added that if the process was difficult for a senior officer, it would likely be much harder for more junior personnel. Likewise, a RAF corporal told the Dad Shift:

“I’ve had my paternity leave handled three different ways for my three children; it does come down to that reoccurring line manager lottery issue unfortunately”.


That inconsistency in itself is part of the problem. Families should not have to rely on confidence, rank or managerial discretion to receive adequate support at such a significant moment in their lives. Soldiers, sailors and aviators should not have to worry about explaining to their commanding officer that their wife and baby are struggling with breastfeeding and need more support, or that their wife’s stitches are infected, or that they are worried that she might be suffering from postnatal depression but cannot even be sure because they are not home enough to tell.

Of course, the impact of leave on operational readiness must be taken into account. Unlike maternity leave, paternity leave is not exempt from the provision in JSP 760 that

“the granting and timing of all forms of absence … is to be at the discretion of the Service and is subject to operational requirements and the general exigencies of the service”.

Nothing in my amendment changes this.

The sacrifices made by those serving in our Armed Forces are shared by their families. When a child is born, those pressures are felt even more acutely. Two weeks of paternity leave is increasingly out of step with the realities of modern family life, the practices of leading employers, and the approach taken by many of our closest allies, with Australia offering eight weeks of paid paternity leave and the United States offering 12 weeks to its military personnel. When Congress extended that entitlement, bipartisan supporters from both Houses described it as a matter of military readiness and national security.

I hope, therefore, in responding to this group, that the Minister will recognise not only the family case for reform but the strategic one. Supporting military families at the moment they need it most is the right thing to do, but it would also be an investment in retention, morale and the long-term strength of our Armed Forces.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and to attach my name to Amendment 57, which would provide for six weeks of fully paid paternity leave for servicepeople. The Committee will see that this is perhaps not the broadest alliance across the political spectrum that you might find, but it is certainly up there in the spread that you will typically see in your Lordships’ House.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, has powerfully outlined, the arguments for the amendment, which I will not repeat, are twofold. First, it is about the welfare of children. It is about children being able to establish a proper relationship and foundation for family life—something that will be with them through their lives. It is also, of course, a big issue for retention and recruitment of servicepeople, so it is an issue for the effectiveness of our Armed Forces.

At Second Reading, I addressed this issue with a number of quotes from the survey. I will just add one here. Think about what two weeks is like. This is an RAF officer from the Dad Shift survey:

“Both children saw us remain in hospital with our newborn for 3-4 days due to challenges with feeding and jaundice … even low-level complications might result in the first week of paternity leave being spent in hospital”.


Those are not circumstances in which, for one week, you will establish a stable relationship—they are extremely stressful, extremely difficult, extremely unnatural circumstances. Then maybe you will have one week or no weeks after that. I know that the Minister said at Second Reading that there is a broader government review of paternity leave, but I do not think, given that we have this Bill before us, that there is any need or any argument for waiting. Action can be taken—and clearly needs to be taken—now.

Amendment 67 in this group is in my name. It is a fairly simple amendment which would put into the Bill that the Government must establish a concessionary travel scheme for veterans’ bus travel. The amendment does not specify the exact detail of what concessionary bus travel might be provided, how it might be set out or what level it might be set at; that is clearly the sort of thing that is appropriate for a statutory instrument. If we think about the situation of veterans, some may qualify for concessionary travel because they are older or because they have a qualifying disability, but what about the veteran at the age of 30, 40 or 50 who has no qualifying disability but who returns to the UK, perhaps after many years of service, not having a stable base here in the UK?

Pension Schemes Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Penn

Committee stage
Monday 23rd February 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 218A. Before I do so, on Amendment 212, the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, made a valiant attempt to square the circle of opposing some forms of mandation while supporting others, but it did not quite get me over the line. So I do not support that amendment.

However, I am interested in my noble friend’s Amendment 218E on the TNFD. We have spoken many times in the House about nature and climate being two sides of the same coin, and we now have a framework that enables organisations to understand nature risk properly. It therefore seems logical that it is integrated into our thinking on pensions.

Although I acknowledge my noble friend’s concerns, the reason why I support Amendment 218A is that, at its heart, its point is to clarify that pension schemes trustees can take systemic-level risks into account when carrying out their fiduciary duty. We could have debates on other aspects, such as taking members’ views into account, but the amendment is attractive because it still has fiduciary duty at its heart rather than seeking to overrule it. That is a beneficial approach because it does not put those of us in Committee, or the Government, in the position of taking those views and making those decisions for people—that remains with the trustees, which is, I think, appropriate.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, eloquently made most of the points to be made in relation to Amendment 218A. The Government agree that we need to clarify that fiduciary duty can include a consideration of systemic risk; that point was accepted by the Pensions Minister in December. So the question then becomes: what form should this improved guidance take? Should it be legislative or statutory? I think that it should be legislative because so much of the understanding of fiduciary duty relies on the interpretation of case law. Therefore, we need a clearer legal underpinning of our understanding of this duty for it to be robust and for trustees to use it, which is the barrier that we are already trying to solve.

I would like to understand from the Minister why the Government have a preference for statutory guidance over legislative change. In the past, the Government have pointed to the importance of flexibility and consultation—those are allowed for through this amendment, but it would have the added benefits of proper parliamentary scrutiny and consultation with outside bodies.

I also want to ask the Minister about the scope of the Government’s proposed approach; this was touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. Why is it limited to occupational trust-based schemes, if that is the case? We have about half of pension assets in local government pension schemes and personal pensions, so why would this not extend to those?

Finally, I wish to press the Minister on timing. We have heard about transition plans in this debate. Work on those has been under way for a long time, and we have heard about the extended timeline, which may extend even further—one never knows. We have heard about the TNFD and the time it takes to get momentum behind this. We have heard about the fact that we were debating these issues three years ago in the then Financial Services and Markets Bill. We had one of our round tables before the election was called and I think that the Government have had further round tables to try to corral their efforts to address this issue.

However, the point remains: there needs to be a legislative basis for this statutory guidance. That is my understanding. We now have a pensions Bill. Let us hope that we do not have another one. We hear the phrase, “We will bring forward proposals when parliamentary time allows”—well, this is that parliamentary time. I am sure that the Government have lots of other things they want to do with future Bills in future Sessions of Parliament. May I encourage the Minister to seize this time? If she does not agree with Amendment 218A, at least on the statutory guidance, bring forward the legislative basis so that the Government can get on with the thing they say they want to do.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak in favour of all the amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 212, to which I have attached my name. As has already been widely noted, it has broad, cross-party support. I would have attached my name to Amendment 218A had there been space and to Amendment 218E had I caught up with it; I will certainly talk to the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, should she be thinking about bringing it back on Report, having at Second Reading praised the noble Baroness’s contributions in that direction.

Like that of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, my speech at Second Reading majored on the fiduciary duty issues, which this group very much gets to the heart of. I was very interested in the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, on the TNFD. It is great to hear such broad political support for that; I hope that it is something we can take forward.

I will mostly focus on Amendment 212. Noble Lords might expect me, as the Green, to get up and talk about the climate emergency—that is standard—but what I am really getting up to talk about today is financial risk. I am talking about the carbon bubble, which is a very severe risk, among many other risks, that all pension savers face. There is a strong economic case for green pensions reform. UK pension schemes have been estimated to hold at least £88 billion in fossil fuel companies and £10 billion in thermal coal alone. Here, I will drop in statistics relating to the biodiversity point: UK pension schemes hold £300 billion in companies linked to deforestation, more than 85% of leading schemes have been found to lack credible climate action plans, and only 4% of pension assets are invested in climate solutions, the things that could be providing the long-term future.

One of the issues that this amendment brings forward is the fact that there is a lack of monitoring of this situation by both the Government and the Pensions Regulator. There were a number of Written Questions in the other place in September about the risks of stranded assets, contribution to fossil fuels expansion and investments in fossil fuels. The Government’s response was that they did not have any estimates on these matters. Subsequent Written Questions led to the understanding that the Pensions Regulator also has no estimates on these matters. There is already some data on this, which is being captured by independent organisations—but I am afraid that is really not good enough. The carbon bubble is something the Government really need to have a handle on.

As some other speakers have already said, we know that many of the largest pension schemes, including some of the biggest names, continue to be invested in thermal coal, as well as other very marginal fossil fuel extraction, which will swiftly become uneconomic as global demand tails off. That is already happening with thermal coal. The International Energy Agency’s Electricity 2026 report, out earlier this month, suggested that global demand for coal has already peaked. China and India, as well as Europe, all saw declines in 2025, yet these investments are still happening.

It is common for the idea to be floated that pension schemes should not exit these investments, despite holding them solely for short-term benefit and for the ruination of other holdings in pension savers’ portfolios, but should try to engage in the companies concerned. However, this has not had any discernible impact. After decades of so-called engagement, no coal mining firm has set strong decarbonisation targets, and it is very hard to see how they might actually do so.

Many oil and gas firms are nominally signed up to far away 2050 targets. I am sure we have all heard the phrase that having a 2050 target is the same as having no target at all. Barely any have anything like a fast enough transition to come anything close to being Paris-aligned. We saw with BP and Shell how quickly firms row back from hard-won targets when their CEOs change or a few shareholders start to grumble. What we are talking about here, I stress, is an approach to protect pension savers’ financial interests. When the UK Government’s policy is moving towards decarbonising the economy, UK pension policy should not be undermining that, particularly when it comes to thermal coal overseas.