Armed Forces Bill

Baroness Goldie Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to wind up this debate for His Majesty’s most loyal Opposition. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, that I am very pleased to be sitting here and I do not envy the Minister sitting over there. Everything has its moment.

As my noble friend Lord Minto said, we on these Benches support the Bill. This House has renewed this legislation every five years since the 2006 Act, in an unbroken constitutional tradition stretching back to the Bill of Rights of 1688—a discipline this House takes seriously. We certainly shall not be a roadblock to its progress.

This has been a rich debate; as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said, there have been many contributions which have been genuinely interesting to listen to. However, one issue has recurred with such frequency it is almost like a musical reprise: funding. I shall leave the Minister to respond to that in whatever way he can, but the current position is overwhelmingly regarded as unsustainable.

Turning to other matters addressed by my noble friend which resonated with others, I want to reflect briefly on some contributions from around the House. The importance of housing was universally agreed throughout the Chamber. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich reminded us, houses, flats, terraced accommodations, bases and dockyards also have to be homes. I am grateful to him; we should never forget that.

On housing and the creation of this new defence housing service, there is a risk of duplication of function—I remember the extraordinary size of the defence infrastructure organisation when I was in the MoD—as I gather this will remain as a directorate within the MoD. If we have two organisations both claiming responsibility for defence estate, duplication is not a hypothetical risk, and that is precisely the kind of institutional confusion this House should be pressing the Government to eliminate before Royal Assent and not after.

I note that Section 343F gives the defence housing service the power to

“form, participate in forming, or invest in, a company, partnership, joint venture or other similar form of organisation”.

I simply want to ask the Minister: why do the Government see this as necessary? What kinds of commercial vehicles does the ministry envisage the defence housing service establishing? And what safeguards will apply to ensure that a body created to serve service families and house them does not drift into activities that begin to serve as accountancy balance sheet operations?

There must also be a clear boundary between the defence housing service and the residual functions of the Ministry of Defence, and clarity of purpose about where responsibility and accountability lie, not least because Schedule 1 provides that the service will not enjoy Crown status in respect of much of its property, save in specified circumstances, which itself raises questions about its legal exposure that I hope the Minister can address.

My noble friend Lord Minto offered up the policy on these Benches of an Armed Forces housing association. That is an alternative model for service accommodation reform to that which the Government propose. Whereas the Government have opted for a body that remains tied closely to the Secretary of State, subject to Treasury borrowing consent and a government direction, our model would deliver a genuinely independent, tenant-accountable organisation. I would welcome the Minister’s reflections on why the Government judged a Crown-adjacent body preferable to that independent, not-for-profit model, and what protection service families will have to ensure that the defence housing service does not simply repeat the mistakes of the past. At the risk of making the Minister feel a little uncomfortable, my noble friend asked about the rumoured deferral of investment in defence housing to help fund the DIP, and I hope that question can be answered.

Since I, as a Minister, took the then overseas operations Bill through this House, politicians from all parties, with the possible exception of the Liberal Democrats, have started to question the impact of the ECHR on UK sovereign law and sovereign decision-making across a whole spectrum of activity, and there is a debate to be had. Specifically in relation to defence, the court decision of Al-Jedda v the United Kingdom, decided in 2011 by the Strasbourg court, clarified the reach of that law into a live arena of conflict. The court ruled that the detention of terrorist suspects in Basra by British troops violated Article 5 of the convention, and that the British state had therefore acted unlawfully. This has serious ramifications for future operational decision-making and for the ability of British troops to hold prisoners of war in any future conflict.

The extent to which such law may now to be incompatible with the overriding need to make instant life and death decisions in a conflict environment requires, in my opinion, serious reflection. I look forward to continuing this argument in Committee, where our amendments will receive fuller scrutiny, and I hope the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, is feeling encouraged by my contribution.

A number of very interesting contributions were made on the service justice system. I certainly welcome the sensible alignment of various provisions with the arrangements in the civilian criminal justice system. I am very grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich for raising a number of valid concerns, because there is a conundrum here. Under the Bill, service police will not be able to authorise pre-charge custody for offences under Schedule 1 to the Armed Forces Act 2006—offences such as battery—even where there is a clear domestic context, because the legislation is drafted so that only “serious offences” fall within scope, a category which does not capture Schedule 1 offences and does not separately articulate the context of domestic abuse.

A further issue arises under Clause 16, whereby a provost marshal may act as the appropriate authority when a person has been charged with a serious offence, meaning there will no longer be any involvement from the commanding officer in terms of pre-charge attention for such an offence. This seems to be fairly significant interference with the chain of command if we consider the environment where many of these offences might be occurring, which could be a base remote from other places with a military police presence but not an extensive one—I would be grateful if the Minister could expand on the Government’s reasoning here. There is also a concern that commanding officers are not obliged to refer offences, such as common assault, voyeurism, and actual bodily harm in a domestic abuse context, to the service police. Consideration should be had to amending Schedule 2 to the Armed Forces Act 2006 to ensure that commanding officers are required to refer such offences for investigation.

These Benches welcome the incorporation of the Armed Forces covenant into law. It finishes off what I was privileged to start in this Chamber in a previous iteration of the Armed Forces Bill. I say to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, that I realise the pace may have been too slow, but I pay tribute to his tenacious pursuit of this issue and to the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, for his continued and vigorous support of the covenant. The previous Government’s reticence was through caution, because we need to understand the consequences of such statutory incorporation. Further questions will follow, and it seems from the Bill’s attempt to define national authorities, local authorities, education authorities and health bodies that this is far-reaching. But what about arm’s-length bodies—corporate bodies which deliver many of the functions detailed in Clause 2? Can the Minister explain their omission from the Bill?

I think we all welcome the provisions in the Bill on reserves to improve flexibility and create fluidity. That is important because there are skills, expertise and niche specialisms in civilian roles which our Armed Forces need to be able to call on at short notice. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Carberry, gave some interesting examples to show how that could work in practice. But as for the laudable objective to increase numbers in the active reserve by 20%, my noble friend Lord Minto indicated a proposal from these Benches of a tax-free first 30 days of reserve service, and that seems to me a no-brainer. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton’s reference to the successful recruitment experience in Canada following a national conversation has not been lost on the Minister. I pay tribute to my noble friend for the vital work which he is doing and ask the Minister to take some of these ideas back to the department.

This has been a useful and constructive debate, and I have highlighted the issues of particular significance to these Benches. I hope that the questions that my noble friend Lord Minto and I have posed can be addressed by the Minister; I have also tried to indicate where we expect to return to issues in Committee. I conclude by saying that, notwithstanding these Benches’ serious reservations about the broader funding issues, there is a lot of good in the Bill, which I am sure the scrutiny of your Lordships can make even better. My colleagues and I shall endeavour to make a positive contribution to that process.