Armed Forces Bill

Baroness Penn Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate. This is my first contribution in this House on the matter of defence. The reasons it has come now are twofold.

The first reason is the time we are living through. In my time in government, in the Home Office and No. 10, we dealt with terror attacks, the Novichok poisonings, cyber attacks, and the use of chemical weapons in Syria. But the scale of the threat, and the response we need, are of a different order of magnitude today. As we have heard in the debate, that means a whole-society response. We need to widen the debate that we have in this House and the people who engage in it, not least on the question of funding. Meeting 3% and 3.5% of GDP towards defence will be incredibly challenging, but it is important that we get there. I do not envy the current Government in trying to do it, but it is a long-term task. The trade-offs are real, and we should not pretend that they are not. That means a wider conversation about what we have to sacrifice to meet those funding commitments.

The same is true when we think about the contribution that we want people to make to our defence beyond our Armed Forces. We need to hear more about that national conversation. I encourage the Government—again, it is a difficult conversation to have—to try to be more open in how they tackle and approach this question. It is not something we have done for a very long time, and I do not think we can come up with the answer behind closed doors without an ongoing period of engagement.

The second reason I am speaking now is my participation in the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme, which has given me much greater insight into the people who serve in our Armed Forces—particularly the RAF, the branch through which I am doing the scheme this year. It is clear that we will deliver on our commitments in the SDR and the defence investment programme only if we deliver for and through our people in the military. Therefore, I welcome the measures in the Bill that will improve conditions for people: the measures to strengthen the Armed Forces covenant, to take further action on housing and to strengthen and expand the role of reservists.

Given the premium that the military places on experience, retention—as well as recruitment—will be more important than ever. In that context, I will raise two issues that I think touch the lives of Armed Forces families in particular.

The first is paternity leave for dads in the military. In the UK, we give dads two weeks’ full-paid paternity leave; in Australia, it is eight weeks; in Canada, it is a share of up to 35 weeks; and in the US, that well-known bastion of parental rights and pay, it is 12 weeks at full pay. The US example is pertinent, because this is about a hard-nosed approach to what we need in order to retain the very best people in our services. I have made the case before about changing our statutory provision in the civilian world and how it is good for dads, mums and kids, but all those reasons are magnified in a military setting because of the demand that we place on the people serving in our military and the absences that they often have from their families. That opportunity early in a family’s formation to spend time together, to bond and to establish ongoing relationships is even more important.

It is also worth reflecting on the dynamic for couples who are both in the Armed Forces. At the moment, mums get 26 weeks at full pay under their occupational provision, and dads get two weeks, so think about the effect that that has on the career of both those people as they have each additional child and how the balance of how they approach care is different.

I recognise that members of the Armed Forces are not employees with traditional employment rights in this sense, that the provision for the occupational scheme is different, and that leave needs to be and is subject to operational demands. Nothing that I would propose in changing it would change that fact, but I think we can and should go further.

I would also like to raise a specific case with the Minister of an Army Reserve sergeant who was denied statutory paternity pay after his mobilisation to support Ukraine was treated as a work break from his civilian job. My understanding is that this is not how the current system is meant to work, but this issue affecting a particular member of the reserves has not been resolved and we do not know whether others are also being affected by, perhaps, a misunderstanding of the rules. I hope the Minister can commit to looking further into this and getting it resolved. If we are going to expand the role of reserves in our country, we need to make sure that the move between mobilisation and deployment and civilian life is smooth and works for them.

The second area I would like to raise is that raised by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley: the fees for indefinite leave to remain for family members of service personnel with service of four years or more. Removing these fees is a Labour manifesto commitment, and it is supported by the Royal British Legion. In the other place, it had a very vocal supporter in my colleague Ben Obese-Jecty, who tabled an amendment to this Bill in the Commons to introduce those changes that are a government manifesto commitment. Sadly, it was voted against in the other place; the Minister responded by saying that work is under way, but no timescale has been given. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, said: it is two years since the election. In that time, the fees for indefinite leave to remain have risen by almost £350. For a family of four to get indefinite leave to remain will cost well over £10,000 and the increase for that family is over £1,000 since 2024.

I recognise that this requires work with the Home Office. Both the Minister and I have worked in the Home Office, and we know that on occasion it can be hard to get things done in that very great department, but two years is long enough. We change our Immigration Rules twice a year. The next changes are due in October, and it would be fantastic to hear from the Minister that the fulfilment of Labour’s manifesto commitment in this area will be contained within those changes.

There is the old saying that you recruit a soldier but retain a family. I hope that, alongside the measures in the Bill, the Minister can signal some progress on both of the issues that I have raised today.

Armed Forces Bill

Baroness Penn Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords, we have already started to discuss some of the themes here; the noble Lord, Lord Empey, raised some of them. On Amendments 42 to 44, I am grateful to my noble friends Lady Penn and Lord De Mauley for their support. The group addresses what I believe is the largest single gap in the law protecting reservists.

We protect the reservist who is already in the job, and almost nobody else. Section 17 of the Reserve Forces (Safeguard of Employment) Act 1985 makes it a criminal offence to dismiss a reservist because of call-out liability. Section 48 of the Defence Reform Act 2014 removes the qualifying period for unfair dismissal where the reason is connected with reserve membership. Both are about dismissal. Neither touches a candidate sitting an interview. I add that where an employer is convicted under Section 17, compensation is capped by Section 18 at five weeks’ pay. That is the entire financial consequence of criminally dismissing a reservist.

Amendment 42 would make it unlawful to refuse a person employment because they have been or may become a reservist, with a remedy in the employment tribunal. Our closest ally covers this expressly. American law protects applicants as well as employees and reaches past, current and future military obligations. This House has already accepted the principle at home: Part III of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 makes it unlawful to refuse a person employment on the grounds of trade union membership. It is difficult to explain to a reservist why union membership merits statutory protection at the point of hiring and service to the Crown does not.

This matters because of what it causes. The reason reservists conceal their service from employers is the belief—frequently, a correct belief—that declaring it will cost them the job. That belief is entirely rational, because there is no remedy if they are right. The consequence is that the whole architecture of employer support rests on people hiding the very thing it exists to support. That is not a stable foundation for the whole force, and it is not a recruiting proposition either.

I expect to be told that there is no evidence of a problem. The absence of evidence is a function of the absence of a remedy. Nobody records a refusal that they have no means of challenging. I also expect to be told that subsection (6) of the proposed new clause, on the shifting burden of proof, is too onerous, but it is the standard provision used throughout discrimination law and well understood by tribunals, and it is narrower than the American test. Without it, the clause would be decorative, because no employer writes down that they declined a candidate over their reserve service.

Amendment 43 deals with what happens afterwards. Between the 1985 Act and unfair dismissal lies everything that actually occurs in practice: being passed over for promotion, taken off the client list, given the shift pattern which clashes with drill nights, or quietly moved sideways after a mobilisation. The employer who does not want reservists does not dismiss them. Dismissal is legally risky and commercially untidy. They simply make staying unattractive, and, at present, that is entirely lawful. American protection reaches promotion, retention and any benefit of employment. Ours reaches nothing until the individual is sacked.

This is settled machinery. It mirrors the detriment provisions already in Part V of the Employment Rights Act, which protects whistleblowers, health and safety representatives, and pension trustees. It falls hardest on those the reserve can least replace: the medical, legal, cyber and engineering specialists that the Regular Forces cannot recruit and could not afford to grow.

Amendment 44 concerns the reservists nobody has legislated for at all. A substantial proportion are self-employed, run small businesses or are partners in professional firms, and not one of the protections in the Bill or in existing law reaches them. For that person, the cost of annual camp is not leave; it is a fortnight of lost revenue with the overheads still running. Australia’s protections expressly reach partnerships, and its employer support payment scheme covers the self-employed. Canada operates something comparable. We pay the reservists a daily rate and give the employer a certificate. Again, to my own Front Bench, I suggest that this is very pro self-employed businesses and business owners.

Subsection (3) of the proposed new clause is deliberately a duty to review and not a spending power, so it creates no charge on public funds. I ask the Government to examine the question and report, not yet to fund the scheme. If the answer is that we cannot afford what Australia and Canada do, this House is entitled to be told the figure.

I recognise that these are not government amendments and that the Minister may have concerns about the drafting. If the principle is accepted, I am entirely content for the drafting to be the Government’s, and I would welcome a conversation with him and with colleagues from all sides of the House before Report. I beg to move.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend Lord Harlech in Amendments 42 and 43. He has again brought before the Committee sensible, pragmatic amendments that surely must be addressed if we want reservists to continue to play a growing role in our Armed Forces. Refusal of employment, denial of promotion or withdrawal on the grounds of reserve service must be unacceptable. We are relying on reservists to balance the demands of their military service and their employment, and we must be able to say to them that they will be properly protected if their service unfairly threatens their livelihoods.

The Minister said in response to the previous group that reservists already benefit from employment protections. These amendments identify two gaps in those protections that I cannot see a reason not to fill. The Minister may, as my noble friend has anticipated, find objections to the drafting or in other areas, but it would be interesting to hear whether the Government accept the principle that these gaps exist in the employment protections for reservists. We might also hear the challenge about providing employment protection on or prior to appointment, but I think my noble friend has found a very good precedent in trade union legislation, which has solved this issue in other cases. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

Armed Forces Bill

Baroness Penn Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 56, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, for adding his name in support of it. I also thank the Royal British Legion for its guidance in drafting this amendment.

Amendment 56 proposes amending the nationality fees regulations of 2018 to waive fees for certain Armed Forces veterans who have been granted indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom. Noble Lords may be interested to learn that the terms of my amendment featured in all three major party manifestos for the 2024 election. Let me quote them briefly. Labour said:

“We will … scrap visa fees for non-UK veterans who have served for four or more years, and their dependents”.


The Conservatives said:

“We will extend the visa fees waiver introduced to cover Commonwealth personnel, to include their direct dependants”.


The Liberal Democrats said that they would:

“Secure a fair deal for the armed forces community … by … Waiving application fees for indefinite leave for members of the armed forces on discharge, and their families”.


Nothing has happened since except that, in response to follow-up Written Questions last year, a Home Office Minister said this on 13 March:

“We continue to keep this policy under review in the context of our wider considerations of various aspects of the immigration system”.


The Ministry of Defence responded a week later, saying that it was

“actively working with the Home Office to take this forward”.

In short, prevarications apart, nothing has happened. To have a reply saying:

“We continue to keep this policy under review in … our wider considerations of various aspects of the immigration system”


is surely classic Sir Humphrey-speak. The Home Office should be ashamed of itself.

The immigration system must be under constant study, not a one-off difficulty. What wider considerations are implied? The Government have recently been priding themselves on their reduction in illegal arrivals of over 40% and an increase in repatriations. There seems to be no crisis or wider aspect so great that the Government cannot immediately introduce this universally manifesto-promised arrangement.

Families of service personnel who have qualified for indefinite leave to remain are faced with visa fees that were £155 in 2003 but have risen to no less than £3,226 per person as of 8 April—a staggering increase. So a spouse, their partner and two children applying for ILR now have to find almost £13,000, on top of their fares and relocation costs, to move to the UK. This is no way to treat veterans and their families.

Such prevarication and inertia does not seem to be even related to the present Government. For more than 10 years, I and others pressed the Home Office to grant ILR to members of the Armed Forces who had been recruited and served in Hong Kong. All were members of the Hong Kong Military Service Corps. Repeated Home Office answers were varied ways of saying, “It is under active consideration”, or, “A decision will be made as soon as possible”. I once christened this Home Office foot-dragging as repetitive inactivity syndrome. The Hong Kong Military Service Corps veterans had to wait over a decade for their approval.

Of course the Home Office faces pressures over immigration arrangements, but it flies in the face of the Government’s commitment to the Armed Forces covenant and to treating veterans fairly to have not yet honoured their manifesto pledge. It has cross-party support. Will the Minister take this back and quickly resolve it with the Home Office? I beg to move.

[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?