Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Kevan Jones and Toby Perkins

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 29th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins]

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. I am too much of a traditionalist to call him an hon. Friend in this place, but he knows I call him a friend elsewhere. I agree entirely with what he says about the importance of locality. We could have a wider debate about whether the Sherwood Foresters should have been put into the Mercian Regiment. When I was on the armed forces parliamentary scheme, we talked about our local regiments, and it became clear that the Mercian Regiment is considered to be the local regiment for people over an incredibly diverse geographical split.

All the more reason, therefore, where information about the original home address of all the new recruits clearly exists, for that information to be made available. That would enable MPs to be part of the programme of trying to drive recruitment and to take pride in the level of recruitment in their area. Just imagine, if we had three MPs all within a few recruits of each other as we approached the end of the year, how much we could be driving such a programme. It would be a real force for good.

If geographical challenges were thrown up in relation to communities—religious or race communities—or areas where the Navy or the Air Force particularly recruit, and the figures were available to all of us, it would put positive pressure on the Government to take action on such things. We talk about diversity, and it seems to me that this is one of the ways in which we could drive it. To sum up, I would be very interested if the Minister would consider the idea of making the information that currently exists publicly available.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

As I said in Committee, I broadly welcome the proposals. At the top of the armed forces and obviously at ministerial level, there is a recognition that society is changing and that if we are not only to attract people to the armed forces but to retain them, we need flexibility in the way in which they are employed.

The new clause moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) is very clear, and I cannot understand what the objection to it could be. We need to ensure that one of the main aims of flexible working is to attract more women into our armed forces, but without being able to monitor that through the Department producing reports, I am not sure how we can gauge whether it is a success. The Minister may say that we could rely on tabling parliamentary questions, but I have to say that the quality of the answers from the Department recently has not been great, and it takes two or three attempts to elicit any answers. I do not see anything wrong with how the new clause is structured. It is a matter of making sure that we monitor what is going on.

The same applies to the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan). The other side of this issue is about knowing why part-time or flexible working is refused. In other workplaces, people refused this type of thing have a course of redress. It is important to be able not only to see whether flexible working proposals are being used, but the reasons why they are not being implemented, which could lead to a lot of dissatisfaction. It will be important to have some oversight to ensure that we know if, for example, people leave because at a certain level in the Army or other armed service they decide that they do not like it.

On the broader issue of armed forces recruitment, my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) raised some interesting points. We are failing on recruitment, and the MOD is now reverting to the usual answer, which is to say, “The reason why we are not attracting people is the economic upturn and we are in a very competitive environment.” That is an old chestnut, and I think I even used it on some occasions when I was a Minister. I am sorry, but that is not the reason. The fundamental issue is that the privatisation model used for recruitment has failed and, as was mentioned earlier, it has also broken the link to local areas.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) raised the important point that flexible working is part of a bigger package, which is not only about career opportunities for individuals, but about accommodation. In Committee and when we debated the Bill previously, the Minister talked about the future accommodation model. I must say that he is going to have to get on with it, because anyone who reads today’s National Audit Office report on Annington Homes will find that it does not make for very pretty reading. This was one of the worst decisions ever taken by—I have to say—a Conservative Government in 1996, and the legacy it leaves for not just this Government but future Governments is quite frightening.

Ministers think that the future accommodation model is the way out, and I hope it is, but it will have to be done creatively. To look at one statistic alone in the report, if the discount the MOD currently gets is reduced from 58% to 38% when it comes up for renegotiation in 2021, that will cost the MOD and the taxpayer an additional £84 million from a budget that is already very restricted. There will have to be some very creative thinking about how to extract the Government from that contract, but it should not be done at the expense of servicemen and women who rely on accommodation as part of their package. As I said in Committee and the last time we discussed this in the House, I am not opposed to a new accommodation model, but there are two issues: one is that it will take time to introduce; and the other is that it will cost money.

I do not know whether the issue of accommodation will be a priority in the current MOD review, but I ask Ministers to consider it an important part. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North rightly said, we concentrate a lot on equipment and it is quite right that we should have the equipment that people need. However, we can have all the equipment in the world, but if we do not have skilled, highly trained personnel behind the equipment—if we do not retain people and keep them, and more importantly their families, happy—we are not going to be successful.

To finish, I would urge that personnel are seen as an important integral part of our defence effort, and nothing should detract from that. The Government have created their own mess with the budget for it. I wish them and the Defence Secretary well in trying to sort this out and in pleading for more money from the Treasury. The current Chancellor was the Defence Secretary when some of these decisions—chickens that are now coming home to roost—were taken. At the end of the day, these are the people we rely on to keep us safe, and the men and women of our armed forces and their families are the ones we should always bear in mind.