Armed Forces Bill

Lord De Mauley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th September 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord De Mauley]

48: Schedule 6, page 134, line 22, leave out paragraph 4
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure non executive board members remain unpaid and therefore genuinely committed to the reserves and cadets.

[Lord De Mauley (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 48, 50, 51 and 52 in my name.

Amendment 48 is about payment to the new non-executive board members. The members of the RFCAs and all their forebear organisations, commencing with the county territorial associations in 1908, whether acting locally or nationally, have never been paid. The volunteer ethos is of very considerable significance, especially in the world of reserves and cadets. Imagine how it will look to the reservists, who volunteer and put their lives on the line, and to the cadet forces, if the non-executives are to be paid. It is a really bad look and unlikely to attract the best of society who are absolutely committed to the reserves and cadets.

Furthermore, we are living in a time of scarce resources, especially in the field of defence. Yet here is the MoD deliberately adding cost, when it knows there is a ready supply of volunteers who will do, and indeed are doing, this work for no financial reward. One can guess the reaction of those who have shown, over many years, their dedicated and unpaid commitment to the reserves and cadets, to the appointment of paid non-executives with no apparent commitment to the reserves or cadets. It is a mistake to offer money to entice people to apply for these roles.

I turn now to Amendment 50, which seeks to reinstate lords-lieutenant. Lords-lieutenant are the sovereign’s representatives in their respective lieutenancies or counties. It is their foremost duty to uphold the dignity of the Crown. Historically, each lord-lieutenant was responsible for organising the county’s militia. The Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 1907 established county territorial associations, with the lord-lieutenant as the president of the county association. The relationship of lords-lieutenant with the military today is maintained via their presidency of their county RFCAs. All lords-lieutenant are affiliated to one of the 13 regional RFCAs; one of them is president and they rotate the presidency among them.

This is constituted in primary legislation, most recently in Schedule 4 to the Reserve Forces Act 1996. Removing that would remove the final vestiges of a military role and an important part of the symbolic relationship of the lords-lieutenant to the Crown. Service personnel hold the sovereign in the highest regard. To cut off this link between reservists and the Crown seems, to say the least, inappropriate. Lords-lieutenant have evidenced considerable concern over the review’s proposals and the consequences of breaking this important link. Under the Armed Forces Bill, the involvement of the lords-lieutenant, which was established under paragraphs 2, 3 and 4 of Schedule 4 to the Reserve Forces Act 1996, is to be abolished. Paragraph 4(2)(b) of Schedule 6 to this Bill will omit

“section 111 and Schedule 4 (provisions of schemes for the constitution of associations)”.

It has been suggested, as an afterthought, that the continued involvement of the lords-lieutenant might be achieved through secondary legislation or regulation. The involvement of the lords-lieutenant is currently in primary legislation and to relegate it to regulations is nothing short of insulting. It also makes it much easier to amend, change and delete it. If it is proposed to amend the law in a way that affects a class of persons, it is customary to consult them. Even if there is no statutory duty to do so, there have been cases where the courts have held that failure to consult is a reason for upholding judicial review of the Government. I understand that the Association of Lord-Lieutenants has not been consulted. I urge the Minister to consider the amendment carefully.

Amendment 51 addresses the establishment of a national council. The strength of the RFCAs lies in their embeddedness across the regions. This was not accidental; it reflects the original Haldane model from 1908—a decentralised, citizen-based structure designed to mirror national diversity and ensure societal ownership of the territorial Reserve Forces. It has endured and worked for over a century. What is today described as “connecting defence with the nation” is rooted in this model, so it is right that Schedule 6 of the Bill establishes regional councils through paragraph 14 of proposed new Schedule 4A. What is extremely odd, though, is that the drafters have not understood that the regional councils are irrelevant if their views are not brought together and debated centrally, so that a single considered professional message can be delivered to Ministers.

Abolition of the membership, discussed in the debate on the last group, also presents a conundrum as to where the regional council members will be elected from. When we questioned this, we were told, “Don’t worry, it’ll be dealt with in secondary legislation”. This is a quite extraordinary response. Without a national council, the regional councils are completely irrelevant, and without a membership they will be ineffective. This seems to be an attempt to pay lip service to devolution, while in fact cutting it off at the roots. A national council is fundamental to the functioning of the new structure, and the amendment would establish one.

Amendment 52 addresses the external scrutiny team. The Council of Reserve Forces and Cadets Associations external scrutiny team provides an independent annual assessment to Parliament of the state, capabilities and health of the United Kingdom’s Reserve Forces, identified as fundamental to advising Ministers and the single services on the effectiveness of training, fighting efficiency and leadership of the reserve, thus meeting the FR 2020 proposition to reservists. It was established following the Future Reserves 2020 review and operates with statutory duties mandated by the Reserve Forces Act 1996.

The Armed Forces Bill, in paragraph 5(b) of Schedule 6, introduces the concept that the Defence Council can remove responsibility for producing the annual assessment or report and award it to someone else at stroke of a pen. This is not the case in the current legislation. Will the Minister therefore explain what lies behind this change? To whom might the responsibility for producing the independent assessment be transferred? What would be considered appropriate grounds for transferring it? When might this happen? How will Ministers ensure the assessment continues in future to be conducted properly and truly independently of the MoD? I beg to move.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, I added my name to these amendments, and I agree with the points that have been so well made by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley. I will start my brief remarks by making just a couple of general points. First, while there have been some criticisms of the arrangements of reserves and cadet forces, particularly in fairly recent reviews, most of these have been attended to subsequently. The general opinion was that, in the round, the Reserve Forces and cadets operated extremely well and were extremely valuable, and the arrangements that had been set in place had served this country extremely well for a very long time. There is, therefore, a burden of proof on anyone seeking to change the current arrangements to show why any proposed alterations will be better than the arrangements that are already in place. I fear that the Government fail on this count in many instances in this particular part of the Armed Forces Bill.

Secondly, the Minister has previously indicated to the Committee that some of the shortcomings might be attended to in secondary legislation, and the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, just referred to this. That is all very well, but as everybody in this Chamber knows, we cannot amend secondary legislation; we take it or leave it, and usually, we have to take it. Of course, there must be secondary legislation for the detailed implementation of an Act and the measures in it; but issues of principle should be settled in primary legislation, not in secondary legislation, for some of the reasons that the Lord, Lord De Mauley, just pointed out. Quite a number of the issues covered by the amendments this evening are issues of principle and, therefore, belong in primary legislation, not in secondary legislation.

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[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, for the amendments whose presentation to us he led on.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Empey, as I have said on a number of occasions both to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and to the Committee as a whole, that I will continue to have conversations between now and Report about what we may or may not do with some of the amendments before us. That commitment has already been made. On the points that he made about spending, I am perfectly willing to answer another Private Notice Question or whatever if he is successful at another time, but perhaps not this evening.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, the noble Earl, Lord Minto, and the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, for their view that the non-executive members of the new RFCA board should be unpaid. That view assumes that unpaid service better demonstrates commitment. I do not accept that. Commitment is not determined by whether a member is remunerated. There is no evidence, in my view, that remuneration reduces dedication to the Reserve Forces or cadet organisations. I take the point that has been made about their voluntary ethos, but, in terms of the board’s membership—

[Lord De Mauley (Con)]

I suggest, in answer to that point from the Minister, that what it does is call into question their independence from their MoD masters.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

That might be a matter for us to consider in the conversation that we have. I do not want to go on for too long, but I understand many of the comments that different people have made this evening; I agree with some of them to a larger or lesser extent. I have never thought, generally speaking, that, in certain circumstances, unpaid work is the way forward. This is one of those situations, in respect of the board: I do not think it undermines the voluntary ethos as a whole because, here, it is related to board membership. In that circumstance, it is perfectly reasonable, given the new board that we wish to set up, that the position should be remunerated, although I accept the point that, in the broader establishment of lords-lieutenant and others across the wider—

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As I have just said to the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, and others who asked about accountability, it is right that primary legislation should secure the requirement for annual reporting, rather than fix a particular organisational model in statute. In that way, we protect the outcome of rigorous reporting to Parliament without unnecessarily fixing the means of delivery in primary legislation. With those remarks, I hope that the noble Lord will see fit to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord De Mauley (Con)]

My Lords, I thank those noble Lords who have spoken in support of the amendments. I also thank the Minister. He said that voluntary bodies all over the country have paid people at their heads. Of course they do. I am a trustee or president of, I think, seven charities. Outside the Government, those paid are universally the executives, not the non-executives.

My concern on the point about the amendability of regulations is different from the one that the Minister addressed. My concern is that the Government can amend them—not that we cannot—and that they can do so much more easily than with primary legislation. I am sure we will return to these issues on Report, but for this evening, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 48 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to the first three amendments in my name, which are in group 12: Amendments 61, 62 and 63. I am not going to do them justice at this time of night, because the first amendment is calling for an independent review of Armed Forces recruitment and retention and in order to do that justice, I need to rehearse the difficulties we have seen in Armed Forces recruitment. Capita was mentioned earlier in proceedings today. Issues of retention have also been raised.

Given the lateness of the hour and the hope that noble Lords, Hansard, doorkeepers and officials in the box will get home at some point in the wee small hours, I will simply express the view that it is important for His Majesty’s Government to have an independent review of recruitment and retention. Each time there is an SDR, we hear that we need to look at the size of our Armed Forces and the size of the reserves, yet there is very little clarity on the recruitment process and retention. We have heard proposals this evening from the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, about increasing paternity leave entitlement precisely as a way of enhancing retention. The country needs clarity on recruitment and retention. As Parliament, we need to be able to scrutinise the current provisions and perhaps give suggestions to His Majesty’s Government about ways in which we could be improving the system. I am raising that issue, but I am not going to go into any further detail this evening.

I hope that Amendment 62 will be seen as uncontroversial, even by someone sitting where the Minister is—even though it is an amendment. It suggests a duty to provide medical records on discharge, simply to ensure that anyone leaving the services is able to go straight away to register with their GP. In particular, if they have issues—perhaps they had a medical discharge or, even if not, they might be at risk of undiagnosed PTSD—then having those medical records will be crucial for them, and it seems only right that their record should be provided as soon as practicable.

Amendment 63 ought to be self-evident, although I realise that the Minister may feel that it is not purely an MoD matter but is perhaps more for the DWP. It would insert a clause introducing a personal independence payment assessment exemption for amputees. The logic is that it seems odd to keep requiring PIP assessments and reassessments when, if someone has had a limb amputated, that is not going to change between assessments. It may be that robotics or other medical innovations change someone’s capacity to work; but given that we are talking about someone who may have had a limb amputated as a result of their service, relieving them of PIP reassessments would appear to be a more appropriate way of acknowledging the reasons why they have lost the limb, while ensuring that we do not put them through unnecessary repeat medical assessments. I beg to move.

[Lord De Mauley (Con)]

I support Amendment 61 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, requiring an independent review of Armed Forces recruitment and retention. At this late hour, I will just say that, at a time when there are nearly a million young people not in education, employment or training, we cannot even recruit 10,000 a year, and our Armed Forces are well below the relatively tiny strength at which they are funded to be. This suggests that something is seriously wrong with the recruiting process, and the report needs to be done.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I shall briefly speak to Amendment 62. My noble friend raised the point about it being important for veterans to be able to have their details in their hands. The NHS guidance for veterans specifically notes that it takes several months for the full records to follow the veterans, and if veterans have complex health issues but no information, the GPs that they see are in deep trouble.

On amputees, importantly, unlike many amputees in the civilian world, most amputees in the military world also have a significant number of other injuries. There is already an issue about amputees in the civilian world having to have repeat PIP tests, but it seems sensible to look at this area.