Veterans Advisory and Pensions Committees Bill

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th March 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Owen Thompson]

I do not intend to detain Members overly long. In moving the amendments, I am perhaps chancing my arm. They are not in any way meant to take anything away from the Bill, which is a very good Bill. I commend the hon. Member for Aberconwy for the work he has done to get it to this stage, and I look forward to its progressing further, hopefully with the support of all Members. However, I could not let such an opportunity pass without once again making efforts to try to address some of the issues that have arisen with Veterans UK over several years. For the record, I draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that I am a vice convener of the all-party parliamentary group for veterans, and we have undertaken a fair bit of work looking at the experiences of veterans with Veterans UK.

My intention is not to detract from the Bill, which does a lot of very good things and moves very much in the right direction. It raises awareness of vital services that are available to veterans, but there is an opportunity to do just that bit more.

There is an opportunity here for us to reshape the relationship between veterans advisory and pensions committees—VAPCs—and the Office for Veterans’ Affairs, giving that office the formal task, on a statutory footing, of holding Veterans UK to account, and providing a kind of ombudsman service. That is the purpose of amendment 1. At the moment—we have heard this from a number of Members in debates—Veterans UK, to a large extent, is judge and jury when it comes to deciding outcomes. The Bill could provide a potential mechanism for a third party to oversee those processes. I do not think that that asks too much in addition from the Bill.

Amendment 2 seeks to make provision about the membership of VAPCs. To my mind, it is a relatively straightforward proposal. Those who are part of veterans associations know our veterans better than anyone, so formally ensuring their inclusion in VAPCs is a sensible proposal. They may well be on those committees anyway, but let us just make sure that they form part of them.

On amendment 4, I have one particular question for the Minister. It was unclear from my reading of the Bill whether it covers any of our veterans who now live overseas. Amendment 4 seeks to make it absolutely clear that it does, because I do not feel that that clarity is there at the moment. I may have missed it—if I have, I welcome that. However, let us just be clear and make sure that all veterans can access the support that is available.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Some clarity on both the territorial extent of the Bill and veterans living overseas would be helpful, including the Bill’s application to veterans living in overseas territories and Crown dependencies, as they sometimes sit in a different category from veterans living overseas. Does the hon. Member agree?

[Owen Thompson]

I absolutely agree. It is simply a matter of clarity. I do not think there is any intention to exclude anyone here, and I am not trying to suggest that there is. We need some clarity around that, to be sure.

Finally, on amendment 3, the Bill refers to covenant matters in relation to housing, education and health, but those are not the only things our veterans need help and support with. I hope that the measure might be expanded to include social care, employment, immigration and that sort of thing. I do not think it would be unnecessarily complicated to add those to the Bill, and I look forward to hearing the thoughts of the hon. Member for Aberconwy and the Minister on the proposals.

I am not here to detain anyone for longer than is necessary, and this is a good opportunity for us to continue the work that is clearly under way better to support our veterans. After all, they have given so much to support the nations of these isles, so it is not too much to ask that we do everything we can to support them, particularly when they need it most.

--- Later in debate ---

Clause 3 sets out the power to make transitional and savings provisions by regulation as required. Transitional provisions may be necessary for practical reasons when migrating from the old regulations to the new. The clause also confirms that the short title will be the Veterans Advisory and Pensions Committee Act 2023.

[Luke Pollard]

I welcome the Bill that the hon. Member for Aberconwy is seeking to introduce; it seems perfectly sensible. However, I have a few questions for the Minister.

In the very useful impact assessment to the Bill, section D on risks assumptions and limitations states that the MOD

“has yet to complete its own review of the VPACs.”

It says that there is a risk that future legislation will be required if that review is not completed before this legislation is taken forward. I would be grateful if the Minister could set out whether the review has been completed, so that we can be sure that we are not risking a requirement for additional legislation. On a point about language, section D also states:

“There is a risk that the widened cohort of veterans in scope will increase the number of personnel receiving support from the VAPCs under option 3”,

which was the one mentioned by the hon. Member for Aberconwy. I think that is not so much a risk resulting from the legislation as its intention, so that is interesting language to use.

May I ask the Minister about the terms of reference for VAPCs? From various explanatory notes, it seems that the last terms of reference were issued by the Office for Veterans’ Affairs, yet the explanatory notes to the Bill suggest that the Ministry of Defence will now issue them. I would be grateful if the Minister would clarify whether it is the OVA or the Ministry of Defence issuing the terms of reference from now on.

Finally, I had a look on the VAPC website to see what is going on, and I would like to praise all the volunteers for their work. There are many minutes on the website, and the number of issues considered in them shows that there are some incredible volunteers working their socks off, but I encourage the Minister to ask his officials to update the website a wee bit. Some regions, such as Yorkshire and Humber, seem incredibly active and are very efficient at getting their minutes posted on the website. Other VAPC regions are, I am sure, meeting and writing minutes, but those minutes do not seem to be as prominent on the VAPC website.

Another question is how people can contact members of VAPC regional committees. There are frequent lists of names of those whom the Secretary of State has appointed to the VAPCs, but there is not any obvious way for people to contact them. If the intention is not for people to contact the regional chair, but to make contact via a different method, it would be helpful to say what that method is when listing the members of a committee that people are being encouraged to contact. Other than that, this looks like a sensible piece of legislation.

[Dr Murrison]

This Bill is intended to regularise what has become custom and practice. There is nothing particularly new here, but the Bill does give VAPCs, which we have decided are worthwhile, a statutory basis. I hope the Bill will be seen in that light.

Under this legislation, VAPCs would have a statutory remit to do more than engage locally with recipients of war pensions or the armed forces compensation scheme. They will cover a broader range of issues; they may, for example, gauge veterans’ views on the support they receive from the Veterans Welfare Service, and raising awareness of the armed forces covenant. I hope the Committee will accept that the Government’s intent, through the legislation and the various reviews under way, is to ensure that the interests of veterans are furthered. That Government are sensitive to their concerns about how they are dealt with under the armed forces covenant.

The VAPCs will provide the Ministry of Defence and the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs with a source of independent advice about how the MOD should support veterans and their families. Families are very important in this. One of the changes that the legislation will certainly bring is a focus not just on war pensioners and recipients of benefits under the armed forces compensation scheme but families and the wider defence community. I should highlight that the Bill also allows for recommendations to be adopted from the ongoing independent review of the VAPCs under the Cabinet Office public bodies reform programme, which is due to report at the end of this month, and from the recently announced independent review of the role and scope of the Government’s welfare provision for veterans, including by the MOD under the Veterans UK banner.

I take the point made by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, which reflected the perfectly understandable concern that there is a lot going on at the moment, and that there is a risk of overlap. I hope that the timeline that I have given, and the fact that this is enabling legislation—further regulations would have to be made as statutory instruments—mean that, in reality, the whole thing is pretty much covered off. Of course, rather than running these things in parallel, we could have run them in series, but I am persuaded that we need to crack on with this issue, and I do not necessarily want one to follow the other.

Veterans Advisory and Pensions Committees Bill

Luke Pollard Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 24th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) for introducing this Bill. It is a Bill he can be proud of; I suspect it may have been a Bill he was given by Ministers to introduce, but none the less he has done so very well.

I have enjoyed the speeches from Conservative Members, who have raised some important issues relating to veterans. Across this House, we thank all those people who have served in our armed forces. As a member of the armed forces parliamentary scheme, I add my praise to the love-in towards the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) and his team and all the SO1s from the Ministry of Defence who do such a good job supporting us in that endeavour.

This Bill is an important update to the piping, as the hon. Member for Aberconwy described it, for veterans advisory and pensions committees, which play a key role in supporting our veteran communities on a regional basis right across the United Kingdom. They are a vital method of engagement with war pensioners, armed forces compensation scheme recipients, the armed forces welfare services and the Veterans Welfare Service at a local level. I thank all those who volunteer on the committees—it is a job that until very recently has not received much attention in this place, but it is important that we thank them for the work they have been doing.

However, it also true that, as the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) mentioned, veterans advisory and pensions committees now operate in a fundamentally different environment from what their remit, as previously laid out in statute, has been. For that reason, Labour welcomes this update to the legislation to ensure that the committees are able to play a more extensive role in raising awareness of other initiatives that affect veterans and, importantly, their families—because not only those people who serve in uniform, but their families form part of the greater armed forces family and should have support.

On Second Reading last month, our shadow Minister for veterans, my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) correctly made the point that,

“local authorities, health bodies and other organisations must understand their obligations to veterans”,—[Official Report, 24 February 2023; Vol. 728, c. 480.]

and those that extend to their families, under the armed forces covenant. This Bill makes reference to that. I know that Members on both sides of the House have tried their best to make the case that the armed forces covenant needs to be more clearly explained. Now, thanks to the census, we understand where veterans are—the answer is “everywhere”—and it is for every single local authority and public body to implement the armed forces covenant correctly, ensuring that the best practice already established by councils in Portsmouth, and Plymouth, which I am proud to represent, extends to every community.

In the Bill Committee, which I note some of the Conservative Members present served on, I raised a number of points. The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs responded to them, but I want to press a couple with this Minister if I can. The work of the veterans advisory and pensions committees is very important, but they are not prominent on the Ministry of Defence website and the VAPC section on the MOD part of gov.uk could do with a wee bit of updating—in particular, ensuring that the annual report consolidating the work of all the VAPCs across the country can be more clearly understood, to enable parliamentary scrutiny.

Regarding the VAPCs, I acknowledge that the Government established non-statutory supplementary terms of reference for a period of 12 months in 2021, which provided the committees with a more comprehensive and distinct role in supporting all veterans and their families. That guidance now moves to the Ministry of Defence from the Office for Veterans’ Affairs. That is a welcome move and ensures that the work of VAPCs can be more properly aligned to other parts of veterans’ communities and public services that now interact with our veterans and their families.

I would be grateful if the Minister set out how the Secretary of State will use the powers in the Bill to appoint members of VAPCs. How do we ensure that membership of the committees reflects veterans’ communities? Two groups of veterans’ communities are often poorly served by veterans’ activities: national service veterans, who were mentioned by the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar), and recent veterans. Making sure that someone is able to understand the services available to them and their pension arrangements, especially in the event of medical discharge at an earlier rate, is really important. In some cases, people who leave military service at an earlier age may not always regard themselves as veterans, so it is important that there is a representative body on the VAPCs that understands how to engage with all the appropriate groups.

Finally, many Members have discussed the superb work being done by veterans’ groups in their communities. I thank all those in Plymouth undertaking that work. On Wednesday, I visited the Southampton Veterans Drop-In Centre, with Councillor Darren Paffey from Southampton City Council. The centre does vital work, and I put on record my thanks to Colin and Tracey Gaylor for the work they are doing, providing first-class support for veterans’ communities in that city. I wish the Bill a speedy passage through the rest of its stages.