Armed Forces Bill

Pam Cox Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 26th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)]

Like so many Members who have spoken in this debate—and I have heard every contribution—I wish to pay tribute to those who serve, to veterans, and to their family members. Those who serve do an extraordinary job, and they do so at our direction and on our behalf. It is therefore our moral duty, which we are reaffirming tonight, to ensure that we give them everything they need to do that job safely and to the best of their remarkable ability. That includes everything from equipment, to training to housing.

We have heard a lot about housing in this debate, but I am going to say one more thing. I am delighted that the Government are bringing forward the biggest overhaul of military housing in a generation, and I look forward to working on that with various teams in my Colchester constituency and the garrison there.

The work of our armed forces is extraordinary for another, very singular reason, which is that it requires the laying down of life. The Parachute Regiment is based in Colchester, with links to other garrisons across the country. During the Afghan conflict, 37 members of the Parachute Regiment gave their lives, and many more were injured. Their selfless sacrifice deserves the upmost respect from us in this country, and from all our allies, including the United States.

I close by commending the Bill to the House, and by commending an outstanding Front Bench Defence team, who brought the Bill forward and are doing so much to lead our country in this way.

Armed Forces Bill (First sitting)

Pam Cox Excerpts

Select Committee stage
Tuesday 24th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)]

Would the hon. Gentleman agree that due regard is a long-established legal concept that lots of public bodies already understand? It is already routinely applied in practice, and to change the definition for the purposes of the Bill would be to go down an erroneous path.

[David Reed]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention; she is an expert in these areas.

National Governments have legal teams to help them interpret the concept of due regard and apply it evenly across their Departments. When we get down to the local council level—I think we have all experienced this—that might be more inconsistent because the skills might not be there to bolster that support. We need to make it clearer. It might not be a case of changing the nature of due regard but of making it more explicit so that councils can interpret it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Francois]

Although my hon. Friend the Member for Exmouth and Exeter East is leading for the Opposition on clause 2, I nevertheless want to make a particular point in relation to special educational needs and to adoption and fostering. I want to emphasise some issues related to educational aspects of the armed forces covenant. I shall therefore speak to amendment 11, tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friends, which relates to the continuity of special educational needs plans, and to amendment 12, tabled by the same Members, which relates to fostering and adoption.

I am sure that all right hon. and hon. Members on the Committee will be familiar from their constituency casework with the challenges presented by the special educational needs issue. I therefore rather hope they might have some sympathy with amendment 11, the essence of which is to allow serving families with a child who has been awarded an education, health and care plan, or its equivalent in the other nations of the United Kingdom, to transfer that support without penalty if they are required to move between bases, for operational or other reasons, from one area of the country to another.

In the modern parlance, I have been on a journey in relation to this issue, so let me explain briefly to the Committee why I feel so strongly about it. Over the past few years, multiple parents have come to my constituency advice surgeries in connection with this issue. In a number of cases, they have been through what I admit is a bureaucratic assault course, sometimes lasting two years or longer, to establish an EHCP for their child or children. Having been through that gruelling experience, which can sometimes even involve attending an appeal hearing in front of a judge, they have often been confronted with the further challenge—even having won such a valuable document, which provides important additional support for their child—that they still cannot find a special needs place. Their child therefore has to be accommodated somehow in mainstream education, even if their condition is such that mainstream education is simply not appropriate in their case.

[Pam Cox]

I cannot help noting that the poor performance of SEN services in Essex is largely down to Conservative-run Essex county council, whose arrangement the right hon. Member and I share.

[Mr Francois]

I was hoping to approach this in a relatively non-partisan manner, but if the hon. Lady wants to mix it, I am happy to do so.

Armed Forces Bill (Second sitting)

Pam Cox Excerpts

Select Committee stage
Tuesday 24th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Mike Martin]

The shadow Minister is exactly right. We have used a few metaphors today, including that of mental health as a journey. Another metaphor is that mental health is a garden that has to be tended. Each of us has a responsibility to introspect and check in with ourselves to see how we are doing, but the garden also needs to be tended by gardeners. The oversight position in new clause 2 is the chief gardener, if you like.

We have all heard stories in our constituency casework about how mental health services are being pared to the bone. By offering reports to Parliament, the veterans’ mental health oversight officer would be able to illustrate some of the particular problems that veterans who suffer with mental health problems have. They would report to Parliament and illustrate the problems in a way that would enable Parliament to adequately oversee the issue and make sure that our veterans are cared for.

[Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)]

I completely agree with everything the hon. Member says about the need for robust mental and physical health support for veterans, and I bow to his personal experience on the matter. Does he agree that, through Operation Courage, we are providing specialist NHS-based mental health support to veterans, and, through Operation Restore, we are providing additional physical health support? It is my understanding that, to date, up to 36,000 veterans have been supported by those two initiatives.

[Mike Martin]

I agree with the hon. Lady. In the spirit of cross-party working, I say that we all support our veterans, and I think that the strides that the Government have made are fantastic. The previous Government had a Minister who was passionate about this issue, and he also made strides in this area. We are all trying to move in the same direction; it is not either/or. We have used the phrase “postcode lottery”. We all accept that veterans or people with mental health injuries do not reach out—often people who are depressed or anxious retreat inside themselves—so it is a good thing to have somebody who is able to survey veterans, understand their concerns and see how well linked they are to the fantastic mental health services that are being rolled out by the Government.

Let me highlight a couple of statistics about veterans. Suicide rates are four times higher for veterans under the age of 25 than for the same group in the civilian population, and 52% of veterans have had a mental health problem compared with 45% in the general population. On the point about belonging that I mentioned, a third of veterans reported feeling loneliness compared with just 7% of the civilian population. Veterans experience PTSD at twice the rate of the civilian population. We do not have any figures for the moral injury concept that I spoke about because it is hard to define and band.

The particular case of veterans and mental health is a well-recognised problem—we do not need to over-make the case; we understand it. Veterans often do not reach out when they have mental health issues, so there is a case for a sort-of chief gardener to help us make sure that we all tend the garden of our mental health.

Armed Forces Bill

Pam Cox Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Taylor]

It was an honour to serve on the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill and to help deliver on our general election promise to extend the armed forces covenant to every area of Government, to better support armed forces personnel and veterans. I was delighted to be joined on the Committee by so many veterans with experience, particularly the Minister for the Armed Forces, the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), my hon. Friends the Members for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) and for South Ribble (Mr Foster), the hon. Member for North Devon (Ian Roome) and, not to forget, the hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst)—I would not want to upset him as he is almost a neighbour. Their input to the Committee and the work that we were able to do, across parties and with good temper, was extremely valuable, and the time spent was worth while.

As the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford has mentioned, it was extremely helpful to visit veterans and armed forces housing, and to meet members of the armed forces justice system and ask them questions. While our recollections of some of those conversations may differ slightly, it was still extremely useful to see how that system works in contrast to how our non-military justice system works.

I welcome this Government’s commitment to placing a legal duty on public services to consider the circumstances of armed forces personnel and their families. My constituents want veterans to be supported and for those who serve to be able to do so with dignity and respect. It was encouraging to hear evidence from representatives of armed forces charities, the service families federations, officials from the service justice system and personnel from across the armed forces and the Ministry of Defence. They all recognised the importance of the changes we are making to turn the tide after years of under-investment by the Conservatives.

Our armed forces are a source of national pride, and I want younger generations to see the armed forces as a future for themselves and an opportunity to do more for their country and contribute to the security of our nation. To make that a reality, armed forces personnel and their families need our full support and respect as they make daily sacrifices in their service to our country. That is why I am pleased that after years of military families being forced to deal with the lowest level of satisfaction with service family accommodation on record, we have brought 36,000 family homes back into public ownership, with the savings being reinvested in fixing and improving forces housing.

[Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)]

In my constituency, nearly 1,000 homes have been brought back into public ownership with the creation of the defence housing service. Does my hon. Friend agree that new clause 13, which addresses the question of single living accommodation, threatens to undermine the new defence housing service before it has got off the ground? Although single living accommodation needs attention, that attention should be given within the armed forces umbrella.

[Rachel Taylor]

I thank my hon. Friend for her valuable intervention and for sharing her experience, with so many military families living in her constituency, and I agree with her. New clause 13 focuses on single living accommodation, which is often of a relatively temporary nature. Our focus really needs to be on the catastrophic situation in family homes up and down the country, which we both saw on a visit down south.

Service families deserve high-quality housing that meets military operational requirements while providing them with the comfort they need to support their family. The Bill’s establishment of the defence housing service will go a long way to meeting those needs with a generational renewal of more than 40,000 military homes, which will be modernised and upgraded, together with a historic programme of house building, with the potential for more than 100,000 new homes on surplus defence land for civilian and military families, with serving personnel and veterans coming first.

This is the most significant plan in 50 years and a stark contrast with the scandal of the botched Tory privatisation that cost us billions, let military families down and left the country worse off. It was a real eye-opener to see at first hand the standard of accommodation that military families have been putting up with and the work needed to make those properties fit for our heroes and their families.

I am immensely proud that in this Bill, we stand by our pledge to halve violence against women and girls. The service justice system is being modernised so that it can provide better victim support and ensure that the victims of the most serious offences have access to protection orders. Criminal behaviour does not belong in our armed forces. The UK has a strong record of cultivating the highest values and standards in some of the toughest conditions. We are bringing change to service justice, creating a victim-centred approach that will support personnel who are the victims of unacceptable sexual assault, domestic abuse, stalking and harassment.

In a period of significant global instability, our commitment to the security of our country requires us to invest in our armed forces so that we can combat any challenges that we face as a country. Part of that must be about expanding our reserve forces. Individuals, including Members of this House, use their free time to make up an integral part of our armed forces, and I am incredibly proud when constituents of mine tell me that they are part of our reserves.

Bedworth in my constituency hosts the largest and one of the most famous Armistice Day parades in Britain, held always on the 11th day of the 11th month. We truly are a town that never forgets. I pay tribute to all the veterans and service personnel in my constituency and all those who work in the defence industry supply chains. My constituents are proud that this Labour Government are backing our armed forces and improving the lives of our country’s bravest while putting our nation’s security first. I will continue to do what I can to support military families and veterans from my constituency, and I commend the Bill to the Committee.

Before I close, I want to put on record at the start of Pride Month how proud I am to have seen the LGBT financial recognition scheme implemented, with a £75 million investment and a memorial, “An Opened Letter”, dedicated and unveiled by the King in October 2025. I recommend that everyone in this House and across the country makes a visit to the National Memorial Arboretum to see that memorial, which is a powerful reminder of the absolute injustice that was done to hard-working service personnel who were serving their country first to the best of their ability.