Armed Forces Bill

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

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

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Chair of the Defence Committee.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister and his team at the Ministry of Defence for their engagement with the Defence Committee on this legislation, including the helpful briefing they gave us ahead of Second Reading. I also thank the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill, chaired by my good friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford). He and the other Select Committee members have done incredible work. I place on record my thanks to my Defence Committee colleagues, the hon. and gallant Members for North Devon (Ian Roome) and for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin), who served on that Select Committee.

The Defence Committee naturally takes a close interest in the areas affected by the Bill. Beginning with clause 2, we strongly welcome the Government extending the armed forces covenant to new policy areas and making the duty binding on Whitehall Departments and the devolved Administrations. That is something we recommended in our inquiry report on the covenant last year. At the time, we said that legislation would be only one part of the solution for strengthening the covenant and that the Government needed to make sure that the covenant legal duty is more consistently applied, by improving guidance and training.

[Becky Gittins (Clwyd East) (Lab)]

The measures on the armed forces covenant are one of the most impressive things about this Bill, not just UK-wide, but for the 115,000 veterans in Wales and their families who will now benefit from the legal duty on public services to take into consideration their specific circumstances. Will my hon. Friend join me in wishing a very happy Armed Forces Day to Prestatyn Royal British Legion branch, as I will when I celebrate and commemorate this special day with them later this month?

[Mr Dhesi]

I commend my hon. Friend’s intervention and join her in extending my best wishes. It is welcome that the Government have published draft guidance on the legal duty, and I am pleased that it includes an explanation of what it means to pay “due regard” to the covenant, because witnesses to our inquiry told us that that phrase can sometimes seem ambiguous. I hope the Minister will consult widely with those affected by the legal duty to ensure that the guidance meets their needs. Our Committee will be watching closely to see whether the expanded covenant is being delivered and is making a positive difference for our armed forces community.

The creation of a new defence housing service in clause 3 is also welcome. I am pleased that the Government have made it a priority to modernise the defence estate and have committed £9 billion over 10 years to support that work. The challenge for the Minister will be to ensure that the funding is delivered as promised; in the current geopolitical climate it is not hard to imagine that the Government might come under pressure to divert scarce resources in response to some crisis. I hope the Government will uphold their commitment to our service families, come what may.

The new powers in clause 4 to counter uncrewed devices are sorely needed. My Committee’s inquiry “Defence in the Grey Zone” examined the many kinds of hybrid threat posed by hostile states, including drones. The armed forces need the power to deal with such threats, to show our adversaries that their hybrid tactics will not work against us.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

The other day I had the opportunity to meet the Ministry of Defence Police and their chief constable at RAF Wyton in my constituency. I was impressed by the counter-drone capability that they are now equipped with; it is vastly in excess of what Home Office policing teams now have, and it is a simple solution to provide the counter-drone capability that we should have at all our bases. I urge the hon. Gentleman to put pressure on the Minister to roll out those new CPM-Wilson and CPM-Watson counter-drone weapons to all our bases, to ensure that that capability is as widespread as possible.

[Mr Dhesi]

I thank the hon. and gallant Gentleman for that intervention. The Defence Committee had the good fortune to view some of those counter-drone measures during one of our visits, and I fully concur with his views.

The measures on service justice are focused on better supporting victims of serious offences. As the Minister knows, this subject comes up time and again in the Defence Committee’s regular sessions on women in the armed forces, and I am pleased that it is a focus of the Bill. It is only right that the Bill brings protections available in the service justice system, such as domestic abuse orders and stalking protection orders, into line with those available in the civilian system.

The new reporting requirements and the victims’ code are also welcome changes, but it has been our experience as a Committee—as it was for our predecessors—that new initiatives do not always have the impact we would hope for, because they take place in an environment and culture that does not take the needs of victims as seriously as it should. I know that we cannot legislate for culture, but unless there is proper training on the measures in the Bill, and a message from leaders throughout defence that things must change, it is likely that our Committee will continue to hear stories from victims who feel let down by the service justice system.

The Bill also aims to update the way that defence uses reserves, and I welcome clause 31, which will make it easier to move between regular and reserve forces. That will support more flexible career paths, allowing people with military expertise to move into roles in industry, and vice versa. The changes to call-out and recall conditions in clauses 32 and 33 should help to strengthen the capacity of our reserves. Reserves are a key component of our nation’s readiness; showing that we are ready to respond to aggression deters our enemies and lets us respond more effectively, if needed. I hope that these measures will soon be followed by further steps to improve our readiness, including the promised defence readiness Bill, which is needed sooner rather than later.

While the measures in the Bill will undoubtedly improve our readiness, they are focused on the strategic reserve only. The strategic defence review stated an ambition to increase the active reserve by 20% when funding allows. We do not know how and when that will be achieved. The measures in the Bill are a good start, but there is more work to do.

In conclusion—I see you are giving me a stare, Madam Chair—I believe the Bill will make a positive difference to the lives of those who serve in our armed forces, and I will certainly support it as it continues to make progress through the House.

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.