Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to paragraphs 5.9, page 55, of the Armed Forces' Pay Review Body 46th Report, published in March 2017, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that service personnel are able to raise concerns about their employment and responsibilities without fear of negative consequences on their careers.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) is committed to making the service complaints process as fair, effective and efficient as it can be. Our people need to have confidence that any issues arising from their Service can be raised and will be investigated and resolved without negative consequences on their careers. Our new service complaints system was implemented on 1 January 2016 and is designed to provide quicker outcomes, and to promote greater confidence in the system, including through the use of more open communications. The new system also replaced the Service Complaints Commissioner with a new Ombudsman with increased powers which we expect will give our Armed Forces personnel increased confidence that the internal service complaints system is fair, efficient and effective.

On 3 April 2017 the Service Complaints Ombudsman published her annual report for 2016 on the fairness, effectiveness and efficiency of the service complaints system. The Ombudsman reported on the working of her office and the new service complaints system in 2016, and the MOD will now carefully consider the findings and recommendations made in the report to see how we might further improve the process.