Armed Forces Bill

I shall say a little more about each of the four pillars. The Armed Forces covenant was introduced 15 years ago and has made a real difference to many in the Armed Forces community. At its heart is a promise between the nation and those who serve, those who have served, their families and the bereaved, recognising the unique demands and sacrifices of service life. It has already helped to reduce disadvantage for our Armed Forces community across the areas of housing, healthcare and education.

We recognise, however, that it must go further. Clause 2 therefore delivers on the Government’s manifesto commitment to place the Armed Forces covenant fully into law. It does this by broadening the covenant legal duty to 12 policy areas and, for the first time, the devolved Governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and UK government departments, will be subject to the duty. This means that, in addition to housing, healthcare and education, the covenant will also apply to areas including social care, childcare, employment, taxation, social security, criminal justice, immigration and citizenship, pensions, transport and Armed Forces compensation.

On defence housing, the Government have a moral duty to provide safe and decent homes to service personnel and their families. They have been previously let down by homes that are not fit for purpose, and we are determined to change that. Underinvestment in defence housing over decades led to record lows in satisfaction with defence homes. The 1996 sale of tens of thousands of defence homes to Annington led to taxpayers picking up the bill for maintenance and rent to the tune of £600,000 a day.

However, just six months after being elected, the Government transferred 36,000 defence homes back into public ownership, reversing a privatisation that the Public Accounts Committee described as “disastrous”. The next task is to bring homes up to a decent standard—a standard that our service personnel and their families deserve. The Government therefore commissioned an independent review and, in November last year, we published our defence housing strategy—our plan for the wholesale renewal of defence housing, backed by a £9 billion investment over the next decade.

Clause 3 delivers on one of the recommendations of the defence housing strategy: the creation of a new stand-alone public body—the defence housing service. This will serve as a single point of accountability for defence housing, staffed by experts and with forces families represented as part of its governance. As such, it will put the needs of the forces and their families first. With a clear strategy, unprecedented investment and a dedicated organisation in the defence housing service, we will deliver on this once-in-a-generation opportunity to provide the safe and decent homes our forces and their families deserve.

Through the Bill, we will also deliver important reforms to the service justice system, especially in the area of victim support and protections. Clauses 5 to 10 provide a comprehensive package of protection measures, with Clauses 11, 12, 26 and 27 providing improved support and assistance to victims of offending. I add that, while these measures will strengthen the service justice system, we recognise that not all unacceptable behaviours reach the threshold of a criminal offence. That is why the Ministry of Defence continues to develop policies that seek to address unacceptable behaviours.

Through the Raising our Standards programme, we are tackling unacceptable behaviour and driving lasting cultural change across defence, with better training, clearer reporting systems and greater trust in leadership. The new VAWG prevention taskforce has been deployed to Catterick and to the south-west to assess lived experiences, tackle root causes of unacceptable behaviour and roll out effective interventions. Immediate initiatives are already being deployed, such as the recruitment of additional sexual assault referral nurses, who will cover the south-west, and the rollout of an independent legacy advocacy pilot that will support victims of sexual offences to understand their rights and what to expect when navigating the service justice system.

These policies, together with the separate service complaints process, now overseen by the recently appointed Armed Forces Commissioner, will also help ensure that unacceptable behaviour is challenged and addressed appropriately. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, as well as the noble Baronesses, Lady Smith and Lady Kramer, that this improvement in culture also includes the whistleblower review. We will be meeting in due course before the publication of that review, which is now ready, subject to the noble Baronesses’ comments.

I move on to the package of measures relating to the reserves. Clause 32 will enable regular personnel at warrant officer level or equivalent, and below, to seamlessly transfer into the Volunteer Reserve, and vice versa, without having to leave one force and rejoin the other. Clauses 33 to 37 amend the Reserve Forces Act 1996 in relation to call-out and recall liability, ensuring that it is fit for purpose. This will help ensure that defence has access to more people with the right skills and experience it needs at times of need. It will harmonise liability across the services, widen the pool from which we can draw resources, and allow us greater access to both our Volunteer Reserve and Strategic Reserve pool. It is good to see the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster—who heads up the reserves—in his place. I know how hard he has been working, as many other noble Lords have been, with respect to this.

Just to digress slightly, I know that many noble Lords across the Chamber are particularly concerned about resilience and homeland defence and all those sorts of things. I look forward to the debate in Committee on that aspect, as we move forward on how we make the best use of our reserves around all of that.

Clauses 33 to 37 will make it easier to mobilise personnel earlier ahead of the outbreak of any war and increase the maximum age—from 55 to 65—at which reserves can be recalled. I welcome that increase. There are many people who would be eligible for this who are 64 and they would be brilliant doctors, brilliant accountants, brilliant cyber analysts—brilliant in many ways that would be of interest. I am aware of some of the initial reporting when that announcement was made, but if you look at it in that light, you can see the significance of the contribution that many older reservists could make to the defence and security of our country. Looking at it from that perspective, one understands the importance of and the reasons for raising that age limit. I just wanted to reiterate that important point at the start of our discussions on the Bill. These measures align with the direction provided by the strategic defence review to allow for a whole-defence approach, to re-energise the relationship with the Strategic Reserve and, as I say, increase our readiness for war or potential conflicts.

Beyond these four main pillars, the Bill contains other important measures that cover such areas as protecting the defence estate from drone activities—again, something that I know has been of particular concern to many noble Lords—providing increased protections for military shipwrecks, and extending cross-border powers for the Ministry of Defence Police.

This Armed Forces Bill makes important and positive changes for the Armed Forces, their families and the wider defence community. I look forward to the detailed scrutiny the Bill will be given in Committee, and the challenge that there will be to some aspects of it, while noting the general support there was in the other place and that there is—as I know from conversations I have had—in this place. Such challenge and scrutiny can only improve the Armed Forces Bill and make it a Bill of which our Armed Forces and defence community can be proud—which is indeed what we all want. I beg to move.

I think—in fact, I know—that we are united across the House in our belief that those who serve our country should never have to live in substandard accommodation, regardless of their familial status. I think we can also all agree that the current state of much service housing ranges from below standard to abysmal and exposes the immediate need for significant structural expenditure and reforms to bring all forces housing up to the expected standard for the 2020s. It was my honourable friend the shadow Secretary of State for Defence, James Cartlidge, who initiated the buyback of the housing estate from Annington Homes, as the noble Lord has referred to. It is welcome that this Government have now completed that purchase, but I believe that there must be an acknowledgement of who started it.

Clause 3 and Schedule l give legislative effect to the second pillar of the Government’s defence housing strategy, published last November, by establishing a new body corporate: the defence housing service. I understand why the Government wish to create a dedicated body with the supply, availability and quality of defence housing at its heart, and a “forces first” approach to its work is one that these Benches can readily and fully endorse. But the creation of a new statutory body inevitably raises questions about what happens to the old arrangements. What precisely is happening to the Defence Infrastructure Organisation? What functions will be transferred to the new defence housing service? Will there be an overlap in responsibility during a transition period? If so, for how long and at what cost to the taxpayer? Clear accountability will be critical to the success of both organisations in the future.

Can the Minister also set out clearly how this new body differs in practice from the alternative that my party has proposed, which is the establishment of an armed forces housing association? This would be a private, independent but, crucially, not-for-profit organisation that would reinvest all revenues back into maintaining properties and building new homes. It would have an oversight board allowing for representation of those living in service family accommodation. It would allow service men and women to benefit from different property ownership models—for example, part-ownership—allowing those of all ranks to realise their dream of owning their own home. It would allow us to reduce the reliance of the MoD on private sector renting, which costs it £80 million a year. Before I leave this point, there is a widely circulated rumour that, to fund the DIP, investment in service housing is to be deferred. This matters. Can the Minister clarify the position?

I turn to a matter that does not appear in the Bill, but that this side believes to be fundamental to the war-fighting capabilities of our Armed Forces. The jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights has expanded the application of the European Convention on Human Rights so that it now applies extraterritorially, as this House will recall from the judgment in Al-Skeini v United Kingdom. There is absolutely no question that British troops must abide by the Geneva conventions and the law of armed conflict; that is not, and never has been, in dispute. We are not arguing for complete prospective immunity from legal accountability. However, we need to ensure that our troops feel confident in taking necessary action and must be clear on the limitations of that action in law. They must be on a level playing field with the enemy they face. To be in doubt, or at a disadvantage, could, in extremis, be fatal at the critical moment.

While the preference of my party is to leave the European Convention on Human Rights entirely, that is not within the bounds of the Bill, so we will be bringing an amendment in Committee to place a duty on the Secretary of State to derogate from the convention during armed conflict—a switch from “may” to “must”. I hope that the Minister will engage constructively with that amendment in the spirit in which it is offered: not as an attack on the rule of law, far from it, but as a recognition that our troops must be able to fight for and defend this country without the fear of endless retrospective litigation on decisions taken in the heat of combat.

I turn now to the provisions on the Reserve Forces, which these Benches broadly welcome. Clause 32 removes the requirement for a service person to formally leave the Regular Forces and re-enlist in the Volunteer Reserve, or vice versa, in order to move between the two. We are pleased about the greater flexibility that this clause allows for movement between the regulars and the reserves, and we hope that it will remove a genuine source of friction for service personnel who wish to serve in different ways at different points during their career.

The strategic defence review, published last year, sets out the aim of increasing the Active Reserve by 20% when funding allows. That is a laudable aim; nobody on this side of the House would quarrel with the ambition to build a larger, more resilient reserve capability at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty. But an aim is not a plan, and I must press the Minister on the timeline. By when does the Ministry of Defence expect to achieve that 20% increase? What recruitment targets have been set year on year to get there? Crucially, given the funding caveat built into the review’s own language, how do the Government intend to fund it, given everything I have already said about the state of the defence investment plan?

I suggest one way of doing this to the Minister: incentivise more people to join the reserves by introducing a tax-free reserve service, whereby the first 30 days of reserve service in any one year would be completely free of income tax. Such a measure would cost the Exchequer relatively little, it would send a clear signal that this country values the commitment reservists make alongside their civilian careers, and it might do more to improve recruitment. I hope that the Minister will take that suggestion back to his department, even if he cannot commit to it from the Dispatch Box today.

I have covered a good deal of ground this afternoon, and there is more in the Bill that we will wish to probe in Committee, not least the reforms to the service justice system. We support the principle of aligning the powers available to service police and service courts with those already available in the civilian criminal justice system, but there are questions to be asked about how these provisions will operate in practice, and my noble friend Lady Goldie will address those in more detail in closing.

I simply say this in conclusion. This is a Bill these Benches support, because the renewal of the Armed Forces Act is a constitutional necessity, and because much of what sits alongside that renewal—the covenant, the housing reforms, the modernisation of the service justice system and the flexibility of our reserves—represents sensible and positive progress. But support for the Bill is not the same as satisfaction with the Government’s record on defence. Our Armed Forces deserve a Government willing to match warm words with hard funding decisions. Until this happens, this House will continue to ask the difficult questions the Government would rather not answer, and I look forward to the Minister’s response and to the scrutiny that lies ahead in Committee.

Another of the traditional arguments for Regular Forces, as against short-term service reserves or volunteers, has been that it takes a long time to train an effective soldier. Again, the SDR questions this with its comment that the finance sector, civil society, academia and others all have much to contribute to countering the hybrid threats we now face. This is not new. I recall 15 years ago, when I was in government, the Ministry of Defence worrying about how to attract into the forces personnel with digital skills to combat the development of cyber warfare, and then discovering that one service unit, the Honourable Artillery Company, already contained a large number of workers in the financial sector with the advanced skills that were needed. I note the impressive contribution of one Territorial Army officer, Tom Tugendhat, in Iraq and Afghanistan, a volunteer officer whose language and other skills proved invaluable.

The experience of the Ukraine war has confirmed that civilian skills can now be immensely valuable in wartime circumstances. Hybrid threats must be faced with hybrid skills, many of which are often to be found more easily in civilian life than in the traditional military. We have also seen in Ukraine how quickly people can be trained to high effectiveness in fields where existing skills add value. The Armed Forces Bill in this respect falls far short of the vision set out in the SDR. It prioritises extending obligations for existing reserves up to the age of 65, rather than expanding and transforming the reserves for the defence of our homeland and UK waters and transforming the relationship between reserves and our broader national society. The cautious phrase that the reserves might usefully be expanded

“by at least 20% when funding allows, most likely in the 2030s”

declares how limited a role is still foreseen.

I have gathered some impressions about current dependence on reserve personnel from association with the London Scottish, a territorial unit in which my father served a very long time ago and which has now been transformed into the reserve company of the Scots Guards. I was struck when invited some years ago to a unit dinner by its honorary colonel, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, by how many of its members had been mobilised individually for short periods to fill the ranks in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a sign of the current shortage of regular soldiers that individual reservists are also mobilised to make up the numbers for ceremonial events, including Trooping the Colour. One of our doorkeepers was marching round Horse Guards Parade 10 days ago.

I understood Chapter 4 of the SDR to be saying that the authors would have loved to recommend expansion and greater integration between regulars and reserves but hesitated to push that very far, given more urgent priorities for limited funding. They praise the Australian military’s gap-year model for short regular service with continuing reserve commitment. They note the positive relationship between skills training for military service and for civilian tasks and suggest that military partnerships with further education colleges could provide a way forward in civil and military apprenticeships. That should become a major part of the Government’s reskilling agenda through cross-departmental co-operation, and I would welcome the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, saying more about how that is to be implemented. Chapter 7 recommends that

“the Royal Navy should adjust its personnel balance to include greater numbers of Reservists to generate efficiencies and release Regulars for front-line and operational roles”.

That seems a highly practical way of reinforcing defence of our maritime waters.

So far as I am aware, little follow-up has been taken on any of this in the 12 months since the SDR was published. There has been nothing on the whole-society approach to defence that should more closely associate civilian skills and responsibilities with military. The authors recommended the national conversation to alert the public to new threats and how they might share in responding. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, told us recently that he has been designated the responsible Minister for the national conversation. No offence to him, but it should be the Prime Minister who leads this, and perhaps the new Prime Minister will realise that he must. The IISS, for example, has just published a report detailing Russian use of drones to overfly British military installations and airports, but it should have been Ministers who told us that to alert the public that we are facing real new threats and we need to respond.

When I asked which government department would be responsible for the proposed homeland defence force—a new iteration of what the Territorial Army was originally organised for—I had the impression that Ministers did not know before they told me that it was most probably the Cabinet Office rather than the MoD, which I suspect is a mistake. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster, will be able to cheer me up by telling me that I am underplaying what has so far been done and that cadet forces and others are already helping to build a new relationship. I was rather struck the other week when talking to one of Britain’s major public schools about how political education will be adjusted when votes at 16 come in to be told that it had abolished its cadet force some years ago because of the cost and the feeling that it was not a vital part of its educational process.

On my reading, this Bill confirms that the Government have not reflected on the changing value of reserve and volunteer forces or followed the recommendations of the SDR. They have not learned the lessons of the Ukraine conflict or the changing nature of hybrid threats. Veterans in their early 60s will do their best to fill the ranks when called on, but there is so much more that should be done to recruit and mobilise reserves to contribute to national resilience and security and to link our Armed Forces more closely to our civilian national community.

I am pleased also to note that in new Section 343AZA(2)(c) a significant consideration is now present—namely, that special provision for servicepeople may be justified by the effects on such people of being a member or former member of the Armed Forces. So far, that is good news. However, the Royal British Legion and other charities have a number of issues and queries about details yet to be resolved, such as care home responsibility for “due regard”. I sense too that there will be inevitable disagreements between local and national authorities about which should be responsible for taking action, and a temptation to play ping-pong over it. Were this to occur, it might be for the Armed Forces Commissioner or a veterans’ commissioner to resolve. The Minister might like to comment on this possibility.

The issue of removing immigration fees for close dependants of non-UK personnel granted leave to remain because of their former service in the Armed Forces will be an amendment to return to in Committee. The 2024 manifesto commitments by the three parties undertook to waive the current and increasing immigration fees that families of non-UK Armed Forces personnel are required to pay before being allowed indefinite leave to remain in the UK with their spouse. Two years have passed, but there is still nothing but empty assurances that this waiver is to be honoured. It is time for action to correct this unfairness.

I am saddened that there is no further attempt to deal with the incompatibilities between this Act and human rights, frequently exposed in examples of lawfare, or further consideration of some form of better combat immunity for service personnel on operations. I sense, however, that this is not a field this Government wish to enter, and it may be rather fruitless to raise it now.

I will also repeat a complaint—some might call it a whinge—I have made at Second Readings of previous Armed Forces Bills: about the way the constitutionally important Armed Forces Act 2006 has to be renewed. Like its 2011, 2016 and 2021 predecessors, the present Bill is, in effect, a 150-page Marshalled List of amendments to the 2006 Act, which itself has almost 350 pages. I commend the efforts of officials to produce in the Bill before the House a masterclass in amendments to the 2006 Act and many other Acts, but unless a major change of approach is found, our successors will be dealing with Bills whose size is measured not by page numbers but in kilograms.

One issue covering more than 32 pages—some 10%—of the 2006 Act is defence housing and other property. Noble Lords will be aware of the Government’s commitment to improve living accommodation for service personnel. This is clearly meant as a key step towards achieving that ambition. The defence housing service is being given wide powers in new Section 343F, with Treasury consent being required only if the housing service is to borrow money. Other functions, such as entering into contracts or agreements, or forming or investing in a company or partnership, do not appear to need Treasury agreement. Such freedom does seem to me to be unusual.

Is the MoD to be responsible for the size of this service and paying for it? Have the Government made any estimate of the cost of and manpower required for this new organisation? Bearing in mind the difficulties facing the MoD because of the shortfall in defence investment planning funding, and the expectation that living accommodation expenditure will fall to the back of the queue, what rate of improvement is to be expected from the new defence housing service? Has the Minister any figures for the House?

The Armed Forces covenant was signed on behalf of the Church of England by the then Archbishops of Canterbury and York in February 2015. Since then, a number of English dioceses have also signed, working in partnership with local veterans, reservists and military bases. I confess that the diocese of Norwich needs to catch up, though I value my own engagement with RAF Marham, with the Queen’s Dragoon Guards at Swanton Morley, and those who serve at the STANTA. At the latter, I have witnessed the valuable work being done by the British Army, in collaboration with forces of other nations, in training Ukrainian conscripts to fight for the freedom of their country against Putin’s tyranny.

I believe that churches and Church schools have a particular role to play in supporting the 124,000 children of military families, who are likely to have to move school more often than others and to have parents away on deployment, sometimes for long periods with limited contact.

It strikes me that the conversations around signing the covenant, the engagement that involves with His Majesty’s forces, and the prompt that this gives to think more through the eyes of service personnel and veterans, is of as much importance as the ceremony of signing. Through good conversations, understanding is fostered, and the gift of concern and care can be extended.

I imagine that I am not the only father of a soldier who has stood at the central memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire and run his hand over those panels of carved names on Portland stone, only to reach our contemporary era, where the stone becomes smooth: smooth stone awaiting chiselling—the names of those who will be prepared to pay the ultimate sacrifice in defence of our nation in whatever will unfold in the years to come.

There are other people, each also treasured by God, who carry or will carry the scars of conflict and war in body, mind and soul long into the future, often impacting those around them. Among those who support and care for them are our Armed Forces chaplains—men and women, both regulars and reservists, whose calling is to serve alongside, being with and being there at both joyous and tragic moments, offering hope, peace and prayerful presence, and being the bearers of spiritual, moral and pastoral support. The Armed Forces covenant is, in a sense, a continuation of that pastoral care shared by us all in wider society.

My second point is about whole society preparedness. The recently published Global Peace Index 2026 found that

“the world has continued its longstanding trajectory of deteriorating peacefulness … There are now more active state-based conflicts than at any point since the end of the Second World War, while the number of countries involved in external conflict has nearly doubled since 2008”.

Given the troubling and dangerous times we live in, the Church of England’s General Synod has been considering how we might be called to be the Church in a time of war. Last July, we heard from the Lutheran Archbishop of Tallinn, Urmas Viilma, about how their preparedness is significantly advanced. This does not sit easily with the Jesus that I encounter in the gospels proclaiming peace-making and that most difficult of commands about love of neighbour and love of enemy.

I note that Bishop George Bell in November 1939, faced with a terrible impending European war, said:

“It is the function of the Church at all costs to remain the Church”.

The Church’s task is therefore to work and pray for peace, and to shape and form peacemakers, peacebuilders and peacekeepers. I would argue that, while not scaremongering, we need also to prepare for the threats we face. The Church and other faith groups would play a key role in supporting communities in the event of a major conflict. Resilience, community solidarity and hope are all key Christian virtues that people have valued in previous wars and would be much needed in any future conflict. As St Paul’s letter to the infant church in Rome put it:

“Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good”.

Will the Minister outline what preparations are in place and what resources are being made available to meet the strategic defence review’s goal of a “whole-of-society approach” to the review’s implementation, including

“widening participation in national resilience”?

My final point, and I declare a familial connection with the Royal Military Police, is a concern that under the Armed Forces Bill, service police will not be able to authorise pre-charge custody for Schedule 1 offences—that is, for battery, even when there is a domestic context. This is because the legislation is drafted for all serious offences to be in scope, which does not include Schedule 1 offences and does not articulate the context of domestic abuse offences. The issue of commanding officers dealing with domestic abuse offences was brought up by the Centre for Military Justice in its evidence in response to the Armed Forces Bill. It recommended an amendment to the relevant schedules to prevent commanding officers dealing with any domestic abuse matter at summary hearing. Although the Royal Military Police has a strong policy position that, where there is a domestic abuse context to offences, the commanding officer could investigate, it is very clear that such cases should always be referred to the relevant policing authority so that it can consider investigating. This is not articulated in legislation. Will the Minister commit to look at that please?

More broadly, I raise the issue that the additional requirements of meeting the threshold of a serious offence will add additional bureaucracy for service police during the arrest of suspects. This could be reduced by giving complete authority to authorise pre-charge custody to the provost marshals. The definition of a serious offence is noted as being similar to, but different from, the definition of a serious service offence in Part 1 of the Armed Forces (Powers of Stop and Search, Search, Seizure and Retention) Order 2009. The added complexity of this definition will inevitably slow down the processing of suspects in arrest and risk incorrect authorisations of pre-charge custody. Giving the provost marshals authority to authorise pre-charge custody in all offences would reduce these risks and give the service police greater parity with its civilian counterparts, who can authorise custody in such cases.

I have been made aware that service police currently have no specific legal protection against impersonation, either by civilians or by persons subject to service law. As the service police as forces are not constituted under the Police Act 1996, the offence of impersonating a police officer and the linked offences in Section 90 of the Police Act do not create an offence of impersonating a service police officer; nor are service police currently protected by the enhanced sentencing powers of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018. Service police officers are regularly assaulted on duty yet are not given the same respect and protections afforded to civilian police officers and other emergency workers.

Will the Minister commit to looking at these anomalies around impersonating and assaulting service police so that there can be parity with their civilian counterparts, with a view to potentially introducing a government amendment to bring clarity to these current anomalies? I look forward to engaging with the Bill as it progresses through your Lordships’ House.

Given the premium that the military places on experience, retention—as well as recruitment—will be more important than ever. In that context, I will raise two issues that I think touch the lives of Armed Forces families in particular.

The first is paternity leave for dads in the military. In the UK, we give dads two weeks’ full-paid paternity leave; in Australia, it is eight weeks; in Canada, it is a share of up to 35 weeks; and in the US, that well-known bastion of parental rights and pay, it is 12 weeks at full pay. The US example is pertinent, because this is about a hard-nosed approach to what we need in order to retain the very best people in our services. I have made the case before about changing our statutory provision in the civilian world and how it is good for dads, mums and kids, but all those reasons are magnified in a military setting because of the demand that we place on the people serving in our military and the absences that they often have from their families. That opportunity early in a family’s formation to spend time together, to bond and to establish ongoing relationships is even more important.

It is also worth reflecting on the dynamic for couples who are both in the Armed Forces. At the moment, mums get 26 weeks at full pay under their occupational provision, and dads get two weeks, so think about the effect that that has on the career of both those people as they have each additional child and how the balance of how they approach care is different.

I recognise that members of the Armed Forces are not employees with traditional employment rights in this sense, that the provision for the occupational scheme is different, and that leave needs to be and is subject to operational demands. Nothing that I would propose in changing it would change that fact, but I think we can and should go further.

I would also like to raise a specific case with the Minister of an Army Reserve sergeant who was denied statutory paternity pay after his mobilisation to support Ukraine was treated as a work break from his civilian job. My understanding is that this is not how the current system is meant to work, but this issue affecting a particular member of the reserves has not been resolved and we do not know whether others are also being affected by, perhaps, a misunderstanding of the rules. I hope the Minister can commit to looking further into this and getting it resolved. If we are going to expand the role of reserves in our country, we need to make sure that the move between mobilisation and deployment and civilian life is smooth and works for them.

The second area I would like to raise is that raised by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley: the fees for indefinite leave to remain for family members of service personnel with service of four years or more. Removing these fees is a Labour manifesto commitment, and it is supported by the Royal British Legion. In the other place, it had a very vocal supporter in my colleague Ben Obese-Jecty, who tabled an amendment to this Bill in the Commons to introduce those changes that are a government manifesto commitment. Sadly, it was voted against in the other place; the Minister responded by saying that work is under way, but no timescale has been given. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, said: it is two years since the election. In that time, the fees for indefinite leave to remain have risen by almost £350. For a family of four to get indefinite leave to remain will cost well over £10,000 and the increase for that family is over £1,000 since 2024.

I recognise that this requires work with the Home Office. Both the Minister and I have worked in the Home Office, and we know that on occasion it can be hard to get things done in that very great department, but two years is long enough. We change our Immigration Rules twice a year. The next changes are due in October, and it would be fantastic to hear from the Minister that the fulfilment of Labour’s manifesto commitment in this area will be contained within those changes.

There is the old saying that you recruit a soldier but retain a family. I hope that, alongside the measures in the Bill, the Minister can signal some progress on both of the issues that I have raised today.

The second area is the Armed Forces covenant. As we have heard, every five years, it allows us to ask whether we are keeping our side of the bargain with our armed services. I welcome the Bill’s decision to strengthen the covenant and extend the statutory duty more widely, but it raises a wider question: what does “no disadvantage” really mean in 2026? The world of work has changed irrevocably. AI technology is reshaping recruitment, jobs and skills. Every year, thousands leave the Armed Forces and enter the labour market. The Armed Forces are exceptionally good at teaching people how to learn under pressure. In a world of constant technological change, that ability may be one of the most valuable things that our servicepeople leave with. Judgment, teamwork, adaptability and leadership are becoming more valuable, not less, and are qualities that the Armed Forces develop every day. Perhaps the Minister could say how the Government see the covenant evolving alongside these changes. If the labour market is shifting, should “no disadvantage” include helping people to develop their skills more during service, making it easier for employers to recognise them?

The Bill also updates arrangements for reserves and recall, recognising that the skills of former personnel remain valuable long after full-time service. If we value those skills enough to maintain that relationship, are we also doing enough to help people keep them up to date—especially as we face the hybrid world which the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, talked about earlier? To me, that is part of what conditions of service now means. They still include pay, housing and family support, but they could also include the chance to keep learning and moving confidently into civilian life. I do not suggest that the Bill should become a workforce strategy, but it is reasonable to ask whether the covenant, transition support and reserve policy reflect the world that people who leave the Armed Forces now go into, including the impact of AI and automation. One of the privileges of spending time with serving personnel has been seeing the skill and determination across the forces. We invest heavily in developing those qualities while people are in uniform; we should be just as determined to ensure they continue to benefit after they leave.

We should all welcome and support the Bill, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, said, make sure it is widely supported outside this House and part of a national conversation. If, in a few years’ time, we can look servicepeople in the eye and say that they are living in better homes, that veterans are finding it easier to build good civilian careers and that people feel better supported to keep learning throughout their careers and beyond, the Bill will have done something significant alongside its constitutional importance.