Madam Deputy Speaker, through you, may I thank Mr Speaker for selecting this topic for our Adjournment debate? I am very grateful to the Minister for Veterans and People, who is in her place. It is the first time that we have been able to engage in this way since she has been in her role, so I look forward to that exchange. I truly hope that we will not get a 15-minute elongation of the answer I got to my parliamentary question, which is that the Government do not wish to engage in this discussion at this time, but we shall see—there is plenty of time for it to develop.
I know that some will look at the title of the debate on the Order Paper, “Potential implications of the judgment in the case of Advocate General for Scotland v. Mr Charles Milroy”, and ask, “What has this got to do with a Northern Ireland MP?” or with the colleagues of mine who have kindly stayed in the Chamber this evening. I do not know Charles Milroy, though I know of his service. This afternoon I had the opportunity to speak with him for the first time, and I can recognise him as somebody who has served our country well over more than three decades.
Charles Milroy joined the Territorial Army in 1982, was commissioned in 1983 and retired in 2015, having served his time as a reservist, as a commissioned officer and major. When he retired, he sought to attain what his co-workers successfully already had: a pension. This House will remember that the former Minister for the Armed Forces, the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), introduced a pension for reservists in 2015. But Mr Milroy was not entitled, he was told, to a pension. For almost six years now, he has been highlighting the legal entitlement that he has and pursuing that legal entitlement through the courts.
As the Minister and colleagues will know, the law that lies behind that is the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000, introduced into our domestic law by the previous Labour Government —an entitlement that assesses whether a part-time worker is being treated less favourably than their full-time counterparts. On two occasions, the employment tribunal and the Employment Appeal Tribunal, through the judgment of Lord Fairley on 29 January this year, have ruled that yes, Mr Milroy was being treated less favourably than his full-time counterparts.
Let me explain why I am raising this matter, and why I think it important for it to be raised. I served on the Defence Committee for eight years over the course of a number of Parliaments, and have taken an interest in defence issues and raised and championed cases not just for an individual, but for the collective endeavour placed in service in this country. I raise this matter because of the fundamental, important principles that lie behind this singular case.