Baroness Carberry of Muswell Hill (Lab)

My Lords, I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, on her tenacious championing of the interests of Armed Forces personnel. I know that that commitment long predates my arrival in this House, so I step with some trepidation on to the noble Baroness’s territory. But, together with my noble friend Lord Beamish, I hope she can explain and help us to understand better what the proposal in the two amendments adds to the powers that the Bill already gives to the new commissioner. I have been trying to approach this question from the point of view of the ordinary member of the Armed Forces who, as it is, is faced with different channels to take concerns through. When the Armed Forces commissioner is in place, there will be yet another channel, and it is unclear to me, if I were put in that position, when I would consider myself to be someone who was availing themselves of the existing channels and when I might consider myself to be a whistleblower, and what the difference would be. I confess that I am not totally clear about the array of routes that someone in that situation might be able to take, and I wonder how the average member of Armed Forces personnel already navigates their way through the possible routes. As I understand it, the existing channels—forgive me if I have got this wrong—include the Ministry of Defence complaints procedure, a facility whereby people can report serious matters confidentially and, in some cases, anonymously; so that is similar to being a whistleblower. Another route appears to be the MoD’s serious concerns reporting facility: another confidential mechanism for raising serious concerns, which can be done online, on the phone or through an app. There also appear to be internal MoD policies that are already committed to protecting whistleblowers from retaliation or other detriments. The support available to people includes nominated officers outside the chain of command and a confidential hotline team. On top of that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, referred to in her introduction, there is the reformed complaints system, which will introduce a new specialist tri-service team for taking the most serious complaints—which will include bullying, discrimination and harassment —outside the single service chain of command. As I understand it, that has been welcomed by the family of Gunner Jaysley Beck, who always remains in our thoughts when we are discussing these matters. A spokesman for the family said that those running the new system need to be truly independent, properly trained and committed to real accountability and transparency. I suggest that those are all our aspirations for the new Armed Forces commissioner. On top of the channels that I have already mentioned will be added the Armed Forces commissioner. Will the noble Baroness take the opportunity to explain to us again, so that we better understand it, what adding a whistleblowing facility to what already exists would achieve? I also invite my noble friend the Minister to give us further assurance that anyone who in future has recourse to the services of the Armed Forces commissioner will be able to do so anonymously, in the same way that anyone designated as a whistleblower under any other system would be able to do. If the Minister could give us that reassurance, that might go a long way towards meeting the concerns the noble Baroness outlined in moving the amendment.