Lord Coaker (Lab)

My Lords, we see Amendment 23 as a minor and technical amendment, in that it makes provision that is consequential to Clause 3. The purpose of Clause 3 is to ensure that the admissibility decisions—decisions about whether a service complaint is admissible and can be progressed in the first instance—can be made by civilians as well as officers. Clause 3 does this by amending Section 340B of the Armed Forces Act 2006 to specify that a specified person may decide whether a service complaint is admissible, rather than it having to take up officers’ time in every case. We intend that decisions will be made by suitably qualified and trained civil servants. Given that these decisions are procedural in nature, this feels appropriate and is the only minor amendment that we have made to the service complaints system in the Bill. However, Section 340N of the Armed Forces Act 2006 similarly provides for the current Service Complaints Ombudsman to refer certain allegations to be considered as service complaints to an appropriate officer in the single services. The commissioner will absorb these functions from the ombudsman and will therefore be able to refer complaints into the system as well. In drafting the Bill, it was an oversight that we did not include this necessary consequential amendment as a result of Clause 3 to ensure that this change was reflected consistently across the legislation. I say to the noble Baroness and others that the provision was already considered in Clause 3 during the Bill’s passage, and it does not exclude the military. With that, I beg to move.