It is a pleasure to welcome you, Mariette Hughes, the Service Complaints Ombudsman for the Armed Forces. Thank you for appearing before our Defence Committee; we are very much looking forward to the evidence session.

Thank you, Ombudsman, for coming in today. The complaints that you have to monitor are often extremely serious. Could you talk us through the role you play, just to orient us, and then comment a little bit on some of the particular things that you have encountered that you think are worthy of note?

Yes, absolutely. The role of the Service Complaints Ombudsman for the Armed Forces is to provide independent and impartial oversight of the service’s own service complaints system. Our aim is to ensure that all service personnel have access to a system that is efficient, effective and fair. We do not provide frontline complaints handling. Initially, when service personnel make their complaint, it is handled by their single service, and that, to me, is the correct way of doing things. It is absolutely right that the creator of the environment where a complaint arises is given that first opportunity to resolve things and to put things right. We can refer individual complaints into the system to make sure that they can access it and that they get handled properly. We can review and overturn decisions that complaints or appeals are inadmissible, to make sure that the right things are being looked at. We can look into concerns around delay in ongoing complaints. When an individual has been all the way through that process, we can review the final decision and the handling of that complaint to check whether the outcome is correct and whether there was any maladministration in the handling of it. Finally, we present our annual report to Parliament on the overall operation of that system and how well it is working. Broadly, the types of complaints that we see are what you would expect to see from any workplace internal grievance system, because that is what the service complaints system is. It is a place for people to raise their complaints about the things that affect them during their service lives. The top three areas of complaint are, and have always been, career management, bullying, harassment and discrimination, and terms and conditions of service.

Can you comment a little on the relative performance of the services—both how they incur complaints and how effective they are in resolving them?

Very broadly speaking, we do not see a huge amount of difference between the three services. Although there are intricacies and differences between them, the areas of complaint are always the same. We see slight shifts and sways between them, but there is nothing that makes it particularly worrying that any one service sees more of one type of complaint than another. In terms of handling complaints equally, each of the services have slightly different complications in the way that they handle them, but, broadly, performance is pretty uniform across the board and has been on a very positive trajectory. We hope to see that continuing. The services are doing very well. One of the things that we recommended in the year before last’s annual report was around the need to standardise complaints handling, to make sure that, regardless of which service you are in, the complaint is handled in the same way, and that is something that we have seen a lot of success with.

If you take the number of complaints and divide it by the number of service personnel, the number is roughly the same for each of the services.

It is broadly consistent across all services, and broadly consistent in terms of splits between officers, non-commissioned ranks and reservists.

Does it vary by what you would consider to be the seriousness of the complaint? Some complaints can be very serious indeed, and some may be very important to the individual but perhaps less significant in other terms.

There is definitely a variance between the complaints themselves. They range from what you would see as potentially quite simple matters to things that are really distressing and are affecting people’s everyday life. What I would say is that, in all complaints handling, severity is a very subjective scale, because it is about how it feels to that person. What you may think of as being a fairly minor complaint can weigh on people for a significant amount of time. What we do not see is any particular link between the severity or seriousness of complaints and the services. It is not the case that one single service is having the big, crunchy complaints. We are seeing the same things across the board, but those can range from very minor things, such as requirements to change something on an annual report or missing some part of an allowance from a pay packet, to the worst cases of sexual harassment or unacceptable sexual behaviour, or really poor examples of bullying and discrimination. We see the whole range.

As you say, there are some that you would consider the worst, even though it is a subjective matter in some cases.

Yes.

As a final question, can you talk a little about your experience of whether putting in a complaint, however it is resolved, then has an adverse effect on a human being’s career in the services? That itself could be an enormous disincentive and demotivator, even in the most serious or most justified cases.

Yes, absolutely. We know that one of the reasons why individuals say that they do not raise a complaint, or have fear of raising a complaint, is a fear that it will mark them out and affect their career progression going forward. More than anything, what we see from the individuals we deal with is that they want their complaint resolved, but they also want to be able to do it in a way that means that they can continue their work and their career without that hanging over them. I have not seen any direct evidence or any cases where I could look at that and tangibly say, “That person has been disadvantaged because of the fact that they raised a complaint,” but the perception is always there. The difficulty when dealing with complaints and with people is that you cannot control the narrative. If individuals know that a complaint has been raised or that somebody has faced discipline as a result of something that has come out in a complaint, there will naturally be that association with the individual who raised it.

I have one final small question, if I may, just because of what you said. It would be possible, in principle, to take a longitudinal approach and run a regression to look at whether people’s careers were different for those who have complained versus sample peer groups. Do you think that might be an interesting analysis to do?

It could be done. I would have to caveat that with a number of things, in that, while we can predict that career trajectory to an extent within the armed forces, it is never linear. There are always other factors about what people want to do with their jobs or their training. The length of time that people are serving is changing. In order for that data to have any real value, it would be a very difficult task.

Thank you for coming to speak with us today. We will perhaps go back to your response to Jesse, because clearly there will be some relationship between people raising service complaints and departing the service. There seems to be an absence of data on those who have not chosen to raise any complaint, and there is nothing in the report that shows you are looking to seek information for those who have exited the services. In your 2023 report, you state that the service complaints system remains neither efficient, effective nor fair, which is deeply concerning, particularly in the case of bullying, harassment and discrimination, which counts for 21% of your claims. These disproportionately affect women and ethnic minorities. As you know, if we look at women, they are 12% of the armed services and about 20% of the complaints that you receive. AFCAS data also further reveals that about 13% of personnel experience bullying, yet only 13% of those affected file a formal complaint, suggesting that there are perhaps systematic barriers to reporting. Given the lessons from large, external, national issues such as Letby and Savile, I am particularly concerned about the emphasis on resolving complaints at the lowest level. The approach prioritises speed over effectiveness, minimises serious issues, and fails to identify harmful patterns. How is your office addressing these risks? What steps are being taken to ensure that lessons from systemic failures are applied to the service complaints process?

That is a really important and interesting question. The emphasis for me would be on resolution at the lowest appropriate level. There will absolutely be cases where it is not appropriate for things to be handled just locally by the chain of command. One of the reasons why we made recommendations 6.1 and 6.3 was around this sense of formalising the informal. I want a system where it is possible to pass appropriate cases back for local resolution, but they all come through the same front door, so that we have an eye on what complaints are being raised, which ones are appropriate to pass back for local resolution and which ones are not appropriate, because they might speak to that wider systemic issue where there needs to be a certain level of investigation. Making sure that we have the ability to pass it back where appropriate, but also to bring everything in through that same gateway, is really interesting. In terms of that central admissibility, that is what we have been trying to go towards, in that we need to see all the complaints that are coming in. We need to understand what they are about. I do not think local resolution minimises the severity of the issue, provided that local resolution is managed properly and the outcomes are overseen and reported.

That is a major factor in Savile and Letby. Therefore, there have to be lessons that you are drawing in. The halo effect exists within the military, with the normalisation of patterns of harm. It is quite interesting to see the different approaches by the three services. The Navy, which is perhaps blighted by operational separation and the time that is taken for their reporting, takes one approach. The Army has raised concerns about this. The Air Force is just going after numbers and churning through complaints. Do you not have some concerns that there is a stripping out of some of the essential context that points to bullying, and would perhaps lead you to understand why the system fails in dealing with bullying?

You are quite right to raise those concerns. Again, it is one of the reasons why, first, we want to look at standardisation of complaints and, secondly, we are focusing on the fact that bullying, harassment and discrimination complaints take too long. A lot of these cases come down to individuals’ recollections of situations. As that timeline extends and memories degrade, it becomes harder and harder to get the answers as to what has happened. Tying it back to the first question, a lot of the reasons why people leave service are that, if they do not get the correct answer to their service complaint, because it has not been dealt with correctly or swiftly enough, it leaves that lingering bad taste in the mouth. The Navy has particular challenges, when individuals are away and at sea, in bringing those individuals back to speak about complaints. In relation to the RAF, it has achieved the KPI in last year’s report. I have had conversations with them about “Let us not sacrifice quality for speed.” There are wonderful things they are doing in terms of case hearings, putting people all in the room together to get accounts first hand rather than doing everything on a paper-based investigation. There are also situations where we have said, “That investigation was too swift. You have not been rigorous enough,” and we have overturned those cases and made them do it again. We are trying to bring everyone back to that central line, but there does need to be further work on the best way to handle complaints that are so important and sensitive, and affect people’s emotions so severely, in the quickest possible and most appropriate way.

I will posit that bullies love informal resolution. I particularly liked your pitch to the Public Bill Committee, where you spoke about going in and speaking to units, stripping out the chain of command and having open conversations with them. Your language in your discussion spoke about how those people will say things like, “The things they are putting up with that chip away and then lead to situations where they feel they have to complain”—that speaks to informal resolution. In those meetings, do you ask openly who the bullies are? People know who the bullies are. We know that they are promoted. We know that they exist and reside in the system because, in certain situations with the military, you literally just time them out. That is part of the halo effect. That is something that comes in some of those other lessons: “It was just Jimmy.” I do not see that that is tackled in your report. I also do not see that deployments and events on operational matters are appropriately handled. When units are sent away as formed units for very short periods of time, people are effectively told just to put up with it for the four months or so that they are away. Again, it disproportionately impacts women, because those people come from non-formed units. Could you provide a view on that?

I will start by saying that I absolutely agree with everything you are saying. We are very limited in my jurisdiction in terms of the things that I can look at that are raised as formal service complaints. I rely a great deal on goodwill, in that outreach visits and these conversations are something that we have added in to the mix. When I have those conversations with individuals, we talk about atmospherics in that area. We talk about whether there are any people who are a particular issue. I ask them about how they can raise concerns, whether they have raised concerns and what has been done about those concerns. One of the things that I do on those visits is feed back to the commanding officer at the end of that visit and let them know if there is anyone they should be concerned about or anything where they should be directing their focus. It is quite rare that somebody will say in those sessions, “It is this person and I want you to go after them.”

Or, “It is the commanding officer.”

There is also that risk. People are quite open with me about the commanding officer, the attitude that they have, and whether that has shifted. It is really interesting how, when a commanding officer changes, it can change the entire vibe and the entire atmosphere. The people who feel that the most keenly are the people in those sessions with me. Again, I do not pull any punches. If I have people telling me that the atmosphere has shifted towards the negative, I will be able to say that to the commanding officer. I want to pull it back slightly to a comment you made: that bullies love informal resolution. I am going to challenge that slightly, because one of the common misconceptions around informal resolution is that it is just everyone getting in a room and agreeing to let it go. Informal resolution can have very tangible formal outcomes, but it is about the way in which the complaint is resolved and investigated. Informal resolution, to me, is the contrast to a paper-based investigation that has an investigating officer and a huge evidence file. If informal resolution looks like individuals in a room talking about their experiences, and a commanding officer saying, “I recognise the truth of what you are saying. There is a problem with that individual and I am going to take appropriate disciplinary action,” that is a tangible outcome that has arisen from informal resolution, as long as it is monitored.

That is how Lucy Letby went by. Because your system isolates every case individually and does not allow patterns to be identified, informal resolution is something that benefits bullies.

Currently, it could be said to do so but, again, if we are able to deliver recommendations 6.1 and 6.3, where everything comes through that front gate and is monitored and tracked, particularly with the new case management system that the services are using, where we can put a number of tags on cases to be able to analyse the data in a way that we have not before, we will be able to see those trends.

To develop this topic slightly, we are soon to have an Armed Forces Commissioner. What advice would you give them about this idea of formalising the informal or keeping it informal? How would you advise them to draw the appropriate line between the two?

My main advice for the commissioner would be to grasp this with both hands and run with it. We have been campaigning for these additional powers for a long time, because we are limited to only the things that come through the formal system. The commissioner will have a huge amount of additional scope to go out and speak to more individuals and to have more rigorous conversations with everyone in the chain of command around, “What are you doing about these sorts of behaviours? Can you show me all the informal complaints that you have received? Can you show me the interventions you’ve made? If not, why not?” They will have the ability to do that, and I would love to see them take that part of the work forward.

We touched on this a little bit, but women are over-represented in terms of complainants. Why is that? Have you identified any trends over the last two to three years?

One of our longest outstanding recommendations is recommendation 1.10, which is asking the Ministry of Defence to do a study into the root causes of that over-representation. Why are these demographics particularly over-represented? It is certainly not the case that women are just better at complaining or more confident in coming forward, as has been said to me in a few meeting rooms—you can imagine how I responded to that. There is something that is happening. We have now seen some progress on this recommendation. We have just received the first cut of data from a report into all the complaints raised by female personnel—anything that ties them together or anything that we can see that speaks to those trends—so that we can start some work on it going forward, but it has been too slow. We have been asking for that for a significant amount of time.

What is your sense?

When we look at women being represented in the armed forces, and talk about them being 12% of service personnel, that 12% is not split evenly across all regiments, all cap badges or all areas. We know that there are areas where there are more women serving, most notably within the medical services. Within those areas, we do not tend to see a number of complaints coming from them—from their home units—but what we do see is that those are the sorts of career roles that then have to go out as attached to other units, to places where they do not have that same demographic split, and where they are perhaps not as used to dealing with women in the workplace.

It is more of an all-male environment.

It is really hard to get behind that environment. If somebody is not routinely working with women and seeing them every day, and it is just a predominantly male environment, it is hard not only to identify where you have issues, but also to eradicate them, because, by the time it has happened, it is too late. My sense is that it is about that unequal split. Individuals are saying that they feel quite safe and content in their home units; it is when they go out and interact with others that they are experiencing those difficulties.

Are there any trends in that over the last two or three years? Has that changed at all, or is your sense that it is stable?

It has stayed pretty consistent. The sorts of things that people are complaining about under this umbrella of complaints has remained pretty constant.

How would you solve a problem like that?

There are a number of different ways. There are a number of different levers that I would love to be able to pull if they were my levers, such as having more women in the armed forces, or more rigorous screening ahead of time. I do not know quite how you would achieve it, but, when we employ people in the armed forces, can we make sure that they are the right sort of people? Can we do something to check how they would respond to certain situations? I do not have the answer for that.

Do you mean something like psychometric testing of recruits?

It is about ensuring that we are not bringing people in with that inherent bias and those poor behaviours.

One assumes that leadership is critical. You mentioned more women in the armed forces, so what about more women leaders?

Leadership is absolutely critical. More women leaders is, naturally, something I would be very much in favour of. Due to the hierarchical nature and the way that careers progress, we need to get the demographic split right at the front end. That will flow through, and that will naturally take a lot of time. While we are in that situation, we also need to look at our male leaders and how well they are calling out what they see. I present annually a session to the generalship programme at Sandhurst, and I talk about challenge culture. One of the things that I always talk to this session about is that it is really easy to say to people, “Be an active bystander: speak up when you see things.” What I have fed back to them, and what they have maybe not realised, is that when I speak to individuals on outreach visits, they always have this inherent idea of who the person of rank in the room is. If they see poor behaviours in the mess or in the barracks, they know what they should be calling out, but if there is someone of a higher rank in the room who has also seen it, to call it out would not only be calling out the behaviour, but also calling out the inaction of their superior. There is always this assumption that whoever is the highest-ranking person in the room should be the person to call it out. Making sure that leaders are aware of that and that that is a reason why people themselves might not speak up and step in, and making sure that they are alive to all of those behaviours and actively looking for them to be able to call them out, is something that we need to drive with them.

The standard that you walk past is the standard that you accept.

Yes, absolutely.

You speak of talking at the generalship level, but the key rank is probably lieutenant colonel or equivalent, because these are the commanding officers of units. If you are a CO of an infantry battle group, which is predominantly a male organisation, you may have women who are attached from the medical services. Are you aware of, or have you yourself done interventions on, ACSC, for instance, which is the staff course for lieutenant-level command, to have those conversations and say, “It is extremely important that you set the tone and call out that behaviour”?

Yes and no. This is going to be a slightly long-winded answer, for which I apologise. We have had conversations with ACSC, and we would love to be able to get in and do more training. Again, I draw myself back to the fact that I am limited in my remit. My remit is to look only at service complaints. There are a million areas that I would love to get into and talk about this sort of thing. We are doing what we can. We present quarterly to each of the services’ new commanding officer course. We talk about service complaints. We talk about bullying and harassment. We talk about the ways they can open themselves up to both observing and halting this behaviour. We are currently in discussions around trying to get in at the RSM level as well, because our experience is that, while it is really important that the CO drives that culture, a very junior serving person is not going to go directly to the CO to talk about their problems. They are going to go to their RSM. Making sure that that person knows what is behaviour that can be dealt with and what is stuff that has to be escalated, and that they are open to the issues that individuals, particularly within marginalised demographics, are facing, is really key for me, so I am really excited to drive that work forward.

To finish off, reservists are under-represented in complainants. Do you know why that is?

The short answer is no. We do not know exactly why it is. By the nature of their work, when we do see complaints from reservists it tends to be more from the full-time reserve service, because they are full-time in that career. Whether there is a split in terms of the full-time reserve service proportionally raising the same number of complaints as normal service personnel, we have not done any analysis and delving into that. I would like the ability to do that. We are also looking to get some engagement and outreach with some reserve units this year, because it is an area where we have not done a lot of outreach and heard a lot of direct feedback.

Could I posit that, if reservists are experiencing bullying and harassment, or inappropriate sexual behaviour, they are just going to walk rather than complain? We are then losing quality people because the culture is not right. Might there be some truth to that?

There absolutely could be some truth to that. As I mentioned, if people do not get the outcomes to complaints that they want, they vote with their feet. Similarly, if people do not feel they can raise complaints, or feel they are not being heard or represented, they will simply choose to stop serving.

You noted an increase in complaints since 2022. Has that trend continued into 2024?

Yes, it has. I will caveat this with the fact that we are currently in the process of drafting the annual report. We get the final data cut at the end of January 2025, so I do not have the exact figures. Recommendation 6.2, which we made in a previous year, was that the services send us quarterly updates on their volumes and their issues, so we do have a good overview of it. There are slight fluctuations between the services but, broadly, we are looking at a 30% increase again this year. That means that over the course of three years, the number of service complaints admitted by the services has more than doubled.

Do you have any insight into the factors behind that increase?

There are a number of things that it could be attributed to. I believe it is a combination of all of them. In terms of the accessibility and visibility of the system, we now have the My Complaint app, so rather than having to understand which JSP you use to raise your service complaint, and printing off the form and filling it out longhand, there is now an app. There is an area on DefNet and Defence Gateway, where you can get information on service complaints and just submit your complaint online. We have improved the accessibility to and visibility of the system. We have also tried to do that, as SCOAF, through our outreach and media work, and through trying to raise the profile of the system. The services will not thank me for saying it, but I welcome the increase in the number of complaints. We know from AFCAS that not enough people complain, so I would like to see that number continually going up. One of the things we see is that a number of the complaints that would have been resolved by the chain of command at a low level are now coming directly into that central admissibility through the app. That is why 6.1 and 6.3 are so important for me. While it is great that we have that overview of them, they do not necessarily need to be assigned to an investigating officer and a decision body. They just need resolving.

You seem to be of the opinion that it is more about people being able to complain more easily than there being more issues to complain about.

I think so. There is nothing that I have seen, in my time in role, that indicates to me that behaviours are getting materially worse. It is that people are more comfortable to complain.

Would you say that there are any specific trends around the issues or complaints that are coming forward?

There is nothing dramatic or of particular concern. We tend to see little bursts of complaint. There will be one issue that comes up, and then we will suddenly have a little spate of complaints, perhaps, from one service. Overall, the complaints are what we would expect to see. In terms of career management, they tend to focus on annual reporting and appraisals, positions in the order of merit, success or otherwise at promotion boards, or choice of appointment postings. Within bullying, harassment and discrimination, that goes from unacceptable sexual behaviour and direct discrimination, all the way down to a breakdown of working relationships, and how people feel and are treated while they are trying to do their jobs. Within terms and conditions of service—this is a really interesting one—we tend to see a split into two areas. One is, “That policy has not been applied correctly or fairly to my situation,” and the other is a much more wide‑ranging, “That policy itself is not fair. It is not right for service personnel.” Those are the things we tend to see.

When you are looking at those individual issues, whether it is sexual harassment or something to do with their career progression, what would be the weighting to how many of those individuals are successful in their complaints?

I am afraid that I cannot give you a figure at this point, because we do not have the data. When complaints are upheld, they are recorded on the system by the services as either upheld or partially upheld. Historically, that has been something that really restricts our analysis, because if somebody raises 10 heads of complaint, two of which are about their annual report and eight about behaviours, and there was found to be one small procedural error in their annual report, that complaint will be recorded as partially upheld. If the annual reporting was fine, but all eight complaints were upheld in terms of the way that they were treated and whether they were bullied, that will also be recorded as partially upheld, so they will look identical within the system. One of the things that we are looking to drive forward under the new case management system is the ability to pick out those heads of complaint, what each of those complaints were about, and whether they were upheld, so that we can see whether there is one type of complaint that is more likely to be upheld.

I am interested in this phenomenon you are describing of the complaining culture increasing rather than the behaviour declining. Is there any clustering effect around a unit or trade? Could you do the analysis from the information you get to see whether that one is becoming traditionally much more complaining than that one?

Broadly, I cannot, but we, as an umbrella, can. I can only see the cases that apply to my office, and then I get the overall data from the services at the end of it. What the services will see when those complaints come in is what the originating unit is and what the complaint is about. They will monitor those hotspots, and that is something that they discuss with me very regularly in our catch-ups. One of the issues we see is that individuals may not raise their complaints until they are out of that environment. The complaint will be recorded at the unit that they are in now, but that is not where the issue was, so we have to be alive to that. We also see issues of intertwined complaints, where one individual will complain and you might then see a retaliatory complaint or somebody who, in talking with that individual, says, “I have been subject to that behaviour as well and I am also going to raise my complaint.” We have to have some sensible conversations around which complaints you can pause to allow other procedures to take place, and which ones you should join. One of the things we are seeing at the moment is a mass of complaints around accommodation. There are about 4,000 around single-living accommodation and issues associated with that. The service complaints system is not designed to deal with that level of mass complaints, but it is absolutely right that individuals can use that system, because it is something that affects them in their service life. When we start to see things like that, and if we see particular areas leaping up in volumes, we have to be alive to it and be able to pick up on those. One of the things we also factor in when we plan our outreach for the year is, “What complaints did we see last year? What complaints did the services see? Is there anywhere that we think we would have particular benefit from going and speaking to people?” That is as much, “Is there a hotspot for complaints? Is there somewhere where we have a particular overrepresentation of a demographic and it would be useful for me to speak to them?” Also, just as worryingly, “Is there anywhere that I have not seen a single complaint from?” I would expect to see complaints in the workplace and, if somebody does not have any complaints, that is just as much of a red flag to me. We use that to factor into the discussions on our outreach and where we are going to focus our efforts.

Speaking of that, I noticed in your report that three complaints were raised against your office, and that one of them was upheld and an apology issued, which is a pretty shocking strike rate and worse than all three of the services, as far as I can work out. Can you please describe to us the nature of that complaint and what lessons you took from the resolution thereof?

When we talk about complaints raised against our office, they are probably complaints about the way we have handled someone’s application, the investigation and the processing through our part of the service. We do not get very many. We have individuals who are unhappy with the outcome, and one of the necessities of complaints handling is that individuals will be unhappy with the outcome. Where they are escalated as complaints, they tend to focus on whether we have followed our correct investigative procedures, whether we have been as clear as we could be, and whether we have followed all the things that we need to do. I would need to look into the specific one to which you are referring, but one of the things we have taken forward from the complaints that we have received is a complete revision of our operating practices and operating manual, to ensure that all our investigators know the correct processes, that that document is frequently updated and that we are doing our best. At the end of the day, it is so damaging if somebody has been through a complaints process and is unhappy with the outcome, and then comes to my office and receives a poor service. That just cements that feeling, so we need to do everything we can to make sure that that does not happen again.

There was only one of three, and you cannot tell us what it was about.

Because I am the ombudsman, I am the ultimate arbiter of those decisions. Ordinarily, complaints are handled by my head of investigation and also my chief of operations. Bear in mind that this is now further than 12 months ago, so I would have to look into which specific one is referred to in 2023, but I am more than happy to write to you on that.

Again, I am going to caveat this by saying that I am not best placed to tell you where the covenant is working well, because my focus is on the service complaints system, but the issues that people raise with us, which sometimes can and cannot be part of the service complaints system, do indicate where there are areas for concern, which will be well known to the Committee. They include things such as accommodation, the provision of childcare services and the ability to access medical services. Those are the sorts of things that people bring to us and end up quite frustrated, because the service complaints system itself cannot handle them. I am really pleased to see that the Secretary of State has allowed for serving personnel to give evidence to the inquiry on the covenant, because that is where you will get the richest data from what people are seeing and experiencing.

I would struggle to highlight anywhere where I have a personal view or personal experience of it.

Those are the main areas in the work that has come through to my office. I am aware of a few cases where individuals have expressed concern, because the intention to provide a service, support or infrastructure is there, but the local area is not able to provide it. The concern for me in this work on the covenant and in bringing it into law is the potential for complication, if it is found that the covenant is not working, around where we are able to take those complaints to and where that focus should be. Is it on local providers? Should it come through the service complaints process? How will individuals be able to raise those issues? It is something the Armed Forces Commissioner will be very interested in.

I am afraid that I do not have enough experience of how well it is working to be able to give a view as to whether I would see that it needs to be extended.

The biggest thing for me is the promise to service personnel that that is being taken seriously. Putting it into law shows that commitment to the things we set out in the covenant. Saying to service personnel, “You will not face disadvantage. You will be supported. You will be treated fairly. It is being taken seriously and being looked after by Parliament and the Government,” is the biggest thing it will achieve.

What interaction have you had with service families, if any?

I have had very little, I am afraid—not through a lack of desire to on my part but simply because my remit is limited only to service complaints and only to the applications that come directly to my offices. We occasionally get contact from individuals who are family members of service personnel, and we do our best to point them towards organisations that can help them. I have met a few members of service personnel family simply through events and outreach. In terms of formal engagement, we do not have the jurisdiction for it, but it is a huge positive that the Armed Forces Commissioner will be able to have that contact.

The German model does not allow armed forces personnel’s family to approach their commissioner. They have to funnel it, as your remit currently is, via the serviceperson. What are the pros and cons of extending the remit of the commissioner to service families?

The comparison with the German model is really interesting. That role has been in existence for more than 65 years. The annual report for the parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces in Germany covers the operation of defence as a whole, so they have a much wider remit in terms of the things that they are looking at, but they also do not have the same direct powers of intervention in service complaints that SCOAF has, or that our Armed Forces Commissioner will inherit. Opening it up to bring in representations from families is really important. It will be of absolute benefit. I mentioned, when I spoke in the scrutiny Committee, that individuals are often not comfortable talking about the things that affect them, particularly when it is affecting their mental state or their welfare. Family members are the ones who see it, who feel it and who are living with it, so the ability for them to bring those issues in and say, “This is really affecting someone,” is going to give us a huge amount to work with. With the German system, because the remit is so wide, if you opened that up to family members on all the issues that Dr Högl is permitted and required to look at, the volume would be astounding. Because our Armed Forces Commissioner will be looking at welfare matters, you will see an increase in volume with bringing it open to the family, but it is the right thing to do, because not only are they the ones who observe things that are happening with their own service personnel that might not normally be raised, but they are the people who are directly affected by some of these welfare matters. When we talk about housing, medical provision or pay and allowances, they are supporting their serviceperson. They are raising families with them. They are trying to maintain their own career while allowing their partner to work in this very important area. They are not subject to service law and do not have rights under the service complaints system, but they are subject to service life, so it is absolutely vital that they have access to the commissioner and can raise the issues that are affecting them.

You could be quite broad in your application of the word “welfare”, could you not?

Yes.

Rommel said that the best form of welfare is better training, because better training means fewer widows. The commissioner, by looking at the welfare brief, could be exploring equipment, as the German commissioner is. She interprets it pretty broadly, and it is a sort of “go anywhere” pass so to do.

I would expect the secondary legislation and the regulations to be drafted to put some sort of steer on that and to include a, “This is including but not limited to” provision—“These are the main areas of focus that we would like to include under welfare”. The danger you have is that if we try to launch into this with everything being up for grabs, you absolutely overwhelm the first commissioner, who tries to look at everything and is not able to do so in sufficient detail as to create any reports with impact that give tangible outcomes or things that we can look to improve. It will be for the commissioner, working with the implementation team and the Ministry of Defence, to say, “This is what we mean by welfare but, for the first two, three or five years, these are the areas of focus, because these are the things that we know are important. This is where we will focus work in the first 12 to 24 months. In that time, we will also take representation and petition from family members and service personnel to find out what else we should be looking at going forward.” Just because they can look at everything does not mean they should look at everything. It will be about that balance and focusing where they can have the most impact.

I was struck earlier when you said, “There are a million areas that I would love to get into”. I just remind you of that.

Yes, absolutely—time, resource and enthusiasm. There are a number of ways in which the Armed Forces Commissioner could have a really positive impact. The office of the Armed Forces Commissioner cannot try to fix everything all at once, but there are a number of issues that we are already alive to that would make for very interesting and positive work.

At this point, I would also like to place on the record my gratitude to the Secretary of State for confirming the granting of our Committee’s request for service personnel to be able to contribute to our armed forces covenant inquiry, which, as you noted earlier, will make sure that it is a lot more productive. I now want to go back to the annual report and look at progress on previous recommendations.

Are you monitoring progress on the previous recommendations and whether the deadlines that were set out in the Government’s response have been met?

We are absolutely monitoring them. I feel like I am caveating everything today, for which I apologise. The formal decision on whether recommendations are closed or open will be issued along with the annual report, but I can absolutely give you an update on the progress. We meet regularly with the MOD to talk about the progress on these recommendations. As the Committee will be aware, last year we chose not to make any new recommendations, for the reason that it had taken so long to seek agreement on the previous ones that nobody had had a chance to progress them. When we make recommendations, we are not doing it for fun, but because we think it will have a positive impact, and I wanted to be able to see the benefit of those recommendations before we move on. In terms of the recommendations outstanding from the 2022 annual report, recommendation 7.1 was about the need to standardise and professionalise case handling, and we have seen some really interesting work on this.

What about the case management system?

That is one element of it.

Is that in there?

The new case management system is up and running. As part of that, in order to understand how cases move through, all the process flows had to be mapped for each of the services, and that allowed a standardisation and a bringing together of how complaints are handled. We have also done a tri-service workshop on maximising caseload efficiencies and how large-scale organisations deal with working with complaints, and that was really useful work, so we are definitely making progress in that area. The case management system is a big part of making sure that that works. Recommendation 7.2 was about visibility in that central area online, where people can access complaints. That is up and running. I am very excited about recommendation 7.3. This was the opportunity for SCOAF to dip sample and quality-review cases that we would ordinarily never get to see. The process for that has been fully designed and is up and running.

Was that met by November?

It was. The services had their cases to us by November, and SCOAF was able to complete our review by mid-December, so we have completed our first round of that and are really excited about that work. Similarly, we have the standard operating procedure and a shared area set up, where all recommendations and changes, whether instigated by my office, by the Ministry of Defence or by committee suggestion, are all now recorded in one place, with an agreed schedule for how they are reviewed, measured and monitored, because we cannot lose focus on what the proposed impact of this change is. Too often previously, we have said, “We will do this,” or, “These are all the recommendations arising from this report,” and we need to be able to stop, look back and say, “Did that have the effect that we wanted, and if so, what further work needs doing?” There has been some delay in delivering those, but we have seen a lot of activity this year and I am very pleased with it.

The review to determine the root causes of the overrepresentation of female and BAME personnel in service complaints should have been done by December.

We have had the initial report. I have had a look through it. It looks very useful. It looks very comprehensive. I am very pleased with the quality of what has been done. We are now in discussions about how we formalise that happening again on a regular basis, to make sure that this is not just a one shot and done, but something that the services are looking at continually.

So a thorough and proper review has taken place and was in your hands by December.

Yes.

You have talked about making your recommendations in the 2023 report; do you expect to make any new recommendations in your next and possibly final report?

Yes, I will be making new recommendations.

But you cannot tell us what they are.

It will not surprise the Committee that I cannot tell you what they are. They are still being fleshed out. Essentially, we will never get to a point where there are no new recommendations to be made. The landscape is always changing and, as it changes, the interventions and the extra things that need doing will change along with it. This is a journey of continuous improvement, so there will always be new recommendations. There will be some going into this report, but they will seek to add to the work that has been previously done. We are not seeking to reinvent the wheel.

Can I ask a specific question? A lot of focus has been on complaints around bullying and harassment, for obvious reasons and rightly so, but the largest number of complaints were around career management, at 35%. Any complaint can affect morale. In terms of career management being a widespread issue, if people think that they cannot progress or be treated fairly in the career, that can have a major impact on morale as well. I just wondered if you had any insights into what underlies career management making up the more sizeable complaints that we have.

There are a number of things that drive that area of complaints. One is the way that career management is done in the armed forces. It is a very strict, regimented process. Everyone has to have reporting. Reporting has to be done in a specific way and by a specific date. There are a number of steps in each of those things that have to happen by a certain date. With any process that is that involved, there are opportunities for it to go wrong. Some of the complaints that we see are about, “My report was not issued on time. I was expecting to receive it by this date and I did not.” These are simple procedural issues. We also look at the fact that, in going into a career in the armed forces, individuals have a level of expectation around how their career will progress and how it will go, in terms of, “In this many years, I would expect to be here or to be achieving this.” When those aspirations do not match up with their experience, we can see complaints around that. It is a very competitive area. When people are going for promotions and there are individuals needing to be ranked by performance for everyone in their rank group, and then being put forward to compete for a limited number of jobs, there are naturally going to be people who think, “I have been career fouled if I do not get the career that I want.” So much of that career management and promotion is on the strength of that annual report. A couple of pages put together by your chain of command—by your first and second reporting officers—is what has the power to decide if you get promoted and if you get the appointment that you want. So much rides on this small document that goes through a very engaged process that there are naturally a number of reasons why complaints will arise from that.

To take you back, do you have a view on stratification? You were talking about performance and the impact of first and second ROs. When people are graduated and given a number against their report, this has a significant impact on them. It is completely unregulated and uncontrolled, and it has a massive impact on people’s performance. Do you have a view? Is that something that falls out?

I would hesitate to call it unregulated and unobserved. If I use the Army as an example, where career management is one of the largest areas, all of their career management complaints go through to APCs—the Army personnel centres—which have the best handling times in terms of dealing with those complaints, and really good outcomes, so they are absolutely on that. What we have also seen are some really good lessons learned, where they have taken it and said, “Even though these complaints were not upheld, we can see that this is causing us an issue and, therefore, we are going to train our first reporting and second reporting officers in how to avoid all these sorts of issues.”

You do not have any concerns about racking and stacking of people.

No, not as such.

Perhaps we can explore that later. Moving on to the function of the SCOAF office, how effectively is your team currently working?

We are functioning very well at this point in time. The Committee will be aware that, historically, performance at SCOAF has been a concern. We faced a backlog, which historically peaked at around 149 cases, and cases taking over a year to allocate. When I took on the role, we were at 49 cases and looking at about eight months to allocate. When I last spoke to the Committee, we were at 18 cases and a two-and-a-half-month wait. We currently have no backlog at all. We have no wait to allocate cases, so as soon as applications come into my office, they are able to be assessed and then passed through to investigators, and timeliness is vastly improved. We are currently at 99%, against a target of 90%, to do all of our cases. That has been delivered without any increase in staffing or funding, and we have released the use of our fee-earning investigators, who are a contingent force that we brought in to help deal with that backlog. That is also in the face of applications to SCOAF having gone up. We talk about the service complaints system having more than doubled in three years. That flows through to us, and we see that same increase. Last year, admissibility applications more than doubled, and substance and maladministration investigations, which are our biggest, chunkiest casework, increased by nearly 50% last year. The fact that we have been able to deliver that performance with no increased staffing, no increased budget and an increased volume is really testament to how hard the team have worked, how much they have bought into it, and the enthusiasm they have brought into it. They want to do a really good job and are, rightfully, very proud of what they have achieved. Just to put it on the record, I am very proud of them as well. We did it in a number of ways. We undertook a comprehensive operational review. We stripped out anything that we could in terms of unnecessary administration on cases, any time we were double handling, or any time there was wait time unnecessarily in our processes. We changed the way we write. We changed our reports to make them easier to write for our people, but also easier to read for the individuals who are accessing our service, and that has really improved that case handling. We have also done a significant amount of work, and that then forms part of 7.1 and what we have tried to cascade out to the services, around optimal case holding. How many cases should my guys have at any one time to make sure that they have enough work to be getting on with and are able to progress it in line with timeframes, but are not overloaded? We have reached the correct balance with that now, so we are keeping pace with what is coming in.

There are always a number of risks that come with this. When you have hit 100% timeliness, there are very few other ways to go. A key thing for me in deciding how we were going to attack the backlog was that the quality of casework should not change. It is absolutely inappropriate to look to reduce a backlog by changing the goalposts and allowing fewer cases in, or by devaluing the product that you put out. I am really pleased that there is no risk on that, but the risk we face is around the burnout of my staff, around maintaining that enthusiasm, and around what we do if that volume continues to go up and we are not able to increase our staffing. Utilising our time and resource is really difficult. We are able to keep pace at the moment, but the intention has always been to reduce that backlog so that staff have the opportunity to do other work as well—to be involved in the outreach visits, to speak directly to service personnel, to engage in the training courses, and to do outreach and education. Currently, we have a number of gapped positions. We are caught up in the recruitment freeze. We are keeping pace. However, my staff are only able to focus on casework at this point, and this affects both the operational and the business side. We have a number of gapped positions. We are filling internally with temporary promotions, but it means that investigators and senior investigators have capacity to do the cases and nothing else. On the business side, we have not had a comms manager for over a year. We currently have no stats manager. We have to be very canny about how we upskill and train individuals so that we can cover those gaps, but it means there is no room left for anything else at this point in time. We could have more impact. We could give more value. We could do lots of extra work, if we had the capacity. We promised staff that if we broke the back of the backlog, there would be the opportunity to branch out and do all this value-added work. At the moment, I have made that promise, but I am not able to deliver on it because we are just fighting to keep pace with it.

To delve into that, why do you feel you do not have the capacity?

We are not able to recruit to any gapped posts. The Ministry of Defence is in a recruitment freeze at the moment and, as part of the Ministry of Defence, we are similarly caught by that.

I am interested in the transition period between your office and your term, and the Armed Forces Commissioner. You have talked about the difficulties faced by your team when there was a gap between your and your predecessor’s terms as ombudsman; what was the impact of that?

That was not an ideal situation, but it is one of the things that you can face when you are dealing with time-sensitive appointments and very rigorous recruitment processes. Quite rightly, you want an individual who can be properly scrutinised and held to account, but you risk the situation that I was in, which is where my predecessor’s end date and my start date, due to the notice that I had to give at my previous job, simply could not be aligned. Under SCOAF’s legislation, unless there is an ombudsman in place, there is no power to be delegated, so nobody else who works for the SCOAF could do any work or issue any cases. We had a period when there was simply no ombudsman, and I ended up taking this role in title a number of weeks before I took it in practice. I was carrying legal responsibility, should anything have gone to JR, before I started in role as the ombudsman. That was not ideal, but it meant that people could keep issuing cases. In a situation where backlog has always been a problem, that was something that we wanted to make sure happened. That risk is even more stark now. I have mentioned that my staff take a huge amount of pride in what they have delivered. If they are put in a situation where there is a gap, and they are not able to progress casework and can see that backlog increasing through something that was entirely preventable, that is going to be hugely detrimental to staff morale. You have an added layer of complication in this case that, when I was recruited to take over from my predecessor, I was taking on an existing role with an existing job spec. With the Armed Forces Commissioner, you will be looking to recruit someone to a job spec and a job description that does not yet exist, and the right sort of person to deliver the intention of secondary legislation and regulations that have not yet been drafted, which puts you in a really sensitive place. The Armed Forces Commissioner legislation does have that provision that the Secretary of State can put into place whatever transitionary arrangements are required, and that gives you a good level of security. My term is due to end on 31 December 2025. Before the plans were announced for the Armed Forces Commissioner in early summer 2024, preliminary work was already being done to start the recruitment process for my successor, so 18 months in advance, which gives you a sense of how time-critical this is.

Is there an opportunity to extend your term to help with that transition period? The Armed Forces Minister stated to the Public Bill Committee that it was going to be early next year that they were going to start—that is, now—but it will now be 2026. There is that transition period. Given your experiences from before, would you say that a transition period for handover is essential, given the things that you have just mentioned?

There are a couple of different points there. There is the opportunity to extend my contract as the ombudsman, but it has been made very clear that the desire is to start from 1 January with an Armed Forces Commissioner going forward. That could be done under those transitionary arrangements to say, “We are going to put someone in place for a transitionary period to help set up that legislation and to understand how the office will work,” and then do a full appointment, or bring someone in as the commissioner and say, “We are starting from this date, but the first year will be setting up that work and understanding how it goes.” Identifying the individual is the key thing, as long as you have that person in post, so I would also recommend potentially looking at a cut-off date. The legislation sets out that, if necessary, the Secretary of State can make an interim or transitionary appointment to cover that gap. Although that would not go through the full pre-appointment scrutiny, you would still want that to be a person of the correct temperament and level. There needs to be an understanding of where the cut-off point is, so that if you do not have this sorted, you need to start looking at emergency situations.

You have looked at the legislation of the Armed Forces Commissioner and what the role will undertake. It has the expanded scope of being able to talk to families. What have you learned in your term of office that the new Bill will bring in to ratify some of the complaints and recommendations much more quickly? Is that a positive way forward?

It is a positive way forward. From the complaints point of view, it gets after the biggest bugbear that we have, which is people getting to the end of the complaints process and still feeling hard done by because the answer is, “Your complaint is not upheld because of x, y and z.” There is still an underlying sense of unfairness—a policy that is not right, or if people are told, “You cannot raise that complaint because it is about your husband and not you, and only you are subject to service life.” It gives that assurance that complaints and welfare, as a whole, are being looked at, which to me is really important. What really struck me when looking at the Second Reading and the scrutiny hearings is that the power that this role has will only be as powerful as the impact that it is allowed to have, based on what is done with those reports. It is not being suggested that the Armed Forces Commissioner will have the power to make budgetary decisions or to decide how things are run within defence. The onus will be on how that commissioner is going to be able to lay their reports, what gravitas is going to be given to those reports, and how seriously those reports are going to be taken to drive this forward. So there is a balance there.

That is important. You mentioned earlier that you are only as good as the resources you have. For the Committee’s information, how big is your office at present? How many staff do you have?

We have budget and headcount allocation for 26 posts, including myself. You are going to test me now. I would have to tell you exactly how many. I believe that, currently, we are holding gaps in six posts out of our 26.

Given the extra responsibilities of the Armed Forces Commissioner, do you see that resource having to increase?

Yes, absolutely—100%. I do not mean 100% by order of magnitude. Coming back to how they will scale the work over the first few years, looking at how many applications you might get from family members will dictate how many people you might need to deliver that work. It would be quite difficult to sit down and say, “You need exactly these staff at this point in time,” but there will need to be more staff, simply because, if nothing else, the Armed Forces Commissioner is absorbing and taking on all the work of SCOAF. We have the correct number of people to do that work, so if there is anything else that you want the commissioner to do, they will require more staff.

The service complaints system has never been determined to be fair, effective or efficient. In your view, how far is it from being considered to be so?

It is closer than it has ever been. Again, I apologise for caveating that, in that the final assessment on efficient, effective and fair is being done at the moment as part of the annual report. We have seen a constant journey of improvement over the last four years, particularly when we look at efficiency. The KPI for resolving complaints is that 90% are done within a 24-week target. That has not been hit tri-service, but last year we hit 74%, which was the third or fourth consecutive year of improvement against that increased volume of complaints. I expect that to keep going up. Efficiency is improving. In terms of effectiveness, we are getting there. We are starting to see better learning from lessons, better cross-service collaboration, and better ways of improving the complaints system. Fairness is the one that causes me the most concern, and is the one where we still have one red rating, because it is about disadvantaging and discriminating. It is about the way that bullying, harassment and discrimination complaints adversely affect a few particular demographics and take longer. Those complainants are, by definition, disadvantaged by the system, but we will start to see them improve going forward.

On that point, to take you back to stratification, or racking and stacking, it is the single biggest factor that affects people’s promotion and reporting. I note that that sits firmly in that red rating, yet you do not view that as a concern.

Racking and stacking individuals for career management does not sit within the red rating.

I think that it does. I do not see enough in the report that points to saying that this is a real challenge to women and ethnic minorities in particular, where a reporting officer, in the movement of a number that is completely unregulated, can have such a significant impact upon someone’s career. I just cannot see it being controlled or discussed adequately.

I understand the point you are making. In terms of that red categorisation, when we look at all those elements for efficient, effective and fair, we are looking at the operation of the service complaints system, not the career management. If I were assessing issues around career management within the armed forces, that is absolutely something that I might put in red, but what we are looking at is how the system itself deals with those complaints.

I want to move on to the Armed Forces Commissioner Bill, and the transition and timeline for that. The Minister for the Armed Forces, in his evidence to the Public Bill Committee, noted that he would like the whole process to be completed and the commissioner’s office to be fully established at the start of 2026. How satisfied are you personally with the transition, the introduction of the new Armed Forces Commissioner, and how that is all being managed?

When we talk about the commissioner being in post, and the office fully set up and fully functional from 1 January, it is a case of, “How long is a piece of string?” If you are asking for that commissioner to be appointed, to have all the additional staff they need, to have the secondary legislation and to have their operating procedures drawn up, I do not think that is achievable between now and then. However, I think that having someone in post, having the primary legislation, and having the trust and confidence of the Committee and that remit to say, “We are starting from now and this is the work that I would like to do” is achievable. In terms of the transition, my staff are all aware of what is going on. They are aware that the core functions of SCOAF are going to be absorbed into the Armed Forces Commissioner.

Your team has full clarity on the impact on them.

My team is aware that the work will be absorbed by the commissioner. They have concerns. They are, naturally, slightly worried. They do not know what this means for them, for their terms and conditions, for their civil service status or for their pensions. Will they still be classed as being part of the Ministry of Defence? Will they be able to do some of the work on the commissioner side, or will they be ringfenced as SCOAF staff when that transition is done? They have a lot of questions and, unfortunately, I cannot answer them. We do not have a lot of the answers at this point.

You have no indication whatsoever as to whether those staff are being moved to the new commissioner’s office.

We have been given an assurance that all current staff will be kept on and that they will simply come under a different name, but that does not give enough clarity for my staff in terms of whether they are still MOD civil servants. That sounds like a minor point but, when we are in a recruitment freeze, where the only option for promotion is inter-Department transfer, that is really important to my guys. A lot of them place a lot of pride in their role as MOD civil servants, albeit under the umbrella of SCOAF. When I say that we do not have those answers, I do not intend that as a criticism. It is just that those answers do not exist yet. If it helps, my team is meeting with them. There is a new implementation manager who has been appointed to help to move the Armed Forces Commissioner stuff through. They have just recently started in role today, I believe, and the whole team is meeting with them later today. Those conversations are starting, but the work is still at very early stages.

Is the freeze on MOD hiring going to have an impact on bringing people into the Armed Forces Commissioner’s office? Will it have an impact on recruitment?

It is difficult to say, and is not necessarily for me to say. I would hope and urge that, in the creation of this office and the importance that is being placed on this, there is dispensation given to say, “We need at least this many people to be able to start, and we are allowed to recruit to those posts.” I have set out my view that you would need to phase that up and start building that office as you get a sense of the volume and of the areas of focus. I would really hate to see all this legislation go through and this office be set up, and then not be able to increase headcount to the level required to have the impact that is desired from this role.

Is the recruitment freeze having a direct impact on complaints being investigated?

It is not within my office. We are still able to allocate cases. We are not overburdening staff. They are still at the optimum case handling. But it means we are not able to free them up to do additional work. It is not affecting the output of our main product, which is investigations into people’s complaints. We have had to draw back on other things to be able to maintain that core function.

Is there an average time that a case is open? In other words, how many cases do you have open today?

We currently have 19.

I want to move over to comparisons with the German system. I also want to place on the record my thanks to Dr Eva Högl for her time in a comprehensive meeting with the Defence Committee, wherein we were able to learn more from the German experience.

Good morning, Ombudsman. Your role has significant independence. Under the German model that we are told the new commissioner is going to be based on, that independence does not really seem to be there. From my reading of it, the Secretary of State will have power over the appointment, funding and staffing, and they can dismiss the commissioner if they deem them unfit. He is essentially their boss. Do you have concerns around that?

Forgive me if any of this is incorrect, but I know Dr Eva Högl quite well, and we have had conversations about the differences in our system and how they are set up. The process of appointing the parliamentary commissioner in Germany is very different. It is not done by open application. It is not done by people being able to put themselves forward for the job. Individuals are nominated by the political parties to fill that post. I know Eva and have the greatest of respect for her. I do not think that affects her independence at all but, looking externally, the idea that you are able to recruit for a commissioner by having it be an open competition and by having that person have pre-appointment scrutiny in front of the HCDC is really important, to maintain that independence and to demonstrate externally that this is being scrutinised. In terms of the Secretary of State having the power to dismiss a commissioner, that is in my terms and conditions now. There are a number of safeguards within that, though, in that it can be done only for certain reasons and under certain circumstances. One of the things I would expect to see is that that is also set out in the terms and conditions of appointment for the Armed Forces Commissioner.

I was particularly concerned about whether the Secretary of State deems the new commissioner to be unfit. You say that you can be dismissed. Is that “unfit” element in the legislation around dismissal for yourself?

I would have to double-check, but I believe it is.

That is someone’s opinion, is it not? The point I am making is that it seems like the Secretary of State is going to have a lot of power here over the new commissioner. Will that not impact on their independence?

I would have to check, and I am very happy to write to the Committee and provide a copy of my current terms and conditions for full transparency. I believe that, under mine, it is set out as unfit in the sense of being unable to carry out the statutory functions of my role, as opposed to unfit in the sense of just not really getting on with them and not liking what they are saying. I would expect that same level of protection to be put in. One of the things that is really important is that, as a member of the Ombudsman Association, we have to go through the validation committee, and one of the things that the validation committee looks at is the terms and conditions of appointing the head of the organisation—that is, the ombudsman or, as will be, the commissioner. If they have concerns that there is not sufficient independence, they will not revalidate this office. It is in everyone’s best interest to have someone who can speak that truth to power and write the reports that have the uncomfortable truth in them, and not risk losing their job because somebody does not like the content of the reports.

You are not worried that the new commissioner role will lack independence because of the Secretary of State’s control over them.

I am not, provided that the HCDC is allowed to do pre-appointment scrutiny. I know that the Chair raised it on Second Reading around making sure that any concerns raised by this Committee are taken seriously, and any reasons for going against the recommendations of the Committee are fully explained and put in the public sphere. This is the area where we maintain that independence and that scrutiny. Just because the Secretary of State has the power, I would not necessarily expect to see them needing to exercise that, because I would want the commissioner to be called in front of this Committee regularly to account for their actions and their reports, and to be held to account for their performance.

In terms of the earlier questions from my colleague, you have 26 posts at the moment, six of which are unfilled. What is your current budget?

It is just over £2 million—I want to say £2.1 million or £2.19 million—for this year. The exact number escapes me right now, unfortunately, but it is around that level, and it has been at that level for the last few years.

We have been told that the new budget will be between £4.5 million and £5.5 million. Is that sufficient to cover the extended remit of speaking to service families?

Again, we end up with, “How long is a piece of string?” I would put on the record that the current budget that SCOAF has for operation is sufficient. We are not raising concerns that we need additional budget to do what we have to do. The issue is filling the posts. We have the budget for the posts, but we cannot put people in them. The budget is not necessarily a concern from our side. In terms of what the budgetary and staffing requirements for the commissioner will be, you have to look at the fact that all of the work of SCOAF is being taken on, so that is the minimum. That is what it will need to be going forward. You will require additional staff. You will have additional things coming in. There will need to be additional legislation, There will need to be more reports. The team that help with putting together the annual reports and laying stuff in Parliament is going to expand. The visibility, the comms and the outreach all need to expand. Depending on how that transition is managed, though, SCOAF has an IT system that functions very well, and we have a website that is fit for purpose. We have office accommodation at the moment that could be extended. It is not necessarily a case of just creating an extra one and doubling it, but the proposed budget does not feel unreasonable for an Armed Forces Commissioner in full operation. I would expect that, for the first few years, they would require perhaps slightly less budget as they start to ramp up and build all those things. As an ongoing operational budget, it does not strike me as being wildly out of the realms of possibility.

I am pleased that the Secretary of State, on the Floor of the House, confirmed, and followed up with a fuller explanation in a letter to the Committee, that he fully expects there to be a robust pre-appointment hearing by the Committee, and that the views of the Committee, especially if we have any serious concerns, will be seriously looked into, to ensure that the appointment is as independent as can be. We spoke earlier about a number of challenges to how the system could be deemed to be fair, effective or efficient. Is there anything thus far that we have not covered and that you would like to place on the record?

I do not believe so. There is nothing of concern that needs placing on the record. What I would like to place on the record, if I may, is that a huge part of all of those positive shifts that we have seen over the last four years has been a shift in attitude with the services. When I took on this role, the ombudsman was very much seen as the organisation that told people off and wrote criticisms, but did not necessarily actively help. What we are seeing now is a much more collaborative discussion where, if we identify something that needs to change, the services and the MOD are so much more willing to sit in a room with us and say, “We all agree that this is the issue. How do we fix it together?” What we have started to see is the services taking as much pride, ownership and investment in delivering a good product as SCOAF is. I would like to put on the record that I am very grateful for those efforts. I will still hold the services to account, and we will still disagree and butt heads, but they have really grasped the importance of doing this, and some of those improvements would not have been possible without that collaborative working.

Some of us have raised this issue on the Floor of the House, as well as in the Committee, in that we have seen significant challenges to recruitment and retention within the armed forces. Can the introduction of an Armed Forces Commissioner, as currently drafted, help to overcome some of those challenges in recruitment and retention?

It will help to identify some of the issues; it will not actively be able to fix them. It is about understanding from people what is affecting them and why they are choosing to leave and, ideally, identifying those issues before people choose to leave. We can flag those things that we describe as the constant background niggles and grumbles that are affecting their wellbeing day to day. The commissioner will be able to shine a light on those and, hopefully, through interventions, people will be able to get ahead of that and improve those situations before people choose to leave.

Ms Hughes, thank you for coming before the Defence Committee. Also, please do convey to your team our gratitude for their service, and for yours, to the country. It is greatly appreciated. With that, I would like to bring this evidence session to a close.