Speeches by Sandher-Jones.

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) for securing today’s debate on this hugely important topic, as he rightly noted. I am a member of the Strategic Reserve myself, and I am grateful to other colleagues who have …”

“Sitting suspended.”

“I will write to the right hon. Gentleman when we have a further update. I am not familiar with the Guardian front page that he mentioned, but I will dig it out of an archive. I am sure he will appreciate that it is from a bit before I started paying attention to these things. We agree that our reserves are a vital sour…”

“Like many in the MOD, I like a challenge. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman recognises that I very much mean what I say when I talk about the importance of the reserves and how that is linked to numbers. I want to address some of the criticisms that have come our way. At one point last year, almost 700 of our reservis…”

“It comes back to the point that I talked about earlier. First off is taking a systems approach to this, so that there are multiple levels where, if something unacceptable has happened, it can be caught by the system and then processed appropriately. I think we have seen where that has not always been the case. We canno…”

“I will always look at suggestions and recommendations and bottom them out. My question, without solutioneering, is what is the real focus they are trying to get after that? Are they putting forward that there are concerns about the independence of the scrutiny of our system? I think we can point to measures to ensure t…”

“Honestly, I would say the best place was in the Army. I am not saying that just because I am here in front of you in this role. One of the most important things that I take seriously as a Minister is holding the MoD to account. It is a strange role: I am not here to defend it or lead it; I am here to hold it to account…”

“Education of people when they come in, so that they can recognise those standards, and so that they can recognise and understand the full range of options available to them. I do not think that, if I just stopped a member of the Armed Forces in the street, they would know all the options available to them. Certainly I …”

“I think it is relevant to go back to your earlier question. In 2025, 51% of individuals who raised a service complaint said that they were happy with the objectivity and fairness of the handling of their complaint. That was an improvement of 13% compared with 2024. Obviously, 51% is not good enough. But 44% were satisf…”

“I will to turn to Sam, who can talk about the victim and witness care unit.”

“First, I understand from what you are saying that you are thinking in terms of a comparison to the civilian justice system. Is that right?”

“That is an important point. There are two distinct stages when you have been a victim of unacceptable behaviour. There is the system that kicks in when something is reported, and I think we can point to a lot of things that we have done to improve the system when it is reported. The worry for me is when things are not …”

“I am not going to do that today. I would point out that we are making investments without the DIP being finalised. A lot of people are working very hard on it. I am sure that everyone here would recognise the importance of getting this right. It is a hugely important piece of work, and we have to get it right. It is ri…”

“That is an interesting one. I will come back to you if we have tracked that specifically.”

“We have taken a number of steps to improve trust. Crucially, the tri-service complaints unit is taking serious allegations to do with harassment, bullying and so on into the tri-service space, so that we can ensure consistency across the services and see that we are truly applying a standard that an outsider or victim …”

“I think we should avoid an arbitrary thing that says that if an investigation does not result in a conviction, it has not done its job properly. One of the ways we try to understand whether we have the right level of convictions is that we would, potentially, look at other systems. It is not always quite correct to com…”

“I have a huge amount of respect for George Robertson; the work that he put into the strategic defence review made for a phenomenal piece of work. I think it is fair to say that we recognise the importance of the recommendations—we have accepted them, we are progressing at pace and some have already been delivered. We h…”

“No, but I want to reiterate how important the chaplaincy service is. I am not somebody with faith, but I really value the chaplaincy service and what they provide.”

“If you allow me, I will start my answer by reflecting on the journey that brought me here. As you know, I served in the Armed Forces. I was an officer in the Army Intelligence Corps for a few years. I think it is worth saying up front that I had a fantastic time serving in the military—the experiences it gave me, the l…”

“Yes—I have personal experience of this. I can think back to an exercise we did at Sandhurst where, for various reasons, the female platoon got the body armour but you just had whatever size there was, and people just had to grab whatever there was. In a subsequent exercise, lots of women were injured, and some people s…”