Speeches by Francois.

“The Minister has summarised the clause very well. We understand the intent of the Bill. We said on Second Reading that we would be a critical friend to it, and hopefully that will play out today. Nevertheless, we support the principle of what the Government are doing, so there is no need to divide the Committee on clau…”

“I think the amendment speaks for itself. I seem to recall that on Tuesday the Minister laid out a timeframe for the establishment of the commissioner and their office; from memory, I think he said that the intention was to have it up and running in early 2026. Perhaps, in the spirit of the hon. Lady’s amendment, he cou…”

“I welcome the Minister’s welcome for the amendment. I hope the Committee is doing the right thing here. We tabled it because the issue cropped up a lot in the public evidence session. By the way, I thought it was extremely useful to be able to have that. When I first came to the House, we did not have such sessions bef…”

“I beg to move amendment 8, in clause 1, page 2, line 2, at end insert— “(5A) The Commissioner shall operate independently from – (a) the Ministry of Defence; (b) the armed forces; and (c) any other government bodies and shall be free from any influence or interference in the exercise of the Commissioner’s functions.” T…”

“Much of the covenant is already enshrined in legislation, as the Minister probably knows; that was done under the previous Conservative Government. Since he mentioned it, will he explain to the Committee which elements of the covenant he believes are not already enshrined in law and therefore would have to be covered i…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Efford. I will make a brief contribution to say that we take it as axiomatic that the Armed Forces Commissioner will be mindful of the principles of the armed forces covenant throughout the performance of his or her duties. There may be an occasion late…”

“I thank the hon. Member for his kind words about my father. I absolutely agree with him about the very important role played by the Royal Navy in maritime bomb disposal, including by the brave divers he alluded to. For completeness, as the hon. Gentleman is a former RAF officer, we should place on record that a great d…”

“My father.”

“Before the hon. Gentleman moves on, I would like to say that he has spoken powerfully about the work that was undertaken by British armed forces personnel during the troubles, and subsequently in addressing the unexploded ordnance threat in Northern Ireland. When I was the Armed Forces Minister, I had the privilege of …”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Dowd. Having read my Order Paper over coffee, may I offer you my congratulations on your appointment to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee? It is an extremely responsible post in which we all have utter confidence that you will do very wel…”

“Perhaps I should begin by declaring a personal family interest in this subject. My late father, Stoker First Class Reginald Francois, served on a minesweeper named HMS Bressay from 1943 until the second world war ended, so he was involved in bomb disposal of a sort. Perhaps more accurately it was mine disposal, but nev…”

“If you are saying that the situation has got a bit better, that is encouraging, but I think you are also implying that there is more work to be done. We might want to explore that on Thursday under the “General service welfare” part of the Bill.”

“That is pretty clear, so thank you for clarifying. I will stop there because I know you have only limited time for your panel and others will want to ask questions.”

“Q To be really clear, is it both? If Corporal Atkins has exhausted the service complaints process but still feels deeply aggrieved and is convinced that it has not adequately dealt with his issue, he could still go to the commissioner, and the commissioner would have the discretion, just as the ombudsman always had, to…”

“Q Francois, Lieutenant 523962—very, very rusty number. Minister, we will get into all the debates on Thursday, but I give you fair notice that, after the testimony of a number of people today, including the last panel, we are probably going to try to provoke a debate on special needs education under clause 3, when we g…”

“The pressure on family life, as we have already heard today, is the single biggest reason why people leave, but when we went round a number of military bases, we found it was often an amalgam of reasons. Sometimes there would be a pressure cooker effect over several years, and then one thing might become, in colloquial…”

“Q I wrote a paper about retention, called “Stick or Twist?”, for a previous Prime Minister. Collette Musgrave: Indeed you did.”

“Q Perhaps I could take the liberty, Mr Efford, of asking the other two services whether they want to add anything on the SEN point. The Army tends to move around so much; I know that it is a particular issue when families move from garrison A to garrison B. Collette Musgrave: I would merely echo Maria’s comments. It is…”

“Q Anecdotally, if colleagues will forgive me, I remember going to RAF Digby about a decade ago, where there were some very highly-qualified communications specialists, who do important work, living in what were virtually demountables, to use a colloquial term. These people are massively employable in industry and then …”

“The Royal Air Force, what about you? It will be interesting to see whether we have a hat trick. Will you give us your top one or two? Maria Lyle: You nearly have a hat trick. You say that we represent families, which we absolutely do. We represent serving personnel as well, which is why I will mention housing in terms …”