ARMED FORCES

HC Deb 09 March 1998 vol 308 cc235-40

6 am

Mr. Boswell

I beg to move amendment No. 66, in page 22, line 39, at end insert— '(3) The Secretary of State shall take all reasonable steps to ensure parity of treatment between those persons serving as members of the naval, military and air forces of the Crown and their civilian equivalents, and shall lay before both Houses of Parliament a report explaining the reasons for any disparity of treatment with such civilians.'. The Opposition have long argued that the armed forces should be exempt from the provisions in the Bill because it is extremely important to safeguard their operational efficiency and morale. We were pleased when the Government did an about turn from their original intention and fell in behind us by agreeing to exempt the armed forces from any national minimum wage.

I am bound to say that the Government, in circumstances of some embarrassment to them—which I will not dilate on now—did not give a clear explanation for their decision. We drew our own conclusion, which was that the Minister had been outgunned by other members of the Government—but we do not want to rub that in. He said that the Armed Forces Pay Review Body might provide a satisfactory proxy to take account of the interests of armed forces personnel in respect of the national minimum wage, and it is certainly the best sort of proxy that the Government are likely to achieve. It is in that spirit that we tabled this amendment.

The amendment states: The Secretary of State shall take all reasonable steps to ensure parity of treatment between those persons serving as members of the…forces of the Crown and their civilian equivalents". Hon. Members who served in Committee will remember that when we discussed this matter, I made two related but slightly separate points. One related to the normal peacetime position, when clearly it should be possible, through the pay review mechanism, to achieve a degree of parity; and the second to the special conditions of wartime, when that parity might not be applicable. Civilians could be serving alongside service personnel, with one group being able to qualify for the national minimum wage—however many hours it was defined that they were working operationally—but the other, the service personnel, not qualifying for that.

The underlying motive for the Government's difficulties relates, for example, to the hours of a working private who is paid about £28 a day, but that is stretched over a 20-hour day on exercises. That results in a very low hourly rate. Of course, that is not what he is always paid, but it shows the sort of problem that would arise if the Bill applied to the armed forces.

We accept that the Armed Forces Pay Review Body is probably the best proxy now that the Government are exempting the armed forces from the Bill. We want to enforce that through the amendment, which states: The Secretary of State shall take all reasonable steps to ensure parity". Our reason for using that formulation—or even raising the matter at all—is, as much as anything else, as the Minister knows, that it is a propensity of Governments—as this Government have done and, as I admit, the previous Government did when there was not a national minimum wage—to phase in awards from the various pay review bodies, and particularly, in this case, from the Armed Forces Pay Review Body.

I want to use the line of argument followed by my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) about delayed payment of entitlements under the national minimum wage. If an award is phased, the sum is not paid in full and, in any case, there is a loss that is not recovered. Therefore, if the Government decide, as they have this year, to defer until later in the year part of the increase—in round terms, roughly one half; the increase varies between ranks—for service personnel of whatever rank, parity will be lost because of the Government's interference in the process, regardless of whether it had been achieved by the pay review body.

I acknowledge—as I acknowledge the interests of the previous Government in the matter—that there may well be interests of Government that require suspension of exact parity. Those circumstances bring me to the second part of our amendment, which would provide that, in cases in which parity was not adequately or fully secured, the Secretary of State shall lay before both Houses of Parliament a report explaining the reasons for any disparity of treatment with such civilians. That seems to be an entirely reasonable provision. We are not saying that the Secretary of State cannot suspend parity, but that, if Ministers choose to do so, they must come to the House to justify their choice. They should be able to do so, and—if it is appropriate—to convince the House that it should be so.

We are, therefore, interested in fairness for service personnel—as I am sure that the Minister is. We want to establish a mechanism that is as fair as can possibly be achieved. We want also to provide some operational flexibility for the Secretary of State in implementing the parity commitment. We have framed and moved amendment No. 66 in that spirit.

Mr. Gerald Howarth (Aldershot)

Clause 35 seems to blow a hole in the Government's case, as Ministers have acknowledged in it that they are not prepared to give parity to their own employees. Crown employees are to be given the benefit—I use the word carefully—of the measure, whereas those who serve in the forces are to be denied that "benefit". It is rather extraordinary that the Government are not prepared to accept amendment No. 66.

I am not quite sure of the latest pay figures for the armed forces, but the most recent ones that I have been able to secure show that an army private, on class 4, will be paid about £25 a day. Even if we assume that privates have an eight-hour day, their hourly pay would fall below the minimum wage—which is why the Minister has been prevailed on by his colleagues in the Ministry of Defence to accede to their requirement that the Bill should not apply to the armed forces. However, anyone who thinks that a squaddy does an eight-hour day needs his head examined, because our forces work many more hours than that. I suspect that, throughout the pay scale of junior service personnel, quite a few people would be caught by the measure. I therefore ask the Minister—who is not an unreasonable chap, although he sometimes rants a bit—to explain how senior officers will explain to soldiers why they will be paid less than those who may be doing a possibly analogous job, but who are civil servants or civilian Crown employees and not part of the armed forces.

The clause also exemplifies the differences in how the different services are organised. The Royal Navy has watches. The Royal Air Force tends to work a shift system, but the Army does not. That, again, illustrates the differences in treatment of those in the different services.

The amendment strikes me as extremely reasonable. It requires Ministers to lay before both Houses of Parliament a report explaining the reasons for any disparity of treatment between service men and their civilian counterparts. I hope that the Minister has a good explanation. If he has not, I shall feel inclined to divide the House. It should be borne in mind that I represent Aldershot, the home of the British Army.

Mr. Ian McCartney

I do not think that any hon. Member of any political persuasion does not represent members of, or families of members of, the armed forces, and those of us with constituencies in industrial and metropolitan areas represent an over-preponderance of families who send their young men and women to serve the country in the armed forces.

The hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) did not help the debate by attempting some guerrilla tactics to find out whether I—or the Government—was committed to the personnel of the armed forces. No one in the House has a monopoly on matters relating to the armed forces. There is a long tradition in the House—perhaps throughout the century. In the case of issues relating to national sovereignty, disputes abroad and, indeed, Northern Ireland, there has been a common approach to the needs of our armed forces personnel, and to the way in which we as a nation should deal with them.

I do not intend to take the line that the hon. Member for Aldershot would like me to take. I do not want to engage in schoolboy banter about whether the present Government are less committed to the armed forces. We are patently not, nor would we be. In Committee, it was clear from what I said on behalf of the Government that our proposals—the proposals that we advanced to create the new clause—were based on the unique circumstances of the armed forces, and that we were clear and specific in our own mind that the mechanisms for the Armed Forces Pay Review Body would meet requirements to ensure that the armed forces were dealt with fairly in terms of their pay and conditions.

I stress that the decision to deal with the armed forces in that way was taken only because the pay review body provided a suitable mechanism to ensure that service men and women were not disadvantaged by the exemption. If we had not felt that the arrangements would meet the requirement adequately, we would have dealt with it in a different way. The review body offers a well-established and credible system which has had not only the confidence of successive Governments but, more importantly, that of the armed forces themselves. In formulating its recommendations to the Government, the review body looks carefully at a range of matters, including comparability with similarly weighted civilian jobs in the private sector.

Mr. Letwin

I am genuinely interested in the Minister's answer to my question. If he really considers the pay review body to be a sufficient safeguard, why does the Agricultural Wages Board—which has been mentioned on earlier amendments—not do the same task for agricultural workers?

Mr. McCartney

The Agricultural Wages Board is an entirely different issue. We have co-ordinated the role of the board with the legislation. We said that in Committee, and, at some point in this evening's—or this morning' s—debate, my hon. Friend the Minister for Small Firms, Trade and Industry made it clear that the board would come up for review in 1999. Between now and 1999, it is not only reasonable, but sensible that the national minimum wage should interface with the agricultural wages system.

We have ensured, first, that as the Agricultural Wages Board payment is higher than the national minimum wage, if appropriate, agricultural workers will be paid the Agricultural Wages Board rate and secondly, that agricultural workers receiving less than the minimum wage will be brought up to the level of the minimum wage so that there will be no discrepancy affecting agricultural workers. They will be paid either the Agricultural Wages Board rate or at least the national minimum wage. Therefore, the point raised by the hon. Gentleman is spurious.

The Government have made it clear that any movement in civilian pay levels as a result of the introduction of the national minimum wage will be reflected in the Armed Forces Pay Review Body recommendations and feed through to service pay.

6.15 am

The review body is aware of the need to give special consideration to the circumstances of particular groups. Its 1998 review recommended higher increases for the lowest-paid service personnel. It is also open to the Government, in their economic and other evidence, to draw to the review body's attention particular factors, such as the need to take into account the relationship between the national minimum wage and service pay.

There is already a parliamentary reporting system. The review body's observations and recommendations are already published in a report, and copies are placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

The Government have every confidence in the ability of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body to take full account of the need to ensure that service pay does not fall below the national minimum wage when making its recommendations. If Opposition Members do not share that confidence, they should say so or withdraw the amendment.

Mr. Gerald Howarth

If the Minister is confident that the Armed Forces Pay Review Body will ensure that no service man receives pay below the national minimum wage, what is the point in having an exemption for the armed services in the Bill?

Mr. McCartney

I know that it is early in the morning, but we made it absolutely clear—and the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) agrees—that we considered it a more appropriate method of ensuring proper remuneration for our armed forces personnel. I thought that there was now a common approach on the matter across the Floor of the House. Let me repeat to the hon. Member for Aldershot that no one can claim, individually or collectively, to be the sole arbiter of pay and remuneration in the armed forces. The Government are committed to our armed forces and to providing fairness in pay and other remuneration, and we shall keep to those commitments. That is why, if the Opposition press the amendment, I recommend that the House rejects it.

I have attempted to be fair in the way in which I have dealt with the amendments; I have addressed them in the spirit in which they were moved. We had a more rumbustious debate in Committee, but this evening we have approached the issue differently. We have had the battle upstairs and the battleground has now been cleared. The smoke has now left the battlefield, we all know where we are going and the sooner that we can move forward, the better.

Mr. Boswell

My reservation about the matter is that the Minister of State carefully avoided the fact that, although there was an Armed Forces Pay Review Body, by which he set great store—as I do—the Government have not implemented its recommendations in full and immediately. Any suggestion of parity was avoided, therefore, and that is what the amendment was about.

I was concerned by the tone of some of what the Minister said in response to the helpful speech and intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth), who represents the home of the British Army and might have received somewhat more gracious treatment from him.

I am a modest man, not prone to wrath, but, in the context of the amendment, the House may wish to consider whether it now proceeds to a call of reveille.

Amendment negatived.