New clause 27 - Extension of benefits to members of
Armed Forces (Pensions and Compensation) Bill
11:00 am
Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury, Conservative)
I offer a quick echo of my hon. Friend's eloquent words. Such a scheme exists for the American national guard, and now that the Government are moving in the direction of the national guard in so many other areas—in mobilisation policy and so on—I counsel the Minister, who I know is well disposed towards reserve forces, and takes considerable personal interest in them, to look at what the national guard does. It has an inexpensive scheme because it has one absolute rule, which is, from memory, that nobody gets a penny if they serve for less than 20 years.
The vast majority of people who go through the national guard get no benefit from it. However, it provides a degree of benefit for the small proportion of people who are the absolute heart of any reservist unit and who serve for long periods. It is calculated on the basis of their total number of serving days during their total accrued service. It involves some detailed record keeping, but in the era of the computer that should not be a huge problem.
It is not expensive and it is for that small proportion of people who really make the reserve forces tick. They are not so much the serial mobilisers, who get pension rights when they are mobilised, but the people who go all the way up through the ranks. One friend of mine who served for 30 years ended up as a company commander, having started as a private. Another example would be the man who commands his regiment having started as a young officer and gone up through the officer ranks. Those people who may be mobilised only once or even not at all in their long service benefit, and it is a relatively inexpensive scheme.
I want now to focus on new clause 29. I hope that the Committee will bear with me if I tell two brief stories from my reserve service. Approximately 25 years ago, on a road in Norfolk, an 18-year-old soldier who was serving under me was struck on a night patrol by an extremely drunk driver, who was subsequently successfully prosecuted by the police. The soldier's left leg was fractured in a large number of places and he was off work for a long time while he made his recovery. The first thing that happened was that we had a charming phone call from his employer. He wanted to be sure that he was looked after in the best possible way and said that on top of whatever the Army gave him he would make him a generous payment.
When we looked into the rules, we discovered that under the system that the Ministry was then operating everything that his employer gave him would be deducted, pound for pound, from the Territorial Army pay to which he was entitled while he was serving. In other words, the employer either carried the whole burden or paid nothing at all. That young man's military equivalent rank payment was roughly what
his employer would have paid him, so his employer reluctantly backed off and left it to the Army. That was not good for relations with employers.
The much more serious case happened by sheer chance when I was serving with the home service force when we were just about to make our first deployment for a generation of substantial numbers of Territorials in the first Gulf war in 1990. This was a much more typical situation. It involved a reservist who was much older than his regular counterparts and was therefore on a much higher civilian salary than they were. He was nearly 50 and a deputy factory manager serving as a lance corporal. He fell off an assault course and broke his arm. He was off work for three or four months.
His employers tried to do exactly what the other employer tried to do. They said that they could not pay him the full rate but would give him his basic salary without the overtime to which he would normally be entitled and the Army could make up the difference. Not a bit of it: under the abatement rules, the MOD paid him nothing. He did not get a penny. A few months later, with the assistance of the now Secretary of State for Health, who was then shadow Secretary of State for Defence, we held an Adjournment debate, which was the last debate before the Christmas recess. Together with three or four colleagues, we stayed behind to press the Conservative Government on this matter. We got the rule changed.
The TA regulations currently state:
''With effect from 1 July 1991,''—
it took a few months to get this through—
''all payments from public bodies and corporations (including DSS Disability Allowance or War Disability Pension received in respect of the same injury or illness) will be deducted from Reserve Forces Disability Allowance, but not payments funded by private employers.''
We all accept that someone in the reserve forces who is already a Government employee—for example, a civil servant or a state school teacher—can receive only the higher of the two rates and not both. However, the Government's proposal is that we return to the abatement of the pre-July 1991 arrangements.
I do not wish to insult my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West, but as a major of 47 he is older than the average major in the Regular Army. Most Territorials and other reservists who are mobilised are older than their civilian counterparts, so they are often on a higher rate of entitlement. It is not even a question of the individual receiving both rates: the civilian employer cannot even top it up to the civilian rate because that extra will be deducted pound for pound in abatement from the military rate. We return to the same problem: either the employer or the individual's pension fund carries the whole burden and the Ministry pays nothing, or the employee receives the lower rate.
I know that the Minister is well disposed towards reserve forces and takes considerable interest in them. The issue cannot be about funding, because we are
dealing with a tiny number of cases. I cannot believe that employers will welcome the measure, in fact I am certain that most, if not all, know nothing about it. It is grossly unfair on reservists. Given that reservists get no benefit, as my hon. Friend said, from the abatement that they are paying, to deny them even this entitlement is extraordinary. A small group of us worked hard with the co-operation of the now Health Secretary to change that 13 years ago, and I urge the Minister not to change it back.