Speeches by Francois.

“They told us as a Committee—I am looking round the House for nods of assent from others who were on the visit, and I am getting them—that it was a problem, and it was cramping the ability to hold court martials. All we were trying to do was justify the cost of the train ticket to the taxpayer and prove that we had list…”

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“I thank the Committee for its indulgence; I will sit down now to facilitate other contributions, not least on education, health and care plans. By your leave, Madam Chairman, I might want to speak again towards the end, when we have heard the debate, particularly on the new clauses. For the moment, though, I will rest …”

“My right hon. Friend is of course a former MOD Minister himself and represents a large number of service personnel. It is obvious from his intervention that he understands the issue very well. What he has just asked me is wholly in line with the spirit of our amendment. My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull West and S…”

“Defence Housing and Other Property”

“I apologise for interrupting so early, but before the Minister gets into his stride, I would like to place firmly on the record that we are debating legislation of material importance, relating to the care of our armed forces, and yet again, there is no Reform Member of Parliament present. Does the Minister agree that …”

“Thank you, Ms Nokes. I will not cut across your ruling, but I do nevertheless say that I wholly agree with the hon. Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor). During the process of the Bill so far, we in His Majesty’s Opposition have sought to act as critical friends, agreeing with the Government when …”

“Specifically, if this amendment is to grant Crown immunity to the defence housing service, which is what the wording implies, how would that affect the ability of armed forces families to raise complaints about the standards of their accommodation? The Minister will recall that we spent a lot of time in Committee debat…”

“I shall turn now to our own amendments. Amendment 1 relates to those people who might be eligible to be called up as reserves but who also perform work that is vital to defence in their civilian employment. During the second world war, people in such a situation were generally referred to as working in reserved occupat…”

“Our amendments 2 and 3 refer to service personnel with children who have special educational needs, and to the related matter of service personnel who wish to foster or adopt children. Both amendments are based on one of the two key principles of the armed forces covenant—namely, that those in the armed forces and thei…”

“Anecdotally, some service parents have left the armed forces in order to protect the EHCP for their child rather than risk the delay that might be incurred by having to go round the loop all over again if they were transferred for operational or other reasons. In short, they put their children before their service, and…”

“There has been a leak: the hon. Gentleman has clearly had access to my speech. He has put a lot of work into this issue, so perhaps I can meet him halfway with what I am about to say. In fairness, there are already DFE guidelines that can facilitate the portability of an EHCP from one local education authority to anoth…”

“My hon. Friend is bearing out the point that there are real-world examples of this issue coming into play, and he has done the Committee a service by reiterating that. The Minister for Veterans and People kindly met me and my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst) last month to discuss …”

“I do not want to pre-empt what will no doubt be an erudite speech, but the key point is that there is a mechanism for doing this—we are halfway there. If service parents get a transfer order a few months in advance, then unless they can be certain that the receiving LEA will accept their EHCP, which they may have gone …”

“My right hon. Friend is of course a former MOD Minister himself and represents a large number of service personnel. It is obvious from his intervention that he understands the issue very well. What he has just asked me is wholly in line with the spirit of our amendment. My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull West and S…”

“Again, my right hon. Friend makes a very important point: allowing tri-service boards increases the potential pool, even of senior officers, who can serve. When we made that visit, the Minister was not able to be with us. That is no criticism; he is an MOD Minister, and he has a lot to think about—he has a great deal t…”

“They told us as a Committee—I am looking round the House for nods of assent from others who were on the visit, and I am getting them—that it was a problem, and it was cramping the ability to hold court martials. All we were trying to do was justify the cost of the train ticket to the taxpayer and prove that we had list…”

“The essence of amendment 6 is to speed up the potential mobilisation of group A reserves from readiness level R9, which is 180 days, to readiness level R8, which is 90 days. Again, we debated this in the Select Committee, where I was keen to point out to the Minister that this suggestion came from the shop floor, as it…”

“This amendment is consequential on Amendment 54.”