31 Jan 25. Charities and Forces Families Federations to give evidence on the Armed Forces Covenant.
Evidence Session: The Armed Forces Covenant
Tuesday 4 February 2025, 10.30, Committee Room 16
Watch on parliamentlive.tv
At 10.30 on Tuesday 4 February, the Defence Committee will hold its first evidence session of its inquiry into the Armed Forces Covenant.
The inquiry examines the UK’s commitment to ensuring that members of the Armed Forces community are supported and treated fairly.
The session will explore how well the Covenant is working from the perspective of the groups who represent and support Service Personnel, and examine some of the issues reported with its implementation, such as a lack of awareness of the Covenant and inconsistent implementation across different parts of the UK.
The Committee will also ask participants to recommend ways the Covenant could be improved. The Government has announced plans to legislate to put the Covenant ‘fully into law’, and the inquiry’s findings will help to inform that process.
In the first panel, MPs will hear from Armed Forces charities, including the Director General at The Royal British Legion, Mark Atkinson. In the second panel, the Committee will hear from representatives of the Army, Navy and RAF Families Federations.
10.30, Tuesday 4 February 2025:
- Mark Atkinson – Director General, Royal British Legion
- Lt Gen. Sir Nick Pope – Chair, Confederation of British Serving and Ex-Service Organisations (Cobseo)
11.30:
- Rebecca Lovell – Head of Policy, Naval Families Federation
- Collette Musgrave – Chief Executive, Army Families Federation
- Vanessa Plumley – Acting Director, RAF Families Federation
31 Jan 25. Chair Correspondence: Defence Equipment Plan. Defence and Public Accounts Committees express “deep frustration” at lack of Defence Equipment Plan. Historically, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) has published an annual Equipment Plan, where it sets out its spending plans on equipment procurement and support projects over the next decade to keep the nation secure. For the last two years, this plan has not been produced. Today, the Chairs of the Defence Committee and the Public Accounts Committee write to David Williams CB, Permanent Secretary of the MOD, expressing deep frustration at this unacceptable loss of transparency. The letter states that “we do not accept that any of the different reasons you and the Minister have given justify the loss of transparency involved in not producing an Equipment Plan for two successive years”. The two Chairs note that in November the Secretary of State for Defence told the Defence Committee “I want to increase the transparency that we are able to provide to Parliament and this Committee in doing your proper job, and I want to increase the information that is provided”. The letter calls on the Permanent Secretary to confirm as soon as possible that the National Audit Office will be provided with the required information to allow it to produce its own Equipment Plan.
28 Jan 25. Science, Innovation and Technology Committee Chair comments on evidence session. The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee this morning held a one-off evidence session with the government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Dame Angela McLean.
She appeared alongside Departmental Chief Scientific Advisers of the top three R&D spending departments – Science, Innovation and Technology; Defence; and Health and Social Care.
Speaking after the session, the Chair of the Committee, Chi Onwurah MP, said: “The committee were delighted to hear that the UK is a science superpower, but we also heard concerns that key technologies might not be receiving the investment needed for us to maintain our superpower status. From what we heard during today’s evidence session, it is clear that we cannot secure our future without appropriate UK infrastructure and people trained in priority areas of science and tech. For example, were told that most master’s degree students studying radar at UK universities are Chinese nationals. We must train people who will be able to work in our military and security services. We need to take infrastructure seriously. Without investing in high containment labs, quantum computing capacity, and skills in sectors such as engineering biology and chemical biology, we could lose our hard-won status. The Committee were also very taken by the Government Chief Scientific Adviser’s call for the national data library to be a ‘data larder,’ making public sector datasets more usable.”
The Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and associated bodies. It also exists to ensure that government policies and decision making across departments are based on solid scientific evidence and advice.
Chi Onwurah (MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) is Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. Full membership of the Committee is available on the Committee’s website.