BAFF blogs index

According to a recent story in the Telegraph, the Ministry of Defence is still supposed to be rewriting its transgender policy, more than a year after the Supreme Court judgment on the meaning of "woman" in the Equality Act, leaving commanding officers and service personnel uncertain about the applicable rules. 

Good to see Armed Forces Day being celebrated once again in many places across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, which had "more than a dozen events" from Edinburgh and Glasgow to Thurso and Dumfries.

The fact that Glasgow held (and were always going to hold) an official AFD event is perhaps worth noting in view of recent controversies.

Indeed, Glasgow registered their event on the official AFD website, thus they are one of the places mentioned in national as well as regional and local media.

As it happens, there were more official events in Scotland than were ever registered on the national site. That is of course entirely a matter for the organisers of each event, often a local branch of the Royal British Legion or Royal British Legion Scotland (Legion Scotland),j with strong support from the local authority along with regular and reserve armed forces, youth organisations, charities and others and of course the members of the public who turned out to enjoy an event honouring our country's armed forces personnel.

Those such as Inverness in Highland, who chose not to be included on the national UK listing, no doubt felt that local and regional publicity would be sufficient to inform their local public.

Organisers of a locally-funded AFD event are in no way obliged to register it in order to have it included in the online 'Find Your Event - Armed Forces Day'

A report just released by the National Audit Office says that the Ministry of Defence lost the taxpayer around £14.5 billion over the life of the Annington Homes deal, compared to where we would be if the 1996 deal had never happened.

But there is also praise for the action finally taken by MoD to repurchase more than 36,000 service family homes in England and Wales for £6 billion.

The deal involved the transfer to the private sector of the bulk of the MOD's service family accommodation (SFA) in England. It was widely criiticised, increasingly so as the maintenance standard of SFA under a separate contract was seen as deteriorating, and when surplus accommodation was being released for the market, the MOD had to pay to refurbish the properties before being sold for private sector profit.

The NAO had reported that the MoD’s main aims had been "to secure funds for upgrade work; improve management of the estate; and secure value for money through a competitive sale." [Comment: There were 19 bidders.] They had found that "the sale and leaseback appeared to satisfy the MoD’s immediate objectives. However, the sale price was lower than the value of retaining the estate, and the MoD retained important responsibilities for managing it."

So although there were rational objectives for the deal at the time, there were criticisms at the time which only increased in the new century.

Although as ever there were financial pressures

Following the resignations of John Healey and Al Carns, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon writes in the Telegraph that Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, who as Chief of the Defence Staff is the professional head of the armed forces, should now "show that he represents British servicemen and women by falling on his sword as well", because –

The resignation of John Healey MP as Defence Secretary marks the end of a period in which, whatever one's political views, Defence had at its head someone who had prepared thoroughly for it in Opposition and, when the time came, did not disappoint.

AFPRB UPDATE: The full AFPRB report and recommendations for financial year 2026-27, accepted by the Government and published on 9 June 2026, is now available at this link: Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body Fifty-Fifth Report 2026.

Today, 22nd May 2026, is the fifteenth anniversary of the official end of Operation Telic, the formal name for UK operations in Iraq that began with the 2003 invasion and subsequent removal of the dictator.

This year's Armed Forces Day national event will be hosted by Rushmoor Borough Council at Aldershot and Farnborough on Saturday, 27th June 2026, with other events taking place across the UK on or around the same date.

When Armed Forces Day was started by the then Labour government one view was that armed forces personnel were hardly honoured by giving them extra work at the weekend.

An MOD written parliamentary answer to James Cartlidge MP (Cons, Shadow Secretary of State for Defence) reveals that in just under 20 months, nearly sixty thousand applications to join the armed forces were rejected on medical grounds.

The Ministry of Defence has announced that for the first time, free, independent legal advice will be available to victim-survivors of rape and sexual offences (allegedly) committed by Service personnel or a civilian subject to Service Discipline that are being investigated by the Service Justice System.