Two and a half years ahead of the Scottish constitutional referendum which is expected to be held in the autumn of 2014, the British Armed Forces Federation (BAFF) is already working on the implications for service personnel.

The membership of the British Armed Forces Federation is drawn from personnel from all three services from across the United Kingdom, as well as those from elsewhere in the Commonwealth. (No referendum vote for citizens of overseas Commonwealth countries, except Malta and Cyprus.)

The British Armed Forces Federation (BAFF) has responded to the UK Government Scotland Office consultation on arrangements for a referendum on Scotland's constitutional future. The Federation is also responding to the separate consultation by the Scottish Government.

UPDATE: Following the publication of the results of the UK Government's consultation, the BAFF response to that consultation is now available at the link below without the need to log in. The UK's Government's summary includes a quote from the BAFF submission.

The report of the independent Covenant Task Force led by Professor Hew Strachan was released by the Government on 08 Dec 2010.

Vice-Admiral Sir Michael Moore, Chairman of the respected Forces Pension Society, has told The Times that the report is "incredibly wet and feeble."

Three quarters of service personnel believe that they are registered to vote but according to the latest research, 44% of those are not properly registered after all.

As Republican senators rejected attempts to reverse the so-called "don't ask, don't tell" policy which prohibits openly gay personnel in the US armed forces, a decade after similar rules were abolished in the UK the head of the British Army's diversity unit confirmed it had been consulted by its military counterparts across the Atlantic.

Last year we followed the story that that women might be allowed to serve aboard RN submarines for the first time. The Sunday Mirror now reports that:

To what extent does human rights law apply to British forces on operations overseas? This vexed question has been in the news again lately, the latest development being the long-awaited decision by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in the case of al-Skeini and Others. Update:

Elfyn Llwyd MP has tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) about Veterans in the Criminal Justice System:

defencemanagement.com reports that military families are set to benefit from £10m of additional funding for their children's education through the introduction of a special 'pupil premium' as the government looks to 'rebuild' the military covenant.

Servicemen and women returning from active combat abroad should have access to "decompression" advice to tackle problems in readjusting to civilian life and to stem the rising numbers of veterans entering the criminal justice system, according to a group of MPs and unions, reported in The Guardian 05 Jul 2010: