The legal duty under the Armed Forces Covenant does not extend to Royal Fleet Auxiliary personnel, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed in a written answer to the Conservative peer Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie, the UK Defence Journal understands.

Baroness Fraser had asked whether the Covenant extends to RFA personnel. Answering for the government, the Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence, Lord Coaker, called the service a unique asset. “The Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) is a unique asset to Government, which we continue to invest in, working closely across Government to ensure the seafarers who work for the RFA have the employment conditions that reflect their essential work,” he said.

On who the duty covers, Coaker said: “The Armed Forces Covenant Legal Duty extends to members of the Regular forces and Reserve forces, as well as Veterans and their families (including the bereaved).” Each of those four groups, he said, is specifically defined in the relevant legislation. The Royal Fleet Auxiliary, a civilian-crewed service, does not fall within those categories.

RFA personnel are not excluded from consideration altogether. Coaker said organisations that have signed the Armed Forces Covenant pledge were encouraged to consider the needs of other groups in the wider armed forces community where individual circumstances merited it. “This includes members of the RFA that have seen duty on defined military operations,” he said.

The Royal Fleet Auxiliary is a civilian-staffed flotilla owned by the Ministry of Defence that supplies and supports Royal Navy ships at sea, providing fuel, stores, ammunition and aviation support, as well as operating amphibious and hospital vessels. Its personnel are civil servants and merchant sailors rather than commissioned or enlisted members of the armed forces, a status that places them outside the categories the Covenant’s legal duty is written to cover, even though RFA ships and crews routinely deploy alongside the Royal Navy and into operational theatres.

The Armed Forces Covenant sets out the principle that those who serve, or have served, and their families should not be disadvantaged by their service, and the legal duty arising from it requires specified public bodies to have regard to that principle in areas such as healthcare, housing and education. The distinction in Coaker’s answer is between that statutory duty, confined to the defined groups, and the broader spirit of the Covenant, under which signatory organisations may extend support more widely at their discretion.

The status of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary has drawn attention amid wider concern over pay and conditions in the service, which has seen industrial action by its personnel over pay, the first in its history.