Armed Forces Bill

The problem that I have intellectually with what the Minister proposes is that he is going to let the convictions stand, and pardon people purely because they were executed. That explains why the 2,700 who were not executed are not being pardoned, whereas the 300 who were executed are being pardoned. I am not sure how that will remove the stigma. Surely the stigma results from conviction rather than execution. If I were a member of one of the families concerned who thought that my ancestor had been wrongly convicted because, for example, he had had shell shock, it would not encourage me to know that his conviction stood and he was being pardoned only because of the severity of the sentence, not because of the injustice of the conviction.