Armed Forces Bill

No, that is incorrect. A Ministry of Defence police officer has marginally more powers than an ordinary police officer because he is a police officer plus. He has the military addition. We must not get confused with the red caps. In Colchester we now have a combined police station, with the Royal Military Police—the red caps—the Ministry of Defence police and the Essex constabulary all working out of one police station. MOD police officers—as Private Eye calls them, MOD Plod—are police officers plus, because they are also part of the garrison Army family. Until the last general election, I was one of three parliamentary advisers to the Royal British Legion. As the Labour and Conservative Members who advised it stood down at the election, it decided to end that arrangement. It now has other ways of bringing matters before Parliament. I mention that because reference has been made to the military covenant. Early-day motion 1 in November 2007 was tabled by myself and was eventually signed by 203 Members throughout the House, 17 of whom are now Ministers—four are in the Cabinet, and three are Defence Ministers, including the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff), who is on the Treasury Bench. You, Mr Deputy Speaker, also signed it, along with Mr Speaker, who was not the Speaker then. Alongside the Royal British Legion, which does valiant work, we have the Army Benevolent Fund, or ABF The Soldiers Charity, as it likes to be called; Veterans Aid, one of the smaller specialist charities, if I may use that term, which does fantastic work for former military personnel who are at the bottom of the pile and is based down the road in Victoria; Combat Stress; and numerous military, regimental and other charities. We need to get their recommendations, advice and views when we consider welfare and so on. Help For Heroes has taken off. I am pleased to say that one of its first rehabilitation centres, if not the first, will be in Colchester. I suggest to the Committee that it visit the Military Corrective Training Centre in Colchester, which takes people from all the services who have been given a custodial sentence and whom the Army, Navy and Air Force wish to have return to the service. The centre is almost like a finishing school. The vast majority of those who go there are Army, it must be said, and the vast majority of those who graduate from it return to their units as better soldiers, sailors or airmen as a consequence. The centre also deals with those who have been given a military sentence before they are discharged. I mention that not because I am advocating that our civilian prisons should become military—far from it; I was very much against a previous Government's boot camp policy—but because I am sure the civilian Prison Service could benefit from the education and training provided by MCTC. I conclude by commending the Bill. The debate has been constructive on both sides of the House. There will be differences, but I am sure of the unity of purpose in the Chamber for our armed forces. I hope the Bill will go forward and eventually become an Act.