Armed Forces Bill

I thank the hon. Lady for her very generous comments, but I visited the United States in September and I visited the veterans' agency. It is the second largest Department of State in the United States and it costs an absolute fortune to run. It was put in place, I believe, because the United States had to deal with the fallout of Vietnam. There is a much smaller scale operation in Canada. In an ideal world, the hon. Lady would be right, but in these straitened circumstances, it would be rather unrealistic of me to make that call. I hope that in the not-too-distant future we, too, will have such a Department. I do not make that call now, because I do not think it is realistic so to do. I take the hon. Lady's point about my amendments being prescriptive and so on. It is a moot point: I may well be wrong and she may be right; I do not know. One thing we should consider urgently, however, as I have mentioned, is having a Minister in the Cabinet Office to cross-cut all available services and to consider everything in each Department that might or might not impact on veterans. I think that would be a useful step forward, albeit that it is not so dramatic a step as a veterans' Department, which, at the end of the day, she and I would undoubtedly favour although it is perhaps unrealistic to call for it at this stage.