Armed Forces Bill

I will move to finish my remarks fairly quickly because we are subject to some rather strange remarks at the moment. The role that support officers would play would be to ensure that relevant individuals who came into contact with the criminal justice system received support while they were held within the system. Only a small percentage end up in the criminal justice system, but it is entirely possible that a goodly number of those people would not be in the prison system if they had been assisted in other ways when they came out of the services. That is my point. As far as the numbers are concerned, I am not saying that the majority are affected, as that would be absolute nonsense. Concurrent with the need for support officers is the need to improve the recording of the number of veterans held in prisons, on probation or on parole. At no time hitherto has an individual been asked, upon entry to the justice system, whether they have a service record, but that is now changing I am pleased to say. I shall not go into this topic at length, but I note that a survey conducted by the Home Office in 2001-02 recorded that roughly 6% of inmates were veterans, whereas a survey carried out by the MOD in 2007 estimated the percentage in one prison, Dartmoor, at 17.5%. I shall not get into bandying figures around, as we have had this debate before. These are MOD figures, not mine or NAPO's. I remember that the last time we had such a debate everyone clubbed together to denigrate Harry Fletcher, but these are not his figures.