I will give the hon. Gentleman five out of 10 on that basis. The Minister for the Armed Forces wrote:
“As my formal PQ response made clear—a definitive response to your question could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
However, it is roughly estimated that at least 200 members of foreign armed forces are either liaison officers or on exchange officer roles annually across the three services.”
He went on to confirm that the Department “does not routinely collect” the requested information about embedded foreign armed forces.
That does at least tell us what kind of numbers we are talking about, albeit not in precise terms. However, the point of my question was to get a general idea of how many people might be impacted by this legislation and to understand whether the Government had a grip on the rough ballpark figures.
Our concern was how the Bill would impact on foreign nationals embedded in the UK armed forces who were involved in the destruction or illegal exportation of cultural property. In her response to my amendment in Committee, the Minister said that
“if a foreign soldier were to commit an act set out in article 15(1)(d) or (e) while embedded in a UK unit, we would dismiss them and send them back to their home state to be dealt with for disobeying orders. The individual would face the consequences of their actions on their return home, and there is no loophole for embedded forces; that would apply whether or not a foreign state had ratified the convention or protocols, as the individual would be disobeying an order.”––[Official Report, Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Public Bill Committee, 15 November 2016; c. 14.]
Now that we have a figure from the Government on the number of foreign nationals to whom the Bill will apply, albeit a rough one, I just wonder—