I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions, particularly the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock); I am grateful for her sincere and constructive tone. I think the whole House is united in our desire to support our armed forces, and I am confident that the Bill delivers for our armed forces. It renews the Armed Forces Act 2006, it improves the service justice system, and it delivers on the Government’s commitment to further enshrine the armed forces covenant in law.
I turn first to new clause 1. As I said in Committee, the Government take very seriously our duty of care for service personnel and veterans under investigation. This amendment was debated at length in the other place during the passage of the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021. Our servicepeople are entitled to receive comprehensive legal support, and a full range of welfare and mental health support is
offered to all our people, as laid out in the Defence Secretary’s written ministerial statement of 13 April 2021. We have made clear our intent to provide a gold standard of care, and we will not deviate from that.
We resist the new clause because a one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate. People have different needs, and we want to ensure bespoke provision—the right support at the right time. Furthermore, the difficulties of drafting such a duty of care would inevitably mean the involvement of the courts and additional litigation.
Turning to new clause 2, I am pleased to remind the House that the Government accept entirely that the historical policy prohibiting homosexuality in the armed forces was absolutely wrong, and there was historic injustice suffered by members of the LGBT+ community as a consequence. We are committed entirely to addressing that with urgency and humility, and our priority now is to understand the full impact of the pre-millennium ban. We are committed to finding an appropriate mechanism to address this injustice, but we resist the new clause because it may complicate or constrain the work already under way.