My Lords, we have had a good short debate and I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part, but I have to say to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, that I am so disappointed with his response. My noble friend Lady Gould spoke from a lifetime of experience of campaigning on matters of this kind, and some of the statistics that she afforded us are staggering. She mentioned that 20 soldiers are on the sex offenders register. Is that uploaded on to the MoD website, in which the noble Earl seems to put a great deal of faith? I do not know, so perhaps he can enlighten us.
My noble friend Lord West of Spithead spoke with the authority of experience as someone who has faced up to this, not quite realising what a big problem it is, and learned a great deal. He said that we have to change, and that is coming from someone who has served his country heroically and has taken great responsibility for the people under his command. He believes that we really do need to do something about this.
I could not improve on the remarks just made by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee. There will be inhibitions and people will not take things forward because of all sorts of consequences that they might face, so it simply is not good enough. In his earlier remarks he also asked the Minister whether the service police are recording all complaints. I hope that he will be able to tell us at some stage whether that is the case. The noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, was spot on. Parents need to be reassured. Later in Committee we will be considering issues affecting youngsters under the age of 18 joining the Armed Forces.