I appreciate that, and am grateful to the Minister for clarifying it. However, he spoke earlier about all this information being uploaded to the MoD’s website, and my point is whether or not that is on there.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, talked about the training of officers, but that is not an answer. Many of us have been involved in training, in all our walks of life, but practical experience shows that you need exposure to deal with problems like this, and the evidence suggests that commanding officers do not have that kind of experience and so are not always the right people. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, said that the United States is looking at this matter, so it is not just something peculiar to our country.
The Minister said that he was not convinced that these amendments were necessary, saying that their provisions do not exist in a civilian context. However, I think we all agree that the Armed Forces is not like any civilian organisation. When you join the British Armed Forces, you are joining an organisation in which you might put your life on the line—it is not like joining Tesco or Barclays Bank. The circumstances and living arrangements are different: they do not go home at 5 pm; they live as a community. We cannot really compare the two.
The Minister also said that some progress had been made and that there is to be a crime registrar. Is this another bureaucrat? How much will it cost? Why not just publish the information? If it is there, why not report it? If the information is being uploaded to the MoD’s website, why not put it in a report? It seems to me that this is another way of pushing things aside and not really facing up to the difficulties. We have a duty of care for the people who serve in our Armed Forces, and I am sure we all recognise that.
The Minister said that he had certain doubts about removing the CO’s ability not to progress a complaint. I think that there are real problems here. I am sorry that the noble Viscount, Lord Slim, feels that this might be perceived to be an attack on the chain of command. That is not the case at all: we have to respect the fact that we need a thorough and well-organised chain of command. However, if you are a “victim”, you are not in a position, as the noble Viscount was able to do, to call somebody in and get the CO sorted out because he has decided that he is not going to progress a particular complaint. There is going to be real disappointment that the Government do not feel able to publish the information that they are collecting. If it is on the website, why not produce it as a report? At the very least, I had hoped that the Minister would have said that although there are deficiencies in these amendments, the Government will go away and see whether they can come forward with their own amendment, having worked with people on all sides to make a better job if it, rather than just shutting it down. I shall not press the amendments, but I tell noble Lords that we will come back to them.