My Lords, I was not able to speak at Second Reading, and I would like to briefly reassure the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, that the Liberal Democrats have no intention whatever of trying to sabotage this Bill in any vainglorious or other way. We are committed to the Bill, and, like other Members of your Lordships’ Committee, to ensuring that the Bill becomes as good as it can be.
We do not wish to civilianise the Armed Forces, as the noble Viscount, Lord Slim, said on Tuesday: we certainly have no intention of doing that. However, there are some concerns about this amendment. While I accept that it is a probing amendment, we share the concerns of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, that there is a danger in either a blanket limitation or looking at things that are any sort of military operation. There may be cases that clearly should not be dealt with after 20 years; there may be other cases that need to be looked at. In cases of murder, rape or the sort of crimes that we were talking about in previous amendments, it would seem extremely strange to service men and women and their families if we somehow said, “If this happened in civilian life, you might get closure, but if it happens while your son or daughter is overseas engaged in military operations, there is a 20-year cut-off, and the rule of law no longer holds”. I ask the Minister whether it would be possible to find a way of dealing with the genuine concerns that have been put forward in the amendment that would ensure that service men and women and their families felt reassured that they were not going to lose the rule of law as would normally be expected.