My Lords, I have practically nothing to add to the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, and my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. Their arguments are powerful and appear irresistible.
I just add one small point. I mentioned a case in which I was involved for the mother of a serviceman killed in a tank because of friendly fire. That case in fact took more than 12 years from his death until the payment of an award by way of settlement by the Ministry of Defence. There was no delay on any side; there was litigation in the meanwhile, and the test case went to the Supreme Court, and so on. But there were inordinate difficulties in pursuing that claim—in finding out what had happened, what the MoD record was on the fitting of identification kit, what the training programmes were and whether they were defective, obtaining expert evidence on these points, and so on—to know whether the case was meritorious, as it turned out to be.
These cases are not easy. As I say, the logic of the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, is irresistible.
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