My Lords, what a privilege to have heard, let alone to follow, the speech of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, so much of which I completely agreed with. One thing I would
say is that, while legislators are limited in what they can do in this regard—and he and his noble friends have had a very good go at using a probing amendment to try to get the Government to stand by veterans and service personnel in real terms—the Government can actually do more.
They could do more even now to address the problem of investigations. Of course, they could not do so by legislation alone, but they could throw resources at it and redesign the nature of investigations, and they could include the noble and gallant Lord and his colleagues, among others, in creating a new investigation system that would inspire the confidence of the public at large, of wretched human rights lawyers like me and, crucially, of veterans and personnel. They could do what we have said in recent days is essential, which is to ensure that investigations are robust, independent and speedy, and not repeated. That could do a great deal to avoid the kind of anxiety that we have heard so much about in consideration of this Bill.
That is not something that any mere legislators can do, so we have to probe in this way and table amendments, such as the previous one from my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe about laying reports, and this more extensive one from the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, the noble and gallant Lords, Lord Stirrup and Lord Boyce, and my noble friend. These amendments are, of course, necessarily limited by the scope of the Bill. I therefore understand why, for example, the noble Lord could not include in the duty of care to service personnel chronic issues of housing and of mental health problems beyond just those caused by litigation.
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If the noble Lord is to return with a further amendment of this kind on Report, subject of course to the response from the Minister, he might add some provision in the duty of care for those veterans who have claims against the MoD. The focus of this amendment is, understandably, on the anxieties of those who are subject to suspicion and accusation through these lengthy investigations. I do so agree with his wider point about our society, in which the presumption of innocence as a societal concept has been chipped away at for so long. We now live in a world, exaggerated by the internet, for example, of “no smoke without fire”, which is very far indeed from the principle of the presumption of innocence. I wonder whether there is room in the noble Lord’s duty of care and duty of care report to think about veterans who are victims and who are struggling to get access to legal advice and representation in their claims against the MoD. Aside from that, I fully stand with the noble Lord and look forward to the Minister’s reply.