My Lords, as speakers ahead of me, and especially my noble friend Lord Dannatt, spoke eloquently in support of this amendment, I will not tax your Lordships’ patience by repeating all that has been said. However, I wish to reinforce the point that we need something of a more permanent nature by which the Government may be held to account rather than a set of conventions and understandings, including defence instructions and notices. These can be easily changed or cancelled without any significant effort or recourse to Parliament. That is why, although I have very carefully read the Ministerial Statement that the Minister laid before us this morning, which sets out what is available to Armed Forces personnel, serving or veteran, I am afraid that it does not offer the guarantee of permanency of the responsibility of the MoD for the duty of care that this amendment proposes.
I also share, by the way, some of the concerns about the Statement expressed earlier today by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. Furthermore, regarding that Ministerial Statement, I am incidentally unclear of the definition of “legacy cases” that the Army Operational Legacy Branch has been created to deal with. That also raises the interesting question of why exemption from means testing for legal aid cannot be applicable for criminal cases arising from all overseas operations, not just Iraq and Afghanistan.
This Bill, which sets out to relieve the strain on personnel under investigation, must surely reflect the fact that the MoD has a statutory obligation for the care of such people. I therefore support Amendment 14.