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Armed Forces Bill

Those issues have been raised with me, but I must tell the hon. Gentleman honestly that they have been raised mainly by soldiers asking me about press reports in which commentators, many of whom have never been near a battlefield, or even gone two rounds with a revolving door, far less been involved in combat, have pompously sounded off on that subject—although I am not, of course, saying that the Opposition Members here today are in that position. Such commentators accuse chiefs of staff with impeccable courageous credentials of being other than courageous. Of course those reports are read by soldiers and other servicemen and women, and of course I regret that. Incidentally, I have also seen that when the picture is painted here of the battlefield in places such as Iraq, and of the consequences and the outcomes of what our servicemen and women are struggling for, it is an unbalanced picture. This morning the BBC said that the fact that 69 per cent. of people in Iraq were looking forward to a better future appeared to suggest that some of the reporting and descriptions of what was going on there had been wide of the mark. I notice that the BBC did not add to the words ““reporting and descriptions”” the words ““by the BBC””. Of course I regret the comments that have been mentioned, and of course they are important; I do not blame hon. Gentlemen for raising them. However, the intention of the Bill is to strengthen and protect our military justice system by modernising and rendering it more effective in difficult circumstances, in relation to the chain of command. The intention is not to hand it over to civilian judgment. Indeed, the case of Trooper Williams, which I cited and which has caused concern in both Houses of Parliament and outside, would be far less likely to occur after these changes.