---

Armed Forces Bill

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. We have ranged from the grand strategic down to the detailed implications of particular sub-sub-clauses of the Bill. I was grateful for and enjoyed the setting of the context for all of this made by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. The need for a fair, transparent military justice system which does not undermine the military leadership is an important part of the way we have to operate today and we need to see the Bill in that context. The experience of all the speakers has been extraordinary. We have had experts such as my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, who know the court-martial procedures from the lawyers’ perspective. We have had all the noble and gallant Lords who have had to dispense military justice at every level of command. We have had the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, with his experience as a commanding officer and we have even had the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, as the recipient of military justice, giving us his experiences. I trust that the Minister is pleased by the general positive reaction that there has been from around the House. It is a complex Bill but it has had a generally good reception from all quarters today, and rightly so. The noble Lord, Lord Borrie, was right to tell us that it was part of a development of military justice. You can look back over the past and see how we have moved towards a fairer and more transparent system as time goes on; this is a part of that and I welcomed his speech. The Bill is a significant milestone and moves towards bringing the practices of the three branches of the armed services together. While the Royal Navy, the Army and the RAF have got different histories, traditions and cultures, they do work seamlessly together on joint operations. However, I find myself disagreeing slightly with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, about how often we find ourselves operating together. I remember 20 years ago as the commanding officer of a support helicopter base that I had both RAF and Army personnel serving together under me. Yet if a soldier and an airman ended up in some alleged offence which they were involved in together, it was impossible to deal with them under the same system, the acute—