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Pensions Appeal Tribunals (Armed Forces and Reserve Forces Compensation Scheme) (Rights of Appeal) Amendment Regulations 2006

I, too, thank the Minister for a clear exposition on the background to the instruments, which seem perfectly satisfactory. I confess to the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, that if some of my amendments to the Armed Forces Bill are accepted we will have even more statutory instruments to look at. I am generally content with these two instruments, but I shall raise one issue. In the short debate on26 June in the Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation in the other place, tariffs for mental health injuries were raised by a number of speakers. I declare an interest as a member of Combat Stress, and consulted to see whether it is as happy as it has been reported that various organisations are. I understand that it had a meeting with the Minister for Veterans, Tom Watson, on 21 June. The discussion was on concerns over whether the tariffs in this first statutory instrument are at appropriate levels for mental health injuries when compared with physical injuries. That is obviously not what we are discussing today. However, it would affect the sort of temporary awards put in, which we are dealing with. If the Minister cannot tell us today, perhaps he would write. Is there an intention to revisit the tariffs, with particular reference to whether the mental health injury tariffs are appropriate when compared with the physical injury tariffs? Nevertheless, this order is about temporary awards, which are time limited to two years. Given that they will then go on to the permanent basis and the normal appeal procedure will happen, we are content to support the Pensions Appeal Tribunals (Armed Forces and Reserve Forces Compensation Scheme) (Rights of Appeal) Amendment Regulations 2006. The Pensions Appeal Tribunals (Additional Rights of Appeal) (Amendment) Regulations 2006 seems to be a helpful, additional right for people in what one hopes are very rare circumstances. The Royal British Legion has asked for it and the Ministry of Defence has responded, so we will support that as well.