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Armed Forces Personnel

That is crucial. It is a fascinating point and one that I would like to take up. Tomorrow, I will travel to York to the General Synod of the Church of England. It is interesting that the Chaplain General’s Department is fully accredited to the General Synod of the Church of England and will be represented there. I can see some interesting discussions taking place. I would like to say a few words about the Royal Military Police, who are hardly ever mentioned, except when things go wrong. I first came across the Royal Military Police in my constituency. Then, as now, five different police forces—most of them military of different colours and badges and so on—were operating in my constituency. The Royal Military Police were always around in their vehicles. Late on a Saturday night, if there was a spot of bother in the garrison towns at closing time, Wiltshire constabulary put a quick call through to the RMP and suddenly everyone calmed down and disappeared very quickly indeed, because the disciplinary procedure is quite different. Someone who is picked up by Wiltshire constabulary is in the cells overnight, rapped over the knuckles by the magistrates and let out the next morning; someone who is caught by the RMP is up on charges in front of the commanding officer the next morning and is fined £700. That is a no-brainer. I next met the RMP when I was in Sarajevo, Banja Luka and elsewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1996. We had close protection squads from the RMP looking after us. They were very dangerous days. I was full of admiration then—and now—for the work that they do. The strange thing is that, in battle, the RMP are always right out there at the front. They are in front of the armour and the artillery, staking out the forward route in their Land Rovers and so on. They are very lightly armoured, if at all, and they have no protection from mines, small arms or artillery. I know that that is being addressed. I have raised the matter before with the Minister of State. We know that there is a new stream of Panther vehicles coming to the Army later. However, what bothers me is that, in a parliamentary question, I asked who was going to get those vehicles first, and the answer was the training regiments. That is fine, but no mention was made of the RMP. I thought that we were talking about what was meant to be a front-line reconnaissance vehicle.