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Armed Forces Bill

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for dealing with the points which I raised about the words ““lawful”” and ““reasonable””, but will he look at that again before Report? ““Lawful”” is not defined in the sense that he described. Without a specific definition, in a very narrow sense, of ““lawful excuse”” along the lines that the Minister has outlined, many people would suppose that if there were a ““reasonable excuse””, it would also be a ““lawful excuse””. For my part, I hope that any court martial dealing with any charge under Clause 1 would always feel it necessary to look at all the circumstances and that that would be so whether the charge was ““reasonable excuse”” or merely ““lawful excuse””. I hope that this might be looked at again because it is a little more difficult than it seems.