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Armed Forces Bill

My Lords, I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, on this. This amendment is what the military would call ““volunteering for the guardroom””. It seems to put an unnecessary complication in the way. The thing about bringing in international law is that, on occasions, it is extremely obscure what international law is. It is open to different interpretation and produces deep issues that the ordinary soldier of fairly low rank would not be in a position to judge. It is a matter for the Attorney-General and Parliament. I should have thought that it was quite sufficient to say that a soldier must not commit an unlawful act. This goes back a very long way; it goes back to the Nuremberg trials, when a lot of the people whom we were fighting in those days said, ““Well, I was all right because I was told to do it””. Of course, it then became very clear that, even if you were told to do something, if that act was unlawful, it did not necessarily mean that you were free from blame. That is how this came about. But if it is made clear that you must not commit an unlawful act, there is no need to bring in the complication of international law, which obscures the issue.