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Armed Forces Bill

The noble Lord makes a fair point relating to the complexity of the military equipment in some cases and how that can be fundamental to its purpose and to issues such as those which he has described, including combat friend-or-foe identification. The question is how we produce a definition of the type of equipment—not relating to aircraft or ships but operating within the land environment—that would be covered by this clause. A definition that related to all service material or to all combat land equipment would be too broad. I have listened to the noble Lord’s arguments and I will go away and think about this matter. The important point is that we produce a definition for service equipment used outside the air and maritime environment that enables us to discriminate between those service materials for which this clause would not be appropriate and those materials that we felt were sufficiently important and fundamental either to operations or to the safety of our Armed Forces. I have taken on board the noble Lord’s points and will see whether it is possible to do that in the Bill.