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Armed Forces Bill

The Minister is very gracious. I thought that it would save him a little time if I spoke to my Amendments Nos. 170 and 189, which speak of a military complaints commissioner. This is our way of laying a place mark at the Committee stage to ensure that this important aspect is not forgotten. The government amendments pick those matters up. There is a slight change of name, to the ““service complaints commissioner””, but things have moved on very fast. While we greatly welcome the government amendment, which picks up the recommendations of the Blake report as well as previous recommendations from the 1990s, when some form of independent ombudsman was talked about, we will need both to read in Hansard the comments which the Minister has made today and to examine the detail of the proposals to see whether there are enough safeguards in the system to make sure that the service complaints commissioner has the right resources, that the person who fills the post is appropriate, and that the qualifications, terms of service and, in particular, the staffing arrangements are clear. We would not want to end up with someone who was a symbol but was unable to do the job. We will come back to this subject on Report. We would not want him to end up being harried like the Chief Inspector of Prisons, whose post we debated earlier this week. We strongly support Amendment No. 164, tabled by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, which is very good.