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Armed Forces Bill

I am grateful to the Minister for reading out the annexe to his letter to me of 9 October. It saves me from doing so because that is the very evidence I would use to suggest that the Ministry of Defence is not taking this problem seriously. I think that he may have misread one bit because my annexe refers to recruits under the age of 17 at Harrogate, whereas he actually said ““under the age of 18””. But that is a small point. If operational actions are compromised because under-18 year-olds are there when suddenly a combat situation develops and you cannot get them off the ship or out of the theatre, that suggests that there has not been enough thought about putting them there in the first place. They have been put in a position where they are liable to be in a combat situation. It is extraordinary that such servicemen must have live ammunition to guard because there are not enough members of the Military Provost Guard Service ““but we are rather hoping that we can find funds to get some more””, and the thought that the Ministry of Defence is just going to ignore the recommendations of the Deepcut inquiry about under-17 year-olds is outrageous. We need to talk about how to move forward urgently so that we can bring forward something that will not cause major difficulty with the Bill on Report. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.