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Armed Forces Bill

My Lords, I oppose Amendment No. 18. We have heard another passionate and lengthy recital, as happened on Clauses 3 and 8. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, knows perfectly well that he has done little but repeat what was said then. He also knows that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, and my noble and learned friend Lord Mayhew have rightly advised the House that the question of lawfulness the noble Lord goes on about is not a matter for the serviceman. It cannot be. In the field, it is wholly impractical to expect it to be. According to the noble and gallant Lord and my noble and learned friend, it is not a matter for the serviceman or the courts of law but for the Attorney-General in the exercise of his supervisory role. My name is attached to Amendment No. 14. I do not propose to repeat anything that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, said. I agree with all of it; it was most neatly and eruditely prepared. I shall, however, make a short point. Listening to the noble and gallant Lord, I thought, as your Lordships may have done, that he made a good case for essentially retaining what we know has worked reasonably well and is satisfactory. I think that the noble and gallant Lord has thus far been unable to discover any breakdown or hint of criticism. Why, then, resort to primary legislation without a clear, reasoned justification? The noble and gallant Lord got none on the previous occasion. He sowed his seeds of wisdom in Committee, which bore fruit on mutiny but fell on barren ground with desertion. Desertion is essentially a question of intention: you move from being absent without leave to desertion as a matter of intention. There seems little justification for meddling with the extant system, for the reasons that the noble and gallant Lord has given.