---

Armed Forces Bill

My Lords, I may be corrected, but while going around the apprentice college at Harrogate and the subsequent training facility at Catterick, I have observed that one can be a trained soldier at 17 just as well as at 18. They have the same responsibilities. One cannot base something on a terrible scene in one area, which none of us liked and which had nothing to do with people being 17. There were other reasons for those problems. If we start to create second-class soldiers, as one or two noble Lords have said, we will have grave problems. I have looked hard at the apprentice school in Harrogate and the subsequent training at Catterick, as I have had the great privilege of spending some time there. I do not see much difference between what comes out of either pile. In the last world war, young men of 17 and 16 in the Home Guard carried loaded weapons and were prepared to fire them if the enemy landed. Many 17 year-olds joined up saying they were 18 and did remarkably well. Giving them special treatment will do nothing but have an adverse effect on recruitment. I cannot support the noble Lord, Lord Garden, with all his best intentions, in this amendment.