---

Armed Forces Covenant

I hope that there will be no shortfall in our ability to honour the covenant, but the whole point of making the process as transparent as possible is to ensure that any future Government are fully exposed if they do not honour it. We are involving the external reference group to ensure that there is external pressure for that to happen, and to ensure that it is not simply a Whitehall-driven process. Ultimately, it will be for Members of Parliament in the first instance, representing their constituents in the armed forces, to detect whether, in their view, the Government have in any way fallen short of the standards that we have set ourselves today.