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Armed Forces Bill

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 9, to which my name is appended. As I said at Second Reading, it seems to me that many of the most intractable issues with regard to the Armed Forces covenant are not within the remit of the Ministry of Defence to attend to: health, education, social services and so on. If the only provision in the Bill for bringing people to account is for them to answer to Parliament for their performance that year, Parliament must be able to probe the Secretaries of State of the relevant ministries, otherwise there is no effective enforcement mechanism and the whole purpose of this part of the Bill will fail. Having the relevant Secretaries of State append their signatures to the relevant parts of the annual report is the very minimum that we should be doing. Indeed, I would go further and seek to ensure that the relevant Secretaries of State are answerable to, and do answer to, Parliament on the anniversary of the Bill and on the annual performance report. This seems at the very least a starting point and will give Parliament the opportunity to probe Ministers on the statements they have made and to which they have appended their signatures in the annual report.