Member

Amendment 14 is another of my second attempts: it is the same as the amendment about finance that I tabled in Committee. It seeks to change the word “may” to “must” in relation to providing finance for the role of the Armed Forces commissioner. Anyone who has been in politics long enough knows that, if you control the purse strings, you control how an individual operates. In Committee, I gave an example of that: the way that the previous Government starved funds from the committee that I chair—the Intelligence and Security Committee—to limit its effects. I am concerned that, with the use of the word “may”, some future Government—I am not casting any doubt on the integrity of the current occupants of the Ministry of Defence—could decide that, if the Armed Forces commissioner has been too difficult, the way to stymie them would be to limit his or her funds. Likewise, it might not be as Machiavellian as that; it might simply be that, in a future round of spending cuts, the commissioner is not seen as a priority for the MoD—or the Treasury, for that matter.