Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)

I will speak briefly to support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie. The German armed forces commissioner and her activities—on whose role, to a large degree, this new UK version is based—are covered by a country-wide whistleblowing Act, which was passed, I think, about three years ago. Looking at the example of Jaysley Beck, and trying to disentangle the long and unfortunate history of the way she was treated almost from the time she joined the Army Foundation College, would identify a whole series of points at which the whistle could have been blown in some way, shape or form but, for whatever reason, was not. This is not a case of a single occasion that was missed; there were multiple occasions involving a wide range of people, many of whom were old enough and senior enough to know better, and who, for whatever reason, did not take action. There are elements of human behaviour and psychology at play, including the way in which an organisation—which has huge pride in its history—reacts when it sees that the way it likes the outside world to believe it behaves, and how it holds its values, is not in fact the case. It is not always straightforward to work out exactly how to deal with that and how to flag up what is going on without being seen to be disloyal and without, in some way, being seen to be disrupting the organisation. Even if you feel that some of the values being demonstrated by the actual behaviour are wrong, they are almost trumped by the other values that one feels are more important, which are probably those that are discussed. The values that have gone wrong are the ones that are not being discussed or flagged up. That seems to be a root cause of why people are not coming forward and not talking. This is an important area. If the new Armed Forces commissioner is not the office that will look after this, who on earth will be? Who will defend the young girls like Jaysley Beck of the future—and, probably, of today? We need to get this right. I think that we would all welcome detailed discussions between now and Report, probably involving outside organisations that have been talking to some of the people who have suffered and who have not found ways of telling the chain of command or the outside world, in a way that was heard, what was going on. We really need to use the occasion of this Bill to try to get this right.