Lord Coaker (Lab)

I thank the noble Earl, Lord Minto, for introducing these amendments. I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, here and note her apologies but also her sterling efforts to get here despite the broken rail. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for stepping in. The noble Earl is right to point out the challenges on recruitment and retention, and the Government are taking a number of steps to try to deal with those outside the remit of the Bill. We can go through all those, on pay, how the childcare arrangements have changed and the change to the recruiting system—there will be a new system from 2027 that will bring the three services together. All those sorts of changes are trying to improve the recruitment process. On the retention aspects of it, we hope and expect that the general welfare investigations and work that the commissioner does may help to address some of the other points that the noble Earl made with respect to their impact. But I take the point from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup: of course the commissioner can look at recruitment and retention if she or he believes them to be of a general welfare concern. Whether they do or not is an open debate, but we are taking other measures outside this Bill to deal with that issue, and we hope that we can address that in the way we want.