Lord Beamish (Lab)

I am very grateful to my noble friend, but the quick answer is: no, it does not. There is a point that I think he is missing. I say this with no disrespect to him or the current Secretary of State but, as Robin Day famously said, he, like all of us, is a here today, gone tomorrow politician. We have to ensure in legislation that this continues on into the future. The Minister gives an optimistic view that, somehow, having a statutory basis for this gives it some type of protection. Well, I am sorry, but I gave the example of the ISC—it does not, and I assure him of that. He said that the commissioner could raise this in an annual report, but I suggest that he reads at least the last eight years of the annual reports and statements—one is coming out next week—of the Intelligence and Security Committee, where this point has been made constantly and ignored by the last Government. That is a body that is on a statutory footing. Not wanting to get in the hierarchy of scrutiny, I note that you could argue that that is a little different to what we suggest here—but, obviously, for the victims, it is not. So, without that, the Minister may be fine, but I am looking to the future. We perhaps have to have discussions about this. If the Minister has already given us a briefing note saying “will”—the noble Lord, Lord Russell, argued that—I would be happy with “will”, because that at least defines it compared to “may”. Discussion needs to be had about where it is within the MoD budget because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said, you suspect that the Min AF or Veterans Minister will argue for this department, but they are the only voice in there doing that.