Mr Mark Francois

My hon. Friend is bearing out the point that there are real-world examples of this issue coming into play, and he has done the Committee a service by reiterating that. The Minister for Veterans and People kindly met me and my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst) last month to discuss whether the Government might be able to do more on this subject, and in fact the Minister for the Armed Forces referred to that meeting in his remarks a few minutes ago. During the meeting with the Minister for Veterans and People, we suggested—here is the leak—that, given the announcement in the King’s Speech that there would be a new Bill on the whole topic of special educational needs, one way of achieving the aim of the amendment might be to include such a provision in that Bill—in a DFE Bill, rather than an MOD Bill. That would still, at the end of the day, achieve the same desirable outcome. The Minister undertook to go away and look at the matter, including potentially in consultation with colleagues from the DFE. Having received her letter of yesterday, I have to say, more in sorrow than in anger, that I was extremely disappointed in its tone. It was a classic civil service boilerplate reply that bore little relation to the discussion that we had in the Minister’s office. I can only ask her to look at this again, perhaps in the context of the new DFE legislation, as I have just suggested.