Lincoln Jopp

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I know that there is support on the Government Benches as well—I just could not find it when I went out to get sponsors. There are many veterans on the Government Benches, and on the Liberal Democrat Benches, and there is a lot of support for this measure in the country. I hope that the Government will listen to that body of feeling. Why does the Bill matter, and why should it get the support of the House? It matters because of a very important thing, which is called the moral component of fighting power. The British believe in a model in which there are three components: the physical, which is the guns and the bullets; the conceptual, which is the way in which we fight; and the moral, which is how we fight, why we are prepared to put yourselves at risk for the British citizenry—the man and woman standing next to us—and that we will do our best to achieve our mission, and potentially pay the ultimate sacrifice. The moral component is more important than all the other things. Napoleon, who was a great believer in the model, observed that the moral is to the physical as three is to one. We undermine the moral component of fighting power at our peril. This gave me no joy: someone sent me a meme, which was a real photograph of the former Prime Minister—it was not mocked up—addressing a load of troops who were getting ready to deploy, and the caption said, “We want you to go to Ukraine, where we will ask you to do things we’re going to prosecute you for in 30 years’ time.”