Armed Forces Bill

I was expecting a brief debate, as clause 8 is one of nearly 300 clauses, but I am pleased with the level of the debate in which we have engaged. I want to focus on the constructive elements that we can take from it. For the record, I also want to establish clarity. My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said that amendment No. 8 was old-fashioned, relating to the first world war rather than to modern military service. The Bill was intended to be a modernising piece of legislation. What concerned me was that it translated the life sentence threat from existing legislation on sanctions to the new legislation. I accept the pedantic—no, the constructive—point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) that the reintroduction of the two-year limit gives us some flexibility. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon) said, it moves us towards a graduated tariff approach. I agree with him that we could have had a better debate about that. The debate on clause 8 did not feature in the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee, and has not arisen in the House until now. My first objection to the clause is that it is not modernising legislation; it simply translates the life sentence from earlier legislation. As for my second objection, I respect the views that have been expressed—along with many others today, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) for bringing to the Chamber his professional experiences on the ground—but we should look again at the process for dealing with conscientious objection. The process that the hon. Gentleman described, as he has seen it, is not the process described in the evidence submitted to the Committee by the successor to the original consultative body, the Peace Pledge Union, which is meant to advise the Government on these matters. Its view is that the conscientious objection process as it stands is not accessible, does not give adequate information to individuals who wish to gain access to it, and therefore undermines the process overall. The third issue, on which there is some agreement across the Committee, is the issue of severity. I think there is a general view that life imprisonment is currently the exception. I thought that we heard earlier from the Liberal Democrats that they did not support the inclusion in this clause of the sanction of life imprisonment. I should be grateful for clarification.