My Lords, I apologise for interrupting the dramatic pause of the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, but I think that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, was going to interrupt if I had not.
It is unusual to get to the final group of amendments and suddenly discover the most heated debate of the whole Bill. That is clearly were we are today. Clearly, the concept of child soldiers, which the Minister said at Second Reading that she did not recognise, is emotive. If one talks about “child soldiers”, it gives a very strong sense of children running around, perhaps recruited by being stolen away from their families by regimes that would be seen as unsavoury. The recruitment of 16 and 17 year-olds in the United Kingdom is somewhat different.
With some of the arguments in favour of Amendment 61, there was a sense that somehow people were being forced to join—that the Army is so determined that it needs more young people, and it can fill its ranks only if it recruits 16 and 17 year-olds. But nobody is forcing 16 year-olds to join the Army; it is voluntary recruitment, and they can do so only with parental agreement.
I am not as passionate as the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster, in saying that I am not persuaded by Amendment 61. On these Benches, our defence spokesperson in the House of Commons, Jamie Stone, and I discussed these amendments at an earlier stage. We were encouraged to table such amendments, but neither of us felt that we wished to do so, because there are some benefits to the current arrangements.
We heard clearly from the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, about certain problems at Harrogate. Like other noble Lords, perhaps with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster, I have not visited Harrogate. I would be extremely happy to do so if the Minister can arrange a visit, because I think it would be important to do so.
We have heard some horrifying-sounding statistics about things that have allegedly happened at Harrogate. However, on an earlier group of amendments we were looking at the report from the House of Commons Defence Committee and some of the issues facing particularly female soldiers—recruited, presumably, after 18. Those statistics were also horrifying. If we were to say that a higher level of abuse or sexual harassment should lead us to say, “Away with Harrogate; away with recruiting child soldiers”, we could almost be getting ourselves to the point of asking why we are recruiting to Her Majesty’s Armed Forces. I do not think we should conflate two things. If there are issues associated with the Army Foundation College at Harrogate, they should be dealt with separately from the principle of whether it is acceptable to recruit people at 16.
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I am very happy to look at more evidence. I assume that the Minister and the Secretary of State have looked at all the relevant evidence; they have rather more officials and supporters than I have to sift through the information. The noble Lord, Lord Browne, is right that we need to look at the evidence and that it should not be taken simply on the basis of individual anecdotes.
Equally, having done the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme—not visiting Harrogate but talking to other people recruited at a very early age—I have heard exactly the things that the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster, said. People said it transformed their life to be able to join the Armed Forces at, in one case, 15—those were earlier days when the rules were slightly different—so the idea of saying that there is a blanket view that we should not permit recruitment at 16 should at least be reviewed on the basis of evidence and debate, not necessarily on the basis of an amendment at this stage.
There are cases in which people are going to leave school at 16. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, suggested that the world has moved on and that most people now stay at school until they are 18. That is true, but there are still people who will not want to stay at school until they are 18 or will not be able to find the right apprenticeship for them, for whom joining the Army at 16 might indeed make the difference to keeping them on the straight and narrow.
There is at least a case to be made for keeping recruitment at 16, but I would like to hear the Minister’s responses to some of the specific questions about mental health outcomes and other questions. If the evidence is overwhelming, clearly we should take that into consideration in any votes on the amendments, but equally we have to bear in mind that people recruited at 16 were not forced into it—they chose to join—so there are questions about what motivated them to join in the first place. That needs to be considered as well.