Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what assessment he has made of the potential effect of the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill on the number of convictions of armed forces personnel.

The Impact Statement for the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill was published on 17 September.

It is not possible to estimate how many potential future prosecutions will not proceed as a result of the statutory presumption against prosecution measure as there is limited available data. In addition, it would not be appropriate for the Government to "play prosecutor" and try to assess what decision a prosecutor might have made in an historical case if the presumption measure had been in place at the time.