One motivating factor behind the changes in the legislation combining discipline acts across the armed forces is the trend towards tri-service operations and defence organizations.

The act also granted a symbolic pardon to soldiers controversially executed for cowardice and other offences during the World War I.

This number included three from New Zealand, 23 from Canada, two from the West Indies, two from Ghana and one each from Sierra Leone, Egypt and Nigeria.

[2] Tom Watson, then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence, was instrumental in including this in the Act.

[3] He was said to have acted having met the relatives of Private Harry Farr, who was executed during the Great War despite strong evidence that he was suffering from PTSD.