The Military Covenant or Armed Forces Covenant is a term introduced in 2000 into British public life to refer to the mutual obligations between the United Kingdom and His Majesty's Armed Forces. According to The Guardian, "it is an informal understanding, rather than a legally enforceable deal, but it is nevertheless treated with great seriousness within the services". It was coined in Soldiering – The Military Covenant (booklet), UK: Ministry of Defence, April 2000, and has now entered political discourse as a way of measuring whether the government and society at large have kept to their obligations to support members of the armed forces.