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Armed Forces: Chain of Command

My Lords, I am delighted to have the privilege of congratulating on behalf of all of us the noble Lord, Lord Moonie, on his maiden speech. He has brought great political and professional experience to his membership of this House, and I know that we all look forward to hearing him contribute on many further occasions. As an old political hack—to use his engagingly modest description of himself—I know that he will recognise why one would like to say very much more by way of welcome than a time-limited debate permits. But he is very welcome and I am delighted to have the privilege of congratulating him. At least two noble and gallant Lords have pointed out that service people on active service, including on dangerous operations, do not expect or require to be exempt from the rule of law. I know that to be true but I know something else as well, that they expect and need to be treated by the enforcers of the rule of law with realism and fairness. Having listened to the speech of my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway, whom I too thank for this debate, it is perfectly clear to me that the overriding question in the case of Trooper Williams lies in the reasons that led the Director of Army Legal Services to refer the case to the Attorney-General. It is particularly good that this debate has been afforded to us because it has already thrown much needed light upon that most disturbing case. More light is needed, and I hope that the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General will produce it, because it is too much to expect the Minister who is from a quite different department to provide it. Why is the Attorney-General not here? He played a crucial part in the reference of this case to the Crown Prosecution Service. He must have endorsed the Crown Prosecution Service’s subsequent decision to recharge Trooper Williams in the civilian jurisdiction. Much as I admire and like the noble and learned Lord, I find it astonishing that he is not here today. Your Lordships will recall what my noble friend Lord Campbell said about the letter sent by the Adjutant-General to the Chief of the General Staff explaining why, in the Adjutant-General’s view, it was necessary to invite the Attorney-General to review the case. It is quite extraordinary that that letter cited reasons which—as the House will recall from what my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway said—were quite extraneous, to use his words, to any proper decision as to whether someone should be prosecuted for any offence, let alone for murder. They included the pressure of ginger groups arising out of the deaths of civilians in Operation TELIC in Iraq and concerns for the future of the military justice system if a cause célèbre were to grow up among pressure groups. These are, as accurately as I can recall them, direct quotations from that letter. It is a very serious situation indeed that that action was taken in circumstances which ran against what was the clear policy and scheme of the Army Act, because your Lordships will recall that before this occurred the commanding officer—acting upon strong advice from Colonel Barnett of the Army Legal Services, which was itself endorsed by his superior in Iraq, who I believe was called Colonel McElvoy—had dismissed the charge of murder on grounds that there was insufficient evidence. Although the decision in military law rested with him, what alternative, effectively, could possibly have presented itself to him? So far as I know nobody has criticised him. It therefore becomes necessary to see what led the Director of Army Legal Services to circumvent the policy of the Act, which provides that once a case of that kind has been dismissed it cannot be taken to a higher military authority and tried by court martial. Well, we read the letter that was sent. It is very important to realise—and we get it from a paper put by the Attorney-General in the Library of the House in 2004—that the Director of Army Legal Services is also the Army Prosecuting Authority, and that he is required to be independent of the chain of command. The Attorney-General said in a Written Statement to this House that the matter was referred to the Attorney-General on behalf of the Adjutant-General. How could the Army Prosecuting Authority—the Director of Army Legal Services—have been acting independently of the chain of command if he acceded to a request and acted on behalf of the Adjutant-General? That is a most serious question that needs to be answered. I am very much afraid that he referred the matter because he was asked, and indeed told, to do so from on high. Very important questions have been raised and in a short time one cannot begin to do justice to them, but I do have to point with great regret to the fact that there is surely a reasonable perception that there was somewhere an unhealthy determination that Trooper Williams was going to be made to face this charge. I share the great relief expressed by the previous speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Moonie, and by others, that at the end of a very long day he was acquitted because the Crown Prosecution Service threw the towel in for lack of evidence.