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Court Martial Judgment

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating this important Statement, although I regret that the normal, well oiled machinery that allows us to see it a little before its delivery seems to have gone awry. We support the Government’s position that our services must obey the rule of law, but if they are to obey it we must ensure that they have justice. We have rightly in this House expressed concern about how the accusations against our soldiers on difficult operations in Iraq have been handled. Here again we have a case that has taken more than two years to come to trial. Does the Minister agree that that timescale is unacceptable if we want to maintain morale among British forces? If so, can he explain what is being done to improve matters—not just a review but what action is being taken? We seem to have three different problems. First, the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police seems to have too many tasks for its limited resources. It also appears that it may lack some of the specialist forensic expertise that it needs in some of those criminal investigations. The evidence seems, on occasions, to be acquired in ways that may compromise a successful prosecution. That also suggests that advice is not as available as it should be. Maintaining the integrity of the evidence and the witnesses must be paramount in any investigation. What urgent steps is the Minister taking to ensure that these problems are rectified quickly rather than waiting for some long review to report? The second failing is in the decision-making process. There is some question over how prosecutions are brought. I am aware that the Judge Advocate General did not criticise the decision to prosecute, but nevertheless this House needs to know whether the evidence was weighed in the same way that evidence would be weighed before a prosecution was brought in a civil murder case. Who makes that key decision to go to trial? Are Ministers consulted? Who bears the costs when it goes wrong? What are the costs? We are told in different reports that the cost of this failed prosecution was somewhere between £8 million and £10 million. If we have to wait for other courts martial to report, the review that the Minister has announced today sounds like another in a series of Ministry of Defence reviews that disappear into the long-distant future. Can the Minister give us a timescale for it? Can he tell us when an interim report will come out? Can he confirm that it will be delivered to Parliament? Meanwhile, what follow-up actions are going to be taken immediately as lessons from this failure in process? I am pleased that my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford is in the Chamber today because he was involved in the trial and may be able to contribute some detail about it. The third area that we need to consider is the support for the accused. The Minister was very fulsome about how the MoD did this and that and how the Army and the welfare were all there. But that is not the perception of the accused. If one reads the reports of what they said, the phrases that appear time and again are, ““Hung out to dry by the Army””, and, ““Hung out to dry by the regiment””. Even if the support is there, the perception is not, and that affects morale. On previous occasions, we have talked about the duty of care that the Ministry of Defence has towards our Armed Forces. In my view, this is another example of its failings. We are asking our troops to serve in very difficult conditions. Opinion polls show that neither local Iraqis nor the British public support their presence on operations. When they are accused of illegal acts, they seem to be treated as though they are already convicted, and there is a perception of inadequate support from the Ministry of Defence, delayed justice and flawed evidence. Does the Minister agree that this cannot continue if we are to retain the loyalty of our hard-pressed Armed Forces?