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Armed Forces Bill

I thank the Minister for introducing this important Bill, and I welcome his intention to table an amendment to introduce a slip rule. My only ancillary comment on that is to ask him if he will confirm—I am not quite sure whether he did so in his opening speech—that lay members, in other words, service members, are involved in any reconsideration of sentence. Even if there is only a technical error, while that is a trigger to reconsider sentence it is vital that there is service input to the re-sentencing exercise. By and large, I welcome the Armed Forces Bill. It does much to modernise the single service Acts and to bring them together. However, we should not be seduced by the line that is sometimes paraded that the so-called ““joint environment”” is a sufficient basis for the Bill. I am glad that the Minister avoided saying that. We need to remind ourselves that the vast majority of our soldiers, sailors and airmen—more than 80 per cent—will serve their entire career in their own single service environments, whether on peacetime or wartime operations. That seems to be lost on a lot of people and on some Members of this House. I have some regret about the powers that Royal Navy commanding officers will lose as a result of the Bill, but as the Minister implied, that can be lived with, particularly in view of the fact that the powers being taken away have been used only rarely in recent years. On a more positive note, I welcome one particular aspect of the Bill mentioned by the Minister other noble Lords: the efforts to deal with delay. The totally unsatisfactory delays in bringing people to trial that we have seen, such as in recently well publicised cases, are dehumanising, demoralising and bad for operational effectiveness. They must be eliminated. Moving from the general, I want to concentrate on two particular areas on which the Bill bears: the chain of command and service ethos. I make no apologies for knocking these particular nails out of sight. The maintenance of both of them is essential to the fighting effectiveness of our Armed Forces, who, contrary to some who would aver otherwise, are different from the rest of society. As such, and as the Bill broadly provides, they must have a unique system of military justice separate and distinct from the civilian system. My noble friend Lord Ramsbotham read out the four issues that the Judge Advocate General articulated to support the point, and I shall not repeat them. I am very glad to see those four points laid out in the Short Guide to Sentencing in Courts Martial that was published by the Judge Advocate General at the beginning of this month. However, having implied that I am broadly content with how the Bill sits with all these points, I have residual concerns. I shall deal first with the chain of command. As I said in this House 11 months ago, the commanding officer, who has total responsibility for command of his ship or unit, must in turn be responsible for, and implement, its discipline. It is impossible to achieve and maintain the necessary level of discipline unless those who are under his or her command are in no doubt that their commanding officer has authority over them. In this context, I worry about the authority that the Bill provides for the service police to approach directly the Service Prosecuting Authority for Schedule 2 offences, in theory with the right to bypass the commanding officer. I do not hold out much hope of persuading the Minister to change the Bill to satisfy my concerns in this matter. However, providing such an authority could undermine the commanding officer’s authority, and I welcome the Minister’s explicit reassurance on this matter. Will he ensure that the ““prescribed matters”” to which Clause 127(3)(e) refers, when defined in the regulations, make it clear—the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, alluded to it—that, in all cases instigated by anyone other than the commanding officer, there is a duty on the service police to notify the commanding officer of any investigation under way, of the progress of that investigation and, if they extend the scope of the investigation and the case is passed to the Director of Service Prosecutions, of the progress of the case? The regulations should explicitly require the Director of Service Prosecutions to be notified of relevant information such as the operational context within which the alleged incident occurred. I recognise that the Minister mentioned this, but I was not quite sure from his introduction that the point would be driven hard in the supporting regulations. On the single-service ethos, I raise two points relating to courts martial that need to be addressed. First, the Judge Advocate General told the Armed Forces Bill Select Committee that it would be illogical for the panel of a court martial to be retained from the single service of the accused and that the default should be a mixed panel with just a senior lay member from the same service as that of the accused. I have real difficulty with this and believe most strongly in the importance of ensuring that the regulations governing the composition of courts martial stipulate that lay members be drawn from the same service as the accused. I am afraid that I have some difficulty with the line taken by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford. If co-accused from different services are before the same court, at least one member from each service should be represented in the dock. I think that I was reassured by the Minister saying in his introduction that he supported this view. My second point arises from the suggestion that the bulk of courts martial in the United Kingdom might take place in one of the three new Army centres—Bulford, Colchester and Catterick. This is short-sighted for two reasons. First, it is extremely important that justice is seen to be done in the local community where the offence occurred—by ““local community””, I mean service community as well as geographical community. Secondly, the court martial system is designed as a deployable system of justice and should therefore be focused on key areas of service activity, which must include Scotland and the south-west. The next issue that I want to raise has been well aired this afternoon. It relates to the qualifications of the Director of Service Prosecutions. It is not enough, as the Minister said it would be, for the director to have a sufficient understanding of the services. The Director of Service Prosecutions must have relevant uniformed service background. This is not stated in Clause 358 and an amendment might be appropriate. I would be grateful if the Minister would elucidate what other criteria would be applied in the selection of the DSP. Who will be involved in that selection? What role will the Attorney-General play in it? My noble and gallant friend Lord Vincent voiced similar queries. I wish to raise one further area of concern which is separate from ethos and the command chain, but which affects both: the readiness of the Armed Forces to implement this Bill in 2008. A significant number of references are made in the Bill to regulations. Although most of them, I expect, will be non-contentious, a number are extremely important; for example, what exactly is to be included in the ““prescribed circumstances”” in Clause 127(2)(c), which relates to the duty on commanding officers to inform the service police in Clause 114? This is particularly relevant, not least given my and others’ concerns about the important role of the commanding officer. Due to the scale of change which the Armed Forces are being asked to absorb, it is important that all regulations are made sufficiently early to ensure that commanding officers, service police and others can be properly trained in their application. Given the scale of change represented in this Bill, I fear that the 2008 implementation date may already be too challenging, and there are strong arguments for a staged approach in some areas in advance of full implementation of the Act to ease the process for commanding officers, service police and disciplinary staff. When will we see these regulations? As I have said, I greatly support the Bill, but I ask the Minister to take on board the points that I have raised to give confidence to our sailors, soldiers and airmen that the importance of the command chain and service ethos is recognised in full.