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Armed Forces Bill

moved Amendment No. 1: Page 1, line 7, after ““law”” insert ““or a civilian subject to service discipline”” The noble Lord said: I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 33A, 34A and 34B. The purpose of Amendments Nos. 1 and 33A is to extend the reference of offences to include civilians who are subject to service discipline. Increasingly, we find that civilians are routinely employed in operations around the world. The Bill must take that into account. The amendments would place all private sector staff, not only sponsor reserves, under military discipline on such matters as the obstruction of operations. In another place, my honourable friend the member for Aldershot pushed the Government on that issue and the amendment is intended to establish whether the Government will consider that further. My honourable friend was promised a letter from the Minister, but no such letter was ever received. Either the Government do not take those matters seriously or they have forgotten. I hope that it is the latter. Amendments Nos. 34A and 34B are intended to seek clarity of the definition of what we mean by the enemy. Today, the threat to the country comes not necessarily from organised nation states but from ad hoc groups of terrorists. There would be merit in changing the clause to reflect the needs of our time and to ensure that the courts are in no doubt of Parliament's intention that the disclosure of information useful to an enemy extends to those who seek to harm us, but who may not have been classified as an enemy in the past. It is clearly not the Government's intention that a service man or woman who provides information to terrorists should not be subject to prosecution under Clause 17. I entirely accept that. The amendment would cover the disclosure of unauthorised information to foreign powers or journalists and I hope that it would be easier to prosecute under the amended clause than under the Official Secrets Act 1989. The information in question would not need to be government information. It would cover, for example, an employee of one of our defence companies leaking information about our equipment programme, the passing of which might be prejudicial to the security and defence of the United Kingdom. The drafting of the amendment accommodates the Government's concerns, ensuring that the offence is not too narrow, retaining the words, ““would be, or might be””. I beg to move.