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Armed Forces Bill

I rise to speak to Amendments Nos. 20 and 21 within this grouping. I fully endorse what the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, said about the seriousness of the offence of mutiny, which causes potentially great disaster in terms of military operations. When looking at the background to this, I noted that until 1689 mutiny applied as an offence only during a period of war. I am not proposing that we go back to the pre-1689 situation. However, the House of Commons Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill report says at paragraph 19: "““The importance of the military context is most apparent when considering the hostile and dangerous situations that Service personnel can encounter on operational deployment. However, Service law must be equally applicable in operational and non-operational environments, and the military context is also important in non-operational environments””." I agree with that. When we consider this—the most serious of military offences in some ways—we have to remember that it covers a wide range of circumstances, some of which will be at the operational end, and some at the non-operational end. My amendments address the words ““or resist”” and ““or resisting”” authority, compared with ““overthrow”” authority, which is the other test of mutinous behaviour. Overthrowing authority is self-evident. The serviceman who has the noble and gallant Lord’s personal digital assistant to read this will know what overthrowing authority means. Resisting authority is a more subjective test. I can think of many circumstances when the noble and gallant Lord was my commanding officer as Chief of the Air Staff, once upon a time, when a group of us might have suggested an alternative course of action. Was that resisting authority? That is the way in which discussions occur in peacetime operations or the way in which in peacetime circumstances we come to the best decisions—a bit like in your Lordships’ House when we come to the best formulation of law. We discuss various things. We are not being mutinous, but are merely trying to distil the available wisdom. The word ““resisting”” in modern circumstances covers too broad a definition. Indeed, the Minister will probably say that he wishes to resist my amendment. If several of us resisted, would that be mutinous behaviour? This is a probing amendment. When something is so serious that until relatively recently it carried the death penalty, but now carries the sentence of life imprisonment, we need to be very precise in our meanings. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about how ““resist”” works in modern society, where the age of deference is almost dead. The military may wish to maintain it but I think not by life imprisonment. The noble and gallant Lord’s amendments took me back to his clarity of thought and language when we sat round the table at the Ministry of Defence. If in using the right legal terminology we can make the Bill understandable to anybody who reads it, that is to be encouraged. Of course, I would want him to drop the words ““resist”” and ““resisting”” from his subsection. With that small change, we could agree on his amendments.