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Armed Forces Bill

The noble and gallant Lord Craig has raised an interesting point on the drafting of Clause 6. As he said, the matter is one of form rather than substance. It is strange that the word ““mutiny”” does not appear in the opening line of the first subsection, whereas ““deserts”” appears in the opening line of Clause 8, which deals with desertion. Although I accept that Amendments Nos. 20 and 21 are probing amendments, they raise a different issue and, unlike the other amendments in this group, propose substantive change to the offence of mutiny. By removing references to resisting authority, the amendment would restrict the scope of the offence to actions done with intent to overthrow authority. That would dilute the definition of mutiny, which we believe should be worded as strongly as possible. Resisting authority in a military context can be just as damaging as overthrowing authority. Although I suspect that this offence will be used very infrequently, we submit that this wording should remain in the Bill to serve as an absolute safeguard to military authority.