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Armed Forces Bill

I rise to speak to my Amendment No. 27. I find Clause 8 tortuous, with its reliance on the phrase ““relevant service”” used repetitiously and with a series of questionable definitions being used for it. The wording of the clause may be clear enough to the legally trained mind, but will not be clear to the average soldier, sailor or airman. The wording of my Amendment No. 27 is lifted almost verbatim from the Armed Forces Act 1971, which itself revised the wordings in the Army and Air Force legislation in 1955 and the Naval Discipline Act 1957. The current definition of desertion would be retained by my amendment. The Minister should explain to the Committee why it was thought necessary in this new Bill to introduce such a complex reworking of the offence and definitions of desertion. Some particular points of detail occurred to me. The 1971 Act refers to being ““permanently absent from duty””, rather than as in Clause 8 remaining ““permanently absent without leave””. The separate offence of absence without leave is covered in Clause 9. Does that not invite some confusion between the two offences of desertion and AWOL to bring absence without leave into Clause 8 rather than absence from duty? The 1971 Act and my amendment sticks to the simpler to understand rationale of, "““intent to avoid serving at any place overseas””," rather than the more obscure phrase ““outside the British Islands””. There is no definition in Clause 367 of British Islands, although I understand that there is one elsewhere in statute. Then there are the somewhat surprising mentions of the protection of life or property and, "““occupation of a foreign country or territory””." That starts to beg the question of whose life and what property. Would we really want to charge a person with desertion when the value of the overseas property to Her Majesty's Government may not be that clear to him? Does ““occupation”” cover everything from the result of a large-scale successful invasion to a few servicemen being attached to a unit of the country or territory at the relevant authority’s request? I get the feeling that the draftsmen are trying to provide a wider set of possible offences of desertion than heretofore. The Committee should not give any ground to widening the possible misbehaviour for which someone could be charged with desertion. The Committee should resist that or at least seek a very convincing explanation from the Minister. This is meant to be a probing amendment to help the Committee to understand the reasons behind the present tortuous drafting for this very serious offence. The only other point to which I should wish to draw the Committee’s attention is that, in my amendment, I have sought to restrict the possible life sentence to, "““service or any particular service when before the enemy””." I question whether a sentence of life imprisonment would be appropriate if the person was on operations for the protection of property, for example. Surely the key issue is whether the person fails to support or lets down his colleagues when they are on operations against the enemy rather than the role of the particular operation. While seeking to spell out a number of possible operational tasks—for example, the protection of life or property—another task, in which the person’s contribution may be vital to the safety of a colleague, might not be covered. Incidentally, the definition of property in Clause 367, at the bottom of page 185, may again be clear to the legal mind but is not clear to me. Would it include mobile homes or temporary structures? Are vehicles included as property? I recall some tortuous restrictions in the Armed Forces Act 2001 affecting the activities of service police in relation to property. For example, it restricted them to, "““If a person is in a garden or yard occupied with and used for the purposes of a dwelling or of any service living accommodation””—" and then there were the restrictions on what he could do. Apart from legal niceties, what is the practical distinction between heritable property and real property? The former seems to apply only in Scotland, which is not—or at least not yet—a foreign country. I doubt whether the potential deserter would have a clue. It may be claimed that the manual of service law will deal with such questions, but this is not a good enough excuse for having any clause in the Bill such as the present Clause 8, that is so tortuous and opaque beyond reason.