---

Armed Forces Bill

I will deal with Amendment No. 64 first and then go on to Amendments Nos. 65 to 68. Amendment No. 64 seeks to provide that every person shall readily be able to determine who his commanding officer is. I understand that, through this amendment and others he has tabled about the terms ““officer”” and ““superior officer””, the noble Earl seeks clarity for soldiers, sailors and airmen. I am pleased that we have a common aim in that regard. As the noble Earl has said, I have written to him on these issues. I hope that he is reassured that through the regulations we will be able to achieve the clarity he seeks. I am willing to meet with him to discuss that further. I recognise that in the Bill overall, there is a significant reliance on trust in certain aspects. The regulations that will be brought forward will meet some of the issues which noble Lords have raised in a number of briefings. I will be happy to meet the noble Earl to go through that further. The combined effect of Amendments Nos. 65 to 67 would be to reduce the highest rank of officers that may be dealt with summarily from commander and equivalents to lieutenant and equivalents, to remove the power to deal summarily with warrant officers, and to require the commanding officer to be at least two ranks above the accused before he may hear a charge summarily. Perhaps I may explain the position under the current service discipline Acts. For the Army and the RAF, warrant officers and officers up to the rank of lieutenant-colonel or wing commander are dealt with summarily by an appropriate superior authority—that is, a senior officer of one-star or two-star rank who has powers of punishment over those individuals. In the Royal Navy, warrant officers and officers up to the rank of commander are dealt with by the commanding officer if he is at least two ranks above the rank of the accused and otherwise by the appropriate superior authority. Under the Bill, we have removed the concept of an appropriate superior authority and provide instead for these individuals to be dealt with by the commanding officer. But it will, as now, be possible to appoint a commanding officer to an individual for a specific purpose in regulations. So the Bill retains the current power to hear charges summarily against all ranks up to those of commander and equivalents, but the regulations will ensure that they are heard by an officer of an appropriately senior level. Specifically, the commanding officer must be two ranks above the accused. I trust the noble Earl is reassured on those two aspects. Finally, Amendment No. 68 would make reservists subject to service law when on a service base, ship or aircraft. Clauses 360 and 361 set out the circumstances in which reservists are subject to service law. These provide that they will be subject to service law when they are carrying out any activities as reservists. To extend this in the way in which the noble Lord’s amendment seeks would be to make it unnecessarily wide. The services have no desire to extend the times when reservists are subject to service law in this way, and believe that it is important to link the times when a reservist is subject to service law to the activities in which he is engaged, rather than where he is located. Additionally, the Bill already provides that a person is ““subject to service discipline”” while he is in one of Her Majesty’s ships afloat or one of Her Majesty’s aircraft in flight. This applies to a reservist as well as anyone else who is not subject to service law. On the basis of this explanation, I ask the noble Earl to withdraw his amendments to this clause.