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Armed Forces Bill

moved Amendment No. 76: Page 43, line 7, leave out ““An officer”” and insert ““A commanding officer or an officer designated under subsection (7)”” The noble Lord said: In moving the amendment, I shall speak also to my other amendments in this grouping. They are an odd ragbag and are probably better dealt with together. Amendment No. 76 is designed to be helpful and to clarify what Clause 91 is about. One has to get to the very last section to discover that it is about commanding officers and how they are delegated. My amendment would clarify that from the outset and make the clause easier to read. I have tabled a number of amendments toClause 100: Amendments Nos. 78 and 82 to 86. They have been grouped together because they all have something to do with time. Amendment No. 78 would put some limit on how long a review can be postponed if a commanding officer is not readily available. I propose 96 hours, although I have no particular attachment to that figure if there is a better one, but I feel that noble Lords would want to know that there is a time limit of some sort for this process. Amendment No. 82 also relates to time periods in the review of custody by the commanding officer in Clause 100. The word ““approximate”” is used for the various time limits. I am not a lawyer, but ““approximate”” seems to be a rather strange word to use. Why can we not define maxima, rather than just leave it up to our learned colleagues to debate how approximate ““approximate”” is? Amendments Nos. 83 to 86 are rather more serious. They would set a unified cut-off age rather than have some provisions that apply for age 17 and others for those aged under 18. Following the Deepcut inquiry, it is clear that we need to take special measures for under-18 year-olds when the Armed Forces are dealing with them. Therefore, wherever the age 17 appears in the Bill, I have raised it to age 18. I do not doubt that the Minister will tell us that the legislation is merely in line with civil law, but how under-18s are used in the service environment is a different matter. I beg to move.