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Armed Forces Bill

I am most grateful. This afternoon, the Minister has been at pains to emphasise—particularly in the context of the attempt by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, to remove Clauses 42 to 49 from the Bill—that the intention is to provide a completely comprehensive, self-contained system. The noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General was suggesting that there might be circumstances where this watertight approach is not as watertight as we all thought. The fundamental issue here is whether that means that the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General believes that he has the constitutional power to remove a case from the military procedure at some stage after it has started and switch it to the civilian procedure. I entirely accept that extra-territorial offences such as murder and manslaughter could be started in the civilian courts. That is plain. But the situation which has concerned me, and which I thought the noble Lord, Lord Drayson, had covered at Second Reading, is one where proceedings are begun by the Director of Service Prosecutions and are then taken out of the services loop by, I suppose, the DPP under the superintendence of the Attorney-General and switched into the civilian loop. I do not believe that the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General has the constitutional power to do that, and I want to be reassured that it is not his intention in future to so act.