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Armed Forces Bill

I shall speak to the amendments which the Minister has just been speaking about. As I reminded the House on Second Reading, and the Committee just now, I have expressed my reservations about the changes being introduced to the statutory redress system. The Explanatory Notes point out the importance of a right that ““dates back to at least the 19th century””. The impact of the government amendments in this grouping is to introduce a so-called ““independent”” element into the redress arrangements. In part, as the Minister has mentioned, that has been driven by the aftermath of Deepcut, but it is another example of a political and parliamentary response to a particularly unfortunate episode. As with Dunblane and mad dogs, I doubt that the statutory response is always the best one, although I acknowledge that at times there is heavy pressure to be seen to be doing something, which is hard to resist. When it comes to the Armed Forces, my concern is more specific. We have repeatedly reminded ourselves, on all sides of the Committee and in the other place, of the critical importance of the chain of command. I shall not dwell on this, other than to say that of all the many elements that go into a successful and responsible chain of command, the most important is that of trust. Commanders must have faith in their subordinates, and the latter must respond to that faith and themselves have trust in their commanders. When decisions affecting life and death may be involved, mutual trust is of the essence. I fear that a number of statutory decisions have been reached in the past 15 years or so that detract from that relationship of trust within the chain of command. Each time we legislate in a way that implies or indicates that commanders and the command chain should not be involved in a disciplinary or complaints process, a secondary but no less important message is being transmitted. It may be no more than implicit, but it cannot be overlooked. The message is that commanders and the command chain cannot or may not be trusted to dispense discipline fairly. Is there not a fear—I have it—that the combination of these steps, and even more if they were to be enacted, such as those concerning courts martial composition and process now being advocated from the Liberal Democrat Benches, will serve further to undermine the trust that must exist up and down the chain of command? If commanders cannot be trusted to administer discipline, why should they still be trusted to exercise command? I am not suggesting that any one of the measures in itself could have that dramatic result, but it is their combination that concerns me, along with the continuing attempts to switch military disciplinary arrangements with those in use for civilians. Some noble Lords may say that the legal system has to take priority. If that is to be our goal, there cannot be a realistic and viable separate disciplinary arrangement for the military. I believe, however, that we are agreed that there have to be separate arrangements, and the rationale for that should be given the casting vote, as it were, when deciding how best to provide for command and discipline in the services. By nature, the services and servicemen are obedient to Parliament, so there is a reluctance in today’s forces to question the wisdom of Parliament. However, we are able to take a longer view of these matters. I argued during the passage of the human rights legislation in the House in 1998 that the Armed Forces should not be brought within the legislation, because they had, and must have, their own statutory arrangements. There are tensions and incompatibilities between what is best for the Armed Forces and for the rest of society. The proposals in these government amendments are unsound, because they serve to add to the subliminal message that the chain of command is untrustworthy.