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Armed Forces Bill

My Lords, generally speaking, the other services, on average, have more intelligent servicemen. That is a fact of life. Royal Air Force equipment is rather more delicate than a Challenger tank, and the Royal Navy’s equipment is really complicated. Also, the noble Lord’s position assumes that the officers on a court martial feel it their duty to convict. I have not sat on a contested court martial, but I know that the ethos among officers is definitely not to want to convict, because then you are going to have to sentence. Officers in a court martial want to be absolutely sure, if they are to convict, that the person is guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. I strongly support my noble friend Lord Astor of Hever in his Amendment No. 58. I would be extremely unhappy if I found myself being court martialled by a panel other than one made up of Army officers who understood the context of the situation in which I had found myself. I have an amendment in this group, and I declare an interest because I have a cousin in legal practice in Scotland who undertakes a considerable number of service cases. My understanding is that the most northerly court martial centre will be in Catterick and there will be none in Scotland. However, there are a large number of service bases in Scotland, such as Kinloss, Lossiemouth, Leuchars, Arbroath, Rosyth, Helensburgh and Edinburgh. Surely, a tri-service court martial centre in Scotland would be viable. There are considerable costs in moving all the court players all the way to Catterick from Scotland. There is a further problem with the summary appeal court, which sits at a court martial centre. As I said, the most northerly court martial centre is Catterick, and a serviceman might be deterred from appealing a summary jurisdiction, even though he knows that he has been unfairly dealt with—I am afraid to say that I have been told that even today there are one or two commanding officers of questionable parentage. The reason for this reluctance is the need to go all the way to Catterick—not just for himself, to appeal, but for all the other players. That does not compare well with the civilian situation, where you can appeal a magistrates’ court decision in the local Crown court. I hope that the Minister can assure me that one of the benefits of the Bill will be that we can have a tri-service court martial centre in Scotland.