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Armed Forces Bill

My Lords, I will make one or two comments about some amendments in the group. First, the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, contends that there is a need to have privates or other ranks on the court martial panel. I am unable to agree with that. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, said that the court members should be experienced. Certainly he will find that the private, or even the corporal, does not have sufficient experience. Experience is vested in the warrant officer, or indeed in the officer, given that, certainly in the Royal Navy, a third of officers have come up through the ranks. It can be perfectly well found among officers and warrant officers sitting on the court. By the way, the services are not egalitarian; let us try to remember that. On the amendment proposed by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, about Scotland, I mentioned in Committee, and before, the importance of making sure that our court martial locations are distributed throughout the country. In addition to the points that the noble Earl made, I will add two more. First, if you are having a court martial and you are coming down from Scotland, you would lose a large chunk of your unit, who may be witnesses or friends. That can be disruptive to the unit’s activities. Secondly, the reason for having a court martial in a local area is pour encourager les autres; it allows people in the unit to see the person being court martialled in the area where he has been operating, appointed or drafted. I would like some reassurance from the Minister that we will not just see two or three court martial centres, as currently outlined. Finally, I support the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, in his plea that the default position should be that a single person being court martialled should have on the court martial largely those from his own service. I do not agree that you will see a trial involving, for example, a flying incident being properly judged by a court martial with no aviators on it, or, vice versa, a trial involving a grounding incident in the Navy being properly tried by those in other services. If the amendment is not successful, I hope that the Minister can reassure us that there will be some sort of provision to make sure that, by and large, the court martial trying a single service defendant will be populated by people from the same service.