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Secure Training Centre (Amendment) Rules 2007

My Lords, I support everything that the noble Lord has just said and the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. The rules are defective in that they refer to ““good order and discipline””. That phrase should be totally rejected because it gives the wrong impression and sends out the wrong statement about what the ethos of a training centre should be. I may be assisted by other Members of the House on this matter, but I am not aware of any criminal statute that refers to good order and discipline as such, or of any classic judgment that refers to it. I believe that the phrase laces the Queen’s regulations for all the armed services—it is none the worse for that—but it is a catch-all provision, dealing with a plethora of offences, some of them very minor indeed. The idea that you should be allowed to use substantial force and pain as an instrument is quite wrong. Would you use pain to train a dog or horse? Why should you use pain to train a child? There will of course be circumstances when force has to be used. I accept that. But the bar should be set very high and the rules should be made absolutely clear, possibly by defining the circumstances or by giving illustrations of the sort of circumstances where such force would be justified and where one could act ejusdem generis with that list. Such a list would make it obvious that force could be used only where there was imminent danger of violent disorder or of substantial injury and so on. If we are talking about cases of minor infractions of good order and discipline—nothing more than an institutionalised system of disobedience—then most certainly this should be changed. That cannot be done in this debate tonight, but I suspect that the Minister will be able to say that, if the evidence convinces him—and I agree with noble Lords who say that the evidence is totally overwhelming—he will be prepared to replace the rules with something more humane and civilised.