---

Armed Forces (Alignment of Service Discipline Acts) (No. 2) Order 2008

We support the order, which provides for the appointment of a qualified officer to be the prosecuting authority for the relevant service, be it Army, Air Force or Navy. We recall the debates on the Armed Forces Bill 2006, now an Act, when my sadly missed noble friend Lord Garden tabled an amendment to ensure that the director of service prosecutions could be appointed only if he had at least two years’ regular or four years’ reserve military experience in the previous 10 years. Sadly, the Liberal Democrat Front Bench was not successful in getting the amendment into the Bill. Although the order does not address that specific point, the clarification that it makes to the definition of a prosecuting authority goes some way to alleviating our concerns about the relevant provision of the 2006 Act. Thus we are content.