| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Dr. Godman: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I confess that it is a long, long time since I was involved with summary charges and courts martial, but I recall my unit being inspected by a very young Brigadier Carver.
With reference to the redress of grievance procedure, is it not the case that any person coming in front of his or her commanding officer has the right to challenge a decision taken in a grievance case? If so--some Conservative Members have much more military experience than I do--surely the right of appeal in the grievance procedure does not damage the standing of a commanding officer.
Mr. Key: The hon. Gentleman is right for the second time this afternoon. I shall come to the redress of grievance. That is an important point, but the problem is one of a sin of omission. The Bill should tackle the redress of grievance. It is deficient. It could be much more efficient.
The Bill provides for summary appeal courts to be established, but the accused will already have been given the choice of deciding whether to be tried by his commanding officer or by court martial. The accused will now be allowed to say that he or she does not agree with the commanding officer's decision, and can cause either the finding or the sentence, or both, to be referred to the summary appeal court. That will obviously undermine the commanding officer's authority, draw out disciplinary proceedings and undoubtedly incur further expense. The burden of work on all those involved will also increase.
The Bill also introduces changes to the procedure for election for court martial trial, and that will encourage elections for trial by court martial rather than by commanding officers, which will also impact adversely on the commanding officer's authority.
Several hon. Members have talked about the practicality of the enforcement of discipline in the field. The armed forces are deployed all over the world in a variety of different operations and security circumstances. That was the reason for a body of military law in the first place. The Bill may be workable in the UK's garrison towns and bases, but it would often be unworkable when our forces are operating in the most basic and possibly dangerous conditions in the field, perhaps thousands of miles away from Britain and its military legal apparatus.
Under the Bill, detention must be authorised by a judicial officer after a certain time. How would such authorisation be given if, for example, a unit were cut off under siege conditions? That is not fanciful. Such conditions can exist in modern peacekeeping operations. One has only to think of the situation of the Dutch army in Srebrenica to envisage how disciplinary problems in the field can put matters in a new and dangerous light.
The Government have argued that there is flexibility in the Bill to allow for such situations, and that, in such cases, an individual would be brought before a judicial officer "as soon as practicable". However, on 18 January, Baroness Symons, speaking in the other place, said that the Bill will not be set aside even in the "most extreme operational circumstances". Therefore, the Government are saying that, in most cases, that flexibility is worthless. Either that or they are telling us that they have engineered by stealth an effective derogation from the ECHR.
Ministers have put much faith in modern communications to circumvent those logistical difficulties. In particular, Ministers have said that video links will be used to enable hearings with judicial officers. The Defence Committee was intrigued to be told last Thursday about video conferencing. The director of personnel services for the Army explained that video conferences happen already, and such conferences take place daily with Pristina. He said that he had himself spoken to a judge advocate on a video conference facility as part of a trial. The judge advocate will have a portable system at home so that he can be dialled up literally at any time. That is probably just as well if one considers the time differences between East Timor and Belize.
There will be static video conferencing suites. Portable systems can be taken home so that a duty judicial officer can be wired up to pretty well anywhere in the world because, as we were told,
- "IT-wise now, wherever our soldiers go, we have the IT systems."
-
One or two people might not agree. That is not quite so convincing if the home football team cannot be viewed in real time or if "EastEnders" or "Brookside" cannot be watched live. We are unconvinced about the potential of video conferencing.
However, there are people who work with the military on satellite links. Has the Minister talked to the company that does the satellite transmission for the British forces broadcasting system, whose programming is generated from the company's studio production facilities near London? That company produces broadcast quality results based on a transmitted data rate of 8 Mb a second. If Her Majesty's forces rely on Inmarsat, the maximum data rate available is a mere 128 Kb a second. That may support low-quality video conferencing, which is, of course, bidirectional, but to achieve broadcast quality links a second path would have to be booked if bi-directional pictures were required. The lower power gives a poor and jerky image with feeds costing several pounds a minute.
For broadcast quality live pictures, the existing technology requires that a portable satellite news-gathering terminal is sent to the source of the feed--a military unit somewhere in the world. Such units cost about £350,000 each. An SNG terminal costs approximately £1,500 a day to rent. That includes an engineer, but a second engineer will probably be needed at £250 a day, excluding travel and accommodation expenses. The space segment cost is dependent upon region and varies from around £350 to £400 an hour for Europe and the middle east to £500 an hour in remote regions of the world, such as East Timor. How will the defence budget bear those costs?
Mr. Fabricant: My hon. Friend simplifies the situation. Is he aware that, at certain times of the year and on occasions such as the world cup, it might be impossible or very expensive to hire a satellite? Can the Government guarantee that a satellite link will always be available during the Olympic games, the world cup, the European cup, or any other such occasion?
Mr. Key: My hon. Friend raises an important issue. I should not like to be on the lower deck of an aircraft carrier when the choice is between watching the world cup and the holding of a judicial review on the satellite uplift.
Mr. Gerald Howarth: My hon. Friend has read out a catalogue of costs that are attributable to the Bill. I understand that the Government have estimated a total
cost of £6.5 million a year. Are the costs that my hon. Friend has just invited the House to consider additional to, or included in, that figure?
Mr. Key: I do not think that the Government know, and I certainly do not know. So far, there has been no suggestion of any of the costs associated with video links, which we have been told happen already as a matter of everyday business in the services. My hon. Friend raises an important point, which we will have to probe in Committee.
Mr. Colvin: There is a mystery surrounding the £6.5 million of costs. That was the Government's original estimate of the cost of dealing with between 850 and 900 appeals to the summary appeals court each year, being in part the cost of the 50 Royal Military Police investigators that would be required. Now they have increased their estimate of the number of likely appeals to 1,500, without any change in the cost. That was a mystery to the Select Committee and it is a mystery to me too. Perhaps when the Minister replies he will give us the answer.
Mr. Key: My hon. Friend is right. It has been suggested that this is a double bluff as part of the Treasury round whereby the Ministry of Defence will say that it cannot implement the Act without a substantial increase in the defence budget. The problem is that no one knows about the costs.
Let us leave costs for a moment, because our second concern goes deeper. We are talking here about justice. In the UK under civilian conditions and in parallel circumstances, a solicitor would be sitting in court with his client. That proximity is essential if proper advice is to be given. That could not be achieved in a remote interview over a video link.
I have read the transcript of the Select Committee's proceedings last Thursday. I know that we were told that advice had been taken and that wide-angled lenses will be used so that the sergeant major cannot stand behind the camera and threaten that the right answers must be given, or else. However, many judges and lawyers argue that the interests of justice cannot be served by a poor-quality, jerky video link, which could not give a judicial officer thousands of miles away a proper grasp of the circumstances and demeanour of an accused man or woman.
If the Government were serious about improving the human rights of members of Her Majesty's forces, they should have turned their attention to the substantial delays in the military legal process compared with the civilian process. For many years, legal aid claims for existing members of the armed forces, some of their dependants and service police abroad have been met by the English Legal Aid Board. The hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde was right to raise that matter earlier. It is almost unbelievable that the Legal Aid Board secretariat published new guidance in December, which stated that the board proposed to end that practice. It is astonishing that the Government are bent on incorporating improved human rights provision in the service discipline Acts while cutting the availability of professional legal advice to members of the armed forces. Civilian solicitors will no longer be able to give advice to, for example, soldiers in Germany. There has been no sign of any reciprocal
increase in the number of service legal advisers. Indeed, the Government have said that there is no plan to increase them.The Bill also fails to tackle the discrepancies in the judicial processes between the civilian and military systems. It is not too late to do that. We were heartened when the Minister for the Armed Forces told the Select Committee on Defence last Thursday that the Department would examine discrepancies in punishment systems and tariffs between the regiments of the British Army. We welcome that. The Government need to go much further. Redress of grievance procedures leave much to be desired. There are countless examples of justice being delayed literally for years. Apart from the injustice, there is the lack of common courtesy to one's employees, and standards of employment practice in the services that would be unacceptable in civilian life. It is good news that the Army intends to sharpen up its procedures. However, the problem is wider than that.
Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of spending a day at sea on HMS Sandown. Have you ever wondered, Mr. Deputy Speaker, what people on Her Majesty's ships do all day? They were just as curious about what Members of Parliament do all day. From the moment that I left the naval base at 8 am until the moment that we returned at 4 pm, there was a ceaseless round of sometimes intense activity. There was a fire drill, a man overboard exercise, a great deal of intense routine work, which involved highly skilled electronic observation and full use--for real--of much of the ship's capability.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |