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Mr. Colvin: I am most grateful to my successor as Chairman of the Defence Committee for giving way. Will he give an undertaking that, when the Select Committee considers the Armed Forces Bill, it will seriously examine consolidating the three service discipline Acts into one Act? Not only the current Select Committee, but the previous Select Committee and the one before that have recommended that the Acts be consolidated. The recommendation was made also in the strategic defence review.
I have read the evidence available to us today, but have seen no reference to the detailed reasons why the Government have not accepted the recommendation. The excuse has been given that there was simply not sufficient time to consolidate the Acts, but that is not good enough. Ministers will have to identify the stumbling blocks, and I hope that the Select Committee will consider the issue.
Mr. George: If the Ministry of Defence is short of lawyers, I heard a very good programme last week on what citizens advice bureaux are doing to provide legal assistance. The Ministry of Defence might contemplate taking that course. However, the Select Committee will certainly consider the matter. As I am sure that the hon. Gentleman realises, he made a grave mistake in leaving the Defence Committee. If there is an opening, perhaps he will decide to return.
3.25 pm
Sir Peter Lloyd (Fareham): I am very glad to follow the hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), who speaks from vast knowledge and a real sympathy and concern for the armed services. I do not follow him in his almost complete happiness with the Bill as it is currently constructed, but I do welcome his comment that the next armed forces Bill should be examined very carefully in advance by an expanded Select Committee. I hope that his idea finds favour with the Minister to whom it was directed.
It is a pity that this debate is not about what disciplinary procedures best ensure the armed forces' high morale, sense of fairness and military effectiveness. In the past, those responsible for the armed services have not always been the first to realise what change, and when, is needed to the punishments that can be meted out to service men, or to the procedures by which they are imposed. I should be very surprised if there were not desirable improvements that are no part of this Bill and have not as yet been properly discussed. Times change, and the services increasingly need intelligent, educated and resourceful people who can take responsibility in very stressful situations, in which restraint is needed as much as aggression.
Those people require an appropriate disciplinary environment of which reason, justice and open procedures are the hallmark. The need is magnified now by the fact that so much of their current duty involves defending the lives and rights of civilians who are being denied their rights, even the right to life.
Despite what I said earlier, I believe that service officers are usually far ahead of leaders in other parts of national life in grasping the totality of what is involved in maintaining group morale and imposing constructive discipline whereby those who are punished for its infringement feel that they have been dealt with fairly and promptly--promptness being a very large part of fairness.
It is no surprise to me that the chief inspector of prisons--a former general--and the recently retired prisons ombudsman--a former admiral--had a far greater and more imaginative and complete idea of what relationships between prisoners and prison staff should be than did those who looked to them to provide support for simple punitive solutions to the endemic and complex problems of the Prison Service.
Alas, we are discussing not the optimum disciplinary procedures for the services, but something considerably more restricted--how to put the armed services disciplinary and judicial processes on all fours with the procedures required by the European convention on human rights, and how to do it with the least damage to the effectiveness of the three services.
Therefore, unless we are saying--here I agree with the hon. Member for Walsall, South--that the United Kingdom should withdraw from the convention permanently, which we are not, or that we should withdraw temporarily in order to rejoin with a suitable reservation--like the French did when they first joined in 1974, but which would be a very hard exercise to pull off--it is clear that matters cannot simply be left as they are if, indeed, we really are out of line with the convention.
As the hon. Member for Walsall, South animadverted, the MOD lost a series of sex discrimination cases after a European Court ruling, to the embarrassment of the MOD, at great cost to the taxpayer and with considerable damage to morale in the services. As the hon. Gentleman said, we do not want to go through that again, so I am sure that the Government are right to want to make certain that there are no effective grounds for challenge under the convention.
I suspect, however, that the Government, mildly traumatised by what happened to their predecessors over sex equality, are determined to follow the more usual British tradition exemplified by the way in which we
zealously apply an unnecessarily demanding interpretation of the requirement of EU directives. So I wonder whether the Government have not done exactly that and proposed changes which exceed what is necessary to bring us into line with the ECHR.Do the Government really have to give a service man charged with a summary offence the choice of a court martial before proceedings start; then, if he decides to submit to the judgment of the commanding officer, does he really have to have a second right of appeal to a court martial if he does not like the CO's conclusion or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) said, if his wife does not like it? That is certainly a more cumbersome procedure than the current one, but I would have thought that most service men on a charge would have preferred the current procedure--to see what evidence there was and what the CO made of it before deciding whether to opt for the full court martial.
I would have thought that, in practice, the rights and convenience of everyone, not least the offending service man, would be at least as well served by retaining the present arrangements. However, I take it that it is the MOD's legal advice--the advice that has been given to the Minister--that, despite the manifest fairness and utility of those arrangements, the European Court of Human Rights would never be persuaded to endorse them. Perhaps in his reply to the debate, the Minister will explain more fully why not. It is an absolutely crucial point that lies at the heart of the Bill and it requires a full explanation. We also need answers to the excellent questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) at the start of the debate.
Mr. Wilkinson: I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend who is making some extremely wise observations. The Government really have to decide which is more important: adherence to the principles set out in the European convention on human rights as adumbrated by those who are charged with its implementation, or the prime responsibility--I would say the overriding one--of Her Majesty's armed forces to maintain such good order and military discipline as to ensure morale and ultimate victory.
Sir Peter Lloyd: In the last analysis, my hon. Friend is absolutely right, but I do not think that we have reached that point. I am not yet convinced that the current arrangements are not on all fours with the convention and I am trying to tease that out of the Minister. It is a central point. I do not expect him to intervene on me now, but I hope that he will give it a great deal of attention when he replies to the debate.
At the same time, I would be grateful if the Minister would explain why, under the new procedures, if a summarily convicted service man appeals, the court martial will not be able to impose a heavier sentence than his CO has available to him. I know that the sentence of a court might well be heavier than the CO actually gave if that sentence was below the maximum, but why should the services not follow the civilian practice whereby, if the defendant elects for trial in a higher court, he runs the risk of a higher penalty than the lower court can impose? Why is the practice in civilian courts not at risk from the convention if it is judged to be unacceptable in the military process, or is it just a matter of belt and braces
copper-bottoming of the military procedures--a course on which I suggested the Government had embarked? Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us.The matter is important because so much services opinion is concerned. I have to take that second hand as the extent of my military career was serving in my school combined cadet force, and I am not sure that all my right hon. and hon. Friends who have been career officers or have been in the services in some other capacity will be convinced that that provides me with a fundamental knowledge. However, I have spoken to a great many people in the services, I have listened to what some of my right hon. and hon. Friends have said, and I have read the debates in the House of Lords.
It is clear that much service opinion is concerned that the new procedures will undermine the authority of commanding officers. We should not take that risk lightly. Anything that diminishes the commanding officer--in particular his ability to settle less serious disciplinary matters appropriately, firmly, without delay and in-house--will diminish a unit's morale and cohesion. It is on those qualities that much of a unit's effectiveness and the safety of all its members rely.
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