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Mr. Hancock: That was the current Chief of the Defence Staff.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We cannot have questions from hon. Members in a sedentary position.
Mr. Hancock: I stand corrected, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. Had I been in his position with nothing much good to say about the Bill, I would have tried to intervene with such a comment. I am sure that General Guthrie will be pleased that his name has been mentioned in the Chamber this afternoon due to the--for me, unwelcome--intervention by the hon. Gentleman.
It is clear from the comment that I quoted that the former chiefs of staff and many Members from all parties in the other place decided that it was not right to pursue the matter. The other place examined the Bill four times in meticulous detail. They went over the same examples that hon. Members have drawn to the House's attention today.
Mr. Blunt: The hon. Gentleman rests his case on the first part of the Bill, which covers custodial circumstances. He is right to point out that it is difficult to establish the exact circumstances in which various provisions will be found wanting. However, the comments of the Chief of the Defence Staff that Lady Symons quoted related to his anxiety that, according to advice he had received, the summary justice system would not comply with the European convention on human rights if the Bill was not passed. The current service chiefs therefore wanted the Bill to be passed on those grounds. However, the fact is--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Long interventions are almost as bad as sedentary interventions.
Mr. Hancock: I was grateful for that intervention because the hon. Member for Reigate made a fair point. Again, it establishes clearly that civilians, legal advisers and senior defence chiefs believed that it was important for our disciplinary procedures to comply with the European convention on human rights, that bringing them into line was necessary and that any intervention that forced a delay on that would be unwelcome and would lead to an escalation of cases before the European Court of Human Rights.
I agree that the Bill tries to achieve three objectives: it covers loss of liberty and custody--many hon. Members have discussed that; it provides that decisions of a judicial nature should not be made by persons who hold appointments that depend on the Executive or, in military terms, the chain of command; and it prevents the same
person from acting as prosecutor and judge and provides for the right to choose between summary trial and small-scale judicial procedures.It is interesting that many Members of the House of Lords also serve as judges. Many of them have served as appeal judges when cases have been brought against legislation, for or against which they voted. That is hardly fair. Our current Lord Chancellor is nervously considering the latest European Court of Human Rights decision on a case in Guernsey. The Bailiff of Guernsey has been ruled out of order for voting for legislation and subsequently sitting in judgment on an appeal by a Guernsey citizen against part of its enactment. That poses great problems for the Lord Chancellor and any judge who sits in the second Chamber.
Some hon. Members claim that our armed forces are second to none--I share that view. They say that the men and women who serve in them go about their business in a lawful and proper manner, yet they are worried that many of them will be guilty of some sort of offence--
Mr. Keetch: In the heat of battle.
Mr. Hancock: In the heat of battle, as my hon. Friend says. Some hon. Members seem to be worried that service men and women will suddenly disregard their training, esprit de corps and whatever else motivates people to do the right thing, and, in the heat of battle, commit wanton acts that are so serious that the perpetrators will have to be jailed, and other people will have to be taken out of the front line to serve as custody officers night and day. I simply do not believe that that will be the case.
My neighbour, the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers), said that all service personnel play the game and stick to the line when they appear before officers, but I have made Defence Committee visits with Ministers and my experience is that the last thing members of our armed forces are is reluctant to speak their minds and tell us the truth--warts and all--about the problems that they face. I represent a huge number of service personnel and their families and come from a family with long service traditions, so I know only too well that the person who is subject to military justice is not always the main instigator of an appeal. That instigation comes from the family. I remember more than one family debate about whether justice had been served and whether the sentence fitted the crime.
Mr. Fabricant: I fully understand that the hon. Gentleman has a great interest in service matters and of course he is interested in service history. Does he recall the sad but nevertheless true cases of people who were involved in courts martial in the heat of battle? Does he not think that his recommendation would cause injustice because of unnecessary delays?
Mr. Hancock: I can only think that the hon. Gentleman is referring to situations in the first world war. Many hon. Members have recognised that injustice. There have not been many such situations since, and no one is suggesting that we have such a system today.
The Defence Committee heard a presentation by three senior officers--Brigadier Andrew Ritchie, Commodore David Humphrey and Air Commodore Rick Charles--two of whom had been in command and one of whom had
been in command in the circumstances that have been described today. All three stressed that the Bill is a step in the right direction and all sought one thing--consistency. All wanted the rights of the individual to be protected, the Army's regimental traditions to be kept up and the rights of the individual to be incorporated into the services. None raised serious objections to the Bill.However, I had reservations. I asked a number of questions, like the hon. Member for Reigate, and would have run him a close second had the Chairman of the Committee done another count. The officials of the House have me down as tabling a lot of questions, but I am not down as being present when the Committee met. That anomaly is beyond me, but they achieved it. The evidence went more than half way to meeting the objections of those in the other place who had not been satisfied by the Minister for Defence Procurement, who speaks on these matters there, and the rest of the way to satisfy the rigorous and robust questioning of the Defence Committee.
My first reservation concerned the MOD's ability to recruit personnel of the required standard. The Defence Committee and the House are well aware of the problems of retention--the military's medical services, from which qualified staff are haemorrhaging, are a classic example. Despite our best efforts to retain people, we are losing pilots hand over fist and cannot hold on to technicians of any grade in any of the three services with any degree of surety. I doubted whether we could recruit, but the brigadier--speaking on behalf of the general with responsibility for legal services--once again assured us that more than half the necessary personnel had already been recruited. He believed that the quota would have been filled by the time the Bill came into operation.
My second reservation has been referred to by many hon. Members, who have mentioned my questions to officers and to the Minister of State in the Select Committee about cost. How on earth could they explain the sudden escalation from 850 persons who would seek to appeal to 1,500, nearly double the original figure? Like the hon. Member for Reigate, I am still worried about whether 1,500 is the right figure; I suspect that it should be higher. In any event, those who have actually had to deal with the matter made it clear that most appeals, as constituted, would concern sentencing rather than a guilty verdict, if such a verdict had been returned. Very few people challenge verdicts, but many challenge the length and severity of sentences. Those whom I consulted did not consider that major financial increases would be involved, over and above £6.5 million.
Like other hon. Members, I sense that £6.5 million is an optimistic figure. I was sad that, when asked, the Minister of State told the Select Committee that it would not be new money. For once, he attempted no elusion--that is, there was no elusion when the Government were talking about money--although he did suggest that the money was in last year's budget, which was earmarked for this year. He did not attempt to disguise the fact that the £6.5 million would have to be found within the existing resources of the Ministry of Defence. We can therefore only imagine that something or other will not happen--perhaps equipment or training will suffer as a result.
The answers to the Committee's questions were fairly robust, and I felt that they hit the targets at which they were aimed. I was prepared to give the Government the
benefit of the doubt, and I wish the Bill a good passage through the House. Thankfully, I shall not be on the Standing Committee; I sense that those who are will experience some long sittings, arguing about the technicalities of the surreal. That is not easy to come to terms with.I think that the Minister of State took on board the Committee's suggestions about how we could consider legislation in the future. He admitted under questioning that he would welcome the opportunity to subject any future legislation to pre-scrutiny. I hope that that constitutes a determined endeavour on the part of Government, not only in the context of this Bill but in the context of future Bills.
The Bill will not produce a perfect solution, but I cannot agree that men and women who join the United Kingdom armed forces should sign away their rights under European law, however elaborately the existing provision is reworded. That notion--which was dressed up in a slightly different way by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell), a former Attorney-General--is one that most reasonable people, inside and outside the services, would consider wrong.
As I said in an intervention, it is not good enough to suggest that our service personnel should sign away their human rights while spending most of their time trying to win back or defend the human rights of others across the globe. That simply does not wash. Those who serve in our armed forces are entitled to justice.
The Bill is not perfect, because the system that we have had over the centuries is not perfect, but it gives us an opportunity to move the justice system in our armed forces a step further. I hope that in a year's time, when we have a chance to examine the matter again--in fact, we shall have to do so because the review will be due--we shall again refine the way in which the armed forces can be disciplined from within, and the way in which their members can protect their rights. It is as important to defend those rights as it is to defend any person whom the armed forces are sent to defend.
I hope that hon. Members will resist the temptation to vote for the amendment, because it would do nothing. We know that what we have now is not acceptable: it is inoperable and will be challenged time and again later in the year if we do nothing now. The Bill makes an attempt to introduce some justice to the discipline of our armed forces, and that should be welcomed.
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