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Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the noble Baroness has already mentioned page 41 of the policy statement prepared for Standing Committee G in another place, which has been a helpful document—so helpful that most of what the noble Baroness said is not included. City technology colleges are not mentioned, nor are academies—they are not part of the detailed account of the draft regulations, which runs to several pages.
So policy is here being made on the hoof and it would be interesting to know why that change was made and precisely how it will be introduced. It is being introduced only in response to an amendment.If the noble Lord, Lord Peston, did not realise it, I must tell him that I was being facetious when I asked why the Government put in place petitions for ballots to remove grammar schools but not CTCs, academies and all the rest. The principle is similar. I was not advocating that; I was simply pointing out the inconsistency of the Government's policy. There is an inconsistency here, too, because the admission arrangements for the academies, if they are following the same route as the CTCs—I understand that they are—were laid out in great detail when they were set up. Under their constitutions, they are already legally obliged to follow procedures for admission to their schools. So entering an admissions forum would serve no purpose. As I said, that is new policy made on the hoof and it would be helpful to have either a letter or some other explanation of that later.
I am sorry that it will not be left to a majority of schools in an area to request a forum if they are unhappy and one does not exist. Again, we return to "one size fits all". When the regulations appear, there will be little flexibility, because the Minister's argument was that the Government want uniformity, everyone doing the same and consistency. That means the dull uniformity and greyness of one size fits all. All of those wonderful, flexible, innovative ideas flourishing out there will be disbanded and we shall have to fall into line with Whitehall, which the Government think knows best. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I beg to move that further consideration on Report be now adjourned. In moving the Motion, perhaps I may suggest that further consideration on Report begin again not before 8.39 p.m.
Army, Air Force and Naval Discipline Acts (Continuation) Order 2002
7.39 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Bach) rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 1st May be approved [28th Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Lord said: My Lords, your Lordships will be aware that Parliament is asked to consider an order of this nature in most years. The purpose of the order is straightforward. It continues in force for a further year the Army and Air Force Acts 1955 and the Naval Discipline Act 1957. These three Acts provide the statutory basis for discipline in the Armed Forces. The Government therefore attach the utmost importance to this order as the means of ensuring that this key
legislation remains in force. The order was approved yesterday in committee in another place and I hope that your Lordships will follow suit.Having just highlighted the importance of the order, it is perhaps appropriate for me at this stage to offer a few remarks on the amendment that has been tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont. The noble Lord's amendment asks your Lordships to withhold approval for the Motion on the Order Paper until the Government have responded to the report of the Select Committee on Chinook ZD576.
Your Lordships will know that the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, and other noble Lords have raised the issue of the Government's response to this report on a number of occasions. The Select Committee's report was published on 5th February this year. The Government have consistently said that they intend to respond to the report before the six months allowed for responses to such reports have elapsed. That remains our intention. We fully expect to publish our response before the House rises. The Select Committee's report is a detailed assessment of a set of complex technical, legal and airmanship issues. It is quite right that it should be fully and carefully assessed, and we are doing this.
As noble Lords may know, we have commissioned further work from Boeing. While I understand the wish of the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, for a speedy response, it is important that this work is fully and thoroughly completed. Boeing's work is nearing completion and should be available to us shortly. Subsequently this will be taken into account in our response.
The implications of supporting the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, if he were to move it to a Division, would be very serious. Unless the draft order has been approved by both Houses of Parliament and approved by Her Majesty in Council before 31st August, the service discipline Acts will expire. The significance of this will not be lost on most of your Lordships, but I must spell out some of the consequences.
I say straightaway that the effect of the amendment could not be confined to the Royal Air Force alone, although that is what it seeks to achieve. Even if that were the effect, it would not be acceptable to the Government. As it is, however, if the amendment were to be carried, it would mean that the draft order, which covers all three services, had not been approved. Therefore, if the amendment were passed, there would clearly no longer be statutory authority for the maintenance of discipline in all three services. Commanding Officers would have no authority to back up their orders with sanctions; service personnel would be able to walk away from the job or disobey orders without any of the consequences associated with the requirements of disciplined Armed Forces.
The Acts do not deal with discipline alone. They provide the authority for most recruitment. The amendment would take that away. There are all kinds of other administrative matters of importance to our Armed Forces which hang on the provisions of the Acts. These, too, would be affected by the amendment.
But there is an even more fundamental point. Constitutionally the service discipline Acts are regarded as Parliament's agreement to the maintenance of the Armed Forces. In consequence, the effect of your Lordships' House deliberately allowing the expiry of these Acts would amount to the withdrawal of that approval. Obviously no government can regard such a prospect easily, nor, in my view, will this House—nor, indeed, will the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont. I am sure that he will use this debate to make his legitimate points on the very important issue which has prompted him to table the amendment. I hope that he will then withdraw it.
Returning now to the substantive Motion, the only years in which we do not generally consider an order such as this is when the three service discipline Acts are themselves up for renewal. This is achieved by the five-yearly Armed Forces Bills. The passage of these Bills through Parliament enables us to review as well as renew the discipline Acts. The present draft order is presented under powers in the Armed Forces Act 2001. The next Armed Forces Bill is due to be introduced in 2005–06.
There is one comment that I should offer about the order itself. The Government have given an undertaking that Ministers moving instruments which are subject to the affirmative procedure will tell the House whether they are satisfied that they are compatible with the rights provided under the European Convention on Human Rights. That undertaking, which covers this order, broadly mirrors the procedure for certifying primary legislation set out in Section 19 of the Human Rights Act 1998. Nothing in this order is incompatible with the ECHR. The continuation order which your Lordships are being invited to approve today is a brief document. It raises convention issues only in that it continues in force Acts that have been considered compatible with convention rights.
However, the European Court of Human Rights took the view in its recent judgment in the case of Morris v the United Kingdom that the procedures for post-trial review provided for in the service discipline Acts are not compatible with Article 6 of the convention. The court considered that the involvement of non-judicial authorities in the review of court martial findings and sentences impaired the independence of the court martial, even though that process is intended to safeguard the accused.
We have been considering how to react to this judgment and it might have been expected that we would have announced our intentions by now. However, the issues concerning post-trial review were given a fresh airing in a hearing last week before your Lordships' House in its judicial capacity. It seems appropriate to await their Lordships' judgment before taking a decision on the future of the review procedure. We shall of course make an announcement as soon as possible. The best advice that we have is that the decision of their Lordships is not likely to come before July and it may be later. If it is not July, it will be the autumn.
As I have already mentioned, it is essential that this order should be approved. It is about continuing the legislative basis for discipline in the Armed Forces. However, as your Lordships will know, the order continues three separate Acts of Parliament, one for each service. The Government have made clear their intention to alter the structure of the legislation, the better to fulfil the needs of the services and the way in which they will operate in the future. We have stated that we wish to replace the three separate Acts with a single tri-service Act. As I know of the interest in the House in seeing this come to fruition, this may be an opportune moment to provide a brief report on progress.
Following preliminary scoping work, a tri-service Act team was set up within the Ministry of Defence last September. The team is about half-way through the policy development stage, which is largely concerned with examining the differences in statutory provisions and in procedures between the services and considering how best to reconcile them.
The aim in this work has been to consider the impact of the existing legislation in the context of the increased level of inter-service co-operation, both on operations and elsewhere. This provided the impetus for the tri-service Act project in the first place. However, for most of the time most members of the Armed Forces will clearly continue to work and live in single service environments. We need to find a solution that supports operational effectiveness in both joint and single service settings.
Although discipline is a central focus of the team's work, it also has to consider other areas covered by the present legislation, such as terms of service, grievance procedures and arrangements for boards of inquiry. Some of these raise complex issues, particularly as we should like to see the tri-service Act lead to improvements in the way we do our business, over and above those to be expected simply from rationalising the legislation. We appreciate also that the benefits to be gained from the tri-service Act should not be achieved at the cost of a detrimental impact on the ethos of the single services. We expect to receive the final report from the policy development stage next spring. This will provide the firm basis for translating policy intentions into the new legislation, although I am sure that there will still be much detail to be resolved.
The next five-yearly Armed Forces Bill is due in the 2005–06 Session. Your Lordships will, I hope, understand that no commitments can be given at this stage as to when the tri-service legislation might be introduced, as this will be subject to the availability of parliamentary time. A factor here is that we are certainly talking about a very large Bill, perhaps containing between 300 and 400 clauses. Quite apart from the issue of finding a legislative slot, our overriding objective is to get this important legislation right. There is much more involved than mechanistically sticking the three present Acts together—and we are not interested in adopting a lowest common denominator approach.
Against this background, I am unable to offer any prospect at present that the legislation might be presented to Parliament in the 2003–-04 Session, as was suggested in last Session's report of the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill in another place. We shall keep timing under review. However, the resources that we have allocated to this project and the progress made so far mean that we are on track to achieve the Ministry of Defence's overall schedule. This is based on being ready for the 2005–06 Session, should parliamentary time be available then.
The need for a tri-service Act derives from the importance of having a better disciplinary framework in those many circumstances where the services work so well together. However, I can assure the House that service discipline today is in good order, as is the operational effectiveness that it serves to underpin.
We see this in Afghanistan and elsewhere. I am pleased to take this opportunity to pay the warmest possible tribute to the personnel of the Armed Forces serving in the most challenging of environments. The qualities that they display are founded in large part on firm and fair discipline, the legislative basis of which we are discussing this evening. I know that these qualities are fully valued in all parts of this House. I invite your Lordships to approve the order. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 1st May be approved [28th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Bach.)
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