HC Deb 17 February 1955 vol 537 cc616-32

6.15 p.m

Mr. Emrys Hughes

I beg to move, in page 46, line 37, to leave out "officers" and insert: members of Her Majesty's forces.

The Deputy-Chairman (Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris)

It may be for the convenience of the Committee if this Amendment were discussed with the four following Amendments; namely, in page 47, line 2, leave out from "officer" to end of line 6; in line 9, at end to add: and shall include at least one non-commissioned officer or private soldier.", in Clause 89, page 47, in line 11, to leave out "officers" and insert: members of Her Majesty's forces,". and in line 19 to leave out from "officer" to end of line 20.

Mr. Emrys Hughes

I understand that the principle underlying all these Amendments is the same, and the principle I wish to have recognised and inserted in the Bill is that soldiers other than officers should be allowed to sit as members of courts-martial. I cannot understand why the Select Committee, which presumably set out to reorganise Army law along the lines of present-day democracy, should have overlooked this point. It may be that the insistence that only officers should be members of courts-martial dates back for hundreds of years when the idea was that the superior people who were then called on to administer justice belonged to a certain strata of the governing class.

In civil law cases a hundred years ago it was impossible to find an ordinary working man acting as a justice of the peace. It is only during my time that we have seen magistrates who belong to the working class and not to the propertied class being allowed to sit on civil benches and administer justice. I believe that has had the effect of strengthening justice and the law, because an ordinary man, if he finds himself charged with an offence, can now realise that he is being judged by another ordinary man.

I believe that to be democracy. I do not pretend that we can make the Army democratic. I would not argue that that can be so in the final analysis. We have frequently heard that hon. and gallant Members have tried to make the Army more democratic and have tried to create a feeling in the mind of the ordinary soldier that the Army has some resemblance to a democratic institution for the defence of democracy. I do not sec why the ordinary soldier should be excluded from sitting as a member of a court-martial.

In my five courts-martial I was always tried by officers. I cannot say whether I should have had any more sympathy if I had been tried by men of the lower ranks, but I never could see the reason why officers were supposed to have a monopoly of human understanding. I cannot understand, for example, why a sergeant-major should not be allowed to sit upon a court-martial. I am not arguing that I should have had greater justice if a sergeant-major had sat as a member of my courts-martial, but if we must have military law I cannot see why there should be this division between the hierarchy of the Army and the lower ranks of noncommissioned officers and privates.

Nobody would say that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) did not have a sense of justice, or that he would not be qualified to sit upon a court-martial. On more than one occasion I have heard him recall his experiences in the Army as a sergeant-major. I am sure that he had a very gallant career, and had as much common sense as any officer from Sandhurst, and could, therefore, tackle the human problems involved in offences against discipline just as well as those officers.

I have not the prejudices against Sandhurst that are held by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg); I have an objective view of the whole lot. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley will support the Amendment. He usually looks with the greatest suspicion upon Amendments moved by me on the assumption that I am out to undermine the discipline of the Army. Sometimes he takes the point of view which used to be adopted by the late Will Fyffe, that "Glasgow belongs to me." My hon. Friend believes, in the same way, that the British Army belongs to him. The only difference is that Will Fyffe was drunk and my hon. Friend is sober.

I appeal to my hon. Friends to support the Amendment, or at least to attempt to answer the arguments I am putting forward. I do not see why we should not attempt to democratise court-martial procedure. I believe that the president of the court should be able to look through the list of soldiers under his command and say, "So-and-so is an intelligent man; so-and-so has a wide experience of life. Corporal so-and-so and Sergeant so-and-so have been in the Army for a long time; they understand the Regulations, and know the human problems with which the soldier is confronted. Let them sit as members of the court-martial." I can see no answer to that argument.

We not only want justice to be done; we want it to be seen to be done. In these days of compulsory military service we do not know whom we might be able to call upon from the ranks. There might be a qualified lawyer, a businessman or an ordinary human being capable of coming to a reasonable human decision upon matters affecting discipline in the Army. I do not see why this duty should be a privilege of the officer corps.

Let us consider some of the offences which are covered by the Bill. A soldier can be prosecuted for being drunk. I do not know that one needs to be an Army officer in order to be able to make up one's mind whether or not a man is drunk. I do not know whether the question requires legal argument. I cannot understand why, throughout the whole range of disciplinary offences, the ordinary private soldier or non-commissioned officer should not be legally entitled to sit as a member of a court-martial. If we allowed him to do so I believe that we should be taking a step forward.

The Secretary of State for War (Mr. Antony Head)

I was most interested in the speech of the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes). I could not help feeling at one period that, had he moved the Amendment successfully before his own troubles arose in respect of courts-martial and a sergeant-major had been sitting as a member of the court, we might have been deprived of the pleasure of hearing the speech which he has just made—because it might have been that his sentence would not yet have expired.

Mr. Emrys Hughes

Under the Section of the Act with which I was charged I received the maximum sentence, which was two years.

Mr. Head

I did not think that the hon. Member was always the sergeant-major's favourite during his soldiering career. In all seriousness, I do not think that he will expect me to make a long speech upon the point, which has been considered most seriously by a great many people, including the Services.

The hon. Member referred to what he termed the democratic or non-class side of the question. He said that in the civil equivalent today all manner of men sit upon the bench, but that situation was not in any way reflected in the Army. I do not want to make a long speech about officer entry into the Army, but today, with Welbeck and places like the Duke of York's School and Sandhurst, commissions are being given to men from the ranks in very much larger numbers than ever before. I assure the hon. Member that that is so. Within the general framework of the structure of the officer class, the situation is altering to a considerable extent.

I do not expect to carry the hon. Member with me upon my second point, which concerns the question of discipline in the Army. This is a matter which is peculiar to the Services. A special responsibility devolves upon officers in connection with discipline. The right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede)—whom we all know was a sergeant-major—and the hon. Member for Brierley Hill (Mr. Simmons) will agree that although, as I should never deny, in his influence for discipline in the Army a sergeant-major has much more effect than a second-lieutenant, the fact remains that a special responsibility is laid upon officers in this connection. It is traditional.

The question whether or not this change should be accepted was discussed at very great length by the Lewis Committee, who considered the suggestion in relation to three questions: First, would it tend to improve the quality of the court? Second, would it tend to improve the prospect, or the appearance, of justice being done? Third, would it tend to improve or impair discipline?

6.30 p.m.

Those were the three aspects from which they considered the matter. They took a lot of evidence and considered the position at great length and then made a Report which I have no doubt the hon. Gentleman has read. They said at the end of it: The fundamental objections are that in the emphatic opinion of those who ought to know the suggested innovation would damage discipline, and that in our opinion it would not improve the administration of justice. In fact there would be a danger that the non-commissioned officer selected to sit would tend to regard himself as being on the court in a representative rather than in a judicial capacity. That was the conclusion of the Lewis Committee. That conclusion was then considered by the then Labour Government and they accepted it without amendment. In fact, they issued a White Paper to that effect. When the Select Committee was appointed the whole question was re-considered and I think that the members were in agreement with the Lewis Committee in this respect. They acquitted the Services entirely of being reactionary or unprogressive in their attitude to changes throughout the Army.

I think that the right hon. Gentleman and those on the Committee will agree with what I have said. The Lewis Committee said the same thing. They said that they believed that this change would not be an asset, that it would not be better from the point of view of justice being done, and that in general it would be against the maintenance of discipline throughout the Army.

I understand and appreciate the motives and feelings of the hon. Member for South Ayrshire, which I am certain are based on justice; but in the light of what was proposed by the Lewis Committee and of the former Government's adoption of that proposal, and in view of the Select Committee's reconsideration and their unanimous finding on the subject, I am afraid that T cannot accept the Amendment.

Mr. S. Silverman

I have been very disappointed indeed by the right hon. Gentleman's reply. He will forgive me for saying that he has not sought to offer any answer whatever to my hon. Friend's most persuasive argument. He has fallen back on authority. He has said, "I will not do what you are asking because the Lewis Committee did not recommend it, because the previous Government accepted the decision of the Lewis Committee and because the Select Committee, which has just reconsidered the matter, has come to the same conclusion as that reached by the Lewis Committee."

As far as I know, this is the first occasion on which the House of Commons has been asked to consider this suggestion and to deal with it. I want to try to follow the arguments. I did not take a note of them, but I think that I can remember most of the arguments to which the right hon. Gentleman referred as being those on which the Lewis Committee—which everybody has followed since—relied.

I should like to say, first, that the argument about discipline does not impress me at all. I confess that arguments about discipline never do impress me in this or any other matter, but one recognises that one cannot have the Services without discipline. What I want to say to the right hon. Gentleman is that courts-martial have nothing at all to do with discipline. The court-martial is still a court. The business of the officer may be, and indeed is, to be responsible for discipline, but it is no more the business of the commissioned officer than it is of the non-commissioned officer. He, too, has responsibility for discipline. One would have thought that every loyal soldier would have his own particular responsibility for discipline, too.

Courts-martial only come into the picture when an offence has been alleged and some kind of third-party judgment, some kind of judicial opinion, is necessary upon two questions. One of them is whether the act alleged was committed at all, which is very often denied at courts-martial as in other courts, and the other is, if guilt is proved, what ought the penalty to be.

Both those are judicial questions. It is precisely because in many cases the commanding officer feels that the question involved on a certain charge is one not proper for him to determine as a matter of discipline within his own function, that the court-martial is called upon. It seems to me, therefore, that arguments directed to the question of discipline are completely irrelevant. If they were not irelevant I should have thought that the argument was wrong, anyhow. Why in the world discipline should be adversely affected instead of improved by having a court which would command the full confidence of everyone who might come before it, I cannot understand.

Then the right hon. Gentleman said, "Never mind the argument about democracy. There may have been something in the argument once, but there is not much in the argument now because in fact we take officers from a great variety of classes and backgrounds now when previously we did not do so and, therefore, the argument by analogy does not apply because commissioned officers also come from all walks of life." That may be so, but it does not dispose of the argument in the least. There are a great many people in the Army who might not be suitable for commissioned rank and still very suitable to be members of a judicial tribunal.

All kinds of considerations go into the selection of officers, and I am prepared to agree that they are much more democratic considerations—to use a much abused word—than they used to be; but still there are a great many grounds on which a man who is a valuable soldier is, nevertheless, not regarded as suitable for commissioned rank. We all know of cases, especially in National Service, of boys with very good backgrounds and excellent educational records who are nevertheless regarded by the personnel selection officers as more suitable for non-commissioned rank than for commissioned rank, for a variety of reasons which seem good to them. They may be correct reasons but they have absolutely nothing whatever to do with the considerations which ought to apply when one is considering whether a man is fit to discharge judicial functions or not.

It seems to me that there is no good reason for not accepting the Amendment. I am reminded of the discussion last week about the phrase "officer and a gentleman." We are really in the same field and arguing against the same background. I should have thought that the words ought to be amended and one should say either simply "officer" or "a soldier and a gentleman." Why not? One could say, "a sergeant-major and a gentleman" or "a non-commissioned officer and a gentleman." Alternatively, let us leave out the words "and a gentleman" altogether, on the basis that the qualities that entitle men to that description may equally be found in all walks of life, in all classes and in commissioned or non-commissioned ranks.

It seems to me that the objection to the proposal of my hon. Friend belongs to that order of thinking, the order of thinking that, when all is said and done and when all allowances have been made for broader and more democratic criteria of selection, and when the selection has been made, there is, nevertheless, drawn a deep chasm, a broad, wide and unbridgeable distinction, between com- missioned officers in the one class and everybody else in the Army in another. Nothing that the right hon. Gentleman said or quoted from the Report of the Lewis Committee, or, for that matter, from the Select Committee's Report, which is now, more or less, being implemented, removes that suspicion from people's minds.

Let us take the case of a man who has served 20 years or more in the Regular Forces, perhaps in a Guards regiment. He may have fought through two world wars; he may have served in every possible variety of condition in every quarter of the globe. Admittedly, such a man has a broader and deeper experience of life, a more mellow attitude to affairs, an understanding, based on his own experience, of the conditions in which soldiers' lives are lived and of the offences that may be committed, than a newly-commissioned officer, whatever his background.

What can be the objection to saying that the first of these two individuals, the man with a very long, wide service, broad experience and a deep knowledge of life, is much better and more useful sitting on a court-martial inquiry than a man whose commission may be barely a week old? How can we justify a law which prevents or denies to the Forces the judicial services of people so eminently qualified, unless, indeed, sub-consciously or unconsciously, we are really relying on a class distinction to which no one would confess and which no one would approve? I hope the Government will reconsider the matter.

Mr. Ede (South Shields)

I would not have spoken in this debate but for the fact that the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) and the Secretary of State for War both alluded to me personally in the course of such observations as they had to offer.

I should be sorry to see this amendment made to the Bill, because I do not agree with the bon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) about the mellowing influence of 20 years in the Guards and of fighting in all quarters of the globe. I have met some Guards sergeant-majors, and mellowness is hardly the description which one would give to the result of prolonged military experience in such a regiment. In fact, I recollect that when I was a provost-sergeant I once had to arrest a private of the King's Own Scottish Borderers, who was getting a little mellow himself, and who had happened to wander into a village in France into which some Guards had come from a neighbouring village. He was confiding to a pot of weak French beer—which he was steadily weakening by his own tears—that he had fought all over the world with soldiers, and that he now found himself brigaded with the Guards.

Mr. S. Silverman

Will my right hon. Friend allow me? My right hon. Friend himself has been for many years a distinguished justice of the peace and has presided for many years over a bench of magistrates, if I may so, with great success. Does he really think that if he had been sitting as a member of a court-martial he would have been less judicial than he was on the bench?

6.45 p.m.

Mr. Ede

I may not have been less judicial, but I might have had a far worse time afterwards. I know that when I sat as a magistrate I went home or came to the House and carried on my ordinary avocations, and did not meet the people with whom I had had to deal on the bench, but if as a non-commissioned officer or as a private soldier I had had to sit in this capacity, and then go back to the barrack room—

Mr. Silverman

They come from another unit.

Mr. Ede

There is nothing in this Amendment about coming from another unit.

Mr. Silverman

Oh, yes, there is. It is the same with the officers; they do not come from the same unit, either.

Mr. Ede

The hon. Gentleman made a speech of some length, and I do not wish to emulate him in length. I am trying to deal with a very human aspect of this matter. Whether or not it was my own unit or another unit, I am quite certain that there would be a judicial finding by men in the unit of the way in which a man of the same rank as themselves had discharged his duty in this respect, and I am quite certain that that is an entirely different thing.

I rejoice that since about 1906 there has been no property qualification for justices in this country, but I would not be sure, from what I occasionally hear in the magistrates' room, that the presence of people of comparatively small incomes dealing with other people of small incomes means that they get less harsh treatment than they would otherwise receive. I am certain that those people who thought that, by making women jurors, women's cases would receive more sympathetic consideration in the courts cannot feel that experience has justified them in what they said.

I do not think that a court composed as my hon. Friend wishes it to be composed would carry the full confidence of the rank and file of the Army. I am quite sure that they also would suspect that, on occasion, there would be the kind of pressure that acts inversely on the person subjected to it, and that greater severity might on certain occasions come from the presence of these people on the court than would otherwise be the case. I do not know how many hon. and right hon. Gentlemen now present saw what I thought was a very fair play on this matter—"Carrington, V.C."—when it was recently produced in London. What happened there? There was a conflict between law and justice, to put it quite crudely, and the two officers on the court-martial, who were the traditional type of officer, stood for justice, while the two rankers who were there knew the regulations so well that they stood for law. As a matter of fact, taking any form of abstract justice into consideration, an injustice was, in fact, perpetrated on a very gallant officer.

The disciplinary powers of the noncommissioned officer and of the warrant officer come from entirely different sources from that which is enforced by courts-martial. It is the personal respect which the man of subordinate rank has for the officers that secures for them their position. I would be very sorry to see them mixed up with the judicial system in the Army. I always felt that if ever I were guilty of an offence, were found out and had to be tried, I would rather be tried by a court-martial than by a civilian court. I would not say the same about people who were innocent.

The position of the non-commissioned officer and the warrant officer in a unit derive from a form of respect entirely different from the form of respect enforced by a court-martial. I daresay that the Secretary of State knows of the private soldier, a recent recruit, who was stopped by a colonel because he had not saluted. The colonel said to the private soldier, "Don't you know I'm your colonel?" The private soldier said, "Oh, you'd better look out. I've just heard the sergeant major say, 'Where's that b colonel? I can never find him when I want him'."

I could not vote for this Amendment. I believe it will not be wanted by the rank and file in the Army and will not increase their respect for courts-martial. In fact, any non-commissioned officer, warrant officer or man who was selected to serve on a court-martial would have a very grim task for many months in living down the fact that he had been thought worthy to be on a court-martial.

Mr. James Simmons (Brierley Hill)

In spite of the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), for whom I have a great respect, I must support the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes). My right hon. Friend mentioned the film "Carrington, V.C.," but he did not say that if the rank and file had served on the court-martial they would have supported Carrington, V.C. We had a very clear indication of what the feelings of the rank and file soldiers were. They knew what a despicable cad the officer was. They would have supported Carrington, and would have used their judgment in favour of justice on that occasion.

The analogy with benches of justices of the peace is good. In the old days, the J.P.s were all drawn from one social class and were of one social status. We know what happened in country districts to poachers and such people who were brought before magistrates who were landowners, and who had no regard for justice but were protecting their own property and property rights. The introduction of people like housewives on to magistrates' benches has resulted in a far more reliable and much more just appraisal of a case than happened in the old days when only one social class sat on the bench.

I failed to gather from the speech of the Secretary of State his reasons for opposing the Amendment. He made assumptions but did not back them up with reasons. He said that there would be danger to discipline, but he did not say how. I have yet to see how the inclusion of a private soldier or noncommissioned officer upon a court-martial would undermine the discipline of the regiment or the battalion. We have been told that officers of the Army are drawn from all classes of the community. It is easier to become an officer now than it was when I was a private soldier. What we called "the officer class" is now more representative of the whole community.

It is, therefore, claimed that there is no need to have non-commissioned officers or privates on a court-martial. The answer is that even if the officer used to be one of the rank and file he is no longer one of them. It is the existing environment that matters. A private or a noncommissioned officer on a court-martial would represent a point of view which he would understand from his present experience, and not from past experience.

We are up against the old class idea again of "officers and gentlemen." I am bound to conclude that the refusal to place on courts-martial people below the rank of commissioned officer is for the purely class reason that commissioned officers belong to a special category of the community and that only from them can we expect justice and fair play in carrying on a court-martial.

In these democratic days, when people even from the lower ranks enter the officer class, there is no reason why, by the same token, they should not sit on courts-martial to weigh evidence and pass judgment, both on officers and on people of their own rank.

Mr. Willis

I support the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes), because the Clause is too tightly worded. This Measure will have to last a long time. The part that we seek to amend provides that a district court-martial shall consist of the president and not less than two other officers. Whatever we decide will remain the practice for as long as this Measure exists. I think the wording is much too tight and that the Government ought to be prepared to experiment.

We all agree with the point put by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) but I could not quite understand what it was he assumed about the non-commissioned officer responsible for maintaining discipline. If his story was correct, the discipline of the N.C.O. is based on nothing but fear. If it is not based on fear it is based on respect. If it is based on respect for the non-commissioned officer, surely more respect will be shown to that non-commissioned officer if he has to serve on a court-martial. Why should a man from the rank and file be unfit to serve on a court-martial and, three months later, simply because he has been promoted, be fit to do so? That is quite the wrong approach.

The qualifications required of a man who sits on a court-martial are not necessarily anything to do with his qualifications as an officer. The Secretary of State for War spoke about widening the scope of entry into the officer ranks. We all agree about that, but why has the scope been widened? It is not to make it more democratic, but because the Army is becoming more and more technical; therefore, we have to widen our scope.

Promotion today depends far more on being competent in one's trade or profession than ever it did in the past. I have yet to learn that because a man is competent in ballistics or something of that sort he is necessarily a suitable person to sit on a court-martial. Therefore, we ought to approach this matter with much greater flexibility of mind.

7.0 p.m.

As I said earlier today, I have had some experience in two Services on what one might call the "lower side of the fence." I have had a considerable amount to do with the other ranks in the Army and outside the Army in ex-Service men's organisations, and I have always found that when the other ranks, or, when I was in the Navy, the lower-deck ratings, were expected to approach anything with a sense of responsibility they invariably did so. I have never found it otherwise.

This insistence on having two other officers as well as the president is pandering to the mystique which exists in the Forces today. It is not in accordance with civilian practice or in accordance with our democratic ideas about which we speak so much, but to which we pay little more than lip-service. If the right hon. Gentleman cannot accept the Amendment, he should at least experiment in this direction. He need not make it obligatory that there should be other ranks on a court-martial, but at least he could so frame the Clause as to make it possible for the experiment to be tried, in order to see if all the dire consequences expected would result from it.

I was quite unsatisfied about the point made that this step would destroy discipline in the Army. We have been given no evidence that that would necessarily result from this proposal. We have been told merely that that is the conclusion which has been reached, and I think that the right hon. Gentleman, even if he does not accept the Amendment, should consider it with a view to seeing if he cannot progress a little in this direction.

Mr. Turner-Samuels

I must say, first, that I have no predilections on this matter, although it is a problem which, while I have been listening to the discussion, has exercised by mind very much. The Secretary of State certainly gave no reasons why this Amendment ought not to be accepted. He gave no intelligent grounds why there should be this distinction in courts-martial in the Army as compared with trials of offences in civil life. Speaking as a lawyer, I do not at the moment recognise any fundamental reason at all why there should be this distinction, and certainly none has come from the right hon. Gentleman.

A court-martial is a military trial, and is just as much a trial as is an ordinary civil trial. One has to consider questions of fact and questions of law. The officers whom it is suggested should be appointed to the exclusion of any other lower rank are not people who are particularly qualified in matters of law. Indeed they are not picked for that purpose, and no decision of law is or could be left absolutely to them without due direction. They would be advised by the Judge Advocate General or the Deputy Judge Advocate General on questions of law, and that functionary would also sum up the whole of the evidence in order to guide the court in its decisions.

I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman and also the Lord Advocate what distinction they draw between the constitution of a court-martial und that of a jury. In the history of this country it has been fundamental to the trial of any subject, in the case of a civil trial, that he should be tried by 12 of his own fellow men. Of course, it is true that being tried by officers is being tried by one's own fellow men, but it is being tried by a particular class of fellow men to the exclusion of others. What is exercising my mind is whether that is right.

On a jury we have all sorts of people and all classes, the rich, the less well-to-do, and professional people, so long as their professions do not exempt them from serving on a jury. All types and kinds of people from all walks of life are called to sit on a jury to try the particular case. A trial for an offence before a court-martial is no less and no more a crime than a trial before a civil court. Why should it have been historically considered all through the centuries as essential, advisable, right, good, profitable, and just to have a jury in an ordinary criminal prosecution before a civil court, and yet to lay down, in the most specific terms, that that should not be so in a court-martial trial?

To my mind, the Secretary of State and his legal advisers ought to consider whether, in the face of that distinction, there might not be in the minds of those in the Forces a feeling that they are not receiving the fair consideration in Army life which they would normally receive in civil life. I think that this is a matter of some substance. It may be that in the last analysis there is some good reason which we have not heard for rejecting the Amendment. Certainly a good reason would have to be adduced in order to show either the inconvenience or the in-advisability of doing what is sought to be done by this Amendment.

I am not dogmatising in any way, but it will not do for the Secretary of State, or anyone else, to come along and say, "Well, one has an apprehension here of the consequences to the members of the court." I do not believe that there can be any difference at all from that point of view as to what is likely to happen to officers if there are no other ranks of the Army on the court-martial as against what would happen to ordinary soldiers or those of non-commissioned rank.

Even if it could be said that while this proposed change was being tried out there might be difficulty for the time being, I do not think that would be an excuse for not trying it, because eventually the matter would right itself. We might say exactly the same thing about members of a jury when they find a man guilty of some crime. It is true they have not to live in prison with the man, and that they go to their own homes and have no further association with him. Nevertheless, that does not dissociate them from the verdict which has been given, and if the verdict is right, then it stands upon the basis of its integrity. That would apply equally to a court-martial.

It seems to me that the ground of apprehension as to the consequences to members of the court, which has been put forward, will not do. If the court is constituted of officers, of non-commissioned officers or of men in the ranks, and a really just and proper decision is given, and seen to be given on the facts and on the evidence, I cannot believe that there will follow some sort of vendetta in the barrack room or anywhere else. I do not think that the view to the contrary can be seriously accepted.

In the administration of our system of justice—and, after all, this is the administration of justice; it does not matter whether it is in the Army or in civil life—trial by courts-martial is an exception to the principles of the jury system. That point should be made very forcibly. This is an exception to what everyone agrees is a proper institution—trial by jury. That being so, some justification ought to be given as to why this exception should continue in relation to the Army.

Upon that note, I would ask the Secretary of State and the Lord Advocate, who will no doubt consult the other Law Officers, to see whether an experiment cannot be made in order to bring into the administration of justice in the Army exactly the same sort of structure, the same sort of obvious justice, the same sort of assurance to the ordinary man who is to be tried there, that he is to get, not only justice but justice from his peers in a democratic way about which he cannot possibly have any reason to complain.

Amendment negatived.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 89 to 102 ordered to stand part of the Bill.