ARMY (ANNUAL) BILL. (Hansard, 7 April 1910)

THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (LORD LUCAS)

My Lords, I beg to move the Second Reading of this Bill. There is one provision in it of considerable importance for the amendment of the Army Act, the effect of which is to give to the commanding officer considerably greater powers of punishment than he has had hitherto. Up to 1906 the maximum punishment that he could give was fourteen days imprisonment, or, in the particular case of absence without leave, twenty-one days. In 1906 his powers were practically decreased, because detention was substituted for imprisonment, and detention is, of course, a much milder form of punishment. What we now ask is that he should be allowed to award detention up to twenty-eight days.

The advantages are these. If you increase the powers of the commanding officer in this way it means that he will be able to award punishment to men who would otherwise have to go to a district court-martial, and there is no doubt that it is greatly to the advantage of a man to be able to be punished by his commanding officer rather than by a court-martial. It affects him in regard to his conduct sheet; and having to go to a court-martial probably means that he gets a less good report at the end of his service, which is a matter of great importance to him when he goes into civil life. Then there is the question of the time and expense of district courts-martial. A district court-martial has to be composed of officers of other corps besides the one in which the man is serving. If the man who is to be tried happens to be in an outlying detachment, very often considerable delay is incurred in assembling the court-martial, and, of course, there is the expense as well. Besides, a great deal of this is absolutely unnecessary.

Seventy per cent. of the men who go before district courts-martial plead guilty when they get there, and I should think that the majority of the offences that they have committed and for which they are to be punished come under paragraph 583 of the King's Regulations, which gives twenty-eight days detention as the maximum for those classes of offences; so that in a very large number of these cases it is practically 602 settled beforehand what is going to happen to the man, and in those circumstances it seems futile that a court-martial should have to be assembled in order to pass sentence upon him. There, is also, of course, the necessity of safeguarding the soldier against the undue exercise of the summary powers which we are proposing to confer on the commanding officer. If the commanding officer proposes to allot any other punishment than a minor one, he is bound to give the soldier his choice whether he will accept the punishment which the commanding officer metes out to him or go before a district court-martial. I think one may safely say that, on the whole, the soldier very much prefers to be tried by his commanding officer than by a district court-martial. The soldier feels that he is being tried by a man who knows him and who will be as indulgent as he can within the limits of his duty, and there is no doubt that in most cases the men prefer being tried by the commanding officer.

Only about one-half per cent.—that is to say, only one in 200—of the men who are brought before their commanding officer and given the option of being punished by him or of going to a district court-martial elects to go before the court-martial. The soldier's safeguard remains as it was before. Increasing the power of the commanding officer to award punishment does not mean that the soldier cannot, if he desires, be tried, as at present, before a district court-martial. I believe that this amendment which we are proposing is really in the interests of the soldier. It is going to do away with a very large number of courts-martial, and it is a reform of which opinion in the Army as far as we have been able to gauge it, and we have made extensive inquiries, is unanimously in favour. I therefore hope your Lordships will give the Bill a Second Reading.