ARMY (SUSPENSION OF SENTENCES) BILL (Hansard, 10 March 1915)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, this is a Bill the passing of which has been rendered desirable by the circumstances of the war. As your Lordships know, included in the very large number of young soldiers who are out at the Front there are a good many to whom military affairs are comparatively new and among whom offences which occur are clue not to any inherent vice but in many cases simply to want of nerve and want of familiarity with trying circumstances. Still, military discipline requires that certain offences which come within this category should be dealt with, in some cases severely. The proposals in the Bill are founded on the observations of the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief and the Adjutant-General, and they have met with the approval of my noble 651 and gallant friend the head of the Army Council.
The change which is desired to be made is this, that when a soldier is convicted by Court-Martial and sentenced, the sentence may, in the discretion of the military authorities, be suspended so that it is not to commence it may be for six weeks, or it may be for three months. During that period the soldier convicted will have another chance. He goes into the trenches; he distinguishes himself by his gallantry; his sentence in that case is remitted. If, on the other hand, it is proved that he has misconducted himself from some inherent defect of character, then his sentence will go on. That provision will reach two cases. First, it will reach the case of the soldier who, as I have said, has erred front weakness and not from design, and whom we all wish to help back to an honourable position in the ranks. It will also meet another class of case. It has fallen to me during the war to relieve my noble and gallant friend of duties in connection with Courts-Martial, and almost every night, sometimes into the small hours of the morning, I am busy considering in individual cases what is to be done with sentences, and what is to be done with them depends upon a classification of the character of the offenders. There is a category of offender, not a large category I am glad to say, who attempts the commission of an offence in order to escape the perils of the trenches. There are not many such cases, but there is a sufficiency of them to make it worth while to deal with this class of case. This Bill enables that class to be dealt with. Such an offender may be sent back to the trenches with his sentence to serve afterwards unless he redeems his character. So that whether you take them from the point of view of the good man or the bad man, the provisions of this Bill alike commend themselves to common sense and to justice. That is the whole of the Bill, and I ask your Lordships to read it a second time and pass it through its remaining stages to-day.

§ VISCOUNT MIDLETON
My Lords. I am sure that this Bill will be received with proper respect. But I did not quite understand, from the statement of the noble and learned Viscount, whether it is intended 652 that this process is to apply pretty universally to sentences or whether it is to be the exception. There is no pleasure to officers in sitting on Courts-Martial, and while we should all welcome the greatest possible leniency in our Military Code, the position of officers composing Courts-Martial if in nine cases out of ten the confirming authority is to suspend the sentence during the war would certainly not be an agreeable one. I think we ought either to change our Code if it is too severe, or make the cases in which the confirming authority is to come in occasional rather than the rule. I suggest that point for the consideration of the noble and learned Viscount. I am quite sure that there is nothing which officers who have been long connected with the Army would more deprecate than that Courts-Martial should become a sort of farce, their decisions being always likely to be over-ruled. The great object is that the soldier should feel that his sentence is the least which ought to be given, and that the officers who sit upon him, having given the fullest consideration to his case, should know that the decision at, which they arrive will as a rule be confirmed.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
The Bill permits this as a discretion to the confirming authority, which ultimately means the Commander-in-Chief. At present all cases go to a confirming authority, as the noble Viscount knows. That authority exercises a discretion, and afterwards the discretion is reviewed by the Secretary of State in all cases where it properly should be reviewed. But the review, of course, is exceptional. Every officer serving on a Court-Martial knows that the sentence may be reviewed and altered, but it is an exceptional course to take. All that is meant by the Bill is this. The Court-Martial will proceed on the exact principles of justice, and it will not be any interference with or reflection upon the Court-Martial if this discretion is exercised. But it is a discretion which will be exercised as an exception to the general rule for the purpose of meeting what is felt to be a necessity caused by the new state of things in the Army.