§ 7.5 p.m.
§ The Minister of State for Defence Support (Lord Trefgarne)My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
The Armed Forces Bill is considered every five years and provides for the continuation of each of the three service discipline Acts. The Bill now before your Lordships has already been subject to detailed examination by a Select Committee of another place. At this stage I should only mention that it recommended that the present system of quinquennial Bills continue. Clause 1 provides for this system of parliamentary scrutiny to continue as before, and I commend it to your Lordships.
The other clauses of the Bill contain a number of measures to bring service law more closely into line with civil criminal law and practice, as well as some which are designed to rectify deficiencies or anomalies which have come to light since the previous Armed Forces Act. It does not contain as much in the way of significant innovation as some of its predecessors have done, but it is nevertheless a worthwhile Bill with several interesting points to which I should like to draw particular attention.
Clause 2 of the Bill makes it an offence intentionally to interfere with or impair the efficiency of service equipment, or to modify or interfere with signals being received or transmitted by such equipment, or to do anything likely to produce such results. This new provision has been made necessary by the increasing dependence of the services on computers in both the operational and administrative fields, and it is designed primarily to deal with interference short of actual physical damage; an example might be the alteration of a computer program.
The following clause deals with offences which can be committed in relation to official documents and amends the section of each service discipline Act relating to such offences. Its principal objective is to make it quite clear that the section applies not just to written records, such as books and ledgers, but also to more modern information storage methods such as computer tapes, photographs and microfilm.
I should also draw your Lordships' attention to Clause 7, which removes the three-year time limit normally affecting proceedings under service law. This time limit applies to almost all proceedings under that law, whether before a court-martial, a Standing Civilian Court, or summary proceedings. At present the only cases exempt from the time limit are those criminal cases where the relevant civilian statute otherwise provides and cases involving desertion, mutiny, failure to suppress mutiny, or those civil offences committed outside the U.K. for which the Attorney-General consents to the proceedings. This general time limit has no equivalent in the civil criminal law, although certain statutes impose their own time limits for certain specified offences. The three-year limit has created some difficulties in the past, particularly in cases such as fraud, which require long and complex investigation and preparation before they are brought to trial. This clause abolishes the three-year time limit, but where the general 67 criminal law contains a specific time limit on any particular indictable offence that time limit would of course continue to apply to service law. I believe that this is a sensible measure to bring service law more closely into line with the civilian criminal law.
We should not forget that service law applies not only to our servicemen. Some parts of the service discipline Acts also apply to certain civilians overseas; for example, when they are supporting the services or are part of a serviceman's family. When such people commit offences, their cases may be dealt with by court-martial or by summary proceedings. Additionally, in north-west Europe, those subject to army or air force law may be dealt with by a special court established to deal only with civilians, known as the Standing Civilian Court. It is our firm intention that civilians subject to service law should as far as possible be subject to the same provisions and punishments as apply in the U.K. Clauses 9, 10 and 11 of this Bill are included in furtherance of that aim.
Clause 13 of the Bill stems directly from the 1981 report of the Select Committee of another place which examined the Armed Forces Bill of that year and recommended that consideration be given to providing a legal framework for the transfer of service children at risk overseas into the hands of the United Kingdom welfare authorities. This clause does precisely that, and also allows the service place of safety order on the child to run for a maximum of 24 hours in the United Kingdom (within the overall maximum of 28 days permitted by the 1981 Act). This 24-hour period allows time for the local welfare authorities to make the necessary arrangements to meet the child. I believe that the clause provides valuable extra protection for the child at risk, and I hope that your Lordships will welcome it.
The last clause that I should like to single out is Clause 14. It emphasises the growing importance of the role of women in our armed forces, in this case the army in particular. Clause 14 removes the present statutory obstacles in the way of imposing on regular army servicewomen a regular reserve liability on completion of their active service in the same way as for men. Servicewomen fill many vital roles in the army, and in some of these important areas there are shortages in the reserve. The sensible solution is to allow women to fill them by imposing a regular reserve liability and this is made possible by Clause 14. Those mainly affected will be new entrants, but some existing servicewomen may also be invited to accept the liability, though I should stress that in the case of existing servicewomen there will be no question of compulsion in this matter.
The remaining provisions of the Bill are largely technical and I do not propose to delay your Lordships by discussing them in detail at this moment. Suffice it to say that I believe the Bill contains a number of useful new provisions, together with others which will tidy up the present service discipline Acts. It is our duty to ensure that our volunteer servicemen, in taking on a commitment to serve under the service discipline Acts, are indeed protected by a fair and clear disciplinary system. I believe that this Bill is a valuable contribution to that end and I commend it to your Lordships. I beg to move.
§ Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Trefgarne).
§ 7.13 p.m.
§ Lord Graham of EdmontonMy Lords, I can assure the Minister that there will be no difficulties, though there will be differences between us, in ensuring a speedy passage of this Bill through your Lordships' House, because we on this side of the Chamber, and indeed noble Lords from all sides of the House, recognise that a Bill of this kind is an integral part not only of our legislation but of the proper conduct of discipline in the armed forces. Though this Bill is simply a piece of legislation to us, we believe that it is of vital interest to those who are serving in the armed forces, and, more importantly so far as concerns the Minister, to those whom he seeks to attract to serve.
I was particularly interested—and no doubt we can pursue the matter further at Committee stage—in the intention of the Government to provide those in the armed forces with the kind of rights that are enjoyed by those in civilian life. We recognise the restrictions imposed by the very nature of service in the armed forces and its responsibilities, and I was pleased to hear the Minister refer to particular chapters in relation to this. I do not intend to deal with the whole Bill and its raison d'etre in what may be called a full dress Second Reading speech.
Quite rightly the Minister drew attention to those points which he considered worthy of emphasis as being of special importance. I want simply to say that matters which we consider to be of importance (and we shall return to them at Committee stage) can be identified fairly well as those matters about which the Select Committee desired to hear evidence. Some of the evidence was unsatisfactory and some was disputed; some of the conclusions were dissented from. Colleagues in another place felt that they would like to hear more about matters concerning summary jurisdiction, court martial, the death penalty, terms of service, desertion, absence without leave, homosexuality, drug and alcohol abuse and trade union rights.
It would not be proper to deal with these matters at length at the Second Reading stage and I simply say to the Minister and his advisers that it would not be my intention to use too often the right to produce amendments and initiate debates at Committee stage but to use the question of whether the clause shall stand part of the Bill in order to invite the Minister to say a little more, so as to understand more fully whether there has been a change in thinking since the matter was debated in another place.
My honourable friend Mr. Kevin McNamara highlighted not so much what the Bill encompasses but areas for which the Bill refuses to legislate, despite the powerful arguments at all stages of the Bill in another place. I note from the proceedings in another place that Members were reminded of the dictum of Lord Justice Mansfield in 1812. It is a good dictum so far as this Bill is concerned. He said:
A person does not, by enlisting in the armed forces, thereby cease to enjoy his rights as a citizen or to be exempt from his liabilities under the ordinary law of the land".69 I shall touch on some of the matters that we shall return to at a later stage. First of all, there is the question of the rights of homosexuals who are serving in the armed forces. I use as my text evidence given in the report of the Select Committee on page 244. There is a memorandum from the "At Ease" Counselling Service, which states:Any homosexual act, or lesbian act, has been classed as illegal in the armed forces of this country for many years, as indeed it was in civilian life until the Sexual Offences Act of 1967. The military were, however, specifically excluded from that reform and as such many thousands of homosexual men and lesbian women serving in Her Majesty's Forces are, through no fault of their own, being subjected to intolerable levels of discrimination, abuse, violence, harassment, interrogation, imprisonment and dismissal.I do not for a moment lay those pejorative charges at the door of what I call "the authority" or the military, but it is a matter upon which I wish to engage the Minister not at length but in some degree at a later stage.There is also the question of drugs. I am not sure whether the Minister has seen the Sunday Times issue of yesterday but in it there is an article by Stephen Davis which carries the headline "Army goes into battle on drug abuse in ranks". He may recall that one of the renewal orders was before the House some two years ago. I acknowledged then that it was a difficult situation. Drug abuse in civilian life has permeated many closed institutions—I made reference to the prison service—and it is a problem that they are all trying to tackle.
The article in the Sunday Times states:
The Army is introducing chemical drug-testing machines in a new drive against drug abuse in the services … The rising trend of drug use in British society, especially among the young, has fuelled concern among the armed forces, which need to recruit 30,000 men and women a year to meet their manpower requirements. About 87,000 of their personnel, 27 per cent. of the total, are aged 21 or under".When I looked for some reference to the scale of the problem as seen by "the authority", I found on page 157:Scale of the Problem in the Armed Forces".This is a memorandum submitted by the Ministry of Defence. It goes on:The precise extent of drug abuse within the Armed Forces is difficult to assess due to its illegal nature which necessarily results in clandestine activity by those involved. Those convicted in past years on drug related offences are shown at Annex A together with provisional figures for the first six months of 1985. In 1984, 353 Servicemen and women were convicted in military and civilian proceedings of drug related offences. This represents just 0.1 per cent. of total Service manpower or around 1 case per thousand personnel. Based on these figures the Services problem with drug abuse could be assessed as relatively minor".Looking at that in isolation, I could be persuaded that the problem is relatively minor. However, yesterday's newspaper article while giving the figure of 353, also says that this was a rise from 122 in 1982. The trend is of course very important. If there has been an increase of that proportion in two years the Minister has surely a responsibility to say that it is not merely a minor problem but that he appreciates that, should the trend continue, it will represent not 0.1 per cent. but 0.2 per cent. and that will happen not within three years but two. The noble Lord will recognise that this is an issue to which we shall return later.70 Another matter of great concern upon which the Minister touched relates to the detention and treatment of young persons and children. Clause 11 proposes that the power to make custodial orders in relation to civilians should be extended to male offenders between the age of 15 and 17. By this amendment, the military legal system would be accruing to itself powers comparable to juvenile courts and children's panels in Scotland. The At Ease organisation tells me:
Such an amendment must cause concern for the management of the court hearing for the juvenile and his family. Many adult defendants have remarked upon the intimidatory nature of court martials and the pace at which the proceedings are conducted. There is no suggestion in the Bill that male offenders between the ages of 15 and 17 years should be dealt with by a different coup and procedure than those of 17 years and above".The organisation says a great deal more. It is neither appropriate nor relevant to make those points here. I would, however, give the Minister notice that if he is unable to say more tonight I shall be returning to this matter in Committee. I shall also be raising on the appropriate clause in Committee the impact of those parts of the Bill that endow the armed forces with what are termed emergency powers, especially as they affect the civilian population. Here again, there is a smack of a desire to leave far too much in the dark concerning matters that can affect those living near military establishments. I expect from the Minister tonight and later the stock answer that the national interest demands secrecy at times, even when disclosure may enlighten and educate those who are directly affected. I shall want therefore to return to the issue of emergency powers.There is little more that I wish to say at this stage. Within the minimum of procedural time with which we shall be provided to carry out our responsibilities, we shall not impede the passage of the Bill. We shall, however, have some searching questions to ask at later stages.
§ 7.24 p.m.
§ Lord MayhewMy Lords, I apologise for the absence of my name from the list of speakers. I should, however, like to associate my noble friends and myself with the general purpose of the Bill, which on balance is a good one. There are a number of clauses that we welcome. These are Clauses 2 and 3, and 9 and 10. But, equally, there are some questions that we shall need to ask at the Committee stage and one or two changes that we shall try to make. We agree with the noble Lord, Lord Graham, that Clause 11 needs a lot more looking at. The noble Lord the Minister will have difficulty in this House over that clause. It is not self-evident at all that a court martial is the proper body to sentence those under 17 to a custodial penalty. It is not self-evident at all. We shall argue from these Benches in Committee that it is wholly inappropriate that a court martial should be given these powers and that different provisions should be made in these cases.
Our approach in Committee, as indeed now, is that we want to respond to genuine demand for change. Where there is no real demand for change and no particular problem to be met and overcome, we shall not press our views. There is a tendency, with great respect to the Labour Opposition, to seek for ideas to impose on the armed services which they quite 71 strongly reject and that are not really calculated to solve particular problems. This is always a danger. I sympathise to some extent with what the noble Lord, Lord Graham, was saying about homosexuality in the armed forces, though I could not possibly accept the specific recommendation made by the Campaign for Homosexual Equality on page 233 of the Select Committee report. I shall not deal with that now; it can be done at Committee stage.
We are entitled to ask whether the armed forces are demanding change in this field. Is this the right moment to impose on the armed forces our ideas about what needs to be done? I accept the logical case that homosexual conduct that is prejudicial to good order and discipline should be punished as being prejudicial to good order and discipline and not as a crime. But homosexual conduct between consenting adults that is not prejudicial to good order and discipline should, as in civilian life, go free. That seems logical enough to me. There is also a commonsense view about what needs to be done on which I shall speak at greater length, I hope, at the Committee stage.
I feel rather the same about the problem of NCOs on courts martial. Is there really a demand for it? Is there really a great problem that needs to be solved? I shall listen but I have not seen enough evidence of serious miscarriages of justice or of desire on the part of NCOs or other ranks in the armed services to have NCOs on courts martial.
The noble Lord, Lord Graham, did not mention trade unions. That surprised me. I thought that the noble Lord would make a long speech about the need for highly unionised armed forces in this country. Again, I ask: what is the problem to be solved and what are the demands for change? I do not see a great deal of pressure. My guess is that the trade unions are no less unpopular in the armed forces than they are outside the armed forces. I should be very surprised if it was otherwise. Nor have I heard of any glaring injustices occurring as a result of the little unionisation in the forces. After all, there is absolutely nothing to prevent members of the armed forces joining a union, paying the subscription and paying the political levy. The noble Lord, Lord Graham, should perhaps be content with that. It can, however, be discussed if necessary at the Committee stage.
I do not intend now to make a proper speech but simply to give the general support of the Alliance parties to the Bill and to warn that we shall put down some amendments on one or two matters at Committee stage.
§ Lord TrefgarneMy Lords, I am greatly obliged to both noble Lords for their constructive contributions to this debate, and above all for giving me some indication of the points that they will wish to raise when we come to a later stage of the Bill. Forewarned is forearmed, and I look forward to debating their amendments with them when the time comes. In the meantime, I beg to move.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
§ Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
§ [The Sitting was suspended from 7.31 to 7.50 p.m.]