Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Craig of Radley

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

My Lords, this is clearly a probing amendment. It flies in the face of the norm that there is, in general, no time limit on investigating or bringing a charge for alleged criminal behaviour. My reason for tabling such an amendment is to encourage debate and a reasoned response from the Government. I shall not repeat my arguments, given at Second Reading, for bringing this to the Committee now. Noble Lords are well aware of the industrial growth in historical cases of alleged criminal behaviour of service personnel, going back over time not just years but decades. The Bill clearly indicates that it is acceptable for the Armed Forces to be treated differently in legislation where there is a military operational reason for so doing. An amendment on these lines, not necessarily using my precise words, would fit that purpose.

The growth in the number of historical claims now being dealt with by the MoD has been the topic of recent media coverage, which has quoted the irritation of Ministers and even the concern of the Prime Minister. Therefore, I hope to hear not only that the MoD is well aware of the growing problem but that it has specific plans in mind to tackle it. If it is to be by some form of inclusion in the Bill of Rights that we have recently heard about in the Chamber, I urge that it should be in the form of an amendment to the Bill before the Committee today. Better still, as I have already proposed—although I do not do so now with great hope—why not include the relevant part in the Bill before the Committee?

Wherever possible, legislation that applies to the discipline and behaviour of our Armed Forces should be contained in one Act. Not only will this alleviate the problem of potential conflicts between Acts, as has been happening with the Human Rights Act, it will make it easier for the Armed Forces themselves to be aware of and to be dealt with by their own specific legislation. I look forward to the Minister’s response on that point. I hope he will be as forthcoming as possible about the Government’s intentions in this area so that the opportunity to debate and help form acceptable legislation is not missed. This should not be in any way a party matter and I hope the debate will avoid any such approach. The Armed Forces are ultimately responsible to the Government of the day, regardless of which party may be in power. I look forward to the noble Earl’s response. I beg to move.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

I just want to make one or two short points. It is interesting that although the noble and gallant Lord is perfectly correct that it is not the practice in the United Kingdom for there to be any statutory limitation on prosecution for crimes other than summary crimes, it is quite commonplace in the civil law countries for there to be limitations. So our allies in France or Germany, for example, would, I suspect, be protected by a limitation of the kind proposed. I am not suggesting that we should adopt that philosophy, which is quite contrary to our practice, as we can see in cases of historical child abuse. I wonder, however, whether the wiser course, rather than going into the area of limitation, which is so difficult and would be seen as an invitation to start doing this for other crimes, would be simply to have a blanket immunity for our servicemen when engaged in military operations, of the kind that I think used to be the case—I stand to be corrected—before the law was changed some years ago by the previous Armed Forces Act. This is certainly an important point to consider, but I favour doing so not by way of limitation but by way of exclusion entirely for acts of that kind while engaged on military operations, while making it quite clear that we are not dealing with cases of one serviceman on another—let us say of one serviceman assaulting another, stealing from him or things like that.