Armed Forces Bill

Lord Thomas of Gresford Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to the Bill. I do not propose to follow the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, very interesting though it was. I am sure we will have an opportunity to debate those issues at a later stage.

I wish to argue that the court-martial system, which is integral to service discipline, does not enjoy public confidence. There have been many reforms and in my view, speaking as a practitioner and as chairman of the Association of Military Court Advocates, this lack of confidence is unmerited and unjustified. But it exists and there are cases coming down the track which will test the system in the extreme.

Back in 1994, I was engaged in the defence of a lance-corporal, serving in Germany, on a murder charge. He was acquitted and returned to his regiment. George Galloway, then a Labour Member of Parliament for Glasgow, Hillhead, used parliamentary privilege to assert that a murderer had walked free and was still at large, serving in Her Majesty’s Forces. He said:

“The military police, who were soldiers with armbands, and the military prosecutor, who was a soldier in a wig, bungled the case”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/3/95; col. 812]

When I appeared in a later court martial in Germany for a 17 year-old civilian son of a soldier, in another murder case, the staff sergeant who was the father of the victim in the previous case picketed the hearing with placards against the court-martial system. I have never heard of a Member of Parliament, nor even the press or public, attack a verdict of acquittal by a jury in a Crown Court in such terms. This did not even happen, for example, in the case I prosecuted in Cardiff during the miners’ strike, when two miners were convicted of the murder of a taxi driver using a concrete block.

The conviction of the 17 year-old went to the House of Lords Judicial Committee, where it was upheld. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, held that the procedure whereby a boy of 17 whose father had left the Army and who was brought from England to stand trial in Germany by court martial could not be considered an abuse of process because that was the process that Parliament had ordered. In 2007, some 10 years after that trial, the European Court of Human Rights had severe doubts on that score, but in any event, following the case of Findlay v United Kingdom, held that the 17 year-old’s conviction had been in violation of Article 6—the right to a fair trial—by reason of the way that the court martial was constituted.

Parliament had already responded to the preliminary decision in Findlay in the Armed Forces Act 1996. The role of the convening officer was abolished and decisions to prosecute were removed from the chain of command and given to the independent service prosecuting authorities. This was in recognition of the need to remove the impression, however mistaken, that the chain of command could have undue influence over court-martial proceedings. The Armed Forces Discipline Act 2000, passed after the Human Rights Act had come into force, made further changes, taking away the CO’s power to determine pre-trial custody and granting appeals against summary convictions.

My own contribution to reform at this stage—and this will appeal to the noble Lord, Lord West—was to table a Parliamentary Question as to why a defendant in a naval court martial was still being marched in at the point of a cutlass. The practice was abolished between my laying of the Question and the delivery of the Answer by the noble Lord, Lord Bach. In the time I have been involved in courts martial, the swords have gone, the stripping of the defendant of his belt and cap has gone, and the marching and the saluting have all disappeared. Importantly, the panel sits separately from the judge advocate. But public disquiet continued.

Noble Lords of an earlier generation will recall how Lord Campbell of Alloway campaigned on behalf of Trooper Williams, where the CO had dismissed charges of murder. But the Army Prosecuting Authority disagreed and passed the papers to the Attorney-General, who referred it to the CPS. The proceedings that followed at the Old Bailey were ultimately discontinued.

In 2005, charges of murder against seven members of the Paras were dismissed by the Judge Advocate-General, Judge Blackett, at a court martial at Colchester. There was disquiet that they had been charged at all. My own personal recollection was that I made a very unusual application in that case for an adjournment in order to get married in the Crypt of Parliament—something that Judge Blackett always brings up with me.

However, major reforms happened in 2006. Courts martial ceased to be convened ad hoc and became a permanent standing court, with court centres at Colchester, Bulford and Catterick. Other reforms included the merger of the separate service prosecution authorities and the creation of the office of the Director of Service Prosecutions. The service was fortunate in both its first director, Bruce Houlder QC, an Old Bailey civilian practitioner, and its second and current director, Andrew Cayley CMG QC, who used to be a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.

In 2006, Judge Blackett gave evidence to the Select Committee in the Commons, advising it that the court-martial system should be brought into line with the Crown Court. Consequently, during the passage of that Armed Forces Bill, I moved amendments in this House to make provision in the court-martial rules that the court-martial panel should be drawn from all ranks and every branch of the armed services. They were to be selected by ballot from a pool constituted of people who were eligible to sit. The qualification was simply to be that the individual chosen was a serving member of the Armed Forces, subject to service law. It was not an outrageous suggestion, because that was the system adopted in the United States in 1952.

I also moved amendments that a person should not be charged with an offence against this section committed in the United Kingdom if the corresponding offence under the law of England and Wales was treason, murder, manslaughter or rape. Further, I proposed that the verdict of guilty should not be entered by a simple majority but by a majority of five out of seven, if seven were sitting, or four out of five, if five were sitting. None of these amendments was accepted and the consequence was that the opportunity was lost to approximate trials by court martial to the Crown Court system.

The Act did not come into effect until 2009 and, meanwhile, in September 2006, the court martial took place of seven members of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment at Bulford before a High Court judge, Mr Justice McKinnon. The charges against them failed. Four of the other ranks and the colonel were discharged by the judge because,

“there is no evidence against them as a result of a more or less obvious closing of ranks”.

He said that there was a conspiracy of silence. Two other officers, one of whom I represented, were acquitted of negligently performing a duty by the panel after a full trial. However, this verdict was not accepted and your Lordships will recall that the Baha Mousa trial, or inquiry, was set up, which lasted three years and cost £13 million.

More recently, we have the concerns expressed over Deepcut. There was some evidence yesterday on the second inquest—which your Lordships will recall and which is published in today’s papers—that the Deepcut barracks were,

“heavily sexualised, misogynistic and toxic”.

Then there is the Anne-Marie Ellement case—two people have been charged so I will say no more about that. However, in the case of Sergeant Blackman, there has been great outside criticism and comment. The sentence was described as “ludicrous”, by a prince of the blood royal, no doubt defeating a convention that has lasted since the days of Charles I. In this House, my noble friend Lord Burnett, who will no doubt speak more about it, described it on 15 September as,

“a terrible miscarriage of justice”.—[Official Report, 15/9/15; col. GC 228]

Have your Lordships, if you think about it, ever heard of the verdict of a British jury in the ordinary Crown Court being described in such terms in this House? There is trouble brewing.

In January 2014 and September 2015, Public Interest Lawyers, headed by Phil Shiner, lodged complaints with the International Criminal Court. The extent of them, as described by the International Criminal Court, was that,

“UK Services personnel systematically abused hundreds of detainees in different UK-controlled facilities across the territory of Iraq over the whole period of their deployment from 2003 through 2008”.

It includes 200 cases of unlawful killing. The prosecutor of the ICC set up a preliminary examination and reported last November that,

“The Office is currently engaged in processing and analysing the vast amount of material provided”.

Your Lordships should appreciate that it would be a terrible insult and slight upon our system if the International Criminal Court were to declare that this country is incapable of dealing with war crimes within our own system.

However, the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, set up by the Ministry of Defence but independent of it, has itself investigated nearly 1,400 complaints of ill-treatment, including torture and murder. I am reliably informed that more than 30 of those allegations have already gone to the Director of Service Prosecutions and that a large number of cases will, at the moment, be tried by court martial. If they are dealt with by court martial, we can expect—and await—unrestrained comment and criticism of the system in the press and the media, leading to public alarm and further undermining of the system.

I am concerned about the welfare of those who serve this country in the Armed Forces and whom we put in the line of fire, and about the reputation of the British Armed Forces. Consequently, I propose to return during consideration of the Bill to the amendments that I put forward in 2006 and, if they are not acceptable, to propose that serious offences of murder, manslaughter and rape, and serious sexual offences, should be tried in our ordinary Crown Courts and no longer by court martial—the system that is under attack. I repeat that, as a practitioner, I have confidence in that system and in the judges and advocates who appear in it, but I fear that unless something drastic is done, its reputation will be destroyed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Howe]

These are matters currently under scrutiny. The firms that the noble Lord mentioned are, I understand, being quizzed by the regulatory authority for the solicitors’ profession. I am not aware of the outcome of those proceedings, but the noble Lord is right to pinpoint the issue of the way in which those firms received their instructions in the first place. That is a matter that we are as keen to get to the bottom of as he is.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

Can the Minister update us on the International Criminal Court preliminary examination? Where are we with that?

[Earl Howe]

I fear that I cannot. I will need to write to the noble Lord about that and I will be happy to do so.

I extend thanks, briefly, to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, for his contribution. I will not attempt to answer all the points he made, but I reassure the House again that these issues are under active consideration with the MoD and very recently, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, will be pleased to know, by the National Security Council.

My noble friend Lord Freeman was concerned that service personnel overseas might be subject to the criminal law of the host nation. We take steps to ensure that, before members of the Armed Forces are deployed overseas, arrangements are made with the host nations to ensure that the conduct of those forces in the course of their duties will not be subject to criminal proceedings under the criminal justice system of the host nation. Allegations of criminal misconduct will be dealt with under UK law, under the system established by the Armed Forces Act 2006.

The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, spoke of the need to do more about publicising data on sexual offences. While we are not yet convinced that it is necessary or appropriate to set out requirements in legislation for the publication of this data, the department is determined to make the data that we publish robust, consistent and accessible. To that end, we are actively considering how best to publish the data as an official statistic. The Service Police Crime Bureau records, for all three services, allegations of rape and sexual assault made to the service police. This information is released regularly in response to Parliamentary Questions and FOI requests. In the case of the latter, the information is uploaded to the MoD’s online publication scheme, where it can be freely accessed.

The Service Prosecuting Authority records, for each year, the number of cases referred to it, the number of cases in which charges are preferred and the number of cases where a conviction is secured. The Military Court Service regularly publishes, on the internet, details of every case heard at the court martial, including offences, outcomes and punishments. There is, therefore, a clear picture of the extent of this type of offending within the services, giving a strong indication of the proportion of case referred from the service police to the Service Prosecuting Authority which were prosecuted, and the conviction rate in such cases.

The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, also touched on the subject of sexual offences. It hardly requires me to emphasise—but I will—that sexual assault is unacceptable, in wider society or within the Armed Forces. At present, a whole range of allegations covering most sexual offences must be reported to the service police by the commanding officer. They can also be reported by the victim direct to the service police and, of course, the service police can investigate on their own initiative, but there are some, such as sexual assault, which are referred back, at least initially, to the CO. The Bill changes that. Where the service police have investigated any sexual offence and there is sufficient evidence to charge, the service police will be required to refer the case direct to the Service Prosecuting Authority. That is provided for in Clause 3. I will be happy to write to the noble Lord with further details around some of the questions he asked on this.

The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, took us to the whole system of courts martial and the service justice system. I should explain, in answer to the broad thrust of his question, that there is already a prosecutors protocol in place between the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Director of Service Prosecutions and the Defence Secretary which sets out the principles to be applied in determining where a case is best dealt with if the conduct occurred in circumstance such that both the civilian criminal justice system and the service justice system have jurisdiction to deal with the case. The protocol recognises that any offence can be dealt with by the service authorities.

The main principle in deciding whether it is the service authorities or the civilian authorities which acts is whether the offence has any civilian context, especially a civilian victim. If it does have a civilian context, it will almost certainly be the civilian police, prosecuting authority and courts which deal with the case. Under the protocol, many cases involving service personnel are dealt with by the civilian police. The service police are able to investigate, but if the circumstances are such that it is considered more appropriate for the civilian police to do so, then they will take the lead. We expect the prosecutors protocol to continue to apply even after the draw-down of forces from Germany, so that cases will continue to be dealt with in the appropriate jurisdiction from the outset.

Of course, we must not lose sight of the fact that the UK civilian police do not have jurisdiction overseas, and as long as the Armed Forces have an overseas role we will need to have a justice system which is capable of functioning extraterritorially and which supports the operational effectiveness of the services. The noble Lord also asked—

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

The noble Earl will know that murder is under universal jurisdiction. Do I take it that murder cases arising out of the IHAT investigations, for example, will be referred to the civil court or to courts martial in this country?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, as I said, there is a protocol which lays down pretty clear guidelines as to how individual cases are handled. I do not think I can give a blanket answer to the noble Lord; it will depend on the circumstances of the case.

He raised other points, including the composition of courts martial and majority verdicts—a theme also pursued by the noble Lord, Lord Burnett. The proposal to change the current rules under which findings of guilt or innocence may be by simple majority would involve profound changes to the court martial system. The court martial may sit in the United Kingdom or anywhere in the world in times of peace or in conflict. Court martial trials may be decided, as in a magistrates’ court, by a small panel, usually of three officers and warrant officers, but a panel of five is required in more serious cases. A service defendant will ordinarily be tried by lay members wholly of his own service. The composition of the panel is determined by the court administration officer who is appointed by the defence counsel. The CAO will draw names at random from a pool of potential members and, having checked that they are eligible for membership of the particular board, will specify who the lay members should be. I would like to write further to both noble Lords to flesh out this whole issue but the great advantage of reaching a decision by majority is that it avoids a hung jury and there is no need for a retrial in the event of a lack of unanimity or qualified majority. As the noble Lords will know, this is a long-established process.

The noble Lords, Lord West and Lord Empey, the noble Baronesses, Lady Taylor, and Lady Jolly, and others raised the issue of mesothelioma. The background to this was the announcement by my honourable friend the Minister for Defence Personnel and Veterans in December that veterans diagnosed with mesothelioma from that date would have the option to receive a £140,000 lump sum, to be paid from 11 April this year. I simply say that the Government understand the concerns that have been voiced in this debate and I can tell the House that work is actively continuing on the matter of those diagnosed before 16 December last year. While I cannot discuss that issue any further today, we hope to be in a position to say something soon.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth, my noble friend—