Armed Forces Act 2006

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by welcoming the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, back to her place. I understand that she has been away for a couple of weeks and has been unwell. I hope that she is fully recovered, because I could not do the knockabout otherwise. I also thank my noble and learned friend Lord Morris of Aberavon for bringing this issue before us.

I venture into this territory with great trepidation, having listened to three lawyers discuss the matter in some detail. From the formal point of view of the Opposition, I can do no more than say that the arguments are persuasive but, should legislation come before us, we would of course examine it, scrutinise it and take advice. We are talking about a military environment and possible military dimensions, and about service law, which must be changed only with great care.

Nevertheless, I totally agree with the call from my noble and learned friend for what he called a widely drawn inquiry. Here, I must disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, given our exchange the last time that we discussed this subject. She responded to my indication of general support, where I called for full consultation. Her response was:

“We are not conducting a public consultation but trying to ensure that the system is tweaked, if it needs tweaking, to ensure that we are in the best possible state to be in for the 21st century. But that does not preclude any interested parties from making representations to the Government on these issues, as and when they think it appropriate. The noble Lord raises a point that he might wish to consider presenting to the Government”.—[Official Report, 23/10/17; col. 768.]


I cannot believe that she was serious. The idea of an individual writing to the mighty Government and getting anywhere where anybody would consider it is, at least, amusing.

This is surely the point. Enough doubt has been expressed about how military law operates in the circumstances. We all know that we will have an Armed Forces Act in 2020. Surely the right thing to do is to have a proper consultation on this area—indeed, perhaps not just this area but others where there has been doubt and concern about cases over the previous five years. A proper consultation would mean that many more people would know that an inquiry—I do not want to use formal words—would take place or that the Government were in a formal way considering changes. It would also mean that the Government would have to make a proper public response. It would encourage involvement by interested lawyers and former serving members of the Armed Forces. It might also be an occasion when forces charities or associations would want to make representations.

One has to remember that the problem of getting things right for the other ranks in our Armed Forces is quite difficult. They do not have a trade union, and I am in no way advocating that they should, but there are no natural systems for getting how the law feels to them and how they see the process. We are making only very slow progress, although we have the services ombudsman, which is a good step forward, and so on. A proper consultation in which everybody was invited to put forward their views and through which there was a proper government response is the minimum that should take place on this issue. It would create an option whereby wider issues of public concern could be introduced. That way, we can have another Armed Forces Act.

We have made a lot of progress over recent years—I think that it was the 2006 Act that brought all the services together and we did some tweaking at the next step, five years later. Here is an opportunity to have another go at the law to make it better and fit for purpose in terms of natural justice as well as in equivalence to the civilian process, and to go through those careful considerations and make it appropriate to work in a military environment.