Armed Forces Bill

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Leo Docherty]

In simple terms, there are circumstances —normally involving the welfare of the alleged victim—in which it would be advantageous for a case to be heard in the military context. Those cases might be small in number, but it is important for the sake of the victim that agility and choice are retained in terms of our approach.

Furthermore, while the Government accept the need to improve decision making in relation to concurrent jurisdiction, we do not agree with the Lords amendment that an Attorney General consent function is the best way to achieve that. That is because, for the Attorney General to make an informed, meaningful and final decision, the request for consent must come at the end of the investigatory process when key decisions on jurisdiction have already been made. The Government instead believe that a better approach is to strengthen the prosecutors’ protocol. Clause 7 ensures that decisions on jurisdiction are left to the independent service justice and civilian prosecutors, using guidance they have agreed between them. In simple terms, where there is disagreement on jurisdiction, the Director of Public Prosecutions always has the final say. For this reason and others, I urge hon. Members to reject Lords amendment 1.

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)]

This Bill has so much to recommend it, and it is so good. I also want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton), who has done incredible work on this. However, I am struggling to understand what extenuating circumstances there might be where a military court would be better placed to opine on rape than a civilian court. In cases of torture, I completely understand this, given the concept of civilians and military individuals understanding how torture might manifest itself, but in cases of rape involving soldier on soldier or man versus woman on the street, I cannot understand what extenuating circumstances would require a different type of court.

[Leo Docherty]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and for her comments about my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham. The advantage of having a choice between civil or military jurisdiction relates to the possibility of a serving person being involved in a case of rape in which their welfare would be undermined by it being heard in a civilian court because of the slower process of the case and the fact that its being heard in the civilian jurisdiction might impede any postings or normal career progression. My principal point relates to the welfare interest of alleged victims, where having agility and choice is advantageous.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

The hon. Gentleman’s expertise in this area is clear for all in this House to see. He is absolutely right that, given the chain of command, ensuring protection for witnesses and victims is essential. We clearly have more confidence in the civilian system to guarantee those. He asks whether the service system could provide those protections, but that seems a very odd way to go about it when the capacity and capability already exist in the civilian system. Why reinvent the wheel?

Will Ministers take this final opportunity to listen to the recommendations of a Government-commissioned, judge-led review, which expressed surprise that these cases were still being handled by courts martial? Will they listen to the expertise on their own Back Benches, as we have just heard, including the proposals made by the hon. Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton) in her Defence Sub-Committee report, “Protecting Those Who Protect Us: Women in the Armed Forces from Recruitment to Civilian Life”? Most importantly, will they listen to service personnel and veterans themselves?

More than 4,000 actively serving women and veterans contributed to that report and its recommendations. Today, a serving member of the Royal Navy whose court martial rape case collapsed due to a number of basic errors made by a service prosecutor called on the Government to back this amendment. She was one of three women who launched a judicial review of the Defence Secretary’s decision not to adopt the recommendations of the Lyons review. She says:

“The value of this amendment for women like me cannot be overstated… This amendment will make the process independent. It will encourage more service personnel to report crimes. It will mean we have some protection from the appalling consequences we suffer when we report rape within our units.

“I am urging the government to accept this amendment. As service personnel we are citizens of this country and we deserve justice just like everyone else.”

[Alicia Kearns]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that perhaps a sensible compromise might be to have this matter come back before the House in a year’s time, if the Bill does pass, to see whether cases are being properly prosecuted, whether we are getting the prosecution rates we need and whether women are being supported to get the justice they deserve when those senior to them commit the most abysmal and horrific of acts—acts that would be considered war crimes if they were done against a civilian but, because they are done by someone in the chain of command, somehow are considered a completely different situation?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady’s experience and expertise, particularly in the field of foreign affairs. However, I think her proposal does not really make sense for where we are right now in this Chamber. We need to see a Government showing leadership. Those brave ladies who have come forward are showing that leadership, and I hope this Government will pay heed to it. The moment of truth is upon us, and we need to see that vote and that leadership now. These women have courage beyond their service to our country. They are showing this Government the way. I urge colleagues across the House to support the amendment.

I turn now to Lords amendment 2, which places the same legal responsibility to have “due regard” to the armed forces covenant on central Government as the current drafting requires of local authorities and other public bodies. This Bill piles new and often vague statutory responsibilities to deliver the covenant on a wide range of public bodies, but, mysteriously, those do not apply to central Government. In practice, this would create a farcical situation whereby the chair of school governors has a statutory responsibility to have due regard to the armed forces covenant, but Government Departments—including the Ministry of Defence—do not.

As the Royal British Legion has pointed out,

“many of the policy areas in which members of the Armed Forces community experience difficulty are the responsibility of national government or based on national guidance.”

Help for Heroes, Cobseo and other service charities know this too, as do Conservative Members, both in this House and in the other place. Ministers must not be allowed to offload responsibility for delivery.

How can it be that social care, pensions, employment and immigration are among the long list of areas we know will not be covered by this legislation? The exclusion of the Ministry of Defence from the responsible public bodies also means the Bill offers little to actively serving personnel. Our armed forces have gone above and beyond both to support our frontline response to the pandemic in the past year and, as I have mentioned, in Afghanistan. What a contrast between the selfless service of our military personnel and a Government who are missing this crucial opportunity to make long-overdue improvements to the standard of service accommodation, while at the same time handing most of them another real-terms pay cut this year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)]

As I rise to speak in this debate, I first pay tribute to the officials in the Department. I know this is a complex Bill and that with legislation such as this we must operate within the art of the possible. There are clearly areas where everybody would like to go further, but I understand the constraints and the dynamics at play, particularly around legislating for the armed forces covenant and so on.

However, there is one thing I am afraid I will not let pass without shining a spotlight on it: the issue of violence and sexual offences staying in the military justice system. I rise to speak with one purpose, and that is to resolutely support my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton) in the work that she has done in this space. She has worked tirelessly, initially against the current but then with some support, to highlight the totally unacceptable experience of females in the military.

Today is a really difficult day for my hon. Friend, and unnecessarily so. I understand differences of opinion, particularly in this space, but where the evidence does not point to the decisions being made by those on the Front Bench, I am afraid I will speak up time and again.

Unfortunately, I was in the room when this decision was made. The evidence did not support the Secretary of State at the time and the evidence does not support the Secretary of State today. I cannot vote against the Lords amendment; it is not the right thing to do. Let me be clear: when the Secretary of State made that decision it was against the advice of the officials in the Department and against the advice of his Ministers.

Conviction rates for rape are lower in military courts than they are in civilian courts. That is a fact. We can pull up the facts at different times and during different processes on the journey to a sexual conviction, but the reality is that the conviction rates for rape are lower. Over the past five years, the average conviction rate for rape in civilian courts, when using Ministry of Justice data, is 34%; over the same five years, using the same data—the MOD’s data—the average conviction rate for rape is just 16% in military courts. Using Crown Prosecution Service data, the figures are even worse. In practice, this means that a military woman is far less likely to get justice than she would in civilian life. We cannot accept that. We cannot accept that on the Government Benches.

The MOD accepts that the contested conviction rate at court martial is significantly lower than it is in the Crown court. The Department suggests that, because the numbers involved in the service justice system are relatively so much smaller, the comparison is of little value. That does not make sense—it is ridiculous and illogical. We have to be honest: there is no point coming to this place and railroading through legislation that we all know to be the wrong decision simply because one individual has his course set and refuses to back out of that alley.

[Alicia Kearns]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it takes enormous courage for anyone to go to court in cases of child abuse, domestic abuse or rape—the issues we are talking about? I worked in the victims department at the Ministry of Justice, supporting people to go forward and get prosecutions, and one in seven Rutland residents is a veteran. Does my hon. Friend also agree that an insidious silence is forced on victims, gagging them and preventing them from going out to get justice in the first place, let alone once they get to a court?