Draft Armed Forces Act (Continuation) Order 2017

Kirsten Oswald Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2017 General Committees

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. Like the hon. Member for Caerphilly, I intend to make only a few brief points.

When I started looking at this issue, I thought it was interesting that, although there is quite a lot of legislation relating to the armed forces, it was quite difficult to find the bits of legislation that actually define what the armed forces are. The 2006 Act sets out some definitions but does not actually state what we are specifically talking about. The closest thing I could find in legislation was a reference in a statutory instrument on overseas territories from 1965, which states:

“‘Her Majesty’s forces’ means the naval, military or air forces of Her Majesty”.

Looking at that, I reflected on some statements made last year, particularly by the Secretary of State for Defence and the then Prime Minister, about how the armed forces interacted with the conventions that developed in Parliament for troops to be sent into action. That is something we could possibly look at further in respect of the armed forces, although I certainly do not want to cause any problems in our progress today. We should probably give further thought to the ways that technology and the embedding of our forces with other nations’ forces or multinational forces link into that. We also perhaps need to think about issues to do with cyber capability or private companies that provide services that our armed forces link in to.

I am interested to hear the Minister’s comments on that, and I am particularly interested in what the hon. Member for Caerphilly said about offenders under the age of 18. That is something I would be keen to hear more about from the Minister. Notwithstanding all those things, like the hon. Gentleman, I do not intend to do anything other than listen to the Minister’s answers as the order progresses.