Armed Forces: Serious Offences

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie]

I thank the noble Lord for raising a very interesting point, which we will all take away and consider in detail before attempting to reply in detail. It is genuinely an interesting issue. One key aspect of Section 42 is the fact that it imports into service law any offence that is also an offence in civilian criminal law. That is extremely important when service personnel are serving abroad and commit civilian criminal offences that the civilian courts here do not have the power to deal with. I thank the noble Lord for raising a very important point.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her Answer. The concept of a very serious offence like murder not being tried by jury has made many of us uncomfortable. I am delighted that there will be a full review. I hope that there will be full consultation and that a wide variety of people will be involved, and I hope that the review will look at the particular problem of the boundary between murder and soldiers lawfully killing the Queen’s enemies. As we know, those have presented some of the most difficult cases over the years, and I hope that they will be included in the review, which I welcome.

[Baroness Goldie]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. On the consultation process, the Government’s aim is that the service justice system mirrors, where possible, the provisions of the civilian criminal justice system. When the maintenance of operational effectiveness across the Armed Forces requires it, there may be differences from that system.

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.