Armed Forces Bill

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 13th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Defence People and Veterans (Leo Docherty)]

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 1B.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendment 2B, and the Government motion to disagree.

[Leo Docherty]

The House knows that this Bill is vital: it renews the Armed Forces Act 2006, so that the armed forces can continue to operate and enforce a system of discipline, and it also fulfils our commitment to further enshrine the armed forces covenant into law.

On Lords amendment 1B, we have been listening to hon. Members here and in the other place. The Government recognise the fact that all Members of this House want to do the best for our armed forces and to ensure that criminal wrongdoing is robustly addressed for the sake of our forces and for the victims of crime. We are particularly mindful about the prominence that statistics have recently played in this debate. The Government have always welcomed scrutiny of our own performance and the role that parliamentarians have in performing that scrutiny. We should ensure that the statistics that we use are clear, transparent and cover the most serious offending that Parliament is concerned about. I am happy to confirm that we will therefore commit to an expansion and an improvement of our existing annual statistical update on sexual offending in the armed forces to include other serious offences.

Our bulletin in spring 2022, in addition to reporting on rape statistics, will now include granular data on cases of murder and manslaughter, and, for sexual offending, those cases involving personnel serving in the armed forces who are under 18 at the time of the offence. Furthermore, from January 2022, we will start to record separately information about domestic violence and child sexual abuse in the service justice system, so that those, too, can be reported on in our spring 2023 bulletin.

These bulletins will include information relating to police investigations, as well as court martial proceedings, meaning that all data related to the categories of serious offences referred to in the amendment of Lord Thomas of Gresford will be included. This will include: the number of reported incidents; how many cases are referred from the service police to the service prosecution authority; how many cases the service prosecution authority are able to prosecute; how many cases go to court martial; and how many cases result in a guilty verdict. We believe that this will increase the transparency of, and the confidence in, the service justice system, and we welcome this scrutiny. Greater reporting will demonstrate the good work that we are doing through this Bill, not least the establishment of the defence serious crime unit, and it is right that data is available to hold Government to account.

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The Scottish National party will of course support the Bill, but as the Minister knows, this is a missed opportunity. Ultimately, it fails to deliver the changes required for those who serve.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Could those who wish to make separate contributions stand so we know how many there are?

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

The debate finishes at 6.29 pm and we would like to hear from the Minister at the end, so I ask everybody to be conscious of the need to get everybody in.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I shall be brief, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I welcome my hon. and gallant Friend the Minister’s tone. He has sought to be constructive. I appreciate that he has made a number of concessions, and I am glad the Government have done that. In particular, I welcome his tribute to the noble Lord Mackay and others. Anyone who knows anything about the law and Government does not lightly mix with James Mackay, and I am glad that has been recognised. I also welcome and endorse the comments made about the work done by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton) in this regard.

On defence justice issues, I rather agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), the Chair of the Defence Committee. There has been movement and I am glad about that, but I am still not convinced by the salami-slicing point. I cannot for the life of me see how Lords amendment 1B creates any difficulty.

My real concern—the additional point I was going to make beyond the interventions I have already made—is about the way the defence serious crimes unit will be structured. Hopefully, there will not be a large number of cases to prosecute, but those involving rape and serious sexual offences in particular will almost invariably require great sensitivity in handling the investigation and the presentation in court, both in prosecution and in defending. Inevitably, such cases—where a member of the forces is either a complainant or a victim, or perhaps both—will by their nature, very properly, engage the highest level of public interest in the broadest sense. The concern is whether a small prosecuting body will ever be able to gather the critical mass of expertise to adequately do justice in those cases, whatever the good intentions.

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[Leo Docherty]

I am grateful for the constructive contributions from the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton) and the hon. Member for Delyn (Rob Roberts). I welcome the fact that the hon. Member for Aberavon will hold the Government to account and help to mark our homework alongside us. That scrutiny is welcome.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East rejected the notion that there was a risk of salami-slicing the service justice system. He rightly paid tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham, and I join him in that. The hon. Member for Glasgow North West suggested that there should be more women on the boards of courts martial. That is good, because that is exactly what the Defence Secretary has committed to. That is a very important commitment and he will be held to account on it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst made some interesting remarks about the defence serious crime unit and made an appeal for independent expertise to be drawn into it. That is exactly what will happen. He paid a fitting tribute to Justice Shaun Lyons, who is, I entirely accept, an extremely credible voice with regard to matters of jurisprudence. However, we also have huge regard for Justice Henriques, and his support for the maintenance of concurrent jurisdiction guided our thinking in this regard.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham reflected on her own inquiry. Again, I put on record our gratitude for that hugely important piece of work, which we will use as a lever to accelerate institutional change to ensure that women can thrive in military careers, given that since 2018 every single role has been open to women to serve in. She questioned the validity of increasing and expanding our reporting on data, but that will be a mechanism for holding the Government to account, and we welcome that.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) asked a good question about housing. I can give him absolute confirmation that that is at the heart of the covenant provision. That is why, along with education and healthcare, it is one of the pillars of the statutory obligation in the statutory guidance. We are putting a huge injection of cash into accommodation provision not just for service families but for single servicemen and women. The highly successful Forces Help to Buy scheme has helped thousands of service personnel to buy their own homes. The Government have put more than £400 million into that. I do not need to tell the House that the military has been an engine of home ownership and social mobility for some 400 years. We look forward to maintaining that magnificent and deeply honourable tradition.

The hon. Member for Delyn (Rob Roberts) attempted to draw an analogy with the Metropolitan police. He ignored the fact, however, that our armed forces are designed to go around the world and defeat the nation’s enemies, which the Metropolitan police is not required to do.

We have listened and we will be judged by our performance, which is why we have set up an admirably transparent system for reporting on our data, and we welcome that scrutiny. We should say very clearly that we have confidence in the provisions in the Bill and in what it delivers. Ultimately, it will deliver a tangible, practical benefit for those serving and for our magnificent veteran community. It is a Bill for the armed forces; we owe them an enormous debt of gratitude and we should be very proud.

Question put and agreed to.

Lords amendment 1B accordingly disagreed to.

Lords amendment 2B disagreed to.

Ordered, That a Committee be appointed to draw up Reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to their amendments 1B and 2B;

That Leo Docherty, Alan Mak, James Sunderland, Suzanne Webb, Stephen Kinnock, Liz Twist and Carol Monaghan be members of the Committee;

That Leo Docherty be the Chair of the Committee;

That three be the quorum of the Committee.

That the Committee do withdraw immediately.—(Andrea Jenkyns.)

Committee to withdraw immediately; reasons to be reported and communicated to the Lords.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We will now pause momentarily in order that people may leave the Chamber in a covid-safe manner.

Subsidy Control Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

Ordered,

That the Order of 22 September 2021 (Subsidy Control Bill (Programme)) be varied as follows:

Paragraphs (4) and (5) of the Order shall be omitted.

Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion for this Order.

Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion four hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion for this Order.—(Paul Scully.)