Armed Forces Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-11
Topic: Law and Crime
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): I fear that I cannot. I will need to write to the noble Lord about that and I will be happy to do so I extend thanks, briefly, to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, for his contribution. I will not attempt to answer all the points he made, but I reassure the House again that these issues are under active consideration with the MoD and very recently, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, will be pleased to know, by the National Security Council My noble friend Lord Freeman was concerned that service personnel overseas might be subject to the criminal law of the host nation. We take steps to ensure that, before members of the Armed Forces are deployed overseas, arrangements are made with the host nations to ensure that the conduct of those forces in the course of their duties will not be subject to criminal proceedings under the criminal justice system of the host nation. Allegations of criminal misconduct will be dealt with under UK law, under the system established by the Armed Forces Act 2006 The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, spoke of the need to do more about publicising data on sexual offences. While we are not yet convinced that it is necessary or appropriate to set out requirements in legislation for the publication of this data, the department is determined to make the data that we publish robust, consistent and accessible. To that end, we are actively considering how best to publish the data as an official statistic. The Service Police Crime Bureau records, for all three services, allegations of rape and sexual assault made to the service police. This information is released regularly in response to Parliamentary Questions and FOI requests. In the case of the latter, the information is uploaded to the MoD’s online publication scheme, where it can be freely accessed The Service Prosecuting Authority records, for each year, the number of cases referred to it, the number of cases in which charges are preferred and the number of cases where a conviction is secured. The Military Court Service regularly publishes, on the internet, details of every case heard at the court martial, including offences, outcomes and punishments. There is, therefore, a clear picture of the extent of this type of offending within the services, giving a strong indication of the proportion of case referred from the service police to the Service Prosecuting Authority which were prosecuted, and the conviction rate in such cases The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, also touched on the subject of sexual offences. It hardly requires me to emphasise—but I will—that sexual assault is unacceptable, in wider society or within the Armed Forces. At present, a whole range of allegations covering most sexual offences must be reported to the service police by the commanding officer. They can also be reported by the victim direct to the service police and, of course, the service police can investigate on their own initiative, but there are some, such as sexual assault, which are referred back, at least initially, to the CO. The Bill changes that. Where the service police have investigated any sexual offence and there is sufficient evidence to charge, the service police will be required to refer the case direct to the Service Prosecuting Authority. That is provided for in Clause 3. I will be happy to write to the noble Lord with further details around some of the questions he asked on this The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, took us to the whole system of courts martial and the service justice system. I should explain, in answer to the broad thrust of his question, that there is already a prosecutors protocol in place between the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Director of Service Prosecutions and the Defence Secretary which sets out the principles to be applied in determining where a case is best dealt with if the conduct occurred in circumstance such that both the civilian criminal justice system and the service justice system have jurisdiction to deal with the case. The protocol recognises that any offence can be dealt with by the service authorities The main principle in deciding whether it is the service authorities or the civilian authorities which acts is whether the offence has any civilian context, especially a civilian victim. If it does have a civilian context, it will almost certainly be the civilian police, prosecuting authority and courts which deal with the case. Under the protocol, many cases involving service personnel are dealt with by the civilian police. The service police are able to investigate, but if the circumstances are such that it is considered more appropriate for the civilian police to do so, then they will take the lead. We expect the prosecutors protocol to continue to apply even after the draw-down of forces from Germany, so that cases will continue to be dealt with in the appropriate jurisdiction from the outset Of course, we must not lose sight of the fact that the UK civilian police do not have jurisdiction overseas, and as long as the Armed Forces have an overseas role we will need to have a justice system which is capable of functioning extraterritorially and which supports the operational effectiveness of the services. The noble Lord also asked—