Armed Forces Bill

I am grateful to the Secretary of State. In that case, we shall have great fun working out whodunit. Like the Secretary of State, I served on each of the previous two Armed Forces Bills. He will recall that those Bills turned out to be Christmas-tree Bills, not only because their Second Readings occurred just before Christmas, but because the original Bill became festooned with more and more decorations. I thus wish to ask Defence Ministers to explain several aspects of the Christmas-tree nature of this Bill. Clause 35 is titled ““Annoyance by flying””. The military has to undertake low flying and MPs have to be sympathetic about the situation in their constituencies each year. However, neither the clause nor the explanatory notes gives anything like a convincing reason why we need to put yet another obstacle in the way of military pilots. The clause says that it is an offence if a person subject to service law flies an aircraft so as to annoy or be likely to annoy anyone, unless he can reasonably avoid flying in such a way. Come on, Mr. Deputy Speaker—is this a military matter, or is it not? We are talking about not recreational flying from grass strips, but fast jets, Chinooks and other kinds of aircraft and helicopters that are on military business. If I am fortunate enough to be chosen to serve on the Committee that considers the Bill, I shall be pressing Ministers for an answer to why we need clause 35. Clause 42 is entitled ““Criminal conduct””. The Secretary of State touched on an important matter in his opening comments. It is important for people to realise that the Bill does not address torture or any other criminal offence that is not necessarily a military offence. Clause 42 points out that anything that is a criminal offence in British law is an offence if it is carried out by members of HM forces, wherever they are in the world—that is my understanding of the clause, but perhaps the Minister will clarify that. That is important because it means that wherever in the world British service personnel are, they will always occupy the moral high ground when it comes to making decisions of life or death. It will also apply to the behaviour of members of HM forces, whether they are in Ayia Napa or elsewhere in Cyprus. We did not cover ourselves in glory in Cyprus 40 or 50 years ago and did not always occupy the moral high ground. I do not think that we did that with internment in Northern Ireland, or that the Americans have done so in Guantanamo Bay. We want to maintain the honour, courage and bravery of Her Majesty’s forces and their personnel. Clause 51 relates to the jurisdiction of the service civilian court. It is important because many people do not realise that the Bill applies to civilians who are subject to service discipline. Indeed, it can apply to the children of serving personnel overseas. It applies to contractors and service families, so the jurisdiction of the service civilian court is important. I will want to probe in Committee to find out exactly how the situation changes under the Bill.