Armed Forces Bill

Let me describe what the clause does before I try to answer my hon. Friend’s many specific points. The clause provides that eight further criminal conduct offences can be dealt with at a summary hearing, but only if the commanding officer has permission from a higher authority or is an officer of at least two-star rank. The eight offences are listed in part 2 of schedule 1 and include, for example, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and possession in a public place of an offensive weapon. Those offences cannot be dealt with summarily at present by Army and RAF commanding officers. The requirement to obtain higher authority permission before those charges can be heard summarily means that an officer senior to the commanding officer in the chain of command will always be involved in the decision to hear those more serious charges summarily. To answer some of the points that my hon. Friend raised, jurisdiction over civilian children will not be affected by the clause, although those children who have their parents’ permission to sign up at 16 and beyond will be. We obviously try our utmost not to put in the front line those who are under 18. I will have to write to him about the point that he made about orphans. I suspect that their legal guardians could give permission, but I do not want to speculate about that. If I have missed out any of his points, I will read them in Hansard and respond as best I can.