Armed Forces Bill

I shall not at this stage because the hon. Gentleman has quoted Lord Boyce enough and it is fair to put the noble Lord on the record. Lord Boyce also warned that tampering with military command could damage operational effectiveness. He said of a commanding officer:"““If you diminish his authority or start to erode his authority, you will have a fracture which is ultimately going to cause failure.””" That is the issue before us tonight. We must ensure that we do nothing that fractures that authority. After visiting those on deployment, the Select Committee concluded that there had not been much opposition in the Army to the Bill’s proposed changes. Although I accept that, we must realise that proposals in the Bill have hardly sunk in at all in the military. I do not especially blame the Government. The guys are out there trying to fight a war and they have no time to start assessing the niceties of the legal position. Although the people to whom we spoke had been briefed, I suspect that some had been briefed only a little in advance of our visit. Some of the changes will take time to make an impact. As has been said, the change that the Government propose results partly from the Trooper Williams case, in which the commanding officer, on legal military advice, dismissed a charge of murder against Trooper Williams, who was said to have shot an innocent Iraqi. More senior military lawyers believed that the advice was wrong, but could not reopen the case and the Army high command felt under political pressure, in the grotesque phrase that Sir Alistair Irwin used, to ““offer for prosecution”” Trooper Williams. That could be done only through the civil courts. Sir Alistair Irwin said that with the"““current legal, political and ginger group interest in the deaths of Iraqi civilians during Operation Telic, there is a significant possibility that this case, our investigation and the subsequent failure to offer for prosecution could become a cause célèbre for pressure groups.””" I have said it before, and I repeat that I find it reprehensible that a senior officer used the expression ““offer for prosecution”” about one of the men under his command. I do not believe that Pontius Pilate would have used that expression. At the instigation of the Attorney-General, Williams was charged but the case was dismissed by the civilian judge. The Government argue that the removal of the power to dismiss a serious charge will prevent a repetition of the Williams case. However, the commanding officer’s judgment was vindicated. The case says more about the high command and the political pressures that led to Trooper Williams being offered for prosecution than about the power of the commanding officer to dismiss a charge. I agree with the Government that we must avoid such a case in the future. I am at one with the hon. Member for Islwyn, the former Under-Secretary, that we must find a way to keep such matters in the military domain and not leave them up to civilian courts.