Armed Forces Bill

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s argument—he has made it on three or four occasions. I shall try to answer that point. At present, there is provision in regulations for the commanding officer to submit to higher authority any information in his possession, in addition to other details, which—in his opinion—may be material to the institution of court martial or other proceedings. The higher authority is required to forward that material to the prosecuting authority when forwarding a case from the commanding officer. What use it makes of that information, if any, is entirely a matter for the prosecuting authority."Under the Bill, there is no prohibition on commanding officers providing the same information as they do now. They will be aware of police investigations and we would expect a similar provision to be in the regulations made under the Bill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) said to the Select Committee, we acknowledge that in such cases a commanding officer may have valuable information that could assist the director in the test that he must apply before proceeding to charge individuals. A commanding officer will have to be made aware of such a case, because it will affect one of his people and the operational efficiency of his unit. Written guidance will set out the standard operating procedures under which the service police will be obliged to act in that regard. Even now, the service police send daily reports to commanding officers notifying them of all cases that they have begun to investigate. Notifying them of a case that has gone directly to the prosecuting authority will be a matter of course and we do not need to legislate for that process. "