My Lords, I remind the House that I am still a commissioned officer in the reserves, although I am not training. This is my 60th year of life, so I will not be doing it for much longer. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, suggested that both the general public and those in the Armed Forces do not have confidence in the system of discipline in the Armed Forces. My experience is different. I have never had members of the Armed Forces come to me and say that they lack confidence in the system of military discipline. I have to admit that it is a robust system.
I have also never heard a member of the public—someone who is not in the Armed Forces—say that there is something seriously wrong with the system of military discipline, apart from when one reads articles in the Daily Mail, some of which are not very well researched.
One of the problems with what the noble Lord suggests is that we do not understand the dynamics of how the court martial panel works. In Committee, I suggested to the Minister that we need to do research, along the lines proposed by the Opposition Front Bench, to understand what the effect would be. We need to war game it before we start altering the system. I suggested to my noble friend that he keeps this under review and makes sure that we are going in the right direction.
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Amendment 2 is on sentences. I have done two or three courts martial, for very minor offences, and my experience is that the judge advocate explains in great detail about the tariff and whether the offender is at the high or low end of it. I do not see that the panel can go outside the guidance given by the judge advocate without running the risk of a successful appeal because it has gone outside the sentencing guidelines.
The noble Lord referred to the need for training in sentencing. I agree, but that input and experience comes from the judge advocate advising the other officers on the panel. You cannot say that the officers and warrant officers on the panel do not have training, because they have been trained for many years in military matters. I do not really understand why the panel would want to deviate very much from what the judge advocate has suggested—that was certainly not my experience. These are interesting amendments, but not ones we should accept.