My Lords, I support this amendment, but I have a number of questions for my noble friend the Minister.
The tri-service serious crime unit is definitely a good idea but, given that the Armed Forces Act brought together the three single-service Acts back in 2006, I have for some time questioned why we do not have a joint service police force, given their relative sizes. The Royal Air Force Police is commanded by a group captain; the Navy, by a commander; and, of course, the Army provost marshal is a one-star brigadier. Who will own this organisation? If it is not going to be linked to one of the other service police forces, how can we ensure that it will not wither on the vine in time? For example, what will happen to the SIB, which has a proud operational record over the past 40 years? What will its role be vis-à-vis this new organisation? Equally, as we create what will be a fourth provost marshal, who will sit on the National Police Chiefs’ Council? Currently, the three single service provost marshals do. Does this mean that now there will be four? How will that look? Will defence be speaking with a single voice?
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What does concern me is the provost marshals’ independence and how we can ensure that independence. Aside from their independent role, the provost marshals also have a reporting chain, on which they rely entirely for promotion. As Minister for defence veterans and personnel, I always ensured that I had a monthly meeting with the Army’s provost marshal to ensure that he had a channel by which he could communicate with me. Ultimately, his OJAR—his annual report—was written by his senior commanders in the Army, who are the very people he may be called on to investigate. There always seemed to me a slight contradiction there, where pressure could be applied.
Traditionally, speaking from the Army perspective, it would be the provost marshal’s final job in the military. The last provost marshal retired at the age of 49. How does that sit with our talent management, when he or she could have gone on to do other jobs? There seems to be a contradiction there.
But my principal question to my noble friend, which she may not be able to answer today, is that I do not understand why this new provost marshal role will have to be recruited from the service police. Why can it not be an outsider, as recommended in the review? Within Defence Medical Services, for the first time, the surgeon-general is no longer a serving member of the military. He is a civilian who has been recruited from the outside, from the National Health Service, yet sits at the top of that organisation. If we really want to be independent and to ensure independence, why can provost marshals potentially not be recruited from external organisations—other police forces? To me, that would only add to their independence and the guarantee of it in their role.