Armed Forces, Army, Air Force and Naval Discipline Acts (Continuation) Order 2008

My Lords, first I associate these Benches with the earlier tributes to the three members of the Parachute Regiment who so tragically lost their lives in Afghanistan. On these Benches we also support the thrust of these orders, but there are a small number of detailed questions which I would like the noble Baroness to answer. I appreciate that one or two may be of a certain technical nature. Therefore, if she would prefer to write to me I would totally understand. First, on the subject of the continuation order itself, what progress has been made on producing some form of loose-leaf volume which would contain all these separate Acts and orders for the use of practitioners both inside and outside the Services and for the judge advocates? I have two questions on the Armed Forces (Service Complaints) (Consequential Amendments) Order. First, what happens if, on a complaint being made, a complainant is dissatisfied with the redress offered? I refer to where a complaint has been accepted by the defence counsel. Is the individual then entitled to make his complaint to an employment tribunal? Secondly, linked to that question, what is the effect on the tribunal proceedings of a decision made by the defence counsel? Do the employment tribunal proceedings start afresh or will the findings of the defence counsel be in evidence before it? In other words, to what extent is the employment tribunal influenced by the findings of the service authorities, or do they hear the case de novo? On the Armed Forces (Alignment of Service Discipline Acts) Order, I am glad to see that there is an attempt to bring uniformity of powers and procedures to the three services. That makes it even more questionable why the Government resisted the Liberal Democrat attempts to allow courts martial to be heard by a mixed panel of all three services during the passage of the Bill. When we had this debate last year, my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford spoke from these Benches. I should like to quote a paragraph from what he said: "““The noble Lord, Lord Astor, referred to the acquittals that have taken place. They have occurred not because of any weaknesses in the military justice system but, in my view—I merely give my opinion and have declared my interest—because of a lack of resources in the investigation phase and mistakes made at that point which led to the prosecutions that did not succeed. However, if the Government are prepared to provide the investigatory branch of the Armed Forces with full and proper resources and training so that they are on an equal footing with the investigation forces in the United Kingdom—if they are capable of doing the same sort of thing forensically and so on—I have no doubt that the procedures will be fair for everyone””.—[Official Report, 20/6/07, col. 301.]" The question to the noble Baroness that follows from that is: has there, during the past 12 months, been any increase in the resources made available to the prosecuting authorities? Finally, what is the proportion of courts martial between the three services? Does any difference indicate a differentiation of resources? Having put those specific points to the Minister, I confirm that we are happy to support the orders.