I am most grateful again to the Minister for his careful outline of the Government’s position. I shall take up one point about the right to elect. At the moment, as I recollect, a serving soldier has the right to opt for trial by court martial as opposed to being dealt with by his CO—I have some
support from my rear on that proposition—so the concept of opting for one mode of trial rather than another is already in the service discipline system.
The Minister referred to the limited scope of Amendment 16. It is confined—I checked the wording myself a moment ago—to,
“a person subject to service law”,
committing an offence or alleged to have done so,
“when on active service in operational circumstances”.
It would not cover the situation of a soldier who committed an offence who was not in such circumstances. For example, I do not think that that description would apply to anyone who is currently serving in Germany.
Having mentioned Germany, I refer to the contribution of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, to say that yes, there have been agreements on jurisdiction where the Army is abroad, but they are coming back. The situation is quite different. We will not have all the substrata of support and so on in Germany that we have now. I imagine that these agreements will come to an end—is it November of this year when the forces are returning from Germany?—so I suggest that is not a point against the proposition that I am putting forward. So far as the other matters are concerned, they again require me to read what the Minister has said and before I do that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.