My Lords, this amendment would remove a commanding officer’s discretion to investigate allegations of sexual assault. Here, as is so often the case, there is a temptation to repeat many things that were said in Committee. I intend to resist that, but I recall that the amendment caused some concern among noble and gallant Lords and I want to assuage their fears about this if I possibly can.
In Committee, the noble Viscount, Lord Slim, who is not in his place, gave us the benefit of how he sought to resolve these matters as a commanding officer. It was very important that he did so because we were able to better understand how a commanding officer can act in such circumstances. I felt then that his fears that the integrity of the chain of command was put at risk by this amendment were ill founded, and I still am of that opinion. What is at risk is the reputation of the Armed Forces if we continue to place a duty of deciding whether or not to investigate a complaint of sexual assault on the shoulders of officers who, in the overwhelming number of such cases, will have no experience of dealing with such matters. Far from diminishing the role of the chain of command, this
amendment will give it full support by involving highly trained investigative officers who are knowledgeable about dealing with complaints of this nature.
Having had the opportunity of speaking to the Minister since Committee, I am hopeful that his reply will show us a way forward. My own view is that if the Government took a long, hard look at this issue and held a review before coming back at a later stage with some conclusions, this would be the way to reconcile the right and proper concerns expressed by colleagues, such as the noble Viscount, Lord Slim, and those of us on these Benches who want to see change.
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Turning now to Amendment 6, I am sure all noble Lords will agree that we had a very good and well informed debate on this matter in Grand Committee and I have no wish to repeat what was said then. In that debate the Minister set out the existing arrangements for the collection and publication of crime statistics. In particular, he was referring to the Service Police Crime Bureau records for all three services and these covered allegations of rape and sexual assault that are made to the service police. The Minister said:
“That information is released regularly in response to Parliamentary Questions and freedom of information requests. In the case of the latter, the information is uploaded to the MoD’s online publication scheme where it can be freely accessed”.—[Official Report, 1/3/2016; col. GC 73.]
As I spent 27 years in newspapers and publishing before entering the House of Commons, the journalist in me needed to check if it was easy to actually find that information and I asked one of my colleagues in the Opposition Whips’ Office, Hannah Lazell, to search for the statistics. She did and I received the following email:
“To find the statistics I googled a number of terms and looked on the Ministry of Defence website, including in the publications and news sections. However, I could only find these statistics when I eventually linked them to the Service Police—so I typed ‘Military Court Service sexual assault’ into Google and found the following link”.
I will not read out the link but it was there. She went on:
“This has been published as a result of a Freedom of Information request and includes all offences prosecuted in the military court. It’s hard to find sexual offences within it—you have to search for sexual offences such as sexual assault—then scroll through them one by one. So while the information is on the web, it’s hard to find and is in a format that doesn’t make it easy to find different types of offences. The government could certainly make it easier to find on the internet and present it in a format that makes it easier to find all types of offences”.
And here it is. It is 148 pages long and there are 1,224 offences listed. It does take some work to find the things that we were seeking to explore. It took many hours to search through and for each one you have to find details of the sexual allegation of assault and rape. The plain fact is that it is difficult to find this information.
My noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe and I were very pleased, however, to have had the opportunity to discuss this matter further with the Minister following Committee. We were very encouraged by what he had to say, and more so when we received a letter setting out the Government’s new thinking on this matter.
I could say a lot more but I would be testing the patience of noble Lords if I did so, knowing, as I do, that the Government have taken this matter very seriously indeed and have sought to address the concerns expressed by noble Lords in Committee. I look forward to the Minister’s reply and I feel sure it will be as full and as comprehensive as the detail he set out in his letter to me which I have already referred to. I beg to move.