HANSARD
Armed Forces (Tri-Service Serious Crime Unit) (Consequential Amendments) (No. 2) Regulations 2022
- Motion to Approve
- 3:27 pm
- Moved by
- That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 17 October be approved.
- My Lords, this statutory instrument makes a minor consequential amendment to Regulation 8(1) of the Armed Forces (Part 5 of the Armed Forces Act 2006) Regulations 2009. This change is required to support the establishment of the Defence Serious Crime Unit, or DSCU for short. It does this by ensuring that the new provost marshal and service police personnel of this tri-service unit are governed by the same legislation as the existing three single-service provost marshals and single-service police forces. This instrument amends Regulation 8(1) to include any reports prepared by, or provided to, the tri-service Serious Crime Unit to be provided to a person’s commanding officer when referring that person’s case to the Director of Service Prosecutions.Although this is only a minor and consequential amendment, the original set of regulations it amends is subject to the affirmative procedure, meaning that this statutory instrument must also follow this procedure. Other consequential amendments are being made to secondary legislation by the Armed Forces (Tri-Service Serious Crime Unit) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2022, which is subject to the negative procedure.
- 3:30 pm
- Having said all that, this provides an opportunity for me to update your Lordships on what has been happening in relation to the DSCU. The Armed Forces Act 2021 set out the framework for the establishment of a tri-service Serious Crime Unit for the service police and enabled the appointment of a new provost marshal. Under the direction of the new provost marshal, who was appointed in January this year, the MoD has undertaken the necessary preparatory work for the new tri-service unit to become operational in December this year. This work has focused on the structure and resourcing of the DSCU and has included the establishment of the Defence serious crime command, a strategic command headquarters for the DSCU, based at Southwark Park, Fareham, home to the Defence School of Policing and Guarding, which has been operational since April.
- The Defence serious crime command will sit outside the single services’ chain of command, ensuring operational independence, giving greater reassurance to victims and building trust in the service justice system. It will provide strategic direction to the DSCU, allowing the unit to focus on the delivery of serious crime policing. One of the strategic aims is to improve the capability of Defence to deal with more serious offences. Reservist service police will be better utilised, the majority of whom are civilian police officers, ensuring the DSCU will benefit from this experience and knowledge. For staff joining the DSCU, external placements with Home Office police forces will be used and there will be a continued focus on building single area specialisms as part of their career development. This will be supported by the adoption of civilian policing qualifications in accordance with College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council guidance.
- Finally, the DSCU will also include a dedicated victim and witness care unit, which will seek to deliver support to victims and witnesses of crime. In consultation with specialist external organisations such as the Survivors Trust and the office of the Victims’ Commissioner, the victim and witness care unit is under development and is expected to be fully operational by early 2023. I hope this gives an idea of the direction of travel, and I will seek to provide further updates after the DSCU has become fully operational. I beg to move.
- My Lords, this statutory instrument has a very narrow purpose, but I am content with the detail. As the Minister indicated, it follows from the review put in hand as preliminary work for the Armed Forces Act 2021. I do not recall what assessment was made of the average number of serious crime cases for investigation in the Armed Forces that might arise in, say, a 12-month period. If the Minister has a figure, it would be helpful to have it on record.There would appear to be some flexibility available to the new provost marshal in how much to draw on additional help within the single-service establishments to match the level and complexity of any investigation he has embarked upon. Am I right in assuming that he would be able to insist on the level of single-service effort he requires always being made available? In other words, is he senior in rank and status to his single-service equivalent? Indeed, is it ever contemplated that he might be a civilian on contract? In the service environment, the importance of the chain of command needs to be upheld, and in that context I was pleased to note that the new provost marshal is required to inform the accused’s commanding officer. I raise these points to allow the Minister to expand a bit more on these details relating to this important new post and unit.
- My Lords, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, just said, this is a very narrow statutory instrument. It is perhaps surprising that its debate has such a wide audience. On the defence side of things, we are quite used to either having Statements right at the end of business or discussing SIs in Grand Committee, where there are usually about four of us. It is important that your Lordships contribute to, listen to and are part of discussions about defence, because they are so important—but the two SIs today are both narrowly focused on service justice.Normally I would delegate all this to my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford, who unfortunately is not here today. In his absence I welcome the statutory instrument and note that it very much fits with the reviews we talked about on various occasions when looking at the overseas operations Bill, when the Minister repeatedly said that the Henriques report will say or do whatever. That is obviously part of this decision, as is the Lyons review.Paragraph 7.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum notes that the defence serious crime unit should“bring together the Special Investigations Branches of the Royal Navy Police, Royal Military Police and Royal Air Force Police”.It then adds,“along with specialist investigative support.”Building on the noble and gallant Lord’s questions about availability of support, can the Minister indicate what sort of additional support might be available? Beyond that, we on these Benches are content with the SI.
- My Lords, I intervene out of order, encouraged by what the noble Baroness just said. One point that attracted my attention is that the regulations apply to all parts of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,“and the British overseas territories (except Gibraltar).”Is there something particular about Gibraltar that means they do not apply there? It would be interesting to know why Gibraltar should be excluded. I am sure it is not an oversight, but the Explanatory Memorandum does not explain and it would be interesting to know the reason.
- My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this narrow and consequential SI, which of course we totally support. It gives us an opportunity to have hopefully a final look at this gaggle of legislation that has been necessary to introduce these reforms.I worry about whether there will be problems deciding what a serious crime is. One can see how it might become defined within a single service, and I am totally in favour of the tri-service unit, but this will involve single-service police forces designating a crime as important for the tri-service specialists. What criteria will be used to decide that it should go to the tri-service specialists? Who will make that decision? To what extent do the criteria differ from those presently used by the single-service specialist units? On personnel, how will the tri-service unit ensure it has the specialist technical capability to investigate serious crimes?In the Minister’s introduction she touched on civilian involvement. Can she repeat that, for clarity? Does this mean that people recruited from civilian police forces or other specialists will have operational capability? In other words, will they be able to serve alongside military operational police? In those circumstances, will they still be civilian in character?Having asked those questions, I repeat our total support for the reforms, in respect of which this is one of the last consequential amendments.
- I thank noble Lords for their contributions. As all have observed, this is a fairly narrow field of activity; none the less, the questions are predictably penetrating and searching. I will try to deal with them.The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked what sort of crimes the serious crime unit will be investigating. I can give some degree of detail, which I hope will be helpful. I should say that it will be generically responsible for the investigation of all serious crimes committed by those subject to service law. It is worth noting that the MoD working definition of “serious crimes” is not the same as that contained in the Serious Crime Act, which I think was at the heart of the question posed by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig.So to clarify, serious crime for the purposes of the DSCU is an offence listed under Schedule 2 to the Armed Forces Act 2006, an offence committed in proscribed circumstances, or an offence under Section 42 of the Armed Forces Act 2006 for which the corresponding offence under the law in England and Wales is indictable, or any other offence which may not be dealt with at a summary hearing by a commanding officer. This essentially captures most criminal offences, which are triable only by a court martial, and some military offences such as the ill-treatment of personnel in initial training.Prior to the DSCU standing up, the single services all have a different threshold for how they determine serious crime; as such, getting clear statistics on the full range of serious crimes is challenging. Official statistics for the most serious offences of murder, manslaughter, sexual offences and domestic abuse in the service justice system are published annually. In 2021, there were 239 service police investigations into these offences.The rank of single service provost martial differs in each service and, as your Lordships will be aware, each is independent from the other and each has no ability to compel the other. But on 5 December, all single service SIB personnel will transfer under the direct command of the provost marshal of serious crime, who will investigate serious crime independently of the three single services and be answerable to the Chief of Defence People and Vice Chief of Defence Staff for the execution their duties. There are agreements that the single service provost martial will assist the provost marshal of serious crime in responding to serious crime in the first instance.
- 3:45 pm
- Finally, Section 357 of the Armed Forces Act 2006 allows Gibraltar and the other British Overseas Territories to use their own legislation to apply the 2006 Act to locally raised forces, such as the Royal Gibraltar Regiment. Section 357 was recently updated by the Armed Forces Act 2021 to clarify the powers available to the British Overseas Territories. I thank the noble and learned Lord for asking that question, and I hope that the answer is sufficient for him.
- I congratulate the Minister on being so very well prepared.
- Before the Minister sits down—she probably deserves a round of applause for that last answer—can I press my two points a little further? First, I have this vision of the military equivalent of Constable Plod coming across a crime. Somewhere there must be a process where that crime goes up the chain of command and gets to somebody who says, “This is a serious crime and it has to go to the specialist unit”. Who would that be? The Minister can write to me if it is too difficult to answer now. Secondly, on the use of civilians, will they have operational powers? In other words, when they are working with the military will they have the power of arrest?
- I thank the noble Lord. I was not forgetting him and was going to endeavour to address those points. It is the provost marshal of the Defence Serious Crime Unit who is in overall charge, and who will therefore expect to assume jurisdiction over the sort of crime that I detailed to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley. I will endeavour to find out more about the mechanics of the structure to see if I can satisfy the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, about how this works in practice, but I understand that there are clearly understood lines of communication and information to ensure that the system works smoothly.On civilians, the DCSU will be staffed and led by service police because, unlike civilian police, they can investigate offences wherever they are committed and use their powers overseas. They are trained and ready to deploy wherever the Armed Forces operate, including in operational theatres. Importantly, the DCSU will have access to civilian expertise by embedding reservists who are police officers in the Home Office police forces. Sir Richard Henriques recommended that the deputy provost marshal be a civilian but, due to restrictions on jurisdiction and operational deployment requirements, there is a need for the deputy provost marshal to be military. However, the DCSU will optimise the use of our skilled and experienced Reserve Forces, many of whom are serving civilian police officers within the Home Office police forces. They will be embedded within the new unit and play a significant role.Perhaps I can provide further reassurance: the new unit will be independently inspected by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, so there is an overall independence of monitoring. I think that has dealt with the points that were raised, so I thank noble Lords for their contributions.
- Motion agreed.