April 2026

Commanding officers should always report an issue if they see one. With this change, they will have to and will be held to account. Question put and agreed to. Clause 17 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 18 Summary hearings: punishments available to commanding officers Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Clause 18 gives a commanding officer the power to award a punishment of service detention to a “corporal, bombardier, lance sergeant or lance corporal of Horse in any of His Majesty’s military forces”. Those are OR-4 ranks, according to the NATO military rank codes. The power may be used only by commanding officers with extended powers at summary hearing. Currently, commanding officers in the Army and the Royal Air Force Regiment cannot impose service detention on an OR-4 rank, whereas those in

Depriving rights to certain property makes absolute sense for commanding officers. Aligning the ability to administer justice across the single services and across ranks makes life far easier.

As someone goes across the single services and joint staff colleges, there will be different sections where they are trained on administering justice and the rights of a commanding officer. Importantly, there will be joint standing procedures produced around the clause, which everyone who becomes a commanding officer will have to read and ensure that they adhere to. Question put and agreed to. Clause 18 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 19 ordered to stand part of the Bill. C

Is the hon. Gentleman talking about a lack of capacity of senior officers to sit on a court martial board, or inefficiency on the court martial board?

I thank the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford for tabling amendment 9, which seeks to add retired officers to those who are qualified for court martial membership. However, I believe that the amendment is unnecessary and most likely counterproductive. The first argument made was about capacity and the lack of senior officers to sit on courts martial and hold people to account. As the Committee knows, we keep those things under constant review. The right hon. Member mentioned a case fro

As the hon. Member will know, trying to speak to people about whether they know other people is exceptionally difficult. Trying to capture that in a data record would be even more difficult. The 200 officers in service at the moment do not include the reservist pool, which is quite large—and that is just one-stars, not two-stars, three-stars or four-stars, so the pool is actually far larger. I will go back to the purpose of sentencing at court martial, because it is an important point. As I say,

Listening to evidence and acting on it is critical. Understanding the context in which it sits is equally important. Did that individual know that there are 200 one-stars within defence? Did they have the authority and responsibility to allocate individuals in a short, timely and effective manner to a court martial board? Probably not. The problem is not capacity. It is perhaps that the Defence Serious Crime Command needs greater authorities and programming to pool individuals in a timely and ef

In no way, shape or form am I suggesting that this was fabricated, made up or a lie. What I am trying to say is that context is important. The statistics show that there are 200 one-stars in regular service, not including the reserve. That is a large pool of individuals, which reduces the right hon. Member’s argument about capacity. He talked about people knowing each other, but there are clear protocols in place to ensure that when the board is pulled together, the range of individuals on it is

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The decimation of our youth services that we saw over the past 15 or so years, because they are not a statutory function for local authorities, has been catastrophic. We all know the impact of that. We are rebuilding infrastructure that has been torn away, and that is a challenge. As she says, we are introducing 50 youth hubs. The Mayor of London announced a youth centre for every borough in London, and other mayors across the country are doing what they can w

I thank the hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley for speaking to amendments 18 and 19. I acknowledge their sentiment, which is to ensure that the information provided to victims is appropriate and timely. The Government’s intention is to ensure that when a victim of an offence committed in the UK by a serviceperson is asked to indicate a preference on jurisdiction, they can do so in an informed way. The information provided must be accurate, helpful and, of course, objective, so I share the

Does the hon. Member accept that, as she says, men are generally the ones who attack women and that, if we do not have single-sex spaces, predatory men will use circumstances that are to their benefit to attack women? That is exactly why we need single-sex spaces.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

The hon. Lady is outlining cases where the application of that guidance might be difficult. Does she think that it would be difficult for someone to determine whether I, given the way I look, should be in a women’s single-sex space?

I just want to put on the record how welcome it is to see the comments of the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar. It is fair to say that Scottish Labour has been on a bit of a journey on this issue, but he has got to the right place, and I welcome that. I join the hon. Lady in stating that the Supreme Court judgment clarifies existing law. It did not change the law. It is about enforcing the existing law. Women have had their lives ruined by this issue over many years, and they are still having

Alice Sullivan has spoken a lot about identifying sex and gender. Does the hon. Member agree that sex and gender are not the same thing, and that if we are registering for a parkrun, another sporting event or anything else, we all know what is on our birth certificate?

As a lesbian woman, I have often been misgendered. As a young person—a tomboy—that sort of thing did not bother me; I wore it as a badge of honour. I am very worried that we are talking about fitting women into stereotypes. Surely, in this day and age, we are trying to move away from gender stereotypes as women, lesbians and gay people. Does the hon. Member agree that a trans woman can be a trans woman and a trans man can be a trans man—they are not a woman and they are not a man; they are a tra

Does the hon. Member recognise that women are a vulnerable group and that we make up half the population, yet we are still subject to more violence than any other group of people in society?

Parliamentary appearance by Catherine Fookes

Over the past 21 months, the Minister has worked tirelessly to try to build on the consensus across the House on the legislation that I put through on 21 May 2024 in order to make the scheme work, and I pay tribute to the work he has done. He has listened carefully to a whole range of inputs on an extremely complicated problem from a heterogeneous group of individuals, and he has done his level best to respond to the advice and best judgment of professionals, to attend to the range of needs and