In 2020, an independent review of the Service Justice System (SJS) by Judge Lyons concluded that murder, manslaughter, rape, sexual assault by penetration, child and domestic abuses cases (where alleged to have happened in the UK) should no longer be within the jurisdiction of the SJS and should be handled by the Civilian Justice System (CJS).
In 2021, the Defence Committee Inquiry into Women in the Armed Forces came to the same conclusion.
There was considerable cross-party support for the Defence Committee’s recommendation and even Johnny Mercer MP, the Minister in charge of seeing the Armed Forces Bill 2021 through Parliament admitted, after he left Government, that he had always disagreed with the Secretary of State’s decision to allow the military court martial to continue to hear rape and other serious cases. (‘The truth was that my name was on the bill, but my advice as to what the bill should/should not cover was routinely ignored in favour of SoS demands. I had no control over it, and wanted to improve it. On rape cases, SoS and I shared a different view. If it was left to me there would have been an entirely different process and end state, in both cases….In my view (murder, manslaughter and rape cases) should have been taken out of the military system and I made that clear internally.’)
Nonetheless, the Defence Secretary rejected all calls for change and the Govt was able to defeat an opposition amendment that would have ensured that, in future, all military murder, manslaughter, rape and sexual assault by penetration offences would have to be dealt with in a civil criminal court.
In response to a judicial review brought by three rape survivors in the military, the Defence Secretary was nonetheless ordered to put the arrangements for determining jurisdiction on a statutory footing and so a consultation was published on what a Protocol addressing the jurisdiction of the handling of criminal offences (including rape) might look like (here: https://www.cps.gov.uk/consultation/consultation-revisions-cps-spa-protocol-regarding-exercise-criminal-jurisdiction)
The CMJ has responded to the Consultation and you can read our response here: CMJ Consultation Response CPS&SPA Protocol
We continue to hope that the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Director of Service Prosecutions will take this opportunity to give effect to the recommendations of the Lyons Review and the Defence Committee and which would reflect the wishes of so many service women and men that contact us for help.