Major victory for military justice campaign

But there is still work to be done.

Defence Minister Mark Lancaster has announced that allegations of sexual assault, exposure and voyeurism made within the Armed Forces will soon have to be referred to the relevant service police force.

This is a much-needed step. For currently, a Commanding Officer (CO) can choose to investigate those allegations him or herself – something campaigners have been working to change for many years.

Schedule 2 to the Armed Forces Act 2006 contains a list of offences a Commanding Officer is obliged to pass to service police.

They range from murder to tax evasion.

But these sexual offences are omitted – not considered “inherently serious”.

Despite sexual assault being an inherently serious crime – a gross violation of a person’s physical integrity that can have life-changing repercussion.

Commanding Officers cannot be considered independent when both the victim and alleged perpetrator are known to them. They are also likely to lack the expertise, training and experience to allow them to properly investigate such crimes.

The significance of this announcement cannot be understated. It is a welcome sign that the government is starting to take allegations of sexual abuse in the Armed Forces seriously.

But there is still much to do.

Liberty’s Military Justice campaign has been at the forefront of protecting the rights of the UK’s service personnel, securing both the creation of an independent Service Complaints Ombudsman and the annual publication of statistics on sexual offences in the Forces.

The next step is to ensure investigations into allegations of rape and serious sexual assault are carried out by civilian police, not service forces. This is how deaths on service property are currently supposed to be investigated – and rape victims deserve no less.

Anyone who alleges they have been raped must know that they will be treated with care and respect, and that any investigation will be thorough and independent – and this should be no different for serving troops.

Just last month the Royal Military Police (RMP) formally apologised to the family of Corporal Anne-Marie Ellement for failing to properly investigate the allegation of rape she made two years before taking her own life.

Anne-Marie Ellement was an RMP officer, as were the two men she alleged had raped her. Yet the case was investigated by the RMP themselves and no charges were brought – a decision the RMP has now admitted was wrong.

Amending the law so that civilian rather than service police investigate allegations of rape and serious sexual assault will send a clear message that they are not trivial crimes – and that they will not be treated as such by the Ministry of Defence.