Who Can Apply?
All serving and former members (regular and reserve) of the Royal Navy, the Royal Marines, the British Army and the Royal Air Force.
What Sort of Charge?
An incident occurring on or after 7 April 2014 while on operations or exercises anywhere in the world which leads to a charge or an appeal under the Armed Forces Act 2006 brought before:
- The Summary Appeal Court
- The Court Martial
- The Court Martial Appeal Court
- The Supreme Court
- Any other Court or Tribunal in the United Kingdom if the Board agrees
What Services Can We Provide?
- A 24/7 legal services helpline
- Legal advice and assistance including at an initial interview under caution
- Collecting evidence
- Obtaining information from the relevant authority
- Obtaining a legal opinion on the merits of the defence or appeal
- Preparing representations to defend the charge
- Securing the attendance of witnesses needed to defend the charge
- Preparing for hearing
- Legal representation at the hearing
- Appealing against sentence, conviction or judgment
We may also pay the reasonable expenses of your close family to attend the hearing or appeal.
Legal Aid
Rather than giving you legal defence services, we may ask you to apply to the Armed Forces Criminal Legal Aid Authority (AFCLAA) to fund your defence. If you’re given legal aid, and you agree to ask AFCLAA to appoint a lawyer from our panel, we’ll pay the amount of the contribution you may have to make. If you’re acquitted and your contribution is repaid, you agree to pay it back to us.
The provision of free Legal Defence Services, the payment of any AFCLAA legal aid contribution and any payment for family members attending any hearing or appeal are in the sole and absolute discretion of our Board of Directors.
What Isn’t Included in the Services?
We don’t normally provide Legal Defence Services or pay any AFCLAA legal aid contribution or family attendance costs for:
- any charge arising out of the use of alcohol or the use, possession or supply of illicit substances
- The costs of any claim or counterclaim against the Crown, the Ministry of Defence, any Minister or other employee of the Crown or any other member or former member of the armed forces
- defamation claims
- any charges for anything that happened before 7 April 2014
We won’t pay any fines, penalties or damages you incur as part of the hearing.
Your Duties
Please call us as soon as you know that an investigation is to take place. If we agree to help you, we’ll ask you to sign an agreement with us which confirms what we’ll do for you and explains your duties. If you don’t keep to your part of the agreement we may withdraw our assistance. You’ll be expected to co-operate fully with us and your legal representatives at all times.
Problems
If you have any problems at all with the services, please call or email us and we will do our best to sort out any issues straight away.
Please call us to find out if you can apply to us for assistance.
UK: 0800 080 3121
Overseas: +44 20 3327 8600
Your Information
When you ask us to help you, and while we’re providing you Legal Defence Services, we collect personal information about you.
We’ll only use your personal information to:
- decide if we can help you
- provide legal defence services to you
- pay and recover your AFCLAA contribution (if any)
- recover any costs awarded in your favour
- complete administration
We have systems in place to keep your personal information secure. We’ll share your personal information with the lawyers acting for you. We may have to give some of your personal information to our Managers. We won’t give your personal information to anyone else unless you agree that we can and we won’t keep it any longer than we need to.
Please make sure that if you need to share sensitive personal information about anyone else with us, that they have agreed you can.
You have the right to ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you and have any mistakes corrected. To ask for the information we hold about you please write to:
The Information Officer
The Military Mutual Limited
7 Maltings Place
169 Tower Bridge Road
London SE1 3JB
