CAT/OP/GBR/ROSP/1 29. The Subcommittee also recommends that the State party embed the functions of the mechanism’s independent Chair and the supporting and coordinating role of its independent secretariat in the legislative text to be adopted. Access to military detention facilities and independent oversight in overseas territories and Crown dependencies 30. The Subcommittee was informed that Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons inspects military facilities in the United Kingdom every two to three years. This includes the Military Corrective Training Centre and service custody facilities, which are cells where navy, air force and army police hold military personnel who have been arrested. However, the visits take place only upon agreement and by invitation from the military, which is incompatible with the purpose and objectives of the Optional Protocol.10 31. Moreover, no member of the national preventive mechanism has explicit powers to visit extraterritorial places of detention, including temporary detention facilities set up by the State party’s military abroad,11 the overseas territories and Crown dependencies of the United Kingdom, which leaves a significant territorial gap in the State party’s obligation to protect persons deprived of their liberty from torture and ill-treatment.12 32. The Subcommittee notes the recommendations of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment regarding the role of the national preventive mechanism in overseas territories, ensuing from the Committee’s visits to the sovereign base areas on Cyprus. The Committee called on the authorities of the United Kingdom to adopt specific legislative powers for the mandate of the national preventive mechanism, which should include the automatic right to visit all places of deprivation in the United Kingdom, as well as in British overseas territories and the sovereign base areas.13 33. The Subcommittee reiterates that, in order to meet the requirements of the Optional Protocol, the national preventive mechanism must have the ability to conduct unannounced visits to all places of detention, and have access to all information referring to the treatment of detainees and the conditions of their detention, and it recommends that the State party ensure that those conditions are met. 34. The Subcommittee echoes the recommendation of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment 14 and urges the State party to take all the necessary measures to ensure the applicability of the Optional Protocol across all of the State party’s overseas territories and Crown dependencies, including through unannounced visits to military detention facilities. In that regard, the Subcommittee calls upon the authorities of the United Kingdom to consider using the existing national preventive mechanism structure, or designating or establishing new mechanism bodies to promptly ensure full compliance with the Optional Protocol – that is, that all places of deprivation of liberty under the de jure or de facto control of the State party are visited by an independent preventive body. 10 11 12 13 14 Optional Protocol, art. 20. See CAT/C/GBR/CO/5, in particular para. 9. In addition, in the concluding observations on the sixth periodic report of the State party, and in reference to the State party’s military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Committee against Torture expressed concern at the findings contained in the 2018 reports of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, issued following its inquiry into the actions of the United Kingdom security and intelligence agencies in relation to the handling of detainees overseas and rendition (CAT/C/GBR/CO/6, paras. 32–35). Guidelines on national preventive mechanisms, para. 10. “Report to the Government of the United Kingdom on the visit to the United Kingdom sovereign base areas on Cyprus carried out by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) from 9 to 11 February 2017”, p. 10 (https://rm.coe.int/pdf/168076e130). Ibid., pp. 9–10. 7