Commentary on provisions of Act Section 17: Removal of requirement to take into account offences in member states
Subsections (2) to (4) remove the requirements in sections 238, 263 and 270A of the AFA 2006 for service courts to take account of EU Member State convictions in the same way as UK convictions when deciding, respectively, how serious an offence is, whether to give an unrepresented defendant a custodial sentence and whether to impose a community punishment. These requirements were introduced by the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 in order to implement European Union Framework Decision 2008/675/JHA (on taking into account convictions in other EU member States). The decision to remove these requirements reflects the approach being taken in relation to civilian sentencing law in England and Wales. The result is that EU Member State convictions are treated the same as those with previous convictions imposed in any other country outside of the United Kingdom.
	Subsection (5) addresses a related issue to do with the instrument which implements this policy in the civilian sentencing context in England and Wales: the Taking Account of Convictions (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020/1520). That instrument made consequential changes to the AFA 2006 in light of changes to civilian sentencing law (regulation 6). The powers to make that instrument did not permit those consequential changes to extend beyond the United Kingdom because of the extent of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. This section therefore ensures that these consequential changes have the usual extent for armed forces provisions (see the description of the extent described below).