Only four members of the 40-seat House of Assembly have ever served in the Bermuda Regiment, despite some Parliamentarians having a vast amount of control over the Island's armed forces and its budget, The Royal Gazette can reveal.

In addition, only one of those persons sits on the Emergency Measures Organisation, which issues recommendations to the Governor on how to deploy Police, Fire and Regiment forces in the case of an emergency.

A Royal Gazette investigation revealed that massive legislative changes to the 1965 Defence Act force more young men into service. However, of more than 1,000 men drafted this year nearly 900 failed to report for military duty.

The four Members of Parliament who have served in the Bermuda Regiment are Home Affairs Minister Terry Lister, who served nine months, Government backbenchers Wayne Perinchief, who left as a corporal before joining the Police Service, and Derrick Burgess and Shadow Home Affairs Minister Tim Smith, who served for three years training recruits, working in the Signals detachment before leaving as a corporal.

Some Parliamentarians, such as Works and Engineering Minister Alex Scott, served in the Cadet Corps in the 1950s, which covered significantly more military and arms training than today's counterparts.

Several members of Parliament did not take part in a poll of Parliamentarians who served, failing to return phone calls, including recently elected Smith's South MP Maxwell Burgess and Tourism Minister David Allen.

The investigation revealed that some MPs were exempted from military duties due to working in high-value jobs, such as Health Minister Nelson Bascome, who was a counsellor in the Health Department at the time of his call-up.

MP Dale Butler proved the opposite, although a well-known scholar now, he was a radical in the 1970s.

Most MPs were not required to serve the military since legislation at that time was very different from today's Defence Act. After the United Bermuda Party's Trevor Moniz won a Supreme Court case in 1981, the 1982 amendment and subsequent legislation reshaped the Defence Act.

Other amendments changed Section 27 of the 1965 Defence Act, tightening the legislation for conscientious objection.