Queen’s Speech

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the integrated review states:

“We will also build upon our close security partnerships, including with Israel and Saudi Arabia, to better protect our interests in the region.”


I urge the Government not to forget their long-standing true allies in the Middle East, despite the untruths and hatred that have spewed forth in the past week in connection with the Israel-Hamas dispute. I call for a fair and open-minded assessment of the situation, with a perspective from British history and in relation to the rest of the Middle East. The UK should join any eventual international effort to rehabilitate Gaza within some negotiated peace plan or political framework designed to resolve the area’s fundamental problems. That effort has to be led by the US, Qatar and Egypt, for it is Egypt that borders Gaza and has the power to open that border without ill result.

Sadly, the Biden Administration seem to have no plan save to revert to the deadly Iran nuclear deal, following in the footsteps of Obama and ignoring the benefit of hindsight. I urge the Government not to follow Biden and not to join in an effort to remove sanctions against Iran, thereby enabling it to continue to smuggle weapons, to continue its terrorist activities and, of course, to support Hamas in its drive to dominate the Middle East. Resurrecting the JCPOA will free Iran sooner or later to continue to enrich uranium and hide its military sites from inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Resurrecting the ineffective 2015 nuclear deal would allow billions of dollars to flow into the regime which will not be used for its suffering people. Iran has been arming Hamas for years. It wants to destroy the Abraham accords and any new concept of a co-operative Middle East. It is Biden’s apparent appeasement of Iran which lies behind the present chaos, along with Abbas’s cancellation of elections.

Hamas’s aim is not a state of Palestine, for that has been rejected several times over the years; it is the replacement of Israel by an Islamist state and the removal of every last Jew from Israel, just as all Jews have been dispossessed, persecuted, expelled, forbidden to live in or killed in that area. Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Algeria, Libya, Yemen and Lebanon are all Judenrein. The truth is that the dominant powers there cannot accept any Jewish presence in the area, and that is why ordinary negotiations between Israel and the others cannot succeed. Israel is the only state on earth whose enemies want to wipe it off the face of the earth.

Meanwhile we have taken our eyes of the real issues in that area. Syria appears to have been discussed in this House only once in the past year. Some 400,000 people have been killed there, including many Palestinians; 6 million people have been internally displaced and more than 6 million have fled. Its horrors and those of Lebanon, Yemen and Afghanistan make no mark. The Turks launched an attack on the Kurds, and there was no reaction. Islamists killed 94 Afghan schoolchildren and a Kabul mosque was bombed, and there was no reaction. Will the Minister proscribe Hamas in full to curb its actions?

The other action this country can take in order to calm the atmosphere is to withdraw from the forthcoming follow-up conference of the Durban racism conference of 2001. That conference degenerated into a hate-filled anti-Semitic meeting uniquely critical of Israel, giving cover to the real human rights abusers of the world. Attendees at the conference compared its anti-Jewish hysteria to 1930s Germany. The track record of Durban has been to harm race relations, poison progress and encourage anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and attacks. The USA, Australia and Canada have withdrawn from the Durban conference, and it is expected that other democratic countries will also do so, judging by their non-participation in previous follow-up conferences. I join the noble Lord, Lord Polak, in asking the Government to act to curb vicious anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Israel activity. Will the Government withdraw from Durban right now?

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Baroness Deech Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 20th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB) [V]]

My Lords, this is a difficult subject: a complex Bill, which, despite its detractors, is not as bad from the perspective of human rights as it looks on first reading. Members of the Armed Forces should not be hounded for the rest of their lives, having acted to protect us in, and from, circumstances that most of us could never imagine, so I hesitate to pontificate on their actions.

However, there is a feeling of unfairness, given the perception that so many terrorists escape justice. Also, one’s instincts are that there should not be a statute of limitations for war crimes—I would be the first to say that Nazi criminals should be pursued and prosecuted for the rest of their lives—so it is worth considering whether to exclude all war crimes from the five-year regime.

The Bill will not prevent prosecution of serious allegations of torture which are supported by evidence, but filters prosecutions that take place after the lapse of five years. During those five years, all the usual rules for prosecutions apply, with no holds barred, and there is no guarantee of immunity from prosecution after five years. A judgment that it should happen might still be made if it is in the public interest and the evidence is sufficient, as well as other pertinent considerations. A similar limitation is present in Part 2, which imposes a six-year time limit on claims by service personnel injured through negligence during overseas operations. It might be better, in the alternative, to set up a scheme of no-fault compensation rather than putting the injured and their families through the court system.

The Bill emphasises the possibility of derogation from the European Convention on Human Rights in relation to overseas operations. That derogation should only ever be exceptional and should certainly not be normalised. It must be remembered that derogation can be challenged in our courts and in the Court of Human Rights. There are other situations in the law where the consent of the Attorney-General is required before prosecution; this is therefore not exceptional.

The important standard in all these discussions should be the law of the International Criminal Court. I posit that it should be avoided at all costs and that decisions and operations in scope of this Bill should be carried out in the shadow of the law—namely, the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction. None of the largest states with the largest armed forces is party to the treaty of Rome which established the court—China, India, Russia and the US—with the honourable exception of this country, though the Government have rightly indicated that the court needs reform. The court was set up for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. One has but to mention genocide to see how ineffective the court’s jurisdiction has been: too slow, too late, too retrospective and, some say, too Africa-focused.

However, once indicted, an individual’s reputation is gone for ever, even if subsequently cleared. The ICC has recently examined alleged crimes committed by UK nationals in the context of the Iraq conflict and occupation from 2003 to 2008, including murder and torture. After some six years of consideration, the court prosecutor said in December that, although it was reasonable to believe that crimes had been committed and command failures had occurred, the UK was genuinely willing to investigate them and to prosecute.

What should drive decisions to prosecute or not prosecute under this Bill is the standard laid down by the ICC—thoroughness and genuineness. Arguably, military investigations into incidents have been inadequate, insufficiently resourced, insufficiently independent and not done in a timely manner. Nevertheless, what the Bill should control are repeated investigations; it would be wise to restore the view of Lord Bingham, whose name is synonymous with the rule of law, that the Human Rights Act should not have extraterritorial application. Quality of decision-making rather than length of time should be the goal. I suggest that the Bill, once passed, should not start in operation until the investigation scheme has been reformed.

Brexit: Armed Forces and Diplomatic Service

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, unlike other noble Lords, I am no expert. I am just a citizen who has felt increasingly anxious over the last 20 years. Brexit must mean that the UK’s influence in international affairs will increase and our reliance on our Armed Forces will be even more vital. We will no longer be one voice among 28 countries with different foreign policy aims. We will have our independent voice in international organisations and pursue our own foreign policy in co-operation with our own choice of bilateral allies.

The importance and vulnerability of NATO have been emphasised since the election of Mr Trump, and now is the time to put all our energy into strengthening that organisation and giving him no excuse to say that we are not pulling our weight. It was embarrassing, especially since it was correct, to have it pointed out that most NATO members have not met the target of spending 2% of their GDP on defence, as agreed in 2006. Only Greece, Poland and Estonia of the other EU members met that target in 2015. Slovenia, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg spent less than 1%. The US and the UK have consistently met or exceeded the target and are de facto the real contributors. In the face of those figures, how could the European Union maintain an army? We should therefore continue to oppose any such notion and instead encourage it to strengthen NATO.

It is often said that the EU brought and maintained peace in Europe since its establishment. The award of a Nobel Peace Prize to the EU in fact had about as much foundation as the award to President Obama and less credibility than the award to Bob Dylan. It was the EU that stood by while Yugoslavia, on its borders, fell apart with genocide and massacres. According to Sir John Nott, a sceptic,

“The only time the EU actually took charge of security was during the Bosnian War. Its mishandling of that crisis led to more than one million people being displaced and up to half a million being killed or wounded”.

What is the EU’s policy towards Russia and its annexation of Crimea and the destabilisation of Ukraine? One would have to search hard to find out. Apparently, it amounts to cold-shouldering, with little comfort to the people of Ukraine and certainly not amounting to a deterrent to Russia. I see no evidence of UK influence on the EU in this particular episode.

What of security and intelligence gathering? Belgium is a byword for inability to collect and use intelligence even between two states. The barriers to intelligence gathering and sharing between 28 states are complex, and frankly there is reluctance to share details on security with countries that have close ties to Russia or appear to be incompetent. Only the Five Eyes, the intelligence alliance between the UK, the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, gives one any confidence.

The four major crises that the EU has faced since 2009—concerning the euro, migration, the rise of right-wing extremism and terrorism—have shown that it is largely ineffective in responding to external challenges and presenting its case to its own people and the wider world. Europe’s open borders, its failure to screen passports and the stolen and fake passports that abound have eased the passage of terrorists across Europe and ultimately into this country. Jews are fleeing France and Belgium in the face of anti-Semitic and terrorist incidents. The EU has been irrelevant to the aftermath of the Arab spring and to the Syrian and other Middle Eastern catastrophes. However, there is now the prospect that an independent UK can take its own decisions in relation to the threats from Russia and the response from the US in the Middle East.

Iraq Inquiry

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, I wish to deal with a further casualty of the war. I was a BBC governor in 2003, when the infamous Gilligan broadcast took place at 6.07 am on 29 May. In it, he claimed that, on the orders of Downing Street, the intelligence dossier was “sexed up”—a phrase which quickly entered the English language lexicon—and this led to complaints from Mr Alastair Campbell on behalf on the Government. Later that day, Mr Gilligan returned to the radio to say that the evidence was not sufficiently corroborated and may be wrong. Other reporters and the press also put it out that the emphasis on the 45-minute assessment went too far, but it was to be Mr Gilligan at the centre of the row.

I say Mr Campbell made a complaint, but it was more like a tsunami of vengeance. Had the BBC treated it like any other complaint from a member of the public, history might have been different. But Mr Campbell did not accept this course of action. He asked for an apology. He later accused the BBC of having an anti-war agenda and alleged that the BBC had tried to prove that the Prime Minister had led the country to war on a false basis. This became a story about the responsibility of journalists to report their concerns, the responsibility of their overseers to the public, and the importance of the freedom to broadcast. It is also about the essential value of investigative journalism. The approach taken to the governors’ investigation of the Gilligan broadcast by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hutton, in his subsequent inquiry—that they should have checked the accuracy of the broadcast—would kill off investigative journalism.

What unfolded thereafter revealed the Government’s determination to “get” the BBC as punishment for allowing a reporter to cast doubt on the reliability of the evidence that took the country into war. The Government nearly brought the BBC to its knees. We know now from the Chilcot inquiry that the dossier was not sexed up. On the contrary, we now know that it was limp evidence, unable to sustain the real justification for going to war. The implication of the words “sexed up” was wrong but, in retrospect, this was an issue peripheral to the non-existence of weapons of mass destruction.

In his report, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hutton, condemned Gilligan and the BBC management. But in retrospect, they were right and he was not. Gilligan was right to report suspicion that the push for war was overdone. The events led indirectly to the suicide of Dr David Kelly, the resignation of Gavyn Davies, chair of the BBC and the resignation of Greg Dyke, a much loved and successful director-general, whose departure is still mourned. I was one of the governors who did not want to accept his resignation. Andrew Gilligan had to leave the BBC.

The ferocious attack by the Government in this case has left me with an abiding suspicion of the good intentions of the Government—any Government—when it comes to the independence of BBC reporting: a lesson we all need to remember as we renew another charter. It would be good to hear some expressions of regret for the damage done to the careers of some good men and for the attitude taken to whistleblowing.

This episode shows clearly the value of having a completely independent BBC board, consisting of people able to stand up to the Government. Editorial processes should be protected by the trustees from political bullying—a lesson for the future. The governors of the time, rightly, could do no more than check that the proper editorial processes had been followed. It was not for them—for us—to tell the journalist to back down when the Government were angered.

It is generally agreed that the inquiry was worth waiting for. I pay tribute to the late Sir Martin Gilbert, a panel member, who was taken seriously ill in April 2012 and died in February 2015. The biographer of Churchill, he was one of the pre-eminent historians working in the 20th century, who left behind imperishable works. He was a supremely gifted academic scholar, with meticulous attention to detail, and I would be surprised if the progress of the inquiry was not affected by his death and the loss of his special talents.

At his memorial service, the former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, said that Martin Gilbert was on course to be a Member of this House. His death was a great loss to the inquiry and, potentially, to this House.

Armed Forces Deployment (Royal Prerogative) Bill [HL]

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Friday 8th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

I have decided, more or less at the last moment, to jump in in the gap because of the Chilcot inquiry and the perspective it has given us. In brief, to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, it seems clear that if Parliament were presented with a similar situation again, it would vote the same way. In other words, MPs have no more, and probably much less, information than the Prime Minister in making such decisions. They are no better equipped to make the decision; indeed, the decision could be much worse. For example, it is not necessarily right to accede to public opinion in making a major decision, such as whether to invade Iraq. Votes may take place in Parliament not because of the global issue, but because of parliamentary in-fighting. If, for example, the leader of the Opposition says that we should not do so and his MPs want to undermine him, they may go the other way.

I was much struck by the fact that, when there was a vote on air strikes over Syria and 66 Labour MPs voted in favour, they received opprobrium—unpleasant emails and so on. It seems to me that it is not right that individual MPs should have on their shoulders the weight of those decisions. It is for the Prime Minister herself to take the glory—if it is such, as in the Falklands—or the disgrace, as has happened this week. That is what Prime Ministers are there for and it is not right to pick apart and play party games with MPs.

Briefly, I am of course in favour of democracy, while the royal prerogative has clearly been rolled back over the years. I am on record as having said that the use of a royal charter is not a good way forward. Whether it is for the BBC or on other issues, a royal charter covers territory where Parliament’s input would be much better. We had the benefit of a report by a Commons committee on this some years ago, which seemed in favour of having statutory definition. We also had the Lords Select Committee on the Constitution recommend a few years ago that a better way forward is through convention, which I would support. Gradual convention is one of the glories of our unwritten constitution.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, on giving us the opportunity to open up this enormous and important topic but, in relation to her Bill, I am worried by the disclosure provisions in Clause 2(2)(b) and, in an emergency, Clause 3(9) because there would undoubtedly be opposition. We would for sure be in court with a judicial review if opponents of the decision decided that the Prime Minister had or had not withheld information that should be before Parliament. Moreover, what would happen to troop morale if a vote was taken and it was very narrow? Would individuals feel that they did not have the wholehearted backing of the country? That would be extremely important. In other words, knowing lawyers as I do, the Bill would open the door wide to endless litigation if it became law. We see the beginning of that today in the aftermath of the Chilcot inquiry, so I say: let convention grow. This is not an area that I would put into statute or one where MPs ought to have the responsibility as individuals. They do not have the information and should not personally have to bear the weight of the aftermath.

Al-Sweady Inquiry Report

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes a very good point and I will take it back to the department. I shall talk to other Ministers and to our media people to see what we can do to get into the outside world the very important message referred to by the noble Lord.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, there has been considerable criticism of the legal profession in this short debate, and of course I would not for a moment defend the costs and the conduct. It helps one to understand the backlash against human rights. On the other hand, this House has recently stood up for the principles of judicial review. I think we have to bear in mind that, although we may criticise the lawyers in a particular case, when it comes to needing a fearless inquiry or needing people who will stand up to the Government no matter how unpleasant and difficult the circumstances, our legal profession still has a lot to be said for it. Its members should not be wholly condemned because of this particular incident. There are, of course, two sides when considering the legal profession.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I have to be very measured in my criticism of the legal profession because I have a number of lawyers who are closely related to me.