Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

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

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I welcome this Bill and look forward to the detailed scrutiny that will be given it by the many experts and ex-senior Armed Forces people who serve in your Lordships’ House. I pay tribute to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Johnny Mercer, in the other place, who fought very hard to get this Bill right through Committee unscathed.

Of course, the Long Title excludes the Armed Forces acting within the borders of the United Kingdom, as has been mentioned by other noble Lords today—those involved in the Northern Ireland Troubles, the Operation Banner soldiers. They are not just soldiers but police and members of the security services, civil servants and even politicians. The object of some of the lawfare operations is to get Members of this House, even former Ministers, into court so that history can be rewritten and an equivalence proved between terrorists and the Army.

Operation Banner ran for three decades from 1969 and was the greatest civil conflict in Europe since 1945—that is, until the break-up of Yugoslavia. While our military casualties were never exceeded in the 70 years after the Korean War—neither in Iraq nor Afghanistan—those sacrifices are largely forgotten. The names of the 700 dead soldiers, many of them young teenagers from “red wall” seats, do not even appear on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website. It is almost as if Governments of all persuasions are embarrassed to mention them.

The repeated promises, from the Prime Minister down, for Northern Ireland veteran equivalence in some future legacy legislation is very welcome, but it must not be delayed or watered down. They need to get on with it, and I believe that it should be separated out from all the other legacy issues in Northern Ireland. The Army and police stopped a civil war from breaking out completely in Northern Ireland, for which they get few thanks, just vexation prosecutions and unending reinvestigations—due in large part to overinterpretation of, ironically, the “right to life” in Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

They paid a colossal price in blood—some 700 murdered soldiers, including from the Ulster Defence Regiment and some 300 in the Royal Ulster Constabulary. That excludes the very many who died in accidents or suicides, or whose lives were shortened by terrible injuries. The equivalent number of police officers killed on a UK-wide basis would be 10,000. That says it all. Yet it is former RUC officers who are now being arraigned in reinvestigations, reopened inquests or pointless public inquiries, with their reputations trashed and all without the benefit of being able to respond.

I praise the many recently formed veterans groups without whose efforts and organisation this Bill would not have happened. The power of social media has, in this instance, proved invaluable. Their immediate concerns are about new prosecutions. I accept that reopening investigations of old cases will continue if sufficient credible evidence of wrongdoing is provided to justify it, but it must be a high evidential hurdle, as high as the Bill provides in relation to prosecutions, not just for political harassment.

Let us not forget that the only cases now involving veterans are ones pending in Northern Ireland, which concern events of 50 years ago or more. For that reason, we need to get on with a Northern Ireland equivalent law, especially as this Bill usefully carries permission in Clause 1 for prosecutors to consider whether or not any proceedings against a person for a relevant offence should be continued.

In conclusion, much has been made by certain civil liberties groups about Clause 12, which requires the Government, in any significant new overseas conflict, to consider derogating from the European Convention on Human Rights. This is useful, but Clause 12 does not mean more than what it says, and probably no more than what normally happens. The new duty simply requires the Government to consider derogation so the process cannot be discreetly avoided. The convention, as we know, is a living instrument, but enforcement is not necessarily a one-way street—something our representatives in Strasbourg need to bear in mind when responding to pressure from the Irish Government in cases involving so-called Article 2 compliance.

I hope that the Minister will, as she has been asked by many noble Lords today, give us a date for the Bill to repay the debt to all who served in Northern Ireland. They deserve our support and for us to value them just as much as we value those who served overseas.

Mull of Kintyre Review

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

Yes. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his support and long-standing campaigning on this issue. I have checked that we are now fitting black boxes routinely on all Chinooks. I can confirm that to my right hon. Friend.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the Secretary of State for his personal dedication to and interest in this matter, and to his party and his coalition partners for putting the issue in their manifestos. Does this not send out a message to anyone who is fighting injustice that if they persevere and continue to push their case, they will eventually, if they are right, see justice?

[Dr Fox]

I of course agree with the hon. Lady. There are a lot of downsides to being a Member of Parliament, but one upside is the ability to see justice done and a wrong righted.

UK Armed Forces in Afghanistan

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I am delighted that we are at last having a debate on the situation in Afghanistan and the deployment of British troops there. It does not reflect well on Parliament, our parliamentary structures or our democracy that the vote at 6 o’clock will be the first substantive vote by Members of Parliament on whether British troops ought to be deployed in Afghanistan. It does not do much for the role of Parliament that there has been insufficient scrutiny of this endeavour other than the quite correct memorials that have been read out to those soldiers who have tragically lost their lives in this conflict.

In preparation for this debate, I had a look at Hansard from 2001. During the relevant 2001 debate, the then Secretary of State for Defence, Geoffrey Hoon, said that he would set out the aims of the mission. He said:

“We aim to do everything possible to eliminate the threat posed by international terrorism, to deter states from supporting, harbouring, or acting complicitly with international terrorist groups, to reintegrate Afghanistan as a responsible member of the international community and to end its self-imposed isolation.”—[Official Report, 1 November 2001; Vol. 373, c. 1014.]

He went on to say that other aims included capturing Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Well, the campaign has not been particularly successful on either the latter two aims or the earlier part.

At the end of that debate, the then Member for Linlithgow, Tam Dalyell, asked for a vote on a procedural motion and 13 Members voted against the proposal. There were four tellers, all of whom were against—one of them was my hon. and good Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who was, bizarrely, a teller for the other side—to ensure that a vote was recorded in the House on that occasion. It does not look good if a country and a democracy is so determined to go to war but those who are prosecuting the war do not want a vote in the House on the matter. I hope that those who support the war tonight will put up tellers to ensure that those of us who do not support either the amendment moved by the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) or the substantive question are able to record our votes against it on behalf, we believe, of large numbers of people in our constituencies and in the wider country.

The war came about after 9/11, which was obviously appalling, awful and wrong. Whichever way one looks at 9/11, there was nothing right about it—it was dreadful—but was it right, sensible or intelligent of the then President Bush to respond by leading us into a war in Afghanistan that has now lasted for almost twice as long as the second world war or the first world war? We are moving into the 10th year of the conflict in Afghanistan, and although President Obama talks about coming out within two or three years, I have a feeling that if the military is allowed to have its way we will still be there in five years’ time or perhaps for even longer than that. The strategy does not seem to involve anything other than continuing the occupation of that country.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

We have been told many times that one reason why we are in Afghanistan is to make us feel safer here and to protect us in our communities. Do we mix with different people from Opposition and Government Front Benchers? Does my hon. Friend get many people in his constituency coming up to him and saying, “Thank goodness we are in Afghanistan because we feel so much safer from terrorism now”? I do not.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I live in and represent an inner-city area, and I have to say in all honesty that not one person in my community—not once, on any occasion—has come up to me and said that. Indeed, there is a sense of grievance among the Muslim community in Britain, partly because of this war but partly because of the substantial amounts of anti-terror legislation that have been a product of the war. They feel much less secure than they did in the past and much more isolated from the rest of the community. We should bear it in mind that foreign policy is not conducted in isolation and its effects are not felt in isolation.