Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lord Morris of Aberavon

Committee stage & Lords Hansard
Tuesday 9th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendments 1 and 2. As I did not take part at Second Reading, I must resist the temptation to cover a whole range of subjects in my contribution to this debate.

As an old Defence Minister, and, indeed, an old soldier who served in Germany as an infantry subaltern and was involved in courts martial there, I broadly welcome the aims of the Bill to introduce a measure of protection against unfounded claims against military personnel, some of which go back many years. I deprecate the cottage industry in the growth of claims.

Let me say immediately that when there is wrongdoing, no person is above the law. Torture is a typical example where we should never propose exemption. I have argued before at the annual conferences of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Cape Town and, more recently, in St Petersburg to persuade all countries to accept the need to ensure that there is no exemption for this offence.

As a law officer, I played a very small part in encouraging the Foreign and Commonwealth Office under Robin Cook to create the International Criminal Court. As John Healey MP said in the other place on Third Reading of the Bill, the risks of

“British troops being dragged before”—[Official Report, Commons, 3/11/20; col. 277.]

the ICC are there. There may be an argument about this, but that is what he said and we should always bear it in mind. Perhaps the Minister could give an assurance on that very point of what—if any—the dangers are of going before the ICC.

The wise words of Professor Michael Clarke, the former director-general of the Royal United Services Institute, on the dangers of an idea gaining

“international traction that the UK operates a ‘quasi-statute of limitations’”,

and hence might be in danger of being indicted before the International Criminal Court, should always be borne in mind. They need rebuttal, and they need clarification.

When the Government launched their consultation on the changes to the legal protection for our Armed Forces serving overseas, the consultation included proposals to create a statutory presumption for alleged criminal offences which occurred more than 10 years ago. I repeat: 10 years was the issue that went out for consultation.

The Bill is a major departure from the norms of our international obligations

“under international humanitarian law … international human rights law and international criminal law.”

These are not my words; they are the words of Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights. They are words that we should bear in mind and rebut if it is possible to do so.

That is the background, and hence it is a basic requirement that any provisions in the Bill need thorough justification. Therefore, I support Amendments 1 and 2 to change the presumption against prosecution from five to 10 years. My question, very simply, is: what is the Government’s justification for the change from 10 years in the consultation document to five years? I would like an answer before the end of this debate.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, before I start my remarks about the Bill, I would like to say that nothing I say over the next few days in any way impugns the integrity of the Minister. I have every respect for her, but I think that the Bill is a terrible piece of legislation—worse than terrible. It is actually quite shocking. It is the international version of the “spy cops” Bill, which granted broad legal immunity to state agents who commit criminal acts. How can that be right?

It is one of those Bills that I think is so bad that we need to scrap it entirely. That is why I am joining the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Smith of Newnham, to oppose the question that Clauses 1 to 7 stand part of the Bill. If a “delete-all” amendment were in order, I would do that instead. I hope that we can build an alliance to oppose the Bill’s Third Reading.

It struck me listening to noble Lords who have spoken already that the support for the Bill is actually based on fake news. The Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has written to our Joint Committee on Human Rights, chaired by Harriet Harman. In a letter, she says that the number of vexatious claims has been “exaggerated”—by our Government, obviously—to justify the proposed legislation. We do not have a whole heap of vexatious, baseless claims, which is what the Government seem to be suggesting.

The Bill clashes with the whole point of our justice system. I know that there are noble Lords in this Chamber who know a lot more about the law than I do, and I am sure they know that that is true. The whole point of our justice system is that the guilty are found guilty and the innocent are found innocent—that is obviously what we have to do. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, mentioned the strain of all these vexatious claims, but in fact they do not exist, so the argument for the Bill is extremely weak.

I consulted two ex-generals and an ex-admiral of my acquaintance about the Bill, and they all had severe qualms. They all felt that this could backfire quite seriously on our service personnel and that it would make things worse. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, demolished the argument for the Bill, but he said as well that service personnel could be brought to the ICC, which would be much worse than being dealt with here.