Overseas Operations (Service Personnel And Veterans) Bill

Lord Redwood Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

First, I took the decision that, if we look back at many examples of case law or challenges, the debate around torture and murder has often been about the excessive use of an action in doing something that is what a soldier may or may not think is legitimate. For example, it is an act of war to go and attack a target. It is, unfortunately, an act that a soldier may have to do, which is to use lethal force in defence. It is often a side effect or a consequence of an action that you detain people. Often, the legal debate around that has focused on whether the soldier has been excessive in that use of force. If a soldier uses an excessive amount of force in self-defence on duty, that is viewed as murder. That is where we have often seen challenges in courts around both investigations and decisions to charge.

What is not part of war in any way at all is sexual offences. It is not a debatable point. It is not a place where it is possible to turn on a coin and argue that there is a right and a wrong. That is why I took the view that we should exclude sexual offences from schedule 1 but in the main part of the Bill cover all other offences. It is not the case that, even after five years, someone cannot be prosecuted for torture, murder or anything else. It is absolutely clear that it is still possible to prosecute, and it is our intention, should new or compelling evidence be brought forward, to prosecute for those offences. The Bill is not decriminalising torture and it is not decriminalising murder in any way at all. I mentioned earlier the view of the former Attorney General of Northern Ireland, who is himself well practised in that type of law and an expert.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I think that this is an excellent set of proposals, which the Secretary of State has thought through with great enthusiasm and common sense. It is of course right that people should be investigated fully, and prosecuted if necessary, close to the event, but we want to avoid double, treble or quadruple jeopardy by money makers who should know better than undermining the reputation of our armed forces. I thank the Secretary of State very much for getting the balance right.

[Mr Wallace]

I thank my right hon. Friend.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Healey]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for a very succinct and spot-on point, and I look forward to the contribution that I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) will be able to make in the debate.

[John Redwood]

Will the changes the shadow Secretary of State wants to make overall give more protection to our veterans, or will they actually reduce the protections in this legislation?

[John Healey]

The changes will give protections that are fit for the future. They will give protections that are required, and they will avoid parts of the Bill that at the moment put at a disadvantage in a unique fashion those British troops who serve overseas, which is why we argue that it breaches the armed forces covenant.

To come back to the presumption against prosecution, in the explanatory notes the Government maintain:

“Nothing in this Bill will stop those guilty of committing serious criminal acts from being prosecuted.”

That is a point the Secretary of State made, but many legal experts disagree and say that the Bill, as it intends, will be a significant barrier to justice. The Law Society’s briefing on this debate says:

“The Bill creates…a limitation period for a select group of persons in specific circumstances, i.e. armed forces personnel alleged to have committed offences overseas.”

Alongside the extra factors for prosecutors to take into account and the requirement for the Attorney General to give the go-ahead for such prosecutions, that clearly risks breaching the Geneva convention, the convention against torture, the Rome statute, the European convention on human rights and other long-standing international legal obligations. Where the UK is unable or unwilling to prosecute, the International Criminal Court may well act. So rather than providing relief for the troops accused, the Bill also risks British service personnel being dragged to The Hague, the court of Milošević and Gaddafi, instead of being dealt with in our own British justice system.

Let us just step back a moment from the technical detail. This is the Government of Great Britain bringing in a legal presumption against prosecution for torture, for war crimes and for crimes against humanity. This is the Government of Great Britain saying sexual crimes are so serious they will be excluded from this presumption, but placing crimes outlawed by the Geneva convention on a less serious level and downgrading our unequivocal commitment to upholding international law that we in Britain ourselves, after the second world war, helped to establish.

Modernising Defence Programme

Lord Redwood Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

In order to be the architect of modernisation, will my right hon. Friend be bidding for some of the £39 billion Brexit bonus bonanza if we do not pass the withdrawal agreement?

[Gavin Williamson]

I could possibly be tempted.

Defence Industry and Shipbuilding

Lord Redwood Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House recognises the important contribution of the defence industry to the UK; calls on the Government to support the UK defence industry by taking into account the economic and employment benefits to the UK when awarding contracts and to publish a full, overarching defence industrial strategy; and further calls on the Government to make the competition for the Fleet Solid Support ships contract a UK-only competition to maximise the return on that contract.

Today could be a significant step forward for things coming home. Of course, I am talking about the contract for the fleet solid support ships. As a proud island nation, the UK shipbuilding industry is vital for our prosperity and defence—a message that workers’ representatives from the shipyards spelled out loudly and clearly to Members yesterday. The industry makes a substantial economic contribution, directly employing some 23,000 people and contributing £1.7 billion a year to the UK economy.

Throughout our history and to the present day, the industry has supplied our Royal Navy with the ships that it requires, thereby playing a crucial role in the defence of these islands. Our ships contribute to many NATO and EU missions, including Operation Atalanta, which combats piracy in the gulf of Aden and off the horn of Africa, and they were vital in the humanitarian relief efforts following last year’s hurricanes in the Caribbean.

In the light of events this week, I will not suggest which ship the Government most closely resemble, but the phrase “rearranging the deckchairs” comes to mind. I know that Members on both sides of the House want the industry to thrive, and the Government have an important role to play in that regard. I was disappointed to hear in Defence questions on Monday that the Government will not publish the conclusions of the modernising defence programme this week, as had long been promised. Instead, we have the Secretary of State’s less than inspiring commitment of “aiming to” introduce the headline findings before the summer recess. We wait with bated breath.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I welcome the Opposition’s approach. We want a strong Navy and more ships built in Britain. Anything we can do together to achieve that will be greatly welcome, and I trust that the Government will agree.

[Nia Griffith]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his excellent intervention.

I hope that the delay will allow Ministers to reflect on the overwhelming case for an active defence industrial strategy that recognises the immense value of building in Britain and takes a longer term view of the orders that the Government will place, giving industry the confidence to invest in the UK and to plan for a steady stream of work.

Long-term planning is vital, not just for the prime contractors but for the supply chain companies and foundation industries such as the steel industry. It gives them the time to gear up to fulfil orders, and the certainty that they need to justify additional investment. A clear strategy needs to balance getting the very best value for the taxpayer—a crucial consideration, especially when the defence budget is under such strain—with the needs of our armed forces and defences. This would allow us to defend sovereign capabilities, support UK manufacturing and continue to develop the highly skilled jobs and apprenticeships that allow us to compete on the global stage. Research and development must be at the heart of any industrial strategy, promoting links with our universities and technical colleges. We should recognise the need to plan for the skill sets we will need in the future, and to inspire our young people, both girls and boys, with the challenge and excitement of pursuing a career in our world industry.

We have had the national shipbuilding strategy and the combat air strategy is being developed, so rather than just the defence industrial refresh it would make perfect sense for the Government to come forward with an overarching and far-reaching defence industrial strategy that would give industry the certainty it requires.

National Security Capability Review

Lord Redwood Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

Yes. We need to reassure our allies that Britain will continue to play a pivotal role not only in the defence of Europe, but in actions in every part of the world, where we bring unique capabilities—the ability to make a difference, as we have done throughout our history. I am as keen as the hon. Lady to bring the national security capability review to a conclusion, so that we can set out our clear vision for our armed forces. They are the best in the world. We have to continue to invest in them. We are increasing the amount of money we spend on our armed forces, and we need to make sure that the whole world understands our commitment to delivering a global Britain.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

The Secretary of State took over in a difficult situation, because there were a lot of vacancies in the armed forces. I was pleased to hear him say that he wishes to bring the totals back up and that that is mainly a recruitment problem, which he thinks he may be able to resolve. Does he have the money in the budget if all those people come forward?

[Gavin Williamson]

Yes, we do.

National Shipbuilding Strategy

Lord Redwood Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

First, let me make it very clear that it ill behoves members of the Scottish National party to pose as friends of the Clyde when they would decommission our nuclear submarines, which would halt work on the Clyde on the frigates that would protect those submarines.

Secondly, the hon. Gentleman is wrong about the frigate factory. There is a frigate factory on the Clyde, namely the Govan and Scotstoun yards, to which I gave 20 years of work back in July when I cut steel on HMS Glasgow, the first of the heavy anti-submarine warfare frigates. I gave 20 years’ worth of work to the Clyde, and, as a result of today’s announcement, it will be able to bid for the lighter frigate as well. He will clearly never be satisfied. There are 20 years of work and the contract for the first three frigates is worth £3.7 billion, but he is still not satisfied.

As for manning, I have already explained to the House that the Royal Navy, like the other two services, is just over 96%, or 97%, manned. We are spending a lot of money on recruiting to fill the remaining gaps, and to ensure that we can continue to offer a rewarding, highly valued career in the Navy.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I welcome the statement. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the same model could be applied to other areas of defence procurement to ensure more British content and more export capability? Will he also confirm that when we are out of the European Union we may be able to spread the model beyond defence, because we shall be able to make up our own procurement rules across the board?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

We will indeed be able to set our own procurement rules, free of some of the constraints that have resulted from our membership of the European Union. It is true that we need to improve the way we have procured our naval vessels in the past, and to start sending new-build ships out across the world again. Many other navies in the world are looking for lighter frigates, offshore patrol vessels and new vessels of all kinds as the global picture darkens and they need to do more to protect their maritime interests. There is a huge opportunity, and we shall see now whether the English yards, alongside the yards on the Clyde, are ready to rise to the challenge.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Redwood Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. We do not condone the use of torture and there are obviously implications that flow from that.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will Ministers take action to make sure that more of the new light tanks we buy are made in Britain?

[Harriett Baldwin]

I am not sure whether my right hon. Friend is referring to the Ajax programme, but I can confirm that we have taken extensive steps to ensure that a significant portion of the manufacturing processes of the Ajax vehicles takes place in south Wales, and we will continue to work with our suppliers to ensure that we get significant UK content in all our procurement.

Royal Naval Deployment: Mediterranean

Lord Redwood Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

There are, of course, already innocent victims of that people trafficking. Several hundred have drowned this winter, and several thousand drowned last year. It is in all our interests to reduce the number of people who attempt the dangerous crossing. The right hon. Gentleman is right that we have to work at cutting off the supply much further back. We have done that through our contribution to the reconstruction of Syria and our aid programmes in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and much further south in east and west Africa. On the creation of safe routes, I am not convinced that establishing some routes as safer than others will do anything to reduce the flow. On the contrary, we need to increase the capacity of, in particular, the Turkish authorities and the Turkish coastguard to intercept the boats before they set off on that very dangerous crossing.

The right hon. Gentleman asked me specifically about interception. The position is that if a boat in distress can be intercepted in Turkish waters by the Turkish authorities —perhaps alerted by the helicopters that are now deploying from the international force—there is a greater chance that the Turkish coastguard will be able to return that boat to the Turkish side. If such a boat is intercepted in international or Greek waters, it is more likely to be taken to one of the Greek reception points. So far as the effect on the alternative route that opened up last summer from Libya to Italy is concerned, HMS Enterprise is still on station in the Tyrrhenian sea and only yesterday rescued around 100 people. It is important to begin to establish a policy of return, so that there is less incentive for migrants to attempt those extremely dangerous crossings and less incentive for criminal gangs to make money out of their doing so.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

If it is now established European Union and UK policy that illegal migrants should be returned, why are not the instructions to the personnel on our boats simply to take people back to where they have come from if they do not have legal papers or if they are not genuine asylum seekers?

[Michael Fallon]

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is in Brussels today discussing the entire issue of returns with European Union and other countries that are attending that meeting. It is unlikely that RFA Mounts Bay will be involved in rescuing people from boats in distress. Of course, the law of the sea places that obligation on her, but she will be further off the coast. It is more likely that a helicopter will be able to identify boats closer to shore in immediate distress that can be picked up by the Turkish or the Greek authorities and returned under their law.

Counter-ISIL Coalition Strategy

Lord Redwood Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that this does show the Freedom of Information Act at work: a question was put to us and we answered it, and the answer is produced on our website. I have regular discussions with the Defence Minister of Saudi Arabia—the deputy crown prince—not least about the situation in Yemen and the need for humanitarian aid and to get talks going. I am not aware of significant leakage of Saudi arms into the conflict in Iraq or Syria.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

If the coalition forces are successful in removing ISIL from parts of Syria, who would form the legitimate Government of those areas, assuming Assad was still in place?

[Michael Fallon]

We hope that Assad will not continue in place for a day longer than is necessary. There is no future for Syria with Assad still in place. As well as the military campaign and the counter-ideology campaign, we now need to work with friends in the region, as has already been said, to help to promote a comprehensive and moderate democratic Government in Syria that has the confidence of all the communities there, including the Alawite community, from which Assad originally came.

Britain and International Security

Lord Redwood Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

We have to deal with ISIL extremism right across the board. We are working with the Tunisian authorities to find out exactly how the outrage last Friday was carried out, how it was planned, and who was involved in it. Let the House be in absolutely no doubt: the people who perpetrated the murders of our constituents are going to be tracked down, whether they are in Libya, in Syria, or anywhere else.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

If we have a Daesh terrorist plotting murders in the United Kingdom, we arrest them, prosecute them, and put them in prison. If that same terrorist goes to Iraq, we try to hunt them down and kill them and blow up the building they are living in. How does that help create a rule of law or democratic pressures in Iraq? Is not the most important thing to try to impose a rule of law and diplomacy and work away to get some solution?

[Michael Fallon]

I recognise my right hon. Friend’s view, which he has honourably held for a long time and advocated very eloquently in the debate two years ago. However, I am afraid that the people we are dealing with—ISIL—do not respect the rule of law, do not respect our system of prosecution, and do not respect international boundaries. Everything we are doing in Iraq is at the request of, and with the authority of, the legitimate Government of Iraq, and any action that we are supporting in Syria is in aid of our operations to assist the Government of Iraq.

Defence Spending

Lord Redwood Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

May I first remark upon the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash)? He had wished to be here to support the motion but is attending the funeral of Sergeant Doug Lakey, who was awarded the military medal and was with my hon. Friend’s father, Captain Paul Cash, on the day he was killed in Normandy in July 1944.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and his colleagues on pinning their support for any future coalition Government to the 2% commitment, which is a significant benchmark. I hope that we will not be relying on his support after the general election, but I think that it sends a strong signal, both to people in my party and to others, so I commend him for that.

This debate is about the importance of defence. Every Member who has spoken seems to understand the importance of defence, but I hope that the House will forgive me if I go right back to basics and explain why defence is important. It is about what defence is expected to achieve: security. Security can be hard to define. It is best understood as a state of mind: how safe and secure people feel in carrying on with their daily life without undue anxiety about what might happen to them, to those on whom they depend, and to those who depend on them. It is also about providing security of expectation. We expect access to reliable supplies of clean water, food, energy and communications, which we all take for granted, and in the longer term we expect access to health, economic security, jobs, incomes and pensions, and education in order to strive for a secure future for the next generation.

It is true that military capability is just part of what we need in order to achieve true security. We want to shape the world for our own benefit and to advance democracy, human rights and free trade for the benefit of all humanity. We and our allies must therefore separately and together conduct campaigns to advance those ends. For the most part we want to use soft power—diplomacy, trade, aid and cultural links—to succeed in those campaigns. In a peaceful world, the exercise of soft power is the only acceptable way to conduct international relations.

During periods when it is less obvious how expensive military capability can be of much value, as was the case in the period immediately after the end of the cold war, it is tempting to believe that national or European defence is not about being prepared to repel invaders or protect from potential aggressors. The use of soft power can seem to be the only way to combat insurgencies driven by religious tensions or extremist ideologies, but there is another danger in that regard. Some offer soft power as an alternative to hard power, and that is particularly attractive due to the war-weary sentiment that pervades our politics today. Some even warn that using or threatening to use hard power—we heard this from my friend and Public Administration Committee colleague, the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn)—undermines and discredits our commitment to the objectives that we Europeans wish to achieve in the world. That is a dangerous fallacy.

The lessons of history are very clear. We cannot enjoy a soft-power world unless we also have recourse to hard power when necessary. Central and eastern Europe were able to emerge from under Soviet communism and join the western family of democratic nations only because the west’s determined hard-power stance succeeded in facing down Russia during the cold war. Today, democratic nations must be ready and willing to deploy hard power to maintain global peace and security. The successful resolution of the 1990s Balkans crisis, which was not a humanitarian operation, proved that when NATO threatened a ground invasion in order to resolve the conflict.

Therefore, as we Europeans—I say “Europeans” because this spending problem is a European problem—conduct our global campaigns to promote peace, security and prosperity around the world, and we seek to do so by using our influence through trade, aid and diplomacy, we need to remember that global security and the rule of international law depend on our ability to defend them—in the last resort, by force, if necessary. The commitment to foreign aid, which eschews the national interest, is no more important an indication of the national will than our commitment to spend the NATO minimum of 2% of GDP on defence.

This concept of defence rests on the concept of deterrence, which has already been mentioned. It is a grave mistake to see defence merely as a collection of tools to be kept in a box that is taken out of the cupboard under the stairs only when something goes wrong, and is put away again when the job is done. Some like to see defence as a kind of insurance against worst-case scenarios. Britain’s nuclear deterrent is often described in that way, but the analogy is deeply misleading and dangerous, because it encourages a false belief that we can balance what we have to spend on defence against what we perceive to be the risks or threats. Not even the nuclear deterrent can buy national or European security on its own.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Is it not also the case that if someone belongs to a club, they have to pay the subscription? We are never allowed to cut the subscription we pay to the European Union, from which some of us do not think we get value, and now people are suggesting that we can cut our subscription to NATO, which is vital to our security.

[Mr Jenkin]

Yes, and it should not be forgotten that our subscription to the EU is also written into legislation, and that we are not allowed to change that. I am thinking of asking the Library to speculate on when our contribution to the European Union will overtake what we spend on defence.

The question is what role defence plays in shaping the kind of world we want. We need to possess and be able to deploy the capacity to discourage, or even to retaliate against, those who would disrupt that. Opponents of the maintenance of our minimum nuclear deterrent systems in the UK and France often assert that they are a waste of money “because they are never used”. Actually, our nuclear deterrent is used every hour of every day of every year. All that we require potential adversaries to know is that we can and might use it, if circumstances arose that would make that expedient. That is how we influence the global strategic environment.

The same applies by degrees to all military capabilities that nations, or groups of nations, possess that can inflict harm or disadvantage on adversaries who threaten our interests or global security. The mere possession of military capability is not a threat to international security. The lack of it on our part, in the face of those who do have it and have the intention of using it, is the threat we confront today. Money spent on our capability is not wasted if we never use it. It is an indication of our will—our determination to succeed in our aims of promoting international security and the rule of international law. We need military capability in order to be peacekeepers. What we possess changes how potential adversaries perceive us because of what we can or might do in response.

Defence is not just about having the armed forces to match the particular military threats that we can see or imagine. Defence policy is about how we decide what military capability we need to possess in order to help shape the world to be more as we want it to be, rather than subject to the will of those who seek to take unfair advantage, or to disrupt that. These days, defence policy extends beyond the traditional domains of land, sea and air, as was so ably described by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). In the globalised and technological world of today, we need to think of defence in wider domains such as economics, trade, aid, cyberspace, technology, industry, media, communications and even politics, and throughout the whole sphere of global society.

For each nation to be effective in international statecraft, we need to act collectively where we can, which is why we Europeans must be prepared to commit national resources to defence, to harness our potential together, and to join with other global allies, or we will find that we have failed to provide for our own security.

That brings me to the absolute primacy of NATO. The idea of a happy new world order, which some still seem to believe we can enjoy, is disappearing before our eyes. That is evident from the failure on a spectacular scale in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the emergence of a more Soviet-style leadership in Russia. Putin pursued a brutally repressive war in Chechnya and then tested his revived military capability in the invasion of Georgia. The subsequent diplomatic stand-off was resolved only when President Sarkozy of France made a unilateral visit to Moscow and effectively conceded permanent Russian annexation of the Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Perhaps that led to his later boldness. We have seen the Arab uprising lead to chaos in the middle east, not the spreading of democracy that we had hoped for.

It is clear that we live in a world where soft power must still be sustained by hard power. We will need to continue to live up to the 2% commitment that all NATO members agreed to at the summit in Wales. If we will not do that, which countries will we have to rely on for our security and for the future of world peace, stability, freedom and democracy around the world?