Integrated Review

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and I recognise and admire the service that he has given to this country in our armed forces. He is completely right to point to the issue of a proposed potential American draw-down in those areas. We are watching it very closely, and we will be working with our American friends in the new Administration to do whatever we can to protect the stability and security of those troubled countries.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Ind) [V]]

Thankfully, the Prime Minister is fulfilling his leadership election promise on defence spending. Given that the National Cyber Force formally announced today involves offensive cyber operations, I welcome the fact that the ISC will provide oversight of this joint MOD-GCHQ venture. Is my right hon. Friend fully satisfied that the ISC is now properly constituted to conduct this scrutiny impartially and independently?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. I believe that the Intelligence and Security Committee is well equipped to provide exactly that further layer of scrutiny of cyber operations.

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

It is better than he did in Committee when he called me a hypocrite, Madam Deputy Speaker, but if he listens to what I am saying, he will know that I am not saying that. I know that his attention span is not very good, and he does not tend to listen. What he tends to do is just stick to what he has in front of him and his view of the world, rather than hearing what people are saying. The issue is—[Interruption.] Well, he can say “brilliant” and chunter as much as he likes, but this is the issue—the delays that are taking place because of the investigations.

I have referred to Judge Blackett, and the Minister was there when the evidence was taken. Judge Blackett is a just-retired senior judge of the service justice system, and he said:

“The Bill is effectively looking at the wrong end of the telescope. It is looking at the prosecution end, and you have got to remember that you do not prosecute until you investigate—and you have got to investigate. This will not stop people being investigated and it will not stop people being re-investigated and investigated again. Lots of investigations do not go anywhere, but the people who are investigated do not see that.”—[Official Report, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Public Bill Committee, 8 October 2020; c. 120.]

That came up when we took evidence from Major Campbell. I will put it on record again that his case was a disgrace, because it took 17 years, but this Bill will do nothing to speed up such cases or to ensure that reinvestigations do not occur. That is the key problem. The problem is not the prosecutions, because their number is very small.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Ind)]

I have put in three written questions about this Bill, and yesterday I had answers to them. Two of the answers were helpful, but one, on the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making, was not. I was trying to establish how many investigations had not resulted in prosecutions, and I could not seem to get an answer, yet that is central to the whole problem. The core of the problem is not the small number who get prosecuted but the large number who get investigated.

[Mr Jones]

The right hon. Gentleman is correct. That came out in evidence that we took throughout the Committee. The issue is not the number of prosecutions but the number of investigations and how we can speed up the length of time they take.

The problem is that the Ministry seems to have a deaf ear when it comes to recognising that we need to address the issue around investigations, which is what new clause 1 would do. It would ensure that we had judicial oversight of the investigations. We can see what we have at the moment from the example of Major Campbell’s case, which went on and on. New clause 1 states that after a certain period of time, the evidence should be put before a judge to see whether there was a case to answer. Clearly, if the evidence did not meet the test and the case was going nowhere, it would get thrown out there and then. Alternatively, it could be decided that the case needed further investigation, but at least that would ensure that, after six months, there was some judicial oversight of the investigation. That would be a way of ensuring that these investigations did not go on for a long time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Jarvis]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the comments towards the end of his remarks. There is a weight of expert opinion. I am reassured about the strength of the case that I and other hon. Members are seeking to make today by the contacts I have had with my former colleagues who are still serving in our armed forces. There is a genuine debate still to be had about this. I am sure that the Minister will want to engage with the substance of the debate. Let us keep talking about it.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

When the Defence Committee was looking at the matter in the previous two Parliaments, it recommended a Bill of this sort provided that the time limit was qualified by the absence of compelling new evidence. Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman saying that he does not feel that that proviso is in the Bill? If that proviso is in the Bill, if there were compelling new evidence that had not come forward in the first five years but came forward afterwards, then indeed a prosecution could proceed.

[Dan Jarvis]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. I certainly assume that all of us attend this debate and seek to make contributions in good faith, and I think there is a genuine desire from Members from all parts of the House to improve this Bill. The Minister has indicated on a number of occasions that in good faith he wants to have that continuing conversation with Members about how we can improve the Bill. There is still time to do so, and I very much hope that we will not miss out on that opportunity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Davis]

My hon. and gallant Friend is exactly right, and I want to see the reputation that comes from that preserved after this Bill becomes law.

I will briefly address the weaknesses of two parts of the Bill separately—this addresses directly my hon. Friend’s comments: first, the criminal prosecutions and then the civil cases.

Prosecutions against armed forces personnel are not brought by just any lawyer. They are brought by the Service Prosecuting Authority, which is part of the Ministry of Defence. As it stands, a prosecution can be brought only where there is sufficient evidence that the accused committed the offence and where it is in the public interest that the prosecution should be made. There is therefore already a high threshold for prosecution. As a result, since 2000, there have been 27 prosecutions. Given how many thousands of members of our armed forces have been in operations in difficult circumstances—in close quarters with the civilian population, fighting against an asymmetric enemy—that is an astonishingly low number. That is not a prosecution system that is out of control. That alone shows that the system is not slanted against soldiers.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I agree with my right hon. Friend that the prosecution system is not out of control, but does he agree that the investigatory system is? To answer my own intervention on the hon. and gallant Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), is my right hon. Friend aware that clause 3(2)(b) says that the five-year limit will not apply unless

“compelling new evidence has become available”?

Why is he not reassured by that?

[Mr Davis]

I will tell my right hon. Friend in a moment exactly why I am not reassured by that, but he is quite right that the issue is the repeated investigation of people who are innocent, in most cases. That is a harassing and destructive thing. The best known case is that of Major Campbell, who underwent eight investigations. I am afraid that the real blame lay with the Ministry of Defence for at least four of them. That is what we should address.

As I say, the prosecution system is not slanted against soldiers. I will give the rather gruesome, well known example of Baha Mousa, a 26-year-old Iraqi man who, in 2003, was dragged from his desk while working as a hotel receptionist by British soldiers, handcuffed and taken to a detention facility in Basra. Thirty-six hours later, he had been beaten to death, having suffered 93 separate injuries while in the custody of British forces. The number of solders convicted of murder as a result: zero. The number convicted of manslaughter: zero. There was a single conviction of one soldier, who confessed to inhumane treatment and got one year in prison.

It is difficult for prosecuting and other authorities to make out a clear-cut case of torture, inhumane treatment or even manslaughter, so I do not believe that the system operates against the interests of the armed forces. Indeed, on the several occasions on which the Government have been asked to produce a case of vexatious prosecution—not investigation, but prosecution—they have never been able to name one. That is not surprising. The Service Prosecuting Authority—the body that brings prosecutions—already dismisses claims that it believes are vexatious. In evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, Nicholas Mercer, the former Command Legal Adviser in Iraq, said:

“Before I left the army, I gave legal advice on a number of prominent cases…I found a case that was without merit and I closed it. It was as simple as that. I do not need legislation to do that. It happens already.” That is a good reflection on our system, and we should not be ashamed of it.

The area of contention, which has been mentioned by the hon. and gallant Member for Barnsley Central, is the triple lock against prosecutions. The Government’s own stated aim is to raise the bar for prosecutions after five years. In its scrutiny of the Bill, the Joint Committee on Human Rights concluded:

“a limitation period that would prevent prosecutions is unlawful under international law if it prevents investigations and prosecutions in relation to torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.”

The Government state that the measure is not a statute of limitations. The Law Society, which some may dismiss, agrees with the JCHR, and concludes that the presumption against prosecution creates a “quasi-statute of limitation” that is “unprecedented” in criminal law, and represents

“a significant barrier to justice.”

Rather more importantly, the Judge Advocate General, whom I described earlier, has said:

“In my view, what this Bill does is exactly the opposite of what it is trying to do. What it is trying to do is to stop ambulance-chasing solicitors and vexatious and unmeritorious claims. The Minister quite rightly said we want rigour and integrity. What it actually does is increase the risk of service personnel appearing before the International Criminal Court. That is why I said it was ill conceived.”––[Official Report, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Public Bill Committee, 8 October 2020; c.117-18, Q234.]

That is the Judge Advocate General, the most expert person in the country on this subject. He also described, incidentally, the Bill as bringing

“the UK armed forces into disrepute”.

If the Government really think that schedule 1 does not make justice more difficult, they would not have excluded sexual offences from the remit of the Bill. If it is not difficult to get a prosecution, why exclude any category? It was right to exclude sexual offences, and the Government should exclude torture on exactly the same grounds. That is the point of the amendment in my name and in that of many others.

I have a couple of minutes, so I will deal briefly with the issue of civil claims. There have been 1,000 civil claims, according to the Ministry of Defence, all of them against the Ministry, not against individual soldiers—as far as I can tell. Surprise, surprise, someone trying to get money goes to the Ministry, not to a poverty-stricken soldier. However, that does not help veterans; it actually hinders veterans.

The point has been made by other Members, so I will press it no further, except to quote the British Legion director-general:

“it protects the Ministry of Defence from civil action—from someone bringing a case. That longstop does not protect the armed forces personnel.”––[Official Report, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Public Bill Committee, 8 October 2020; c. 86, Q161.]

Of course, what the Bill could stop are the sorts of cases that exposed Snatch Land Rover, the lack of provision of body armour and a number of other scandals, which quite properly improved the operation the MOD.

The Bill does the same for torture cases. All the stories about torture and rendition came in the first instance from civil cases—all of them. That is what brought them into the public domain; there was not a single criminal prosecution in the first instance. It is difficult to bring a torture case. In most, only two people know about the torture: the victim and the oppressor—the torturer, or torturers. Typically, no other evidence is available in the public domain. A case is difficult. Even in the case of Belhaj, the most famous torture case—we delivered Mr Belhaj and his pregnant wife to the Libyans, for heaven’s sake—it took 10 years, essentially, to get to court, and of course he got an apology from the Prime Minister. That is why the issue of torture is almost impossible to bring to court.

Time is running out, so I will finish by quoting the questions that the Judge Advocate General put to the Minister in Committee. He said that

“six Royal Military Police were killed…in 2003”,

and asked:

“would we accept that there would be a presumption against… prosecution”

of their murderers? Would we expect special arrangements—

Civil Service Appointments

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The SNP is with me on that.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend may not be aware that there was a six-month stand-off in 2018 between the then Defence Committee and No. 10 over whether Sir Mark Sedwill, newly appointed as National Security Adviser, should appear before that Committee, because it was argued that he appeared before the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy and he need not come to us. Can my right hon. Friend give us an assurance that this National Security Adviser will indeed testify as required before all relevant Committees, including the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Defence Committee and, who knows, the ISC, if it is re-established by then?

[Michael Gove]

I very much take on board my right hon. Friend’s point. it is the case that normally for any particular official or Minister there will be one Select Committee, which is the principal area to which they will be accountable. But, speaking for myself in my own role, I have been held accountable by the Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union as well as by PACAC. I know that David Frost will want to engage with all the Committees of this House and the other place in order to ensure appropriate scrutiny.

Veterans’ Mental Health

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I intend to get everybody in who was here at the beginning of the statement.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

With the Minister’s own strong record on the subject, I am sure that he will agree that the misapplication of human rights law to the battlefield, rather than the law of armed conflict, is a cause of immense stress and mental distress to the veteran population who have taken part in campaigns and fear being dragged through the courts. When will the Government be bringing forward the promised legislation—I have in mind the promise made on Armistice Day last year, during the election campaign —to stop the repeated reinvestigation of veterans in the absence of any compelling new evidence?

[Johnny Mercer]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his continued doggedness on this issue. I can confirm that I will be introducing a Bill on Wednesday next week that meets our manifesto commitment on this issue. The Prime Minister has made it absolutely clear that the days of lawyers running amok in our services and our veterans community, trying to rewrite history in order to make money, are over. Through a series of measures starting next Wednesday when I will introduce the Bill, this Government are going to go to war on lawfare, and we will ensure that those who serve are protected when they come home by those who should be protecting them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Q7. If he will make it his policy to introduce an ex gratia scheme to compensate war widows who had their war widow’s pension withdrawn on cohabitation or remarriage.

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend has made this point to me in person. I have heard from the war widows themselves about their own concerns. The Ministry of Defence is looking at what can be done to provide meaningful support to those who have lost their loved ones.

[Dr Lewis]

Given that the previous Defence Secretary sought and was refused permission from the Treasury to help the estimated 265 war widows whose pensions were cancelled when they remarried, and can be permanently restored only by their going through a divorce and remarriage to their second husbands, will the Prime Minister personally meet Moira Kane and Mary Moreland of the War Widows’ Association finally to put an end to this deplorable and dishonourable situation?

[The Prime Minister]

The Ministry of Defence is looking at this very problem, and I am conscious of the issue that my right hon. Friend raises—it has been raised with me. I have asked my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence to meet the chairman of the War Widows’ Association to discuss further what we can do.

Ministerial Code

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Lady for her question, and she knows that I have enormous respect and affection for the work she does. She is right to say that, as we are all managers of staff and public servants, we must be properly robust and exacting in ensuring that we do everything we can to deliver for those who put us here. All my ministerial colleagues know that their first responsibility is to the British people, and to delivering the manifesto on which we were elected.

The hon and learned Lady rightly said that it is important that any investigation is thorough, rapid, independent, and authoritative. The Cabinet Secretary will be leading the work in accordance with the ministerial code, and with access to the independent adviser, Sir Alex Allan, and that will ensure a proper and fair inquiry. On the presence of the Prime Minister, as I said earlier, the Prime Minister is determined to ensure that across Government we fulfil our manifesto pledges, and it is right for him to lead that work. As the Minister responsible for the civil service, it is appropriate that I am here answering these questions.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

How does my right hon. Friend think that Margaret Thatcher would have got on if she had been subjected to the same smears and sexism as have been used against the current iron lady in the Home Office?

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. We are all aware that progress in the past has depended on strong Ministers, and indeed strong Prime Ministers, setting exacting terms, but it has also depended on having a brilliant and able civil service that can act with confidence and provide candid advice. Those two important pillars of our constitution are at the heart of this Government’s operation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2020 Commons Chamber

The Prime Minister was asked—

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 12 February.

[The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)]

The whole House will want to join me in sending our deepest sympathies to all those affected by the weekend’s flooding. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government has announced the activation of the Government’s emergency Bellwin scheme to provide financial support for qualifying affected areas in the north of England, and we continue to work closely with our partners to help those affected and, above all, to keep people safe.

This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall hold further such meetings later today.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Q1. If he will take steps to ensure that the security, defence and foreign policy review is completed before the comprehensive spending review.

[The Prime Minister]

We will continue to transform the UK economy through the Budget in March and the comprehensive spending review later this year. The timing of that integrated review will be announced shortly.

[Dr Lewis]

I am grateful for that reply. May I urge the Prime Minister to recall what happened to the last combined security and defence review, which was done within a straitjacket of fiscal neutrality? It meant that every extra pound spent on cyber or security was a pound to be cut from the conventional armed forces. Therefore, will he try to ensure that the next attempt at a combined security and defence review will not face such a straitjacket and will be concluded before rather than after the comprehensive spending review?

War Widows’ Pension Scheme

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

After the knockabout of what was described as the last full debate while Britain is still a member of the European Union, we come to the last actual debate under those circumstances. The scandal—and it is a scandal—that I wish to discuss has absolutely nothing to do with the European Union whatsoever; it is entirely self-inflicted.

I am grateful to Mr Speaker for granting this debate about the sickening mistreatment of a group of 200 to 300 of the people whom we in this place above all should hold in the highest honour—namely, widows of service personnel who died in combat defending this country or as a result of terrorist offences against them because they wore the Queen’s uniform.

Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) was elected my successor as Chairman of the Defence Committee. He won a worthy victory in a field of five very well qualified candidates, and I congratulate him once again. I take this opportunity to give my thanks to the conscientious Committee Clerks, the gifted Committee specialists and the indispensable Committee administrators, without whom, as he will find, no Committee Chairman could hope to function efficiently.

I should also like particularly to pay tribute to the four Labour members of the 11-person Committee that I last chaired in the previous Parliament who lost their seats: Madeleine Moon, Ruth Smeeth, Phil Wilson and Graham Jones. Like all the other members of the Committee, I never had to give a moment’s consideration to which party they belonged to. All they cared about was their belief in a strong defence for the United Kingdom. They should be very proud of their work on the Committee; I certainly am.

The early general election inevitably left a few inquiries unfinished, but time and again, during the dozens of hearings that we held on two Committees from 2015 right through to the end of 2019, we referred and returned to the atrocious treatment meted out to an estimated 265 war widows who lost their war widow’s pension on remarriage or cohabitation and who still await its restoration.

On 8 November 2014, the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, announced that from April 2015, war widows would be able to continue to claim their war widow’s pension when they remarried or cohabited. That commitment was repeated at Defence questions on 24 November 2014, when I asked the then Minister, Anna Soubry,

“whether it is the case that a war widow who lost her widow’s pension on remarriage but who has subsequently become single again is eligible to have it reinstated and never taken away under any circumstances thereafter?”—[Official Report, 24 November 2014; Vol. 588, c. 644.]

She replied that she thought the answer was yes, but that she might be wrong. I am sure that if Anna is watching this, she will smile when I record the fact that that was probably the only time in her prominent and distinguished parliamentary career that she admitted that she might be wrong about anything.

However, the following day it turned out that the Minister had in fact been right, because she replied in a written answer to two written questions I had tabled on 17 November 2014. She said:

“From 1 April 2015 the spouse or civil partner of all members of the Armed Forces Pension Scheme 75 and any War Pension Scheme widow will retain their pension for life if they have not already surrendered it due to remarriage or cohabitation.

From 1 April 2015 those who have already surrendered their pension due to remarriage or cohabitation can apply to have their pension restored for life, should the relationship end or they cease cohabiting.”

I sent this reply to a remarried war widow, the widow of someone who had been killed liberating the Falkland Islands in 1982, who lived in my constituency. I noted at the time that:

“It seems to me that this will lead to some rather odd situations, given that—once restored—the pension could never again be taken away. Therefore, there may be a perverse incentive for couples to break up in order to have the pension reinstated and then get together again now that it cannot be removed a second time.”

The remarks I am going to make from now on are a continuation of a speech that I made on 22 November 2018. That date in itself signifies how unsatisfactory the situation is. I really should not have to be still banging on in 2020 about the same problem that was fully explored a year ago and more. At that time, I paid tribute to the fact that the Commissioner for Victims and Survivors, Judith Thompson, had—with the assistance of the chairman of the War Widows Association, Mary Moreland, who is present with colleagues today—compiled the testimony of a number of war widows in an attempt to enable me to convey to this House what it really meant to have had their sacrifice acknowledged by the award of a war widow’s pension, only then to have it snatched back on finding somebody with whom to spend the rest of their lives.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for securing this debate. Does he recognise that, as well as that terrible slight, many of these women will have made huge financial sacrifices personally so that their husband could serve, making them very fragile financially, and therefore to ask them to choose between their security and a new partner is not just a disservice to them but also, I would say, a breach of the contract we would have had with that fallen serviceman?

[Dr Lewis]

May I just say that it is typical of my right hon. Friend, a former Secretary of State for Defence, to make sure that she was present today, as she notified me she would be, to make that very point? Indeed, as I would have expected, she goes to the heart of the matter. As we will hear later, what really needs to be done is to stop looking at this award as the award of a pension or a benefit when in reality it is meant to be recognition of and compensation for a sacrifice, which should be untouchable under any circumstances.

In fact, however, that is not the case because, as Judith Thompson, the commissioner, spelled out at the time:

“If your spouse died or left Military or War Service before 31 March 1973 and you also receive the War Pension Scheme Supplementary Pension you keep your War Widow’s Pension for life.”

So if it is before 1973, they are okay. She went on:

“If you were widowed after 5 April 2005 and receive Survivors Guaranteed Income Payment from the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme you keep your War Widow’s Pension for life.”

In between, however, we have this cohort—now reduced to between 200 and 300—of war widows who lost the pension under a change in the rules and have not had it reinstated. I said in that earlier debate that that basically created a perverse incentive for people who, by definition, have already suffered the greatest trauma and tragedy, to part from the person with whom they have found renewed happiness, and go through a charade of this sort if they wish their pension to be permanently reinstated.

At that time, the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), who sat on the Defence Committee on behalf of the Democratic Unionist party, pointed out an additional perversity, which was that widows of members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, who served and died alongside members of the Ulster Defence Regiment and other regiments, had had the issue resolved locally in Northern Ireland. Because members of the Ulster Defence Regiment were in the Army, which is covered by defence and not a devolved matter, their widows had not had that issue resolved, and were still being denied the reinstatement of their war widow’s pension.

I then read extracts from five of seven testimonies—that was all I had time for—from war widows who explained what this issue meant to them. I shall now abbreviate those testimonies, but I urge anyone who is interested in reading the full account of what those five widows had to say to look at the speech from, I believe, November 2018, which can easily be found in the appropriate section of my website—[Interruption.]

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I am intervening at an appropriate time so that my right hon. Friend can reshuffle his papers.

[Dr Lewis]

That is very helpful.

[Bob Stewart]

This situation is frankly iniquitous. It is unfair and wrong, but it could be put right very quickly if we just say that once someone receives a widow’s pension they keep it, end of.

[Dr Lewis]

That has been said. That is what David Cameron did, and that is now the situation. The argument arises because of the small cohort who between those years did not have their pension reinstated. Thanks to my gallant friend’s intervention, I now have the exact date of that previous debate. It was on 22 November 2018, and it is easily accessible in Hansard, or, even more easily, in the “Commons Speeches” section of my website.

I first quoted Linda, whose husband John was murdered by the IRA in May 1973 by a booby-trap bomb. She explained:

“In the early 70s War Widows were visited by inspectors to ensure they were not living with another man whilst in receipt of their compensation pension. I felt degraded by this. Life was lonely as a young women with a baby and over time I missed the family life I so tragically had taken from me. I missed my son having a father, I missed the closeness and friendship of a husband…As was stated in 2015 this was a choice—”

the fact that she had to give up her pension on remarriage—

“that should not have been forced on War Widows. I was personally heartbroken when I was told that pension changes in 2015 had left me behind. The utter disbelief that the Government didn’t really mean ALL War Widows would now have their pensions for life was unbearable. These changes made me feel like a second class War Widow and I have now been made to relive the pain and grief of 1973 every day. I cannot and will not accept that John’s sacrifice is less worthy than others.”

I read out four more testimonies on that occasion, but I do not have time to do that again. Instead, I shall refer to two testimonies that I did not previously have time to read out. One was from someone who was bereaved not during Operation Banner in Northern Ireland, but in Iraq in 2003.

Raqual lost her husband Matt there.

“If anything happens to me”,

he wrote immediately before deploying,

“I want you and our son and our baby to be happy. Meet someone else and give our children a loving home. You won’t need to worry about money as you will be financially independent”—

he thought—

“and able to give our children what they deserve!”

Eight weeks later, she was a widow. Eight years later, she remarried. Upon remarriage, she writes:

“I surrendered my War Widows’ Pension as I had to do and increased my hours of work to compensate for this loss of income.

Being able to support my children independently was and still is very important to me and to Matt’s memory. I would never expect my new husband to have to do this. And then came the decision to allow widows to retain their pensions on remarriage, but only if they remarried after April 2015.

I am so pleased for the widows who will benefit from this. But I hold the values of fairness and equality in high regard, and we are now in a situation which is neither fair nor equal. Even now, I simply can’t get my head around the fact that had I waited four more years to remarry I would have kept my pension for life. How can it be fair that someone who remarried on the 31 March 2015 lost their pension, and yet 24 hours later someone in the exact same position would keep theirs!!!???”

[Allan Dorans (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Raqual is a constituent of mine. At the time of her husband’s tragic death in 2003, they already had one child and she was 12 weeks pregnant with her second child. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that children of fallen servicemen deserve the financial security of a pension, paid into by their father during his time of service, if for no other reason than the memory of the man who made the ultimate sacrifice for his country?

[Dr Lewis]

I agree totally. I thank the hon. Gentleman, a new Member from the opposite side of the House, for taking the time and the trouble to participate in this short debate.

My final extract from testimony is from Elizabeth, the widow of Ronnie, who was murdered in Northern Ireland. She says:

“I was devastated by his murder and went into deep shock…Due to my depression, I was on injections for months, but I just couldn’t get out of my feeling of hopelessness. The authorities threatened a number of times to put me into a secure hospital if I did not improve. I had a friend who stayed with me every night for almost eighteen months. The children didn’t want me to go anywhere as they thought that I might be murdered like their daddy. I just couldn’t believe he was gone, and for a long time, when I made the tea, I set a place out for him, almost believing he was coming home.”

She concludes:

“It makes me so angry and sad that the government took the pension away, it’s almost as if they stole it off me. My first husband Ronnie was a brave man, and he answered the call to join up, and I will always be proud of him.

As I get older, that pension would be such a help, and it would also be an acknowledgement by the government that taking it away was wrong and we deserve it for Ronnie laying down his life for his country.”

Time is defeating me and I want the Minister to have time to reply, so let me just move forward by saying that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), the new Chairman of the Defence Committee, appeared before the Committee on 19 March 2019 during the course of one of our annual inquiries into the armed forces covenant. At the time, I asked him how this matter was progressing. He explained that the then Secretary of State for Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson) who is now the Secretary of State for Education, had already written to the Treasury. They were awaiting a reply and were in the hands of the Treasury. I now have a copy of a letter that was sent on 12 February 2019 by the then Defence Secretary asking that the Treasury reinstate all war pension scheme widows’ pensions and armed forces pension scheme widows’ pensions for the people concerned. He explained that the Treasury had previously refused; but this was a letter that he had actually sent to the Prime Minister. I also have a report, which I do not have time to read, from the Daily Express on 9 March, which stated that the then Prime Minister had said that this needed to be got done. Since then, what? Nothing. The months have gone by, and nothing has been done.

What is the way forward? It is to do what the chairman of the War Widows’ Association—Mary, who lost her husband to the IRA during the troubles—and others have recommended all along, namely to reclassify this award as compensation for sacrifice, and not a benefit that should in any way be affected by a change in a person’s financial or other circumstances.

I mentioned former Prime Minister David Cameron, and said that he did his best to sort out this problem. I want to give him a pat on the back for how he sorted out a previous problem to do with a campaign in which I was involved to get belated recognition for the Arctic convoy veterans, who had not had a campaign star. All the same objections were raised as are raised by the Treasury now—about precedents, Pandora’s boxes and all the rest of it—and in the end Mr Cameron said, “Just do it.”

I know that successive Defence Secretaries have wanted this done. I know that the Minister, who was a member of the Select Committee when we were going over all this, wants it done. It has to be done. The situation is a disgrace. I hope that the change in Chancellor might conceivably have removed an irresistible force or an immoveable object, or whatever metaphor we want to use, that was disgracefully holding things up. This has to be dealt with now. We cannot wait for these ladies—those affected overwhelmingly are ladies—to die before we finally recognise that a shocking and indefensible injustice has been perpetrated.

--- Later in debate ---

[Johnny Mercer]

Of course. I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I will look at every single case. I am determined that we will get this right.

Ten years later, in April 2015, the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, made the same pensions-for-life changes for all other widows or widowers who were, or who became, entitled to a pension from that date. We must be clear here: none of these changes reinstated war pensions that had already been foregone as a result of remarriage or cohabitation, which is what we are being urged to do today by the War Widows’ Association. These changes were forward looking, with no retrospective effect, meaning that if a widow was, or became, entitled to a pension in April 2015, it was a pension for life and we would never take it away.

The War Widows’ Association has argued that the changes created an anomaly, because a group of people —whose number, the War Widows’ Association claims, is in the hundreds—have not benefited from them. These are widows whose remarriage, civil partnership or cohabitation occurred before the rule changes and whose relationship remains intact. As that group of war widows have not had an entitlement to reinstate their war pensions, they have not benefited from the pensions-for-life changes.

I am certainly well aware of their concerns. One of the first things I did on becoming a Minister was meet the War Widows’ Association. The Ministry of Defence regularly receives representation from the War Widows’ Association, which is a member of the central advisory committee on compensation. Indeed, I have discussed these issues with war widow representatives recently.

I will end by referring to the statement released by the War Widows’ Association after David Cameron’s announcement in 2015. It specifically said and accepted at the time that new legislation never has a retrospective effect, and that the change would apply only to those who were receiving the pension when the new legislation came into force that April.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

The Minister has not addressed their particular proposal, which is to say, “Reclassify this. It is not a pension. It is an award. It is something separate and special. It does not set a precedent.”

[Johnny Mercer]

The Treasury has looked at reclassifying it in the way that my right hon. Friend asks, but that would be retrospective and the war widows themselves have accepted that those who have already given up the pension as a result of remarriage or cohabitation will not have it reinstated.

[Dr Lewis]

They haven’t—they want it reinstated.

[Johnny Mercer]

Let me be clear with the House, the War Widows’ Association and my right hon. Friend. No one, least of all me, underestimates the sacrifice of these individuals who have lost their spouses on operations. I am determined to continue these conversations so that we can fulfil the part of the armed forces covenant that talks about the special recognition we give to the bereaved. I am happy to continue meeting my right hon. Friend to find a way forward.

Question put and agreed to.

UK Special Forces: Iraq and Afghanistan

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

It is almost as if the hon. Gentleman can see the notes in front of me, because I am coming to that exact point.

The allegations uncovered by the joint BBC and The Sunday Times investigation have to be taken out of the Government’s hands and given to an independent inquiry led by a judge. No honest person could disagree with that.

The hon. Gentleman touches on an important wider point, which is Parliament’s broader ability to hold special forces operations to account. That is woefully lacking in this country, and we are being outdone by the United States—the United States!—on the oversight of special forces. In this modern age, the public expect there to be proper parliamentary scrutiny and parliamentary oversight. The system needs updating.

Clearly, there cannot be a free-for-all in which every single Member can access information on live special forces operations, as only a fool would suggest such a thing, but it cannot be beyond the House’s collective imagination, or beyond the collective imagination of the small group of Members, some of whom are unfortunately no longer with us, who regularly attend debates on defence, to propose a mechanism by which we can catch up with the United States—the US system is not perfect, but it is something—Denmark and Norway and have proper oversight of special forces operations.

Indeed, it has been mentioned before in the House by both the Labour Opposition and the Scottish National party, to great resistance from Conservative Members, that the time has come for us to introduce a proper war powers Act. I say to the Government that it is better to take this stuff on now and to have a serious parliamentary debate on the scrutiny efforts this Parliament can take forward before it ends up in the International Criminal Court—nobody wants to see that, but it may well be heading there. A failure to deal with this properly, to be judicious and sober in approaching these matters and to ensure that justice is done and the pursuit of the truth is absolutely unforgiving is nothing short of an assault on our values. It is worth remembering that the ICC was set up with the United Kingdom’s enthusiastic support, and rightly so. As I said, I do not want to see this end up in the ICC and I am sure that neither does the Minister. He has an opportunity to ensure that it does not.

Against a backdrop of assaults on the international rules-based order, which the Government tell us day in, day out they want to defend and uphold, surely we must respond to this mind-blowing investigation properly.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

rose—

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I detect that the former Chairman of the Select Committee on Defence wishes to intervene.

[Dr Lewis]

Before the hon. Gentleman concludes, may I ask whether he feels that a mechanism similar to that of the Intelligence and Security Committee, which conducts investigations into matters relating to the intelligence agencies that cannot be discussed on the Floor of the House, might not be a slightly more appropriate response than the much wider aim of a war powers Act, with all that that would entail?

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

It sounds to me as though I have an ally in the former Chair of the Defence Committee, because I think that part of the remit of the judge-led inquiry that I have advocated on the Floor of the House tonight should be to make a recommendation to the House on what mechanism the House or the Government bring to the House so that these operations can be properly scrutinised. The ISC would be an obvious outfit for that, although I know that other Members would perhaps disagree.