Immunity for Soldiers
Debate between Julian Lewis and Johnny Mercer(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Johnny Mercer
My hon. Friend raises a really interesting point. The checks and balances being discussed by the Attorney General relate to a rigorous investigation. Comprehensive and new compelling evidence should provide a safeguard. The problem with a statute of limitations per se is that where clear evidential thresholds are met—when it comes to clear wrongdoing—we start entering difficult areas. We should at least start a conversation about it, but the Prime Minister has specifically asked my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Defence Committee not to do so.
Dr Julian Lewis
I would not put it quite as explicitly as that, but it was certainly implicit in the way that our report recommendation was first put forward and then somehow mysteriously excised from the Government’s agenda. May I try to resolve the pointed issue and ask my hon. Friend whether he would accept the term, “qualified statute of limitations”? That is what the Government seem to be putting forward, that there will be a presumption against prosecution after 10 years have elapsed—hence the statute of limitations—unless new and compelling evidence emerges, hence the qualification.
Johnny Mercer
Around this legal language, there are ways out of this. We can do that without using inflammatory terms or mechanisms that people would not agree with. I am afraid that what gets lost in a lot of this is that there is an impression that individuals such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and I—[Interruption.]
Johnny Mercer
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham. There is an impression that we have no feelings for the victims, that they play second fiddle, and that there is no effort to pursue justice in any way. We have just heard my hon. Friend talk about cradling an 18-year-old girl as she died in Northern Ireland. Victims and families get this impression because legal teams drag them down a pathway and get them genuinely to believe that they might, in the end, have all their questions answered. There is nothing more disingenuous than using their grief, anger and sense of unjustness to propel a totally false narrative, which is used simply to extend the conflict.