Leamside Line

Debate between Lord Beamish and Peter Gibson

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jones]

They have clearly not read the report. If the hon. Gentleman tells me that any Government are going to provide him with £640 million of public money for a railway to Consett, he is deluding himself. That is not going to happen. The point is to be honest with people. I know that he came out with that flippantly when he did not think he would get elected as the Member for North West Durham, but he did and, therefore, he feels he has to follow through. It is not going to be achievable.

I object to the fact that the public are being deluded, and that more public money has frankly been wasted on highly paid consultants. The hon. Member for North West Durham referred earlier to the Weardale line, which is another example of similar amounts of money being suggested. That line will not be achievable, because the amount of money being argued for will not be forthcoming. Why not just be honest with people?

The strategy is clear: throw around all these projects to give the impression that something is happening when it is not. We have a real example with the Leamside line where, if the Government concentrated on putting in the money, it would create benefits. The hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) is right that it would improve his constituency and those on the east coast main line, due to capacity. However, I wish he would not argue about the new timetable for the north-east coast line, which would mean that an hourly service would be introduced from Chester-le-Street. The hon. Member and the Tees Valley Mayor complained that that would reduce the number of trains to Darlington. I am sorry; we need an hourly service and that needs to be addressed. It would be addressed if we got the project.

[Peter Gibson]

My job as the Member of Parliament for Darlington is to stand up for the services that reach my constituency, just as I am sure the right hon. Gentleman would fight if the services in his constituency were reduced. I have no hesitation in continuing that fight for the services in my constituency.

[Mr Jones]

I have no criticism of that, but he speaks up and gets the entire thing shelved for six months. That means that my constituents do not get the hourly service from Chester-le-Street that they were promised. That shows how logic has gone out of the window in arguing for the overall benefits on the east coast mainline, not just for one particular town that happens to have a Conservative Member of Parliament.

[Peter Gibson]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way again?

[Mr Jones]

Yes.

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Lord Beamish and Peter Gibson

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th October 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Peter Gibson]

Let us have both approaches.

Dr Morgan: Okay. To start with the second one, it seems to me that the problem in this area is lawfare or the judicialisation of war—whatever you want to call it. The extension of the European convention on human rights into this area as a result of the European Court’s decision in Al-Skeini, and the decision of our Supreme Court in Smith v. Ministry of Defence, which confirmed that and extended the law of tort into the battlefield, led to the erosion of combat immunity. To me, that should be the priority for any legislation on this difficult and multifaceted problem.

The section of the Bill that partly deals with the issue is the derogation provision and the duty on the Minister to consider derogation. It is not a duty to derogate; it is a duty to consider doing it, which is putting into statute the Government’s policy. It seems to me that that is valuable, although it does not change very much.

In its consultation paper published in June 2019, the Ministry of Defence said it was going to look at restatement of combat immunity, hand in hand with a no-fault compensation scheme for service personnel to pay damages on the full tort measure. Those two things should go together. I regret that last month, in reply to the consultation, it said that legislation on the issue is

“not being taken forward…at this time.”

I think it should be. The priority should be to restate combat immunity and, hand in hand with that, to have no-fault compensation for service personnel on the full compensation measure that you get if you bring a claim in law.

If that were done, it would help with the problem about the shorter limitation periods for tort claims—damages claims—that was raised several times at Second Reading. The British Legion has been quoted several times saying that that breaches the armed forces covenant. I do not want to get into that particular debate, but there is no question that service personnel might, in some fairly unusual situations, find their ability to bring damages claims caught by the proposals in part 2 of the Bill as it stands.

If the Ministry of Defence took forward the proposal that it called “Better combat compensation,” to have full compensation through the armed forces compensation scheme, those worries would fall away. If there was full compensation available without the need to bring a tort claim or negligence action against the Government, any limitations on the time periods for bringing tort claims would be an irrelevant question for service personnel.

Those are two reasons why I would revive what seems to have been the Ministry of Defence’s approach at one point, which was restating combat immunity and ensuring full, no-fault compensation. If you want me to give more detailed comments on the provisions of the Bill I can do that, but I would approach the issues in a quite different way than in the Bill that we have.

[Mr Jones]

Q In the case of no-fault compensation, would that then be within the existing armed forces compensation scheme? How would you change that?

Dr Morgan: The proposal to make that switch is in the joint paper produced by Richard Ekins, Tom Tugendhat and myself that I mentioned at the start. We said in that paper that that there is a case for having a more generous strand within the armed forces compensation scheme applying to those soldiers who cannot bring tort claims at law. In other words, if Crown immunity in warfare were to be revived—the Government already have the statutory power to do that, they do not need an Act of Parliament—and it was decided that you cannot bring claims at all, there would be a case for having a more generous approach within the armed forces compensation scheme to those people. I would not necessarily say the whole armed forces compensation scheme should be upgraded—I am aware of how expensive that would be. If we are going to restrict tort claims of a certain sub-category of injuries to service people, then it would be a good idea to balance that out by having full compensation.