Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Debate between Lord Beamish and Stephen Timms

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The hon. Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) said that this was a good Bill—no, it is not. It is a bad Bill, and it is an unnecessary Bill. All of this could have been done within the Armed Forces Bill that is going through Parliament, but the Government chose, for their own reasons, to put forward this Bill. It does not get to the central point of the issue, which is around investigations. They are completely absent from this Bill and currently absent from the Armed Forces Bill. They were resisted by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) in this Bill and in the Armed Forces Bill. It galls me that yesterday he was standing outside a court in Northern Ireland, trumpeting the fact that he was on the side of trying to stop people being investigated, when he had been in a position to do something about it. I think of him as being a bit like an actor in a play who has been sat in the audience watching, rather than taking part.

Without investigation, the Bill is flawed. I have written to the Minister: he needs to ensure that investigations are put in the Armed Forces Bill, because without that, despite the protections that have been claimed today, servicemen and women will be watching our proceedings, thinking that they have more protection than they have. They will still be investigated if allegations are made. There is an opportunity now, with the Armed Forces Bill, to remedy that.

Part 2 of this Bill should simply have been scrapped. I am sorry, but the idea that we should all have Limitation Act rights and yet members of our armed forces should not—that we should take those away from them—is just not good enough. A Bill that is supposed to give things to our armed forces has been taking things away from them. Part 2 will be challenged in court; only the lawyers will benefit from it.

I welcome the change on war crimes because, like many across the House, I was concerned about our international reputation. I fully support Lord Dannatt’s amendment; I believe we should support anything that helps servicemen and women who are going through such a process.

The Bill claimed to do a lot but does very little. It is disappointing. It could have been vastly improved, or just ignored altogether and incorporated into the Armed Forces Bill. There is an opportunity to put right what is not in this Bill when the Armed Forces Bill passes through the House. I know that the Minister is open to discussions about that, but I urge him to ensure that that happens, because without that, people will still be investigated; they will still go through the agony that this Bill was intended to stop. We all sympathised with that intention. It clearly will not be achieved in the Bill’s present form.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I also warmly welcome the further concession that the Minister has announced. The Bill will now exclude all the offences for which service personnel could be summoned before the International Criminal Court. That has now fixed the worst of the problems that many have been anxious about during debates on the Bill.

It would be helpful to understand why it has proved so hard for the Government to realise how awful what they were proposing was. No Minister wants to give armed forces carte blanche to commit torture, genocide and war crimes, and yet it has required the most extraordinary struggle to stop the Government doing exactly that. The noble Lord Robertson—I welcome the Minister’s tribute to him—introducing his amendment in the other place, said:

“Maybe after a lifetime in politics I was affected by some uncharacteristic naivety in thinking that the Government, faced by almost universal and expert opposition on this aspect of the Bill, would by now have changed their mind.” [Official Report, House of Lords, 13 April 2021; Vol. 811, c. 1190.]

Yet they ploughed on until yesterday. Perhaps it was indeed the change of Minister that averted disaster, and with others I congratulate him on his achievement in a short time, but if he can, in winding up, shed some further light on what on earth has been going on, the House would be grateful.

I strongly support what my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) said on duty of care and investigations. I hope that we will come back to them soon if the duty of care amendment is lost this afternoon. I warmly welcome the progress on the Bill in the past few days and would be grateful for any light the Minister can shed on what has been going on.