Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Debate between Lord Boyce and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Committee stage & Lords Hansard
Tuesday 9th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Lord should now continue and we will see how well we can hear him.

[Lord Boyce (CB) [V]]

My Lords, this Bill sets out to make better provision on legal proceedings for our Armed Forces when they are, or have been, engaged in overseas operations. This is a very laudable aim, but the Bill’s significant emphasis on presumption against prosecution as a way of relieving some of the stress of legal proceedings is misplaced. It is the investigation and reinvestigation process that so wears people down, and prosecution, when it comes, may even be a form of relief. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, alluded to this matter of waiting in the last group of amendments.

Anyway, we should bear in mind that, even when the presumption is in place, there is no total lifting of the threat of prosecution after five years. As the Minister has told us, this can still happen if the Attorney-General sees fit. Furthermore, there could be the spectre of an even longer investigative process if the case falls into the hands of the ICC. I know that the matter of the ICC has been well covered this afternoon, and that the Minister has sought to reassure us on this point, but I am afraid that I am not convinced. Nor it seems is the ICC, which apparently remains unconvinced by any assurances that the Government may have tried to make in defence of the Bill.

This is by the way, because, as I have mentioned, it is the investigation process that needs primarily to be addressed: to be sharpened up to ensure that it is not a fishing expedition, that there is value in pursuing the matter under consideration, that it is constrained in length, and that reinvestigations are launched only after the most careful judicial oversight. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has captured all this rather well, as indeed have other noble Lords. It is for these reasons and others that I support Amendments 5 and 28, to which I have put my name, and, indeed, other amendments in this group. I concur with much of what other noble Lords have eloquently said on the matter of investigations; I will spare your Lordships a repeat of all that has gone before in this group.