Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Lord Morris of Aberavon Excerpts

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

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup. Part 1 of the Bill creates a presumption against prosecution after five years, and factors are spelled out in the Bill which require consideration before any later prosecution. I would have thought that those factors would in any event form part of any decision on whether to prosecute, but I have no difficulty with them being put on the face of the Bill. What is important to stress is that this part of the Bill does not give impunity to our Armed Forces, nor does it explicitly deal with the real problem that has faced them, particularly after operations in Iraq and Afghanistan—namely, investigations and reinvestigations many years after the events.

This group seeks, among other things, to remove Part 1 from the Bill entirely, whereas the amendments in groups 2 and 3 at least attempt to amend and not wreck this part of the Bill. The reasons given for this drastic approach are the effect on our international reputation and, in particular, the risk that the International Criminal Court will or might become involved in circumstances where prosecutions would normally be left to our authorities. I am not at all convinced about the reality of this risk. Is it really suggested that if genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes, as defined by Articles 6, 7 and 8 of the Rome statute, were discovered five years after the original offences, they would not result in a prosecution? Nothing in this Bill would prevent one.

I hope that noble Lords who seek the removal of this part of the Bill have read the evidence that Major Bob Campbell gave to the Public Bill Committee in the House of Commons. He said of the Bill that the principle of attempting to improve the lot of veterans and service personnel was welcomed, and that

“if the Bill were to be squashed it would send a very depressing message to the veterans community—probably one that has been felt quite harshly by the Northern Ireland veterans—that we are not important enough to get any type of assistance when facing legal assault.”

Major Bob Campbell was investigated and reinvestigated 11 times in relation to the same incident over 17 years. His view was that if the Bill had been enforced, his torment would at least have ended in 2009. Whether or not he is right about that, it is important to pay attention to his answers. When asked about the danger of the ICC becoming involved, he told the Committee that he had been repeatedly informed that if IHAT—which noble Lords will know about—was in anyway interfered with, the International Criminal Court would “swoop in” and

“clamp us in leg irons and we would all be off to the Hague.”

About ICC involvement, Major Campbell said:

“I decided to test that theory, and I wrote to the chief prosecutor of the ICC, Ms Bensouda, asking in exasperation whether I, SO71 and SO72 could surrender ourselves to the ICC rather than go through several more appalling years at the hands of the Ministry of Defence. Ms Bensouda responded that our allegation does not fall within her remit, because her job is not to prosecute individual soldiers; her job is to prosecute commanders and policy makers for the most grave crimes. In her orbit, manslaughter, which is what I was accused of, is not a war crime. It is a domestic crime—a regular crime, as opposed to what she would normally deal with. I reported that rejection to the Ministry of Defence, which continued to repeat that the ICC would fall in.


The second point I would make is what would be so terrible about the ICC being involved? We kept getting told that the ICC has a bit of scrutiny over IHAT and is keeping a very close eye on it. Personally, I do not have a problem with that. Like I said, the ICC was not going to ruin our careers, the ICC was not going to harass our families, and the ICC was not going to go and bully soldiers who had left the Army for a witness statement—not even a suspect’s. The ICC would conduct itself professionally, and it would have no incentive—no financial incentive—to drag things out for years, like Red Snapper, which provided most of the detectives to IHAT, did. Finally, the ICC would probably not use the investigative technique that IHAT used, which was to pay Phil Shiner’s gofer to be the go-between between them and witnesses because IHAT was too scared to go to Iraq.”


He continued:

“So regarding the whole spectre of the ICC, first, I do not find it remotely as scary as people make it out to be and, secondly, it is completely false, because I attempted, with my two soldiers, to surrender ourselves in order to spare us another several years of the MOD fannying about, and the offer was refused. So to answer your question, I do not see that as an issue at all.


What I would say, though, is that I think I understand why the Government would be reluctant for the ICC to be involved, because the scrutiny would not be on Tommy Atkins; the scrutiny would be on General Atkins and Minister Atkins.”—[Official Report, Commons, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill Committee, 6/10/20; cols. 27-28.]


This part of the Bill is not a panacea. It does not of itself prevent investigations or reinvestigations, but it is something which will be welcomed by our own forces. I respectfully suggest that the spectre of the ICC as a reason for wrecking this part of the Bill is unsound. I invite noble Lords who have quite rightly emphasised their respect for our Armed Forces to look soldiers like Major Bob Campbell in the eye and say to them that these provisions are entirely inappropriate and would damage our international reputation. I strongly oppose all these amendments.

[Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendments 1 and 2. As I did not take part at Second Reading, I must resist the temptation to cover a whole range of subjects in my contribution to this debate.

As an old Defence Minister, and, indeed, an old soldier who served in Germany as an infantry subaltern and was involved in courts martial there, I broadly welcome the aims of the Bill to introduce a measure of protection against unfounded claims against military personnel, some of which go back many years. I deprecate the cottage industry in the growth of claims.

Let me say immediately that when there is wrongdoing, no person is above the law. Torture is a typical example where we should never propose exemption. I have argued before at the annual conferences of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Cape Town and, more recently, in St Petersburg to persuade all countries to accept the need to ensure that there is no exemption for this offence.

As a law officer, I played a very small part in encouraging the Foreign and Commonwealth Office under Robin Cook to create the International Criminal Court. As John Healey MP said in the other place on Third Reading of the Bill, the risks of

“British troops being dragged before”—[Official Report, Commons, 3/11/20; col. 277.]

the ICC are there. There may be an argument about this, but that is what he said and we should always bear it in mind. Perhaps the Minister could give an assurance on that very point of what—if any—the dangers are of going before the ICC.

The wise words of Professor Michael Clarke, the former director-general of the Royal United Services Institute, on the dangers of an idea gaining

“international traction that the UK operates a ‘quasi-statute of limitations’”,

and hence might be in danger of being indicted before the International Criminal Court, should always be borne in mind. They need rebuttal, and they need clarification.

When the Government launched their consultation on the changes to the legal protection for our Armed Forces serving overseas, the consultation included proposals to create a statutory presumption for alleged criminal offences which occurred more than 10 years ago. I repeat: 10 years was the issue that went out for consultation.

The Bill is a major departure from the norms of our international obligations

“under international humanitarian law … international human rights law and international criminal law.”

These are not my words; they are the words of Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights. They are words that we should bear in mind and rebut if it is possible to do so.

That is the background, and hence it is a basic requirement that any provisions in the Bill need thorough justification. Therefore, I support Amendments 1 and 2 to change the presumption against prosecution from five to 10 years. My question, very simply, is: what is the Government’s justification for the change from 10 years in the consultation document to five years? I would like an answer before the end of this debate.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, before I start my remarks about the Bill, I would like to say that nothing I say over the next few days in any way impugns the integrity of the Minister. I have every respect for her, but I think that the Bill is a terrible piece of legislation—worse than terrible. It is actually quite shocking. It is the international version of the “spy cops” Bill, which granted broad legal immunity to state agents who commit criminal acts. How can that be right?

It is one of those Bills that I think is so bad that we need to scrap it entirely. That is why I am joining the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Smith of Newnham, to oppose the question that Clauses 1 to 7 stand part of the Bill. If a “delete-all” amendment were in order, I would do that instead. I hope that we can build an alliance to oppose the Bill’s Third Reading.

It struck me listening to noble Lords who have spoken already that the support for the Bill is actually based on fake news. The Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has written to our Joint Committee on Human Rights, chaired by Harriet Harman. In a letter, she says that the number of vexatious claims has been “exaggerated”—by our Government, obviously—to justify the proposed legislation. We do not have a whole heap of vexatious, baseless claims, which is what the Government seem to be suggesting.

The Bill clashes with the whole point of our justice system. I know that there are noble Lords in this Chamber who know a lot more about the law than I do, and I am sure they know that that is true. The whole point of our justice system is that the guilty are found guilty and the innocent are found innocent—that is obviously what we have to do. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, mentioned the strain of all these vexatious claims, but in fact they do not exist, so the argument for the Bill is extremely weak.

I consulted two ex-generals and an ex-admiral of my acquaintance about the Bill, and they all had severe qualms. They all felt that this could backfire quite seriously on our service personnel and that it would make things worse. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, demolished the argument for the Bill, but he said as well that service personnel could be brought to the ICC, which would be much worse than being dealt with here.