British Overseas Troops: Civil Liability Claims

Lord Randall of Uxbridge Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie [V]]

I thank my noble friend for his helpful comments and his tribute to my honourable friend, Mr Johnny Mercer, who is a noted proponent of the interests of veterans and a passionate supporter of this Bill. My noble friend gets to the kernel of the issue. I fully anticipate debate about a number of aspects of the Bill—that is healthy and the Government will of course look carefully at what your Lordships have to say when the Bill comes to your Lordships’ House—but I can confirm for my noble friend that, for the sake of our veterans and armed services personnel, it is important that the underlying principle and under- pinning thrust of the Bill be preserved.

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]]

Can the Minister reassure the House that the Bill will not deny essential rights to victims and potential claimants?

[Baroness Goldie [V]]

I am happy to give that reassurance to my noble friend. As I explained earlier, the Bill is neither a statute of limitations nor an amnesty but an attempt to strike a fair balance that recognises the legitimate rights of victims and potential claimants. However, it weighs those against the undoubted obligations and pressures which confront service personnel when, in the name of this country, we deploy them overseas to carry out operations and they find themselves in an unusual and very challenging environment. That is why the Bill has tried to strike that balance appropriately.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Randall of Uxbridge Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a privilege to follow the noble Lord. I draw the attention of the House to my entries in the Register of Members’ Interests, particularly as a trustee of the UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum and president of the Colne Valley Regional Park.

The general election result has given us a welcome degree of certainty, and the gracious Speech has outlined some measures that are to be welcomed. The international situation is, of course, giving us all a great deal of concern.

The environment has rightly risen up the political agenda dramatically over the past 12 months, reflecting real public awareness of the gravity of the potential disaster facing our planet on many levels. I was very pleased to hear my noble friend Lord King of Bridgwater mention population. As he said, it is something we rarely discuss. We cannot but be appalled at the severity of the situation with the fires in Australia, and we must not forget that other precious places are on fire, notably the Amazon. While we are looking at the world, we must not forget about our own nature and biodiversity. The UK has overseas territories that are incredibly rich in diverse nature ranging from the Indian Ocean to the South Atlantic and from the Caribbean to Gibraltar. They are every bit as much of our biodiversity as the Chilterns or the Cairngorms. In fact, they have more diversity. We must not let them remain the Cinderella of the UK’s guardianship of nature, because they are our crown jewels.

The gracious Speech contains much ambition, but it will be up to Parliament to ensure that noble ambitions are turned into real, positive action. I do not doubt the genuine aspirations, but I am concerned that a certain amount of watering down might occur. This, I am afraid to say, is based on experience in various jobs that I have held, most recently in No. 10 as a special adviser. Enshrining the 25-year environment plan, launched by the then PM, Theresa May, will be paramount for our country. We must not let this opportunity pass. We must make it a real, meaningful change to the way we treat our nature, which we all enjoy and depend on for our very lives in so many ways.

One thing that I believe is of paramount importance is real, meaningful funding for both Natural England and the Environment Agency. I know that whenever we have these debates there is a request for more funding, but I have seen the funding for those two agencies go down. It is incredibly important that we give them the resources that they are desperately starved of, as both can provide the expertise and enforcement role that they should be offering. I was delighted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that the environment would be a priority in the Budget. We shall see.

There will be ample opportunity during the legislative process to strengthen, if necessary, this landmark legislation, and today we have heard of several examples of where we have to ensure that that happens. We will be hosting the climate COP in Glasgow, and as hosts we must set an example to other nations. Therefore, I cannot understand how we can contemplate any further expansion of aviation. The plans to create what is ostensibly a second airport at Heathrow must be axed, not just for emission reasons but because clean air is a human right. I will be looking closely at the Private Member’s Bill on clean air which the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, is bringing to the House next week. I hope that suitable measures on air quality will be incorporated in the environment Bill if those measures are not already in place.

As we have already heard from my noble friend Lord Patten, in particular, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, there was something of a bidding war on tree planting during the election campaign, and planting the right species in the right place is of course very important. However, it seems the most utter madness that, while we are advocating the planting of more trees, HS2 is embarking on the biggest deforestation scheme since the First World War. Normally I do not encourage the culling of wildlife, but that particular white elephant should be put down humanely before it tramples down more in its terrible path. The opportunities for expansion of our rail system are not best served by this scheme, as expertly argued by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, in the past few days. While we are speaking today, I have heard of the eviction of people in Harvil Road, while people try to ensure that the water supplies are not contaminated.

We are leaving the European Union. We have an opportunity to be among the best and most enlightened in Europe, and I urge the Government to be bold and grasp this opportunity with enthusiasm.

First World War (Commemoration)

Lord Randall of Uxbridge Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Randall (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow so many colleagues on both sides who have spoken so movingly, including my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) and the right hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell), with whom I sparred gently over the years before I was retired out of the service. It is fitting that in this place, to which we all come from different walks of life and different parts of the country, our memories of our constituents or our families reflect exactly what happened 100 years ago, where so many people fought and died while disregarding their status in society. That is reflected here today.

May I also say what an honour it was to listen to my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick)? I have to say that that was a marvellous speech. As someone who came to the House in a by-election I can say that it is all downhill from now on. The Whips will have taken note of a speech like that and will mark my hon. Friend down for plenty of statutory instrument and delegated legislation committees because that is what it is all about.

Just after my 18th birthday—

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

A long time ago.

[Sir John Randall]

It was indeed a long time ago and I can just about remember it. Just after my 18th birthday, I was standing, literally, in the footprints in the pavement in Sarajevo, by the river Miljacka, where Gavrilo Princip stood and fired those fateful shots that sparked the conflagration we are discussing today. At the time, it was chilling to think what had happened and what the consequences were. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and others have said, the causes of the war and who was to blame are matters for historians to discuss at great length. I have noticed that a certain amount of revisionism is going on in certain quarters, but I will leave that aside. Little did I realise then, of course, that Sarajevo, having been the trigger point for such conflict would in a few decades again become the very centre of more conflict and killing in Europe in our own era.

I am afraid to say that the folly of us all as human beings is that we never seem to learn the lesson of history. That is why these commemorations have to be held and why we have to educate generation after generation in the hope that somehow those mistakes will eventually be realised. We must remember, too, how easy it is to fall into violent conflict.

I congratulate the Government and the country as a whole on the way in which they are embarking on this anniversary. There will be many commemorations throughout the country—some grand, some major civic ones, some local, some individual ones. In my own small parish church, St Laurence in Cowley near Uxbridge, they are researching the names—not a great number—of those on the war memorial. We are still trying to track down the one lady whose name is on there—Olive Latham. We have not yet found out about her history, who she was and why she is on the memorial.

I am proud to say that when a memorial was built and consecrated in Uxbridge after the first world war, we called it a “peace memorial”. I grew up thinking that it might have been done in the ’70s—in a decade of awakening in which we felt that we should not be talking about war—but I found that that was the original name for our memorial. That is fitting, given that Uxbridge was, and to some extent still is, a centre of non-conformism. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) talked about her forebears in the congregational church, and that applies to me, too. For many of the local people, at heart, there was a degree of pacifism but perhaps there was a need for people to answer a stronger calling to serve their country.

As we have heard movingly from many Members, every family will have memories from those days that have been told down the generations. Both my grandfathers were in the forces. My maternal grandfather was in the Royal Flying Corps, principally because he was a woodwork teacher and the aeroplanes were made out of wood. He ended up doing important work mending the planes, so he did not have to serve on the front line. My paternal grandfather, Bert Randall, joined the Royal Horse Artillery and kept a diary. As a good Randalls, as I hope I have been, we always obey the rules. He wrote his diary every day, but it ceased as soon as he went overseas, when keeping a diary was not allowed.

It is fascinating to read what my grandfather had for breakfast, lunch, dinner and many other things from day to day, but it does not provide the sort of insightful, deep and philosophical thoughts of which we have heard from other diaries. I noticed from the diary that he started off with a boyish enthusiasm, joining up with his mates going off to war. While he was training, first in Reading and then in Norfolk, it is possible to see that enthusiasm being tempered, as he realised that some of his comrades were being sent off to France to fill the gaps as a result of all the casualties. The realisation that this was not a game was dawning on him.

One of the most poignant pieces of memorabilia pertaining to my grandfather is provided by a little note he sent. He was on the front line in France, manning a gun limber, and the horse was blown up underneath him, wounding him quite severely. He came home on a hospital train and I have the very note he scribbled out in pencil, which he gave to someone to deliver to his mother in Uxbridge, saying “I’m all right, I’m safe”. He said he did not know why he was being sent to Nottingham when he was only a few miles away from her, but he told her, “Don’t worry, Mum, I’m okay”. I find that incredibly moving, because these stories are all about people. I am sure that many of us here are parents and we can hardly begin to imagine the horror of seeing one’s children going off to war.

My grandfather never wanted to talk about the war—it could be an example of that non-conformism. On Remembrance Sundays, my father who had served in the second world war was very happy to wear a poppy, but my grandfather was not. I think it was the horrors he had seen. He never really wanted to talk about it. That stays with me.

Thankfully, both those grandparents returned home, but not everybody in Uxbridge was so lucky. Lord Hillingdon was one whose son, the honourable Charles Mills, died in action. He was killed in 1915 when Lord Hillingdon was the sitting Member of Parliament for Uxbridge. Everybody is affected and, as I said earlier, we have to educate every generation about what happened.

We have talked about some of the excellent schemes that have been put in place—that of the Institute of Education, for example—and there has been a concentration on the western front. It is quite easy to send schoolchildren across to France and Belgium to see the moving war cemeteries, the Menin Gate and so forth. We have to remember, however, that the war was fought on many fronts and that many people lost their lives throughout the world. In my own borough of Hillingdon, there is an obvious link with the wider world where graves of Australian and New Zealand servicemen can be found at Harefield church, which has an annual Anzac day service at which local school- children put a little Australian or New Zealand flag on the graves. Harefield is one of the smallest villages in Middlesex—it is still there, still a village and still in Middlesex—but it was home to two Victoria Cross recipients in the first world war.

Returning to my theme of remembering what happened elsewhere, I shall talk briefly about the conflict on the Salonika front. I shall do so not only because I studied the history and languages of the Balkans at university, but because I discovered recently the story of British women, particularly Scots but some English women, who served on that front. Although they are much feted in Serbia and elsewhere, we know very little about them over here—something we should try to rectify.

Those women mostly went out as nurses. One particular woman, not in the first flush of youth, had been rather snubbed over here. She wanted to join up and do nursing, but they did not think she had enough qualifications, so she joined the Red Cross and went over to Serbia, where along with various others who had volunteered, she was thrown into the middle of an horrendous typhus epidemic. In the early days of the war, more soldiers were dying there from typhus than they were from battle wounds. Many of the nurses and doctors succumbed to the disease, but these women gallantly turned some of these hospitals round.

Then, as the Serbian army pushed back, something began to happen in 1915. I hope that we shall take part in some of the commemorations of it next year, because the British were involved, although not as much as some. The Serbian nation—I say “nation” because this included the Parliament, the King, bishops, the army and many civilians—retreated across the Albanian mountains along to the Adriatic coast, and thence to the island of Corfu. It was a terrible retreat, during which hundreds of thousands of people died. It is interesting to note that the Albanian people allowed the Serbian army to pass freely. Some of the rivalries about which we hear today may not be as long-lasting as we probably assume.

At the time of the retreat, a nurse, Flora Sandes, decided to enlist in the Serbian army. She did not see why she, as a woman, should not be able, or allowed, to do what a man could do. The Serbian army personnel were a little bit sceptical, but they needed every person they could get. They thought that somehow having one of their allies—a British person—alongside them would be a morale-booster, and so it proved to be. Flora joined up as a private, and she did not get many special favours. She was on that terrible retreat, and she went to Corfu. After the French and the British had enabled those on the retreat to convalesce and re-equip themselves, they arrived at the Salonika front. Flora Sandes was very seriously injured.

As I have said, I do not think that we in this country have fully recognised that, at a time when women did not have the vote and it was very rare for them to be doctors, women such as Flora Sandes not only wanted to do such work, but were given an opportunity to do it in a place that was not their own. There is an excellent book on the life of Flora Sandes and others, and I have to say that the more I read such stories, the more of a feminist I become. That may seem unlikely, but it is true.

The Scots did not only send nurses. They, as well as the French, took some of the young people from Serbia who had gone on that terrible retreat—many of them had been orphaned—into their homes, where they were looked after. I think that some connections still exist. Scotland took a very proud part in those events, and is remembered very fondly in the Balkans as a result.

We know that we must engage in these commemorations for the reasons that I have already given, but I also remember an experience that I had a few years ago, just before we had to vote on the war in Iraq. I took two of my children—it was half term—to the site of the battle of Waterloo, and also to the cemeteries and trenches of the first world war. I am not a great military historian like my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland, but I think it important for people to know about their history.

When I saw, face to face, the reality—the enormity—of what armed conflict means in terms of human life, it became very difficult for me to say that I had the right to send people to their deaths. There are times when we have to do it, and I recognise that: I am not a pacifist by nature. However, it makes us all have to think, because making such decisions is not an easy matter. For that reason, I am thankful that I had the opportunity to make that visit.

Let us go forward into these commemorations. Let us try to ensure, for the sake of those men and women who gave their lives—and those men and women whose lives were ruined for ever because of all the trauma, which might have been gassing or might have been just what they saw, and were never really mended afterwards—that those lives were not given in vain. We must do everything we can to try to avoid the follies that we end up going into.