Northern Ireland Budget (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Lord Swire and Lord Bellingham

Money resolution: House of Commons & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 9th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a great honour to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), who made an extremely moving speech.

I plan to be brief, but I first want to thank the Secretary of State for Defence, who, in reply to my Question 1 this afternoon, said that he would set up a dedicated team at the Ministry of Defence to look at the situation of all veterans. I have sponsored two Adjournment debates on this subject, and I have also set up an informal parliamentary support group to look at the interests of veterans from all theatres.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon) on the way in which he moved his amendment. I underline the comments about his time as Defence Secretary, during which he worked tirelessly to try to stop some of this nonsense going on, particularly in respect of Iraq and Afghanistan. His amendments are a genuine attempt to try to move this debate forward and to propose a constructive suggestion.

I very much hope that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland will do two things. First, I hope she will work with the Secretary of State for Defence to make sure that the unit being set up really starts to make a difference. Secondly, the consultation that she set up did not actually say anything about looking at a statute of limitations. She mentioned the word “amnesty”, but, as the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) made very clear, we are talking about an amnesty, but not a statute of limitations. In this case it would affect Northern Ireland, but I would extend it to all veterans from all theatres so that they knew where they stood and that, after a period of time, it would not be possible for them to be subject to the knock on the door. The qualification would of course be that that applied unless any new evidence became available.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

Would my hon. Friend not say that all veterans who find themselves in such a position today, tomorrow or in years to come should be looked after properly by the Ministry of Defence—provided with support, including if necessary counselling, and with security and an escort, particularly if they are going back to zones in which they are accused of committing these crimes—so that they do not feel they are not wanted, and do not feel isolated and forgotten?

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

My right hon. Friend is 100% right on that point, but we hope very much that there will not be any prosecutions in the future, or any further arrests.

The key point is that our security forces, as has been pointed out, served in Northern Ireland with the utmost professionalism and dedication in an incredibly febrile, tense and dangerous atmosphere. Young soldiers were sent over—volunteers: we are talking not about conscripts, but professional soldiers—and they were the envy of the entire world. Does the Secretary of State believe that any other army from any other country in the world would have showed the sort of restraint that our Army showed in Northern Ireland, as indeed did the police?

Some 10% of the killings in Northern Ireland were carried out either by the police or the security forces. That is a staggering figure. One has to bear in mind that every single case was fully investigated. Soldiers were operating under the law of the land—not under armed forces law under the Geneva convention, but under our own law—with the yellow book or the yellow card, and every instance was fully investigated at the time by the military police, the RUC or other authorities. That compares with the terrorists, who operated under no known code, and whose only aim in life was to kill and to maim, so how can there ever be any equivalence? How can we talk about amnesties, when our armed forces were operating under the rule of law and under the law?

I want to refer quickly to two cases. I will not mention the names, because they may well be sub judice, but I want to illustrate my concerns. First, the leader of a small patrol went into a village after a shooting incident the day before. The platoon had come under fire. A small patrol of four soldiers went into the village in a follow-up operation after an arms find. A suspicious individual was challenged but did not respond. All four members of the patrol opened fire and that person was killed. It was actually a tragic case of mistaken identity. It was fully investigated at the time by the military police and the RUC. All the evidence was pulled together. The rifles and the rounds were subject to forensic examination. After a period of months, all four members of the patrol were completely exonerated and no further action was required or taken.

We fast-forward to 2012. Under the PSNI investigation under the Historical Enquiries Team, the corporal major who had commanded that patrol was asked to go to Northern Ireland to be questioned, which he did. It was explained to him that there was no new evidence and that the existing evidence had disappeared—the rifles had long since been thrown away or whatever, and the forensic evidence was no longer available. After four days of very polite questioning, he was told that there would be no case to answer. He asked whether he could get on with his life and go back to his family and was told that he could. Fast-forward three more years and there was a knock on the door. Eighteen officers arrested him and took him to Northern Ireland. He has now been charged with attempted murder—I will not go into any more details because he has been charged.

I went to a veterans dinner last weekend at the Royal Anglian Regiment. There were more than 100 people at the dinner. Every single person who came up to me said, “What is going on? Can we not do something about this? Many of us live in fear.” In a speech given that evening, a former regimental sergeant major gave an example from Londonderry in 1972 that illustrates the difficulties that our soldiers faced, the fear they were up against and the appalling decisions that had to be taken on the spur of the moment.

In this second case, soldiers went into the crowd to snatch a demonstrator who had been throwing rocks and bricks at the police and soldiers. They snatched the demonstrator and the crowd became inflamed. The company of soldiers turned around and started moving backwards. One of the soldiers was hit on the back of the head by a rock. In those days, the helmets were not as effective as they are now and he fell down with a cracked skull. The crowd surged forward and were about to lynch him. My constituent and four other soldiers opened fire on the crowd and killed an individual. That was fully investigated at the time. It was found that they were operating under the yellow card or yellow book but that incident is now being reinvestigated. No fewer than 10 people at that dinner now fear they are among the 284 Northern Ireland veterans, men in their 70s and 80s, who may well get the knock on the door as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks said.

Coastal Erosion

Debate between Lord Swire and Lord Bellingham

Tuesday 12th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

In following the hon. Lady’s speech just now, I am not certain as to which is eroding more quickly: the coastline of Scotland or support for the increasingly incompetent SNP Administration in Edinburgh.

I want to confine my remarks to a particular part of my constituency, one of the jewels in the crown of East Devon: Sidmouth, a regency seaside town well known to my hon. Friend the Minister. Sidmouth is at the gateway to the Jurassic coast world heritage site, and a large part of the town is in a conservation area. For years now, I have been working with various bodies and individuals in the town—not least the local councillors, Councillor Stuart Hughes and now Councillor Tom Wright—to try to resolve what has become an increasingly difficult problem, particularly for the residents of Cliff Road, overlooking Pennington Point, which has seen erosion year on year. Indeed, earlier in 2018 it was widely reported in the national press that Cliff Road was one of the most endangered roads in the UK, owing to coastal erosion.

We are very dependent on the south-west coastal path in Sidmouth. We have replaced the Alma bridge, but the various different schemes have gone on for too long. Over the years I have had Sir James Bevan, the chief executive of the Environment Agency, down to see the erosion. Andrew Sells, who is in charge of Natural England, has been down. I even had my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), who was then the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, come and look at it.

There are two issues at stake. One is the complexity of trying to get a satisfactory solution. It is a complicated engineering issue. Many different bodies are involved in the steering group: East Devon District Council, Sidmouth Town Council, local fishermen, the Environment Agency, Devon County Council, the National Trust and the Cliff Road Action Group. All of those groups have a rightful interest, but that has delayed the implementation of a scheme that can arrest the erosion that we see year on year.

The new scheme, the preferred scheme, for the Sidmouth beach management plan would see a new groyne wall installed on East Beach and a plan to raise the splash wall along the promenade. I am extremely nervous about the prospect of raising the wall along the promenade because we have seen what happened in the neighbouring constituency of Tiverton and Honiton: one can drive down the esplanade in Seaton and not actually see the sea. We would not want that replicated in Sidmouth. This part of the £9 million project would last around 100 years.

We now have a funding issue. East Devon District Council needs to raise £3.3 million, with the rest hopefully being secured from the Environment Agency. Work would begin in 2019 and be completed in 2020. When we look at the areas we can raise the money from, we see that we are left with either a local levy, the district council, Sidmouth Town Council, South West Water, local charities, visitors, East Devon housing, and residents. I humbly submit to the Minister that it is not satisfactory to try to leave a small local authority with a funding gap that will prevent the scheme from being realised.

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

My hon. Friend is being incredibly generous in giving way. My local authority has similar problems, but it faces a structural funding deficit. The Minister’s Department and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government must consider making some form of ring-fenced precept available to local councils, and perhaps there should be more contributions from town and parish councils inland.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

I agree with my hon. Friend that it is almost impossible to ask local authorities for large amounts of money to fill the gap because they all operate under very strict financial constraints now. Such schemes should not be held back by relying on the local authority to make up the difference, so I ask the Minister whether Bellwin can be extended. Can my residents of Cliff Road, who have found it impossible to get mortgages and increasingly difficult to get insurance as they see their gardens disappear, get a compensation package?

I hope that the whole area can be dealt with quickly. We need a masterplan for the whole Port Royal area along the esplanade, but there is no point in doing that until we have secured the Pennington Point and rock revetment scheme, because that would threaten the sewage works in the area, which could in due course flood the entire town.

I do not want to delay the debate unduly. The Minister is welcome to come to Sidmouth at any time to see the situation for himself. We are almost there now. This has gone on for so long. The scheme must be implemented. We cannot wait any longer. We have got people onside. We have got everything lined up now. I pay tribute to all those who have got this far, but we have a funding deficit and I ask the Minister to be creative in looking at the compensation issue for the residents of Cliff Road and also in helping with the funding that we need to get the scheme under way.