Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. While it is an absolute honour to follow the right hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), it is also a tough gig in defence debates, but I will do my absolute best in the time that I have.

I will speak to Lords amendments 4 and 5 and the new clauses they would insert into part 2 of the Bill. Many of our witnesses in the Public Bill Committee called for this section of the Bill to be scrapped altogether. Before I turn to the amendments, I also want to add my welcome to the Minister, who is no longer in his place. He will know the frustrations felt by many of us who sat on the Public Bill Committee at his predecessor’s obstinance in the face of expert evidence and personal testimonies. Like others, I sincerely hope for a change in approach, because our forces and veterans would have been better served by well considered and evidenced legislative changes, not this confused hash of a Bill. The Government have rightly identified that there is a problem and a need to provide greater legal protections to armed forces personnel and veterans serving overseas, but they have drafted legislation that makes the problem worse, all in a hurried effort to match the sweeping rhetoric of their 2019 general election campaign.

Lords amendment 4 inserts a new clause that would ensure that our armed forces retain the same rights as civilians in bringing civil claims against the Ministry of Defence. As drafted, the Bill, whose central aim we are told is to provide greater legal protections to armed forces personnel, includes provisions to do the exact opposite and disadvantage our personnel and veterans by introducing a hard six-year cut-off for any compensation claims, including for personal injury and death, all by amending the Limitation Act 1980. The Government claim that this will stop any baseless claims, yet there are already provisions in the Limitation Act to strike out any such baseless claims.

Worse still, the Bill allows the MOD to strike out not just baseless claims, but rightful ones, too. When it comes to dates of diagnosis and knowledge, such as with PTSD or hearing loss, or when it is difficult to establish facts in the context of armed conflict, claims cannot always be made within six years. The Government’s own impact assessment from last year shows that at a minimum, 19 injured or bereaved members of the forces community who made claims from operations in Afghanistan and Iraq would have been blocked from doing so had this legislation been in place. One member of our brave forces being blocked from a claim is completely out of order, never mind 19.

Crucially, we do not know what will happen in the future, but it is likely that there will be drastic unintended consequences, and we do know that with this Bill, our forces will have less protection than civilians. There is simply no justification for introducing this time limit when such a measure currently does not exist.

Unamended, this part of the Bill will only benefit the Ministry of Defence, yet the Ministry of Defence will be the defendant in all these claims. That is a clear conflict. The Government have shamefully created legislation that protects them from legitimate legal claims while preventing forces personnel from access to justice.

The new clause under Lords amendment 5 would introduce a duty of care for service personnel. I am completely at a loss as to why the Government would reject and oppose care standards for service personnel involved in investigations or litigation arising from overseas operations. Anyone who has experience of being under prolonged or repeated investigation, especially when they are innocent, will know how utterly career-ruining, life-ruining and crushing it can be to be in that position. The defence that the Armed Forces Bill is the best place to address the issue simply does not cut it, because that legislation is not yet in place. This Bill will be soon. It is a dereliction of duty for MPs to accept glaring gaps in legislation on the promise that the issue may or may not be rectified in future legislation.

As we have heard from other Members, there remains nothing in the Bill that will solve the problem of repeated investigations. Without the Lords amendment, there is nothing in the Bill that will afford our forces and veterans a duty of care when undergoing such investigations. I would appreciate it if the Minister fully explained why the Government feel that, after our forces personnel and veterans have put themselves in harm’s way for all our sakes, they do not deserve legal, pastoral or mental health support at a time of heightened stress and worry.

Finally, as I did on Report, I urge all Government Members to look beyond the rhetoric and political spin, read the legislation and consider the noble Lords’ amendments and new clauses carefully, before they vote with their Whip and put our armed forces and our veterans at a gross disadvantage.

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister for Defence People and Veterans, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) on what must have been a massive overnight essay crisis or the worst sort of Sandhurst show parade. I will be amazed if he can keep his eyes open for the next couple of minutes, but my contribution will be short.

I welcome the Government’s sincere efforts, led by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), to deal with these vexatious legal actions. Having listened to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), it strikes me that there is now an opportunity to listen to the bishops, the former Secretary-General of NATO, the admirals, the air marshals, the generals, the right hon. Opposition Members, the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and a former Attorney General. We must renew our efforts in support of Northern Ireland veterans, including some soldiers with whom I served elsewhere.

More generally, on these crimes—about which, I regret to say, I very, very nearly know rather a lot—no British soldier should ever be any doubt whatever that if they commit these crimes, they will be liable for prosecution by our courts for the rest of their lives.

[Jamie Stone]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway). I wish to take this opportunity—I try do this from time to time, Mr Deputy Speaker—to remind the House that one of my children is serving in the armed forces, as is my son-in-law.

I offer my personal congratulations to the new Minister, the hon. Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty). We do not know each other well, but I am somewhat biased as my late brother-in-law served with the Scots Guards and I would not dream of calling them the woodentops; they are a very fine regiment indeed.

It would be churlish of me not to give credit where it is due: as so many others have said, the Government’s move on Lords amendment 1 is most welcome. My party and others in all parts of the Chamber will welcome this change of heart. We feel we have been vindicated for our efforts to press the Government.

I could say many different things in this debate, but I wish to dwell on just one point—it is interesting how sometimes a speech will come into one’s head as the debate proceeds. I would not describe myself as coming from a military family, but my grandfather served in the first world war, as did his four brothers, two of whom died, and my father served in the Fourteenth Army in the second world war. Although, as the right hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) pointed out, bad things have been done by our soldiers, I was brought up in the belief—one to which I still hold dearly—that the British armed forces had the very highest standards and a well-deserved reputation for fairness and decency in the way that they conducted themselves. That reputation won us friends at that time and for the future and gave and gives us a position of moral strength that has served this country incredibly well for a very long time. To throw that away by not absolutely outlawing torture would have been a a reprehensible backward step, especially as torture has been illegal in this country for more than 300 years.

The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) quoted Lord Stirrup, and I would like to add a quotation with reference to Lords amendment 1. Lord Stirrup said:

“Our Armed Forces personnel in general exercise incredible judgment and restraint in the most dangerous and trying circumstances, but it would be unreasonable to expect that they should be entirely free of the faults and frailties that are part of the wider society from which they spring. When such crimes are suspected, they should be investigated thoroughly—and the investigation process itself would certainly bear improvement—and, if the evidence is sufficient, the perpetrators should be prosecuted.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 January 2021; Vol. 809, c. 1199.]

Indeed, I would argue that in more recent times, this country’s agreement to and participation in the torture inquiry on the Iraq war continues to underpin this high moral position. It is as simple as this: whatever the results of the inquiry, and even in the event of an accusing finger being pointed at British personnel and action being taken accordingly, the fact is that our armed forces will be better for it, and we will still be on that moral high ground.

In the other place, my party, led by my colleague Lord Thomas of Gresford, voted for an amendment that would require the investigations process to be timely and comprehensive, to avoid repeated investigations against service personnel without compelling new evidence or information. The Government were defeated on that amendment, and that is because, as other Members have said, the drawing out of this process is incredibly bad for not just the person involved but their families.

That takes me neatly to the duty of care. Anyone involved in investigations must have access to the legal, pastoral and mental health support that they need. I am glad to see that Lords amendment 5 extends national standards of care and safeguarding to the families of those under investigation. As I said in my earlier intervention, if we do not get recruitment right for the armed forces, we are in danger of eventually having no armed forces at all. We have to staff our armed forces. If potential recruits are discouraged by what they see as their terms and conditions of employment, they will stay away. If people in the armed forces take a look at what might happen to them and the lack of support they might get, they will walk—it is as simple as that.

It is almost certain that the other place will return the Bill to us with amendments. I give credit where it is due. I think the Minister is a breath of fresh air, and I welcome him to his place. I hope that he and all the reasonable Members on both sides of the House will look at what the other place sends back to us very seriously indeed and act accordingly, because at the end of the day, it is about the good of our armed forces and the defence of the realm, and we live in an unsafe world.