Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Ben Wallace

Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

T2. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ben Wallace)]

Today’s questions have rightly focused on support for our friends in Ukraine, but it is important to remember that threats are growing elsewhere in the world. The middle east continues to harbour terrorism, which is why the UK still supports the Government of Iraq as part of the global coalition against Daesh.

I want to update the House on a strike that took place a few weeks ago, as is our agreement on strikes under Operation Shader. In late December, an RAF Reaper remotely piloted aircraft conducted a strike against a leading Daesh member in al-Bab, northern Syria. The individual’s activity was related to chemical and biological weapons. The Reaper’s crew minimised potential risk to civilians before firing two Hellfire missiles, both of which struck the target accurately. These actions are vital to degrading such terrorist threats, protecting British citizens and supporting our international partners.

[Mr Carmichael]

I think we can all accept that there is a legitimate role for the security services in combating disinformation campaigns from foreign, hostile states. However, a recent report from the campaign group Big Brother Watch showed that in 2020 a number of British citizens had their social media posts featured in monitoring reports produced for the Cabinet Office by the British Army’s 77th Brigade. Will the Secretary of State tell the House: is the 77th Brigade still monitoring social media posts of British citizens, and, if so, for what purpose and under what authority?

[Mr Wallace]

One part of the 77th Brigade’s role is to challenge disinformation, not opinion—its role is not to monitor or counter opinion, as that is about the freedom we all enjoy in our society. The 77th Brigade is on the lookout for media manipulation of misinformation or lies from abroad, and where that is found, it is flagged to the appropriate authorities. I am happy to write to the right hon. Gentleman with fuller details about what legal authorities it functions under, but I assure him that if at any stage I have seen anything that I think crosses that line, I have, in writing, made sure that is known and it is stopped.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Ben Wallace

Monday 2nd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

At the beginning of the covid outbreak, the military were deeply engaged in the roll-out, building and running of the covid Nightingale hospitals, including the transfer of reserve medics from the NHS into that service. We will continue to review that. We are working inside the Department of Health and Social Care to see what its needs are, and I stand by to deliver them.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Fishermen working in Scapa Flow occasionally still dredge up ordnance left there from the end of the second world war. My constituent Ian Spence did exactly that in January this year. For the loss of a day’s fishing, damage to his gear and the personal danger in which he was put, he was given an ex gratia payment of £228. Can the Secretary of State explain to me and to my constituent why he considers that to be adequate?

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel And Veterans) Bill

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Ben Wallace

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

My hon. Friend makes a substantive point, and one reason we find ourselves facing these challenges is because there is a clear conflict between international humanitarian law in some areas, and international human rights. The encroachment and growing reach of ECHR into areas of combat has created a clash, in some sense, between things such as the Geneva convention and individual human rights. That is why when the authors wrote the ECHR, they included some of those carve-outs as a way of accommodating the international laws under which they had been operating in the mass conflict of the second world war. Indeed, when the Defence Committee was chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), it picked up on that very real clash, which is hard to resolve. In my view, some of the problems with lawfare is that people are exploiting that clash for financial gain. It is easy to hide behind a humanitarian law on one day and a human rights law on another, and we have a duty to try to make a difference.

We are not going as far as many countries under the jurisdiction of ECHR. Other countries in Europe have a statute of limitations on criminal offences. Germany and France both have a number of criminal statutes that are statutes of limitations. Other countries also do that, or have amnesties, but we are not going that far. We are trying to resolve that clash and see how we can ensure a proper threshold, so that there are no vexatious investigations and our men and women do not constantly find themselves the subject of them.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Surely, the debate of the past five or 10 minutes has exposed the truth of this matter, which is that it is easy to build consensus in the House on provisions relating to civil actions—there is very little exception to that. However, may I take the Secretary of State back to the answer he gave to the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell)? He is right in what he says about torture, but the logic of his argument is that torture should be listed in the first schedule to the Bill. He is right to put sexual offences in that schedule because, as the Government says, there are no circumstances in which sexual offences can be tolerated in war, but the logic of not including torture suggests that there are some circumstances in which torture is accepted. That is the logic. Will the Secretary of State tell the House what those circumstances are?

[Mr Wallace]

The right hon. Gentleman is a learned Gentleman and a former colleague of mine—

[Mr Carmichael]

Not learned; I am a former solicitor.

[Mr Wallace]

Well, he should be. Only a solicitor would argue the toss between a barrister and a solicitor; for us mere soldiers, they are learned gentlemen or women in this context. I am afraid that he is absolutely wrong in his assertion. Nowhere in the Bill prevents a prosecution for torture either under five years or over five years. If he can show me where in the Bill there is a decriminalisation or tolerance of torture, I would be delighted to hear which clause or subsection decriminalises torture. Will he show me the statute?

[Mr Carmichael]

The exclusion of torture from schedule 1 raises the inference for any court that—and this is a matter of logic, not of law—there are circumstances in which torture is acceptable. All the Secretary of State needs to do is include torture in schedule 1, and the Bill would have no difficulty.

[Mr Wallace]

Does the right hon. Gentleman therefore venture that beyond torture there is murder? Should we include murder in that schedule as well?

[Mr Carmichael]

Obviously not, because murder is dealt with by the common law of this country. The Secretary of State is perfectly aware that such a case could still be brought under the exceptional circumstances provisions. The problem he has is that there is no such thing as unexceptional torture.

Counter-Daesh Update

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Ben Wallace

Wednesday 22nd July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

We have been clear that we are not in the business of reducing the potency and capability of our armed forces. We are in the business of making sure that we are modernising to meet tomorrow’s fight. The worst thing that we can do is modernise—actually not really modernise, but equip ourselves—for what happened 10, 15, or 20 years ago. That is why we are determined to invest more in autonomous areas, in new domains, such as space and cyber, which are really important. The threat against space is, regrettably, real. Our adversaries are weaponising space and we are deeply vulnerable in the west to such actions because we rely so much on space assets.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It feels like distant history now, but the vote in December 2015 on the subject of deploying airstrikes in Syria was one of the most difficult that I faced in my time in the House. I was eventually persuaded to support that, and I think that the situation that the Secretary of State describes today is one that justifies the decision that the House took in 2015, but the assurances that I and others were given by the then Prime Minister were around what would happen in addition to the military solution. It was about the reconstruction phase and the aid effort that would be made. What assessment has the Secretary of State for Defence made of the changes to the Department for International Development now being folded into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office? Will we have an overseas development operation that can meet the obligations that were taken on by the Government in December 2015?

[Mr Wallace]

I know that the right hon. Gentleman is a thoughtful colleague and, indeed, at the time I think we were in the same Government. We should be proud that we spent £3 billion of aid in reconstruction and investment in that region and in protecting people from the effects of poverty. That is the other half of that reconstruction that he was worried about, and I think that that is incredibly important. On the other part of his question, which related to—[Interruption.] It has slipped my mind.

[Mr Carmichael]

DFID.

[Mr Wallace]

DFID. We often talk about organisations and machinery of Governments—they come around, and come and go—but the key here is the sense of purpose and the mission. The mission has not changed; the mission to invest and to help provide security and stability in Iraq and Syria has not changed and will not change. We all have an obligation to that part of the world because of events that happened perhaps 20 years ago or more, and that is not going to change. Whatever badge we put on the front of a door and whatever office someone sits in, that is not the fact; what matters to the people of Iraq and Syria is whether they are getting the aid, support, stability and security they need. I believe we are providing that, and we will continue to do that.