Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 20th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, who served along with us in Northern Ireland as a Northern Ireland Minister. I have some deep concerns about the provisions in the Bill, as I believe they would act contrary to human rights conventions and put a time limit on justice by decriminalising torture after five years. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which he is a member, has pointed to the various failures in the Bill, with its lack of proper regard for well-known human rights conventions. Other commentators have stated that the new Bill plans to ignore conventions in protecting military personnel and civilians in overseas operations. The Bill seems more about protecting the Ministry of Defence than veterans or civilians.

In fact, the Law Society of England and Wales has been critical of the Bill; it believes it goes beyond the Government’s stated aim of reducing spurious claims against service personnel and victims. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has stated that the “presumption against prosecutions” in Part 1 is

“akin to a statute of limitations”.

I note what the Minister has said—that that is not the intention—but the commission has said that Part 1 will clearly be

“seen as incompatible with the international human rights framework and customary international law.”

The Joint Committee on Human Rights published its report on the Bill on 29 October, following the end of Committee in the House of Commons. It criticised the Bill and argued that several changes needed to be made, saying that there was

“little to no evidence that … cases with no case to answer”

were being allowed to proceed in the courts. It said that the statutory presumptions against prosecution in the Bill were unjustified, and that it was concerned that the Bill could breach the UK’s obligations under international humanitarian law, international human rights law and international criminal law. The report included a recommendation that Clauses 1 to 7 should be removed from the Bill. The Joint Committee also criticised the introduction of a time limit to human rights and civil litigation, arguing that this risked breaching the UK’s human rights obligations and preventing access to justice, and that the more important problem was of long-running and flawed investigations. It said that the MoD needed to improve the way investigations were conducted.

The noble Lord, Lord Hain, like other noble Lords, has already referred to the situation in Northern Ireland. I note that the Bill does not refer to Northern Ireland but there are serious issues there. On 18 March 2020, when the Bill was published, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland published in tandem a letter about the way that issues to do with veterans and legacy there would be dealt with. Can the Minister update us on that? Like the noble Lord, I believe that the only way to deal with legacy issues in Northern Ireland is to go to back to the Stormont House agreement to deal with them in that methodical, fair and equitable way—and where no organisation, whether the Armed Forces or the paramilitaries, republican or loyalist, gets any amnesty for any wrongdoing that may have taken place which resulted in untold misery right across our community.

I look forward to Committee, but there is one important premise: time limits should not be placed on accountability and justice. I hope that the Minister will make that the hallmark of this legislation and seek to redress the problems of the Bill with further amendments.