Immunity for Soldiers

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to be called so early in the debate. I take your guidance about not speaking about individual circumstances, Mrs Moon. My purpose is to give a voice to the many veterans in Plymouth who have attended my surgeries and stopped me in the street to raise their concerns about what is happening. There is a real sense of betrayal among many veterans with regard to what is going on with veterans of Northern Ireland—not just among those who served there, but among those who wore a uniform anywhere. They feel that an attack on one has become an attack on all.

Those veterans have asked me to pass on their genuine concerns. In particular, they feel that the words spoken to date by the Prime Minister and by Government Ministers have been hollow—they were not meant. There is a sense that when veterans are needed for electoral purposes, there are lots of warm words about supporting them, but when those people who served our country need guidance and wrap-around support from their Government—the people who sent them into conflict and harm’s way in the first place—that is absent.

I would be grateful if the Minister set out answers to some of the questions that I have been asked. The first is about what new evidence means. A number of the reasons given for going after veterans relate to new evidence, but the definition of that is something that many of the veterans who have spoken to me struggle to understand. When new evidence from the past does not look that new or evidential, what does it mean now? That is not a matter of prejudging the guilt or otherwise of any individual but of understanding the legal framework within which any decisions may be taken.

What support are the Government—be it the Ministry of Defence or any other part of Government—providing to veterans to enable them to gain support? A number of the veterans who have contacted me are very old: something that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) also mentioned. In any other circumstance, we would be providing support for them because of their vulnerability. Strength and stoicism in this matter cannot be given as a granted because of the age of the veterans and the severity of what is taking place.

I have not met a single veteran who has said that someone who breaks the law should not be prosecuted. Indeed, every single one of them has reinforced to me, time and again, that the UK armed forces are the very best in the world because they uphold the law, are trained in what is right and wrong, and understand what is a legal order and what is an illegal one. That sense of training and duty is very important.

Why are the decisions on this matter not going up the chain of command? Veterans have raised a question about how those being looked at now, in the round, are part of a command structure. At what point does the command structure come into play—those politicians and senior officers who may or may not have given orders or set an engagement framework within which anyone serving in Northern Ireland will have operated?

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I intervene simply because the command structure does not really come into it. The decision is in the yellow card. Individuals have to make their own decisions about opening fire; there is no time to turn around and ask for permission. The decision can sometimes be made very quickly. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about the command structure being involved, but opening fire is a personal decision and the person who makes it has to stand by it and justify it. That is why it is so important to train very hard on the yellow card.

[Luke Pollard]

Given his service to the country and experience in Northern Ireland, the hon. Gentleman knows this issue better than many others in this place. Veterans have raised the question with me about how decisions are made because sometimes there is a sense that not everyone who was involved in the operation is being pursued. However, I entirely agree with and understand the hon. Gentleman’s point.

The sense that I have been asked to communicate, and I do so for the final time now, is that many veterans who served in Northern Ireland, and many who did not, feel betrayed and let down by the Government. They hope that whatever comes out of the situation and the debates—

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[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I served for more than three years in Northern Ireland, on seven operational tours. I first went there in 1970. Sadly, I lost six men who were directly under my command, and many more in my unit. Almost 50 of the men under my command were wounded—35 in one incident. I have been involved in several fatality shootings. I think I have the right to speak for Northern Ireland veterans today.

We were sent to Northern Ireland by our predecessors. The Glosters were sent in, I think, August or September 1969. We were sent to save lives, to look after people. We were given a yellow card, which was approved by Parliament, and that yellow card told us what we could and could not do under fire. We trained very hard on it. We memorised it. We rehearsed it. Colleagues are nodding their heads. We practised on exercise incidents so that we would learn.

Army training screams out against opening fire in peacekeeping. That decision is an incredibly difficult one to make and it is very difficult in an urban environment because soldiers are thinking, “If I open fire, who else am I going to hurt?” How many times did I see instances of our soldiers not firing when under fire because of the possibility that children or women would be caught in the crossfire? That tactic was used by our opposition. There is huge inhibition to opening fire, and the decision to do so has to be made in milliseconds by our young men. By the way, I worked with some young women on operations, but not in the infantry. When that decision and those actions are judged, it is in some courtroom, warm and nice with time and lawyers. A judgment is being made about a decision taken by someone who is panicking like hell.

[Richard Benyon]

Fifty years ago.

[Bob Stewart]

My right hon. Friend is right: it was taken a long time ago. We must remember that most of our young men were 18 or 19 years old. They were kids. My soldiers looked so young that they could have been in year 9 or 10 at school.

Firearms were used as a last resort. On the yellow card it says, in capitals:

“FIREARMS MUST ONLY BE USED AS A LAST RESORT”.

That was drilled into us. A challenge had to be given before someone could open fire, unless doing so, it says on the yellow card, would increase the risk of injury or death to others or oneself. That challenge was clear: “Army. Stop or I fire.” Again the yellow card is specific: opening fire was allowed only if lives were endangered by someone firing a weapon at a soldier or someone they were protecting, or if someone was planting or throwing an explosive device—the card specifically mentions petrol bombs. One third of my platoon were injured by petrol bombs in 1970 on the streets of Londonderry, at the Rossville Street/William Street junction—one third burned, and we had not opened fire at all. And nor did we. If someone is driving at a soldier, that soldier is allowed to open fire. Finally, if a terrorist has killed someone or is in the act of killing someone, a soldier can open fire if they cannot make an arrest in any other way.

We could only open fire with aimed shots, not with machine gun fire; we did not do it automatic. We had to use “the minimum force”—that, again, is on the yellow card—and we had to be careful that we did not hit innocent people. That little phrase stopped so many British soldiers from firing, particularly in Belfast on the Falls Road.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend recall, as I do, it being drilled into our heads that a 7.62 round would travel through two levels of brick and kill something on the other side? That often gave our soldiers cause for hesitation, even when thinking about returning fire.

[Bob Stewart]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Most men on the ground were petrified that, by accident, they would kill an innocent person. That was a factor in the decision to open fire, in those milliseconds.

I know what happens in the case of a fatality, as I was involved in such an investigation. The Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police hauled us over the coals. Even though we had just acted to save our life or someone else’s life, we were treated as though we had done something wrong. Soldiers are separated, questioned individually and kept in isolation. They are not given assistance and they have a very uncomfortable interview. The weapons they used are seized and checked; all the ammunition is counted, and they have to account for every single round. That is what happened to our men, and some women, when they were involved in fatality shootings.

Detailed reports were produced. The problem is that those reports are usable by the Director of Public Prosecutions; they are dug up, and some people go to court. In 1978, I had a very uncomfortable interview with two soldiers who were working with me. They were not infantry. I told them they had to go to court and would be charged with manslaughter. They went ballistic. They said, “Sir, you bloody officer. You are actually going to ditch us. You are going to abandon us; you are going to let us go to a court.” I felt rotten, because I agreed with them, but the Royal Ulster Constabulary told me that I had to instruct those soldiers to go to court and I had to support them, because if they went to court on a charge of manslaughter and that court proved there was no case to answer, the case would be dismissed and they would never hear about it again. Well, will they?

We always acted within the law. If we did not, as we have heard already, we should be prosecuted, but this card was given to us by our predecessors in this place as a protection, as well as instructions as to how we should act. Terrorists just disappear. There is no record of what they have done; they just kill. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) has said, we must not judge them in the same way as soldiers. It is so easy to go after men in uniform who went out at our bidding and acted within the law, with everything written down. It is so much more difficult to get evidence on a terrorist. Those terrorists just disappear, and then they get letters; I know those letters do not give them immunity, but it seems like they do. To the men and women who are veterans and who I am trying to represent, it seems like our Government—or Governments, because this includes the Labour Government as well—are giving those guys get-out-of-jail cards. So many of our veterans feel really bitter about that.

It is unsurprising that there is huge anger among the veteran community. They ask, quite rightly, “What are you Members of Parliament doing to help us? You sent us there. You gave us this bloody card and said that if we used it and acted in accordance with it, we would be protected.” Now, our soldiers need protection. They need our protection. How can soldiers, policemen and members of the Ulster Defence Regiment—some representatives of that regiment are here—be considered in the same light as a terrorist? As my right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury said, those guys went out to kill; we went out to save lives. There is a huge difference in intention, and we have to sort this matter out. Terrorists did not give a damn who they killed. I have held people dying—women and young girls, including one 18-year-old girl who happened to be a Catholic. They did not give a damn who they killed, and it was terribly upsetting.

Our men and women who served in uniform require us to act. We need a statute of limitations for Northern Ireland veterans. It is absolutely right that we have a statute of limitations for people serving outside the UK, but what is the difference? Someone putting on a uniform was more likely to be shot in Northern Ireland than someone doing it in Iraq or Afghanistan. I can tell you that in Northern Ireland, our casualty rate was pretty big. The casualties we had in Northern Ireland outstrip the casualties we have had in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not just that: there were people who were really badly injured. I had three who lost their legs.

Colleagues, we cannot consider our servicemen and servicewomen in the same light as terrorists. I am ashamed that our Governments—I say “Governments” because I include Labour, the coalition and our present Government —are, as our servicemen and servicewomen see it, complicit in a witch hunt against them. These are old soldiers. Many are in their 70s—I will get there in a couple of months. In the Army, when we really wanted to sort something out, people would be told, “Get a grip.” It is time that our Government and our Ministers got a grip.

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[Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)]

I do not seek to add to the incredible speeches we have heard today, particularly from individuals who served in Northern Ireland—I did not. I want to add just two or three new points and not take up too much time.

People are very well aware of my general feelings on this subject, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore) for securing the debate. This is not a niche issue for people who have served or who have a particular interest in this subject; it is as basic an injustice as this House has seen for some time. I urge colleagues to think about what more can be done.

When the Good Friday agreement went through in Northern Ireland and the settlements were reached, it was deemed more politically tolerable for soldiers, servicemen and policemen to take the hit, rather than other sides. That is why we are where we are—it was simply more politically tolerable for politicians to do that. I urge my colleagues to do whatever is required to ensure that this Government do not continually speak warm words that ultimately mean nothing, and to hold them to account on behalf of people who need it.

I know the Minister personally and none of my remarks is directed at him—he only recently took over the job. This weekend’s revelations were genuinely shocking, with the Prime Minister’s clear mindset that people who served should receive treatment

“equal to, not preferential to”

other groups in the conflict. Many people have written to me in the past two days on the back of that specific sentence. The situation reminds me of three years ago, when I took part in a Westminster Hall debate, with the then Minister for the Armed Forces, who is now the Secretary of State for Defence, on the Iraq Historic Allegations Team. That is the point I want to make: nothing ever seems to change. We say a hell of a lot in this place. I remember her looking up at me and saying, “No one hears from these investigative teams first”, but that morning I had been on the phone to someone who had heard from those private investigators first.

MPs who recount their experiences are not turning oxygen into CO₂ for the hell of it. This actually means something; this is people’s everyday experience. I know the responses will be, “We’re thinking about this and we’re thinking about that,” but there has been a clear moral failure by the Prime Minister and the Northern Ireland Office to deal with the situation. I am afraid that it simply cannot go on.

As many hon. Members have alluded to, this is not about whitewashing history. I urge colleagues to be really careful with the language they use. It is not colleagues who said this but last Thursday the front page of The Guardian read, “Mordaunt to give veterans amnesty for battle crimes.” Nobody has ever asked for that, and nobody has ever thought about it. That is deliberately inflammatory wording, designed simply to prey on the grief and the hell that some families and veterans are going through. In this case, an amnesty is not appropriate in any way whatever. On its own, a statute of limitations cannot work. There can be no time limitation on serious criminal behaviour.

Last week, we began to see the beginnings of a presumption not to prosecute, which is the sort of area we should be working in. That came from the Attorney General.

[Bob Stewart]

I entirely endorse what my hon. Friend has said, with one proviso: if someone has been investigated by a competent authority, I think a statute of limitations is perfectly acceptable.

[Johnny Mercer]

My hon. Friend raises a really interesting point. The checks and balances being discussed by the Attorney General relate to a rigorous investigation. Comprehensive and new compelling evidence should provide a safeguard. The problem with a statute of limitations per se is that where clear evidential thresholds are met—when it comes to clear wrongdoing—we start entering difficult areas. We should at least start a conversation about it, but the Prime Minister has specifically asked my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Defence Committee not to do so.

[Johnny Mercer]

Around this legal language, there are ways out of this. We can do that without using inflammatory terms or mechanisms that people would not agree with. I am afraid that what gets lost in a lot of this is that there is an impression that individuals such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and I—[Interruption.]

[Bob Stewart]

“Right honourable” is very good.

[Johnny Mercer]

My hon. Friend.

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[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone, and to have served under Mrs Moon’s.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) that there is not an awful lot more to be said, but I will say it anyway because the e-petition demands that we reiterate and re-reiterate the reality of what has been going on. I congratulate those who started e-petition 243947 on their work, and my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore) on his very good and powerful speech.

I have not spoken about this subject pretty much since I left Northern Ireland, but I listened with great interest to my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), and it brought back an awful lot of memories of Northern Ireland. I was a young platoon commander like the ones he described, not that long out of Sandhurst. I do not know that I learned very much at Sandhurst; it all had to be re-learned after I left. I remember large periods of incredible, intense boredom, followed by massive periods of panic and fear—literally almost alongside each other. I lived in the masonic car park with my company, in an old caravan that had a hole on the side by my bed. I was damp the whole time I was there, because the rain lashed through the whole of the winter.

I remember the fear in my young guardsmen’s eyes when they were caught up in an incident. It came not from the idea of what might happen to them, but mostly from what they might have to do, and what they might get wrong. The yellow card, which was drilled into us before we left, scared the living daylights out of me before I even set foot in Northern Ireland, and I know it was the same for my young soldiers. As my hon. Friend said, some of them were 18 years old and had very low levels of education. They were in an urban environment that they had never been in, and they were armed and acting in support of the police, as a quasi-police force. We expected them, in a moment, to make the kind of judgments that highly paid, brilliant legal brains would stall at. Those young men had to make those decisions for themselves, as my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, and they bore the burden by themselves—too often, without support.

I take the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View made. I have a real problem with our relationship with the armed forces in this country. We expect them to do the right thing and go to war. I still remember my father, who served with great distinction in the second world war, telling me that many of his friends who had been incarcerated in prisoner of war camps for a number of years came home to find their families in near destitution, because the then War Office had decided that, as they were living comfortably in a prisoner of war camp, their pay could reasonably be cut in half; they would have no need for the other bit. It forgot that, or did not even bother to find out whether, they had dependants living at home, who, by the end of the war, were in deep poverty and starving. I am afraid that that is the kind of relationship that we have percolating through after every single operation. We treat our veterans of Northern Ireland in much the same way.

I am sad to say that the Government, and previous Labour and Conservative Governments—I am not necessarily speaking of mine, but all Governments—are determined to find the reasons why we cannot do things, but never the reasons why we can. Our servicemen and women get put in operations, genuinely risk their lives, and do not complain about it. They do that on the general assumption that a paternal Government would oversee their wellbeing if they were wounded, if their families were hurt or if they ended up in a difficult situation in which they might be prosecuted.

Too often, in the slightly politically correct conversations that take place outside Parliament when Ministers are interviewed, they start equivocating about who was doing what. We get equivocation about the terrorists versus the soldiers. I did not serve with particular distinction, but when I was in Northern Ireland, I had to find a cache of a large number of armour-piercing Garand—an American rifle—rounds. I thought to myself that they were on their way to somebody who would do a snipe on one of our patrol vehicles. They would have gone clean through it, and would have killed anything on the inside. Terrorists were setting up another attack, like those the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) described, on people who were there to keep the peace. There is no equivalence between those who go out to kill people, and those who go out to defend people but may end up having to kill people as a result. That stands above all else. That is what we do as soldiers. That is what we know we are about.

That is particularly the case with British soldiers, who I still believe to this day are the best trained, and most reasonable and decent, troops on the ground. They always operate with a real sense of restraint. They do not even have to be taught about that; there is an instinctive sense of restraint that comes from their training. We now find that 90% of the cost of these prosecutions is going on 10% of the incidents. Where is the natural justice in that?

I want to raise an issue. I had friends who never came back, and I want to talk about Robert Nairac. I saw him a few nights before he went to Northern Ireland, and he never returned. What happened to him—a brave young man trying to do his job—was horrific. He was not just killed but tortured and dismembered. He disappeared, and no one has ever owned up to knowing where his body is buried. No one has owned up to doing it, although we have a fair suspicion of who it was. His poor parents have gone to their grave with no conclusion to the sad tragedy of Robert Nairac. He is typical of many people, both soldiers and non-combatants, who disappeared in Northern Ireland. Where is the justice in the fact that families such as his will never see those responsible prosecuted for their filthy, foul actions? There is no natural justice in pursuing British soldiers, rather than the people who tortured and killed Robert Nairac, because it is easier.

Worse than that are the letters of comfort that were given out. I find it astonishing to discover that letters of comfort are given quietly to those on the run. Why are they on the run? Because they have committed atrocities and cannot come back. That is about Government and perhaps about the Belfast agreement—but in a funny sort of way, not really; otherwise, that would have been done publicly. It would have been shouted from the rooftops if it were an equivalent process, but it never was.

As my hon. Friends have said, the endless nightmare for soldiers who served in Northern Ireland was that they were three times more likely to die than the terrorists who they were after. The likelihood of death was greater on the streets there than in other operations before or since. Why was that? Because our soldiers walked through the streets in plain sight, and were targets every single moment that they were there.

I recall the sheer fear I felt as a young platoon commander on the first commemorative Sunday of Bloody Sunday in the Bogside. I remember having to keep a patrol safe as over 100,000 very angry people talked about tearing them limb from limb if they found them, and knowing that at any stage, any one of my patrol could have been taken away, never to be seen again. Those were the kinds of decisions that one had to make. That still resonates, even today.

Ultimately, I simply urge the Government to do the right thing—to recognise that it is quite ridiculous that soldiers who have been cleared in previous investigations should ever be pursued again, unless there is absolute, categorical and clear evidence, beyond what is needed to meet the burden of proof, that they have done something that nobody knew about before. These men, who are in their 70s, should never face that, but they do. My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham mentioned one man who was arrested by a stream of police cars and taken away immediately, as though he had committed some foul offence and might run. The overcooking—the nonsense—that the police get up to on these matters sometimes is quite ridiculous.

I do not want these men to be treated differently, but I say quite categorically that if there is to be a statute of limitations, it must cover veterans of Northern Ireland. I understand that those who served in other operations may well be covered, but because Northern Ireland veterans served in the United Kingdom, UK law will override anything that the Government might do. That absolutely cannot be allowed.

I give my Government fair warning that I will simply not put up with shunting Northern Ireland veterans to one side while seeking some sort of general political cover, as though we had done something for them. We will not have done anything unless we deal with all our servicemen and women, who have had the bravery and courage to serve their country. There can be no second-class treatment.

There is debate about whether it should be stated that prosecutions must be based on new evidence, or whether there should be a statute of limitations. I would be content with observing this one principle: no servicemen or women who served in Northern Ireland should be arrested and pursued, particularly after cases against them have been dismissed, simply because the police have nothing better to do with their time than find out whether they did something. It is time that the Government acted on that.

I urge the Minister and his colleagues to recognise that those of us who served in Northern Ireland did not ask to. We did not, in a fit of passionate patriotism and bravery, suddenly volunteer to go there on our own. We were told to go there because we were soldiers. That was the command. We were told that it was an operation; it was not some other affair, as we now seem to hear. We went on that operation—Op Banner was an operation—and did our duty.

[Bob Stewart]

It was Operation Banner. Soldiers did 28 days in Northern Ireland and were awarded a General Service Medal, which is the recognised medal for serving in combat zones such as Malaya, Aden and Borneo. Northern Ireland is on the clasp for the General Service Medal, so it is an operation like any other.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I agree. The other day, I made the point that I have an Operational Service Medal for Rhodesia, as it was then, and a General Service Medal with a clasp for Northern Ireland. I assume that the operations were recognised as equivalents—I do not remember a distinction. I was never told that I was on a subset of an operation in Northern Ireland, but that I could go on a real one in Rhodesia. I can tell hon. Members, without a shadow of a doubt, that Northern Ireland was the more frightening of the two.

The Minister must say loudly to all those who have the privilege of running Departments, and even to the Prime Minister, that this simply cannot stand—it is a deep injustice. Those who served need us to stand up for them, because they have nobody else. Their families need us to stand up for them, because they have nowhere else to go. Successive British Governments have too often failed their servicemen and women because they were mealy-mouthed about how to support them. That has to stop; we must now protect them.

I have one last phrase for the Minister. When natural justice collides with the law, we must change the law to protect those who protected us.