Awards for Valour (Protection) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Gareth Johnson

2nd reading: House of Commons & Committee Debate: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st February 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Gareth Johnson]

Yes, of course.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I understood that the Bill was intended to stop people parading in medals and awards to which they are not entitled. If the Bill covers only medals for valour, what is to stop the Walter Mitty characters simply continuing to do as they do, using long service or other medals, not medals for valour, in the hope that the public do not read the small print or understand the insignia and the ribbons attached to them? Surely, unless there is a blanket ban, it does not really address the problem.

[Gareth Johnson]

If somebody seeks to wear medals that are completely fictitious, that would not be covered by the Bill. If they wanted to wear Boer war medals, that would not be covered by the Bill. I come back to my original point—the Bill deals with a particular problem.

In my experience, the overwhelming majority of Walter Mitty characters tend to pretend that they have served in Afghanistan or in a recent conflict, such as the Falklands, and wear the medals that represent that. The Bill would stop the overwhelming majority of such instances. It will not cover every single example of someone being boastful and exaggerating their worthiness to others. It would be impossible to have a Bill to achieve that, without huge unintended consequences. The Bill ensures that the overwhelming majority of Walter Mitty-type characters—as the hon. Gentleman put it—are covered by legislation, the practice is stopped, and there is an end to the deep hurtfulness and offensiveness that they create, once and for all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Johnson]

Of course, doing anything fraudulently to obtain money is a criminal offence, but at the moment it is not a criminal offence to try to curry favour, respect and elevation as a consequence of wearing medals when people are not entitled to do so.

[Brendan O'Hara]

To go back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire about the numbers involved, while I accept the goodwill behind the hon. Gentleman’s Bill, I note from the Defence Committee’s report on it that the Royal British Legion said in its written evidence that

“only a handful of such instances”

of non-veterans applying fraudulently for help could be recalled and that

“there are no reliable statistics to reveal the true scale of the problem”.

Even the Royal Air Force Families Federation said:

“We have no evidence either way but instinctively we would say it is not widespread”.

There seems to be a consensus among the military charities that this is not a major problem. Are we in danger of creating more legislation where the current legislation on fraud would cover what this is designed to prevent?

[Gareth Johnson]

Fraud law already exists, so that is dealt with separately. Again, it is difficult to get a handle on exactly how many people are guilty of this misbehaviour—as it is at the moment, rather than being a criminal offence. However, I would take issue with the hon. Gentleman’s comments. Numerous military charities that are fully supportive of the Bill have contacted me. They say that, particularly around the time of Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day, numerous people have contacted them to say, “I’ve got this character at my local service and they are doing a massive disservice to the people who attend.” I am not saying that this is rampant or that there are thousands of people around the country, but there are certainly hundreds.

That is just one part—to tackle these Walter Mitty characters—but another, perhaps the most important part, of the Bill is about giving people confidence. It is a deterrent. It ensures that when we see somebody, we can have confidence that that individual is bona fide. That is one of the main reasons behind the Bill; it is a secondary purpose to catch those Walter Mitty characters and punish them through the law. I do not expect hundreds of arrests to flow from the Bill, but it is right to have it. Such legislation exists in most countries in the world, particularly in America, where the Stolen Valour Act protects people who have won the Purple Heart, for example. I understand that it works very well around the world and gives veterans the protection they deserve. It is high time that in this country, which has one of the richest military histories in the world, we protected our veterans in exactly the same way that we see in most other countries.

I shall move on to subsection (5)—back to the dryness of my speech. It contains clearly defined criteria that an award will have to meet to be added to the schedule. It will have to be a gallantry award, military or civilian, or a campaign medal awarded on the basis of risk and rigour. In the United Kingdom, a campaign medal will be approved to acknowledge a particular campaign or operation only if it meets the criteria of risk and rigour. Broadly speaking, the campaign or operation must have involved a risk of danger to life from enemy action, and it must have involved a level of rigour that is significantly greater than that experienced in more peaceful times. Those criteria are stringent and the bar is deliberately set high to ensure that when awards are made, they reflect the value of the sacrifice made by those who participated in the campaign.