Exiting the EU: New Partnership

Debate between David Davis and Kirsten Oswald

Thursday 2nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I am not quite sure what my hon. Friend means by formal reporting. I have visited the Exiting the European Union Committee once and will be appearing in front of it again, and this, as I said, is my sixth statement to the House. We come to the House at every possible opportunity to tell Members what is going on. There will be subsequent debates, including substantive debates on policy. There will undoubtedly be other Brexit debates—more are planned already—so there is no question that the House will not be fully informed. That we are somehow not paying attention to the Opposition is an illusion—a chimera—that they like to run out. We have given them a White Paper and answers about the customs union and the single market. I do not know how much more open I can be without being dissected.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

The Government seem to be in a constant state of delayed reaction, but we finally have the White Paper. It contains a statement on strengthening trade with the world that reads like a tweet, and a conspicuous amount of space that is totally blank. Does that reflect the Government’s thinking on Brexit?

Armed Drones

Debate between David Davis and Kirsten Oswald

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I am pleased that the Backbench Business Committee agreed that this was an important debate to have, and I thank them for that. I also thank the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) for his contribution. He made highly relevant and pertinent points, some of which I might repeat. I make no apology for that, because we are discussing a serious matter. I also hope to consider the use of drones from the human perspective, including that of our service personnel.

I echo the sentiments of the right hon. Gentleman, who raised significant concerns about the operational parameters, thresholds and legal framework for the use of drones. Like him, I note the killing of UK citizens by British drones in Raqqa earlier this year. The UK Government have a clear desire at the moment to engage in a campaign of air strikes, which reinforces the importance of having debates such as this fully at the appropriate time. We need proper and clearly understood parameters and a legal basis for any military action that we take. Those parameters are most appropriately discussed and agreed before and not after we ask our service personnel to undertake action.

It is vital that we take the time in this debate to consider and assess the use of armed and unarmed drones and the legal and structural frameworks within which they are used. Because we are responsible for their use, we must also consider the impact upon the people against whom such weapons are used and understand that sometimes they are not the desired or intended target. We must also consider the impact on those whose job involves operating drones.

Clearly, technology is moving fast. Not only are military drones available to our armed forces and those of other nations, but the technology is becoming more accessible and advanced all the time. I understand that companies such as DHL and Amazon are beginning to research the deployment of commercial delivery drones for business purposes. We must assume that such technology will be available not only to our friends but, as the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) noted, to those who wish us ill. We must consider that. I know that technology to counter such a situation is under development too.

We must consider those whom we ask to operate drones. It is our duty to look after military personnel operating within a conflict zone; that is equally relevant whether crews are miles away or have not moved from their desks during their deployment because they are engaging in the conflict by operating a drone. Clearly, a key decision-making factor will be the fact that the use of drones does not directly endanger our service personnel, which is important. The ability to control drones remotely means that our personnel can operate effectively out of harm’s way, and we must see the positive in that. However, Chris Cole of Drone Wars UK strikes a cautionary note:

“Drones swing the balance away from engaging in the often difficult and long-term work of solving the root causes of conflicts through diplomatic and political means, towards a quick, short-term ‘fix’ of ‘taking out the bad guys’.”

However, it may not be the bad guys who end up on the receiving end of drone strikes, which is surely a cause for concern and another reason to consider legality. Studies on US targets have revealed a number of flaws in how targets are identified, including during a number of strikes resulting from electronic communications that officials subsequently acknowledged as unreliable.

David Cortright, the policy director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, also raises ethical questions about drone use as a means of combating terrorism. He cautions that after 10 years of combat in Afghanistan and given the current high levels of threat from terrorist attacks, of which we are all aware, we ought to know better. We may need to consider that point. Additionally, former Pentagon adviser David Kilcullen has testified that drone strikes arouse anger, which coalesces populations around extremists. As we have heard, recent terrorist attacks in Pakistan are seen as a direct response to drone attacks. Reports from the federally administered tribal areas in Pakistan suggest that it is a matter of honour under the tribal code for the families of drone attack victims to seek revenge. The US drone programme, operating largely in declared war zones, counts nearly 90% of people killed in recent drone strikes in Afghanistan as not the intended targets of those attacks.

From a legal perspective, such statistics and reports cause concern. Yasmine Ahmed, director of Rights Watch UK, told the Joint Committee on Human Rights that clarity is required about the framework on which the UK Government rely in their use of targeted drone strikes, and I agree. Although the UK Attorney General suggested in September this year that UK Government actions on targeted drone killings complied with humanitarian law, serious questions still remain, including on the definition of a combatant and the assessment of those killings as militarily necessary.

In 2010, Sir Gus O’Donnell presented the parliamentary convention on when the UK Government are expected to provide Parliament with the opportunity to debate decisions to use military force. Except in an emergency, approval in advance is required. It is therefore concerning that the unprecedented use of a drone strike to kill a UK citizen in Syria outside the context of war was not notified to Parliament in advance. The facts of the incident have not yet emerged into the public domain, leaving the parameters within which the Government are working unclear to us.

The use of drones must also be considered in relation to those whom we deploy to operate them. I am pleased that we have discussed mental health provision for service personnel in this House recently; the issue deserves scrutiny, understanding and resource. In such discussions, it is imperative that we also fully consider the impact on mental health of being a drone operator.

In 2013, the US Armed Forces Health Surveillance Centre published a report noting that operators of unmanned drones can suffer the same psychological problems as operators of manned drones and similar problems to aircrew. In addition, it said that the negative psychological impacts do not present themselves only as post-traumatic stress disorder. Because of the level of emotional distance between operators and the reality of the human targets that they are pursuing, there are concerns that it might remove the human aspect of their work.

Last month, The Guardian published an article in which a number of former air force drone operators and technicians had come to the paper to discuss their opposition to the ongoing reliance on unmanned drones. One ex-operator described his experience this way:

“Ever step on ants and never give it another thought? That’s what you are made to think of the targets—as just black blobs on a screen. You start to do these psychological gymnastics to make it easier to do what you have to do—they deserved it, they chose their side. You had to kill part of your conscience to keep doing your job every day—and ignore those voices telling you this wasn’t right.”

Questions have been raised about the psychological effects of the very real distance between operator and target, which has sometimes been described as encouraging a PlayStation mentality amongst drone operators. That is a danger in having to remotely control the aircraft separately from the events on screen, as operators can disconnect from the reality of their control over the drones. The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions raised the concept of a videogame mentality in a 2010 report to the UN Human Rights Council.

Recently, the BBC also highlighted the impact of the job upon the mental wellbeing of drone operators. It reported on the RAF’s 13 Squadron, which operates drones from an aircraft hangar in Lincolnshire. The operators there, who are all qualified and experienced military pilots, work in shifts, controlling aircraft thousands of miles away. The preparation and processes that they undergo are exactly the same as those required for flying a conventional aircraft, and once the door to the workspace is closed the pilots report that it puts them psychologically in that airspace, with all the emotions and thought processes being exactly the same as on manned planes.

One RAF crew member is reported as saying that the potential for psychological and emotional impact on drone operators was

“far greater than it ever was with a manned cockpit”.

He explained that the impressive resolution of drones such as Reaper means that operators know exactly what is on the other end of their crosshairs, and that this immediacy of targeting is also magnified by the fact that the drone crews are “airborne” for hours and hours. Also, unlike conventional crews, they do not have four-month tours but a year-round job, with a proportionately greater risk of suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.

Similar issues are being reported in the USA, with concerns regarding the psychological impact of drone crew experience, and difficulties with crew retention and recruitment. These difficulties are becoming a significant issue, with drone crew members keen to transfer to conventional crews, and consideration now being given to financial incentives to persuade pilots to remain on drone crews, where numbers are becoming critical because three times more pilots are aiming to leave drone crews than conventional crews. Studies have also indicated a concern about psychological numbing, which is attributed to crew seeing the very clear, direct video feed.

[Mr David Davis]

The hon. Lady is very eloquently laying out one of the major areas of concern about the use of this weapons system. Does she think that if the drone operators know unequivocally that what they are doing is legal, it would make their job easier and their chance of suffering stress lower?

[Kirsten Oswald]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention; he makes a very important point. If we expect our service personnel to go into any conflict situation, whether they are in a conventional aircraft or operating a drone, it is our responsibility to make sure that there is a legal basis for that action.

There is an ethical dilemma when drone operators are faced with their targets. In the USA, it is being considered whether it might be better to replace the images that crew members see with modified interfaces. It is possible to do that, but of course the concern then arises that it would potentially introduce an unethical level of emotional distance, which could lead to a lack of recognition of those affected by strikes as people, dehumanising them. I note that the right hon. Gentleman had heard General McChrystal express similar concerns.

That disconnect has also been reported as causing operators challenges in coming to terms with the effects of their actions on both combatants and civilians, and their working environment can contribute to that. After their shift, operators head home in their cars, thousands of miles from the results of their day’s work and—crucially—remote from the opportunity to assimilate their experiences with those of colleagues, as would be the case in a more conventional setting.

Looking to the future, it was recently disclosed that the United States military are using civilian operators to fly drones that are tracking suspected militants and other targets across the globe. This is part of a privatisation of job roles that were previously exclusively undertaken by military personnel. The Los Angeles Times reports that civilian pilots operate combat air patrols that daily fly through areas where military operations are taking place. These civilian operators provide video and collect sensitive information for the United States air force. Although they are not permitted to pinpoint targets or fire missiles at them, they are clearly operating military drones, which is prompting questions, because they are now part of what the USAF refers to as the “kill chain”, which starts with surveillance and ends with the launching of missiles.

That is not the situation that we are faced with now in the UK, but we are faced with a situation in which the thresholds of operation—the legalities and the parameters— are unclear. It is also a situation where, notwithstanding the potential for use of drones, unintended consequences reign supreme. For these reasons, I call upon the Government to debate this issue further, and I would be delighted to hear further information from the Minister about the points that I have made.