Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill (Second sitting)

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th October 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you very much in advance for giving evidence today. I will ask Emma Lewell-Buck to start the evidence session.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

Q Good afternoon to both of you. As you are aware, the main purpose of the Bill is to provide greater legal protections to forces and veterans. In your opinion, does it fully do that?

Ahmed Al-Nahhas: No, APIL’s position is that the Bill does not afford that. We acknowledge the good intentions behind the Bill. However, in respect of part 2 of the Bill, which I am here to discuss—the civil claims aspect—we believe that it strips service personnel and veterans of certain rights in relation to civil claims and their rights under the European convention on human rights.

Emma Norton: I would agree with that and I will not repeat it. I would say that one of the major flaws in the Bill is that it does not address the issue of the investigations that gave rise to all the problems that we are dealing with today. I think you heard that in the previous evidence; it has been a thread that has been running throughout the evidence that the Committee has heard today.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Q Bearing in mind your answers, I think I know the answer to the next question. Do either of you feel that it will reduce the number of investigations and reinvestigations or not?

Ahmed Al-Nahhas: I may pass that question to Emma, who is here primarily to deal with those issues in respect of investigations. My remit is in respect of civil claims.

Emma Norton: I think there were very serious problems with the original investigations that took place into the allegations of harm in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is what made it relatively easy for courts to find that, time and again, fresh investigations needed to be conducted, which then gave rise to further litigation. The responses from the Ministry of Defence to those adverse findings did not go far enough. The investigations that we had had time and again never got to the bottom of what had happened.

As witnesses have said, the longer period of time that you get between the event and the investigation, the harder it is to get to the bottom of what happened. If we were serious about really addressing the issues that Mr Campbell and other veterans have described, we would be looking at what kinds of systems and structures that we could build now and that would ensure that this does not happen again. What kinds of investigations could we set up and design that could function in the context of overseas operations? I am afraid that until that happens, these problems are going to recur and I do not think the Bill addresses them.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Q Would either of you advocate a pause on the Bill going through right now until some of the issues can be ironed out properly?

Emma Norton: I am happy to say that I would, personally. That would have been a sensible way to go about it—to have a consultation that would really hear from individuals who had been directly affected by investigations, as well as victims, and to speak to experts who can talk to the challenges of building a really good system of investigations overseas, because it is really difficult and we do not underestimate that. There are lots of things that could be done and could be done better.

There was a service justice review, and I know we are expecting some further responses to the recommendations in that review, but that was published in February and it had taken two years to get to. That contained some really interesting ideas about how we could improve service policing and the quality of prosecutorial decision making. I know that there are lots of other ideas—ideas about maybe getting greater degrees of civilian oversight and input into military policing overseas, or possibly having judicial oversight of decisions to detain insurgents and reviews of those kinds of decisions. It would have been more sensible to have those discussions first and then look at what was needed by way of amendments to the criminal law. It feels very much—we have heard this a couple of times today—that this is a cart before the horse situation.

Ahmed Al-Nahhas: I would add my agreement to that. APIL’s concern is that the impact assessment does not go far enough and is not clear. I would welcome a pause so that a proper impact assessment can be taken and further expert evidence explored.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Thank you both. My colleague, Kevan Jones, wants to come in quickly on investigations as well.

[Mr Jones]

Q On investigations, a theme has come out in the reading and in this morning’s session. We have time limits here for bringing prosecutions. Would you suggest time limits for investigations? The Human Rights Act says, I think, you have got to have speedy investigations. Even without time limits, is there a role for judicial oversight of those investigations as they are ongoing—an investigation could get to a point where independent judicial oversight could say, “Nothing further is going to be gained from taking this prosecution any further”? What are your thoughts on that?

Emma Norton: I do not think you can have a set time limit for an investigation. I think an investigation needs to take as long as it takes, as long as it is being conducted expeditiously. The problem with the original responses to allegations of really serious abuse overseas was that those allegations were not responded to sufficiently, certainly in accordance with our convention-compliant obligations, which are that they needed to be sufficiently independent, sufficiently well-resourced, sufficiently prompt, adequate—all those kinds of things. I do not think that setting an arbitrary time limit on what would be criminal investigations is necessarily helpful. If we think about how police conduct criminal investigations domestically, although there are time limits in terms of issues around police bail and things like that, there are no hard and fast time limits within which police need to complete those investigations, although obviously they should do them as quickly as possible, because otherwise the defendant is prejudiced.

[Mr Jones]

Q What about actually having a review of the investigation—an independent review of those investigations?

Emma Norton: In terms of how that would function overseas, I can see the benefit. It may be that when you have sufficient levels of civilian input into those investigations or oversight into those investigations, or judicial oversight into decisions to detain in theatre, then that may not be necessary; you could inject that level of requisite independence in those ways. This is something that would really benefit from a wider consultation with experts in criminal law and procedure, who are experienced in criminal law and procedure but also in the challenges of having investigations overseas. We have not had that.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Q Going back to my earlier question, does the Bill open up the possibility of more prosecutions in the ICC?

Ahmed Al-Nahhas: I am sorry, I cannot comment on criminal matters.

Emma Norton: I am not an expert in international criminal law, but if an otherwise credible allegation of a war crime was not proceeded with because of the Bill, that by definition increases the risk that those matters would be taken up by the ICC. That is something, of course, that our Judge Advocate General Jeff Blackett has very real concerns about and has spoken about. I know a lot of others also have very serious concerns about that.

We have heard a lot about veterans and their understandable fear and anxiety. We have heard less from very senior and formerw members of the armed forces who are really concerned about these provisions—the criminal side of the Bill as well as the civil side—and feel they are not in accordance with the Army’s values and standards. The message the Bill will project to the rest of the world about how the Army wishes to conduct itself is really serious, and they feel quite despairing about it. I was speaking to a former brigadier this morning who served 36 years, and he said that he was really ashamed of the Bill. So I think there is a real concern.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Thank you both very much.

[Sarah Atherton (Wrexham) (Con)]

Q Hello, Emma. It is good to see you again. I am intrigued with what you just said. A blunt question to you: do you feel that the Bill is necessary?

Emma Norton: What is necessary is for what happened in the past never to happen again—definitely. I just do not think that the Bill will fix it, for the reasons I have given. I will not go over them again, but they go to the lack of willingness inside the MOD to look at those allegations at the time.

I think we are in a different place now. The MOD has learned a huge amount from all those errors. I would say that the MOD has learned from some of the litigation; there have been some very positive outcomes from that, and that is missing from the debate. I just do not think that the Bill fixes those problems sufficiently.