Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Debate between Gareth Bacon and Ian Paisley

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Stuart Anderson). When my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton) was in her place, she outlined the concept of lawfare. There can be no doubt that that exists and has been exploited, leading to vexatious claims against our brave armed forces personnel over a considerable period of time.

Cases such as that of Major Robert Campbell are absolutely scandalous. This man had to face eight separate investigations over 17 years into a single incident that took place back in 2003. He is only 47, so we are talking about more than a third of his life. Each investigation cleared him, only for the goalposts to be moved for each successive investigation. The toll taken on that completely innocent man, who put his life on the line for his country, is enormous.

Tragically and shamefully, he is not alone. To put it into perspective, a long-running streak of claims have been dismissed as far back as the 2009 al-Sweady inquiry, which took five years, cost £25 million and the conclusion of which was that the allegations were

“wholly without foundation and entirely the product of deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hostility”.

Furthermore, the Iraq historic allegations team determined that 70% of cases did not have a case to answer or that it would be disproportionate to conduct an investigation. Similarly, as of June, the service police legacy investigations had closed or were in the process of closing 1,200 allegations. Operation Northmoor, which took three years and cost £10 million, resulted in no charges, but all that takes significant time and causes huge distress to those under repeated investigation.

Our servicemen and women make enormous sacrifices on behalf of our country and the practice of hounding them must come to an end. It is therefore right that the Government seek to raise the bar for prosecutions in overseas operations by requiring prosecutors to have proper regard to the uniquely challenging circumstances into which we send our personnel to risk their lives on our behalf, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West.

Opponents of the Bill have said that it would issue an amnesty for torture and war crime offences, but that is simply not the case. As the Minister has been at pains to make clear, the Bill does not provide blanket immunity from prosecution; it merely raises the threshold for the prosecution of alleged offences. Those opponents have also claimed that it would damage the reputation of our armed forces. I question instead what sort of a country we would be if we allowed our armed forces to continue to make enormous personal sacrifices only to return back home and be at the mercy—for years—of tank-chasing lawyers such as Phil Shiner, who was, of course, struck off for his actions. The Minister has outlined at length how the Bill meets the UK’s obligations under domestic and international law. I look forward to hearing him do so again in his closing speech.

Most Members on both sides of the House sincerely support our armed forces, but there have always been some who have taken sides against our armed forces and shown no respect whatsoever for our veterans. I am not among them. I am inclined to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), who said that the Bill goes some way to protecting our armed forces but probably not far enough. However, it does improve the current unacceptable position. I therefore support the Bill to protect our armed forces.

[Ian Paisley]

May I say at the outset that I am extremely proud of our armed services and their conduct, their calibre and their gallantry? They are well renowned and well supported across Ulster. They are applauded, and have been for many years, even through the dark years when people did not like the armed services so much, because people know the sacrifice that young squaddies made to hold the line between peace and chaos in a part of the United Kingdom. They were, and are, applauded.

In principle my party welcomes the Bill and wants to support it. We do think there are many ways in which it could be improved, and we hope the Minister is listening to those calls for improvement. We are bitterly disappointed that the legislation will fulfil only part of the Government’s manifesto commitment—part of the commitment on which Members canvassed around the whole of this nation to obtain support. I will come to the detail of that in a moment.

When I was a student at university, I had a tutor from Germany. She recounted to me a story about one of her earliest and most confusing experiences of Northern Ireland. She wanted to call a colleague here at King’s College London, and for her it was not a problem. She picked up the phone, she dialled the number, and she was told by the switchboard operator at Queen’s University, “That’s fine—that’s a local call.” Some time later, she had to call a colleague at Trinity College, Dublin, but she was not able to make the call, and was told by the switchboard operator, “Oh, that is an overseas call, down to Dublin.”

So I understand the confusion that some people might have, and indeed the justification that the Government have put into this piece of legislation to leave Northern Ireland out, and leave Operation Banner soldiers out, because in theory Northern Ireland is not overseas, and service in Northern Ireland is not an overseas matter: it is a local matter—a domestic issue. But the Government’s manifesto commitment was to all of their personnel, and no matter what way we cut it, and no matter what the small print may now say, those brave and gallant people and soldiers who served in Northern Ireland under Operation Banner have been jettisoned by this piece of legislation.