Awards for Valour (Protection) Bill

Gareth Johnson Excerpts

Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 24th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. The Bill goes over the top in making these things a criminal offence, potentially with a custodial sentence attached. That is bad enough in terms of going over the top, but when we are dealing with things that have “the appearance of being an award”, we are going way beyond what anybody has ever envisaged before, and we are going too far.

My amendment 3 proposes to delete the words “including in particular” from clause 2. That seems a strange phrase to have in legislation, as it is general and does not strike me as being a particularly helpful legal phrase. How do we define “including in particular”? Does that mean something else is included that we do not know about? I do not really know what definition we have in mind for “including in particular”. How on earth is anyone to know whether they are committing an offence if they are wearing something which is not mentioned “in particular”? It could be interpreted that they did break the law without having any idea that they were doing so because the provision just includes things “in particular”, but not exclusively those things. That is a strange phrase.

We can take amendments 4 and 6 to 15 together, as they all deal with the fact of this being an imprisonable offence. They would remove the custodial sentence for the offence in England and Wales.

As I have said, I do not think we should have this legislation. As I pointed out on Second Reading, the Defence Committee called its report on the Bill “Exposing Walter Mitty: The Awards for Valour (Protection) Bill”, but it would not expose Walter Mitty; it would criminalise him and potentially send him to prison for three months. If it was just about exposing Walter Mitty, probably none of us would have a problem with the Bill, but that is not what it would do.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

I have deliberately not intervened on my hon. Friend until now because it is quite clear that he is trying to talk the Bill out, and it is absolutely clear that his amendments are wrecking amendments that are not based on logic. Does he accept that it is a great shame that there is support on both sides of the House—from Her Majesty’s Opposition, the Government, the Scottish National party—yet he seems hellbent on preventing it from becoming law?

[Philip Davies]

I am sorry that my hon. Friend takes that attitude. I have tabled some amendments that have been found to be in order by the Speaker. I do not know whether my hon. Friend is questioning the Speaker’s selection of amendments, but they are all in order, which is why they have been selected for debate. If they were not, they would not have been selected. I am going rather rapidly through each of them, which is what we are supposed to do on Report—we table amendments and go through them to explain the purpose behind them, and then people can explain why they disagree. That takes as long as it takes. I do not think I have been dwelling unnecessarily on any particular amendment, so I am sorry that my hon. Friend takes that view. I do not set the timings for debates; if the debate could last longer, I would be happy for it to do so, but I do not set the rules. I am going to go through the amendments and explain why I have tabled them. I am sorry that he does not like people doing that with legislation in the House of Commons, but that is what the House is for.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am trying to do that, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I keep getting distracted by Members wanting to raise all sorts of other matters. I will stick to my amendments, as I was trying to do in the first place.

Amendment 4 would remove the chance of anyone being sent to prison for such an act. Other countries have different positions, as was confirmed by the House of Commons Library before Second Reading. A range of offences is covered, and there is a distinction between wearing medals, wearing medals with an intent to deceive and wearing medals with a view to a financial gain. As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) said, fraud legislation already provides protection in this country when it comes to wearing an Army uniform, so we do have other legislation that covers this area, when other countries have no such legislation.

My amendments give a range of options: I have gone from no custodial sentence to custodial sentences of one day, seven days, 14 days, 21 days and 28 days, all of which are naturally better than three months. I prefer no custodial sentence at all, but I have tabled all those different amendments to give the House some kind of choice if it felt a different option was more appropriate.

[Gareth Johnson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is very sad that, come this Remembrance Sunday, any individual can parade in front of widows, veterans, families and loved ones wearing medals that they have not won themselves—they may not have even served—with the intent to deceive and to curry favour? The reason why they will be able to do so is that he has filibustered this Bill.

[Philip Davies]

I thought that my hon. Friend was going to make a sensible point, rather than bandying about more accusations. I am trying to improve his Bill. The fact is that, by his own admission, he brought forward a Bill that was a bit of a dog’s breakfast, because he changed it radically in Committee. If he had had his way, his Bill would have gone through on the nod; no one would have said anything and it would have gone through in its original form, which he accepts was a dog’s dinner of a Bill; it is now half a dog’s dinner. I accept that he made some improvements in Committee, but just because he is on a tight timescale is no basis on which to pass legislation in this House. It cannot be appropriate to say, “Well, I know that it is not a very good Bill, that there are deficiencies in it and that there are lots of concerns with it, but, I tell you what, we are on a bit of a tight timescale so we will forget about all that, just nod it through and to hell with the consequences.” Are we saying that, if someone gets sent to prison and gets a criminal record when no one in this House ever intended that they should get a criminal record, then so be it—hard cheese? That might be the attitude that my hon. Friend takes, but it is not one that I take. We must take these provisions seriously.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

The idea that I am scared of the hon. Gentleman is bizarre, particularly given that he did not even understand what an amendment was in his first intervention. He has a lot of learning to do.

I have dealt with the custodial sentence part of the Bill. Now, I come to the part on fines. I am trying to reduce the level of fines because they are disproportionate. With the way the Bill is drafted, it seems that somebody could be given an unlimited fine by the courts for this offence. Again, I cannot honestly see how an unlimited fine is appropriate for committing this offence, but that is what it would be in England and Wales following the changes to fines a few years ago. It would be rather different in Scotland and Northern Ireland, with a maximum of £5,000, which is still too high. Amendments 16 to 23 are about reducing the level of fine from unlimited to something more manageable. I have suggested a range of options. The lowest I have gone down to is £200, which is a level one fine in the courts, and I have gone up to a level four fine, which is £2,500. At least that sets a limit because an unlimited fine seems rather over the top.

Clause 1(4) provides that the Secretary of State may change the schedule of medals at any point. Amendment 24 would mean that the Secretary of State may not change the schedule of medals. When my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford introduced the Bill, he said that the challenge in drafting it was knowing where to stop. As I have said before, he may know where he wants to stop but, as with many things, where the legislation stops and where other people might want to stop are the most important. We should not encourage legislation giving the Secretary of State unlimited power to change the schedule willy-nilly. It obviously has the potential to apply to many more medals and other awards for non-armed forces personnel—and, in many cases, why not? But we should not be giving the Secretary of State that power. Amendments 25 to 27 are consequential amendments to that.

Clause 1(5)(b)(ii) states:

“The regulations may add an award to the Schedule only if it is awarded in respect of…a level of rigour significantly greater than might normally be expected in a non-operational environment.”

If the right to include medals in the future remains, it should only apply to those involving danger to life from enemy action, not

“a level of rigour significantly greater than might normally be expected in a non-operational environment.”

I am not sure who would be the ultimate judge of or who would determine the phrase

“greater than might normally be expected”.

Amendment 28 would deal with that issue.

Amendment 29 would delete the wide-ranging provisions regulations. Why do we need to hand over all these powers to make regulations that are in the Bill? Surely these things should be on the face of the Bill. Amendments 31 to 34 would delay the Act coming into force by two months, four months, 10 months or a year and 10 months respectively.

I have been through my amendments as quickly as I could. They would all make the Bill stronger and deal with some of the potential unintended consequences that were not envisaged when the Bill was conceived. I hoped that my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford would have taken them in the spirit in which they were intended. I could have gone on at greater length on every single one of those amendments, but I went through them all as quickly as I could. I hope they are helpful because I worry that if we are not careful, we will end up criminalising not the people who my hon. Friend wants to criminalise, but people who we never had any intention at all of criminalising. That is all I seek to avoid in this legislation, and that is a duty that we should take very seriously.

Giving someone a criminal offence is a serious matter; it is not something that should be taken lightly—it can have devastating consequences for people—and the same is true of sending people to prison. Yes, of course we want to expose Walter Mitty, but do we really want to criminalise and imprison Walter Mitty? That is where I draw the line with this legislation. If we think we are sending too many burglars and robbers to prison, surely the solution cannot be to send these people to prison, too.

[Gareth Johnson]

The main purpose behind the Bill is to protect veterans. It is intended to ensure that when anybody sees someone wearing medals proudly at a remembrance service or in any other sphere, they can have confidence that that individual is the legitimate article. That has always been my intention.

I find it grotesque in the extreme that certain individuals—we have had numerous examples of them—can parade in front of others and cause deep upset, hurt and ridicule to those who have actually served and those who have lost loved ones. It is grotesque to see that bravery undermined by those who do not have the courage to put their own neck on the block for our country.

It is because of that that I put forward the Bill. Legislation has worked very successfully in many countries around the world, and it worked successfully in the United Kingdom; in fact, legislation was originally introduced by Winston Churchill after the first world war. He said that when anybody sees a person wearing medals, that should radiate an opportunity to say, “There is a man in whom we can all have confidence and pride.” That is exactly the motivation behind my Bill.

I leave it at that. There is very much more that I could say, but I hope that we can make it at least to Third Reading.

[Stephen Doughty]

I just want to add my voice in support of the Bill. The hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) has gone about it on a very cross-party basis. It is something we all support. It was gone through at great length in Committee, when many of the aspects that have been raised today were dealt with. Fundamentally, what I cannot understand is why, if the Bill is supported by decorated veterans who have put their lives on the line for this country, and indeed by Members of this House who have put their lives on the line for this country, it should not go forward.