Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between James Cleverly and Penny Mordaunt

Monday 18th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

9. What steps he is taking to protect the armed forces from persistent legal claims.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Penny Mordaunt)]

Although we will always investigate serious allegations of wrongdoing, we are committed to ending the large amount of opportunist litigation brought against our armed forces, which places great stress on them, undermines human rights and corrupts our operations. The Prime Minister chaired a National Security Council meeting on the subject in February, which looked at a range of options we have developed, and tasked the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), who has responsibility for human rights, and me to produce a comprehensive package to address the problem. We expect to make announcements very shortly.

[James Cleverly]

Two weeks ago Justice Leggatt said that Public Interest Lawyers showed

“a serious failure to observe essential ethical standards”

when it claimed that British soldiers were responsible for the death of a child. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is simply the latest example of the hounding of our forces—something we committed in our manifesto to clamp down on—and that it must now be investigated by the regulator?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I agree with my hon. Friend and it is right that Public Interest Lawyers has been referred to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. Justice Leggatt criticised them for failing to take action when they discovered inconsistencies between their claimants’ accounts and, worse, for ignoring those inconsistencies when they were pointed out to them and for continuing to advance the case. In his words,

“no responsible lawyer…conscious of their duties to their client and the court would have felt able to advance the original allegation.”