NATO

James Heappey Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I could see the excitement on the Chancellor’s face as my right hon. Friend outlined his proposals. I was not sure whether it constituted agreement that we should be setting those targets, but I am sure that we shall have to negotiate on the issue over a long period.

We must ensure that NATO is adapting—and continues to adapt—to the times, and also to the threats that it faces. Since its creation, we have always seen Britain leading from the front. Not only do we assign our independent nuclear deterrent to the defence of the alliance, as we have for the past 56 years, but our service personnel and defence civilians are on the ground in Eastern Europe at this very moment, providing a deterrence against Russian aggression.

 

It has been my privilege to see their dedication and devotion to duty in Estonia, where we are leading a multinational battlegroup, and in Poland where they are supporting the United States forces. And at the same time our sailors are commanding half of NATO’s standing naval forces, and our pilots, ground crew, and aircraft have returned to the Black sea region, based in Romania, to police the skies of our south-eastern European allies. Just last year UK forces led the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force and we became the first ally to deliver cyber-capabilities in support of NATO operations.

Meanwhile, UK personnel form a critical part of NATO’s command structure. So I am proud that the UK will be sending more than 100 additional UK personnel to bolster that command structure, taking our total to well over 1,000. As we look at the emerging threats and the challenges our nation faces going forward, it is clear that we must make sure that NATO has the resources: that it has the capability and the people to man those command structures, in order for us to meet those threats.

NATO needs the extra support to deal with the growing threats. The dangers we face are multiplying all the time and come from every direction. We are confronting a host of new threats from extremism to cyber-warfare, dangers global in nature that require an international response and a global presence. We are witnessing the rise of rogue states conducting proxy wars and causing regional instability, while old threats are returning.

Russia is a case in point. Back in 2010 Russia was not clearly identified as a threat. The focus of our attention was ungoverned spaces such as Afghanistan and Iraq, but by 2015 the emergence of new threats was becoming apparent to everyone and this threat has accelerated and increased over the last three years.

In 2010 our Royal Navy was called on just once to respond to a Russian naval ship approaching UK territorial waters; last year it was called on 33 times. Russian submarine activity has increased tenfold in the north Atlantic, to a level not seen since the cold war. The Russians are also investing in new technology, through which they aim to outpace our capability. They are concentrating on our weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and we must be realistic and accept that we are going to have to invest in new capabilities to deal with these new threats.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that there is a re-emergence of a peer-on-peer threat, and while some great new pieces of kit are now entering service with our Army, Navy and Air Force, does he agree that the pace of their arrival and the new capabilities that will augment them cannot be swift enough as we make sure we are capable once again of fighting against our peers, not just mounting counter-insurgency operations?

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: the pace and delivery of both the new equipment and the support we give our armed forces is important. We must make sure they get that new equipment, that new kit and that new capability as swiftly as we can.

Our Air Force planes have been scrambled 38 times since 2012 in response to Russian military aircraft. Russia continues to use its cyber-bots and fake news to undermine democracies across the world; we have seen very clear examples of that in Montenegro, Estonia and elsewhere. And we ourselves have had the shocking attack in Salisbury—the first offensive nerve agent attack on European streets since the second world war.

So there is plenty to focus our minds as we head into the Brussels summit. That is why, earlier this month at the NATO Defence Ministers meetings, we took decisions alongside our allies to further strengthen NATO’s command structure, enhancing its naval presence and putting in place the right capabilities to defend the Euro-Atlantic area as it is increasingly threatened. We also took that opportunity to clarify our three priorities for the pivotal summit meeting in July.

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[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

I welcome this opportunity to debate the role of NATO. The timing is particularly appropriate, with the debate coming ahead of the NATO summit next month. The alliance is the cornerstone of our defence and our collective security, and Labour Members are proud of the role our party played in its founding. The leadership of Clement Attlee and his Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, was so instrumental in setting up the alliance in 1949. Bevin moved the motion

“That this House approves the North Atlantic Treaty”.

That established NATO. He spoke in that debate of the backdrop of growing global instability and the shared determination of the 12 founding members to avoid any return to conflict. The increasingly aggressive actions of the Soviet Union drove the Government to consider, as he put it,

“how like-minded, neighbourly peoples, whose institutions had been marked down for destruction, could get together, not for the purpose of attack, but in sheer self-defence.”—[Official Report, 12 May 1949; Vol. 464, c. 2011-2013.]

Bevin was clear that the creation of the alliance was not an aggressive act but was instead about deterrence, a fundamental principle of NATO to this day. The Atlantic treaty was to send a message to potential adversaries that NATO’s members were not a number of weak, divided nations, but rather a united front bound together in the common cause of collective self-defence.

[James Heappey]

Last year, the Labour party leader was asked about article 5 of the NATO treaty and he responded:

“That doesn’t necessarily mean sending troops. It means diplomatic, it means economic, it means sanctions, it means a whole range of things.”

Will the hon. Lady clarify from the Dispatch Box now that, if one of our NATO allies were attacked militarily and he were Prime Minister, he would respond with military action?

[Nia Griffith]

I will confirm that Labour 100% supports NATO and, as the Leader of the Opposition has made absolutely clear, we want to work within it to promote democracy and to project stability. That is exactly what we would do if we were in government.

Historic Allegations against Veterans

James Heappey Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Sir Henry Bellingham) on securing the debate.

I served in Northern Ireland at the end of Operation Banner, so I know very well just how politically sensitive these issues are out there. However, the current situation, with ex-soldiers still under investigation, cannot endure. The equivalency being made between the service of members of the British armed forces and terrorists is immoral, and public outrage is entirely understandable.

[Ian Paisley]

These issues are only sensitive among a very narrow band of people who did not give a toss about the life of any soldier in Northern Ireland.

[James Heappey]

That may be the case. I will talk about something slightly different in the short time I have available, drawing on my own experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than getting into the intricacies of Northern Irish politics.

I served in Afghanistan twice, as a platoon commander and then, latterly, as the adjutant of 2 Rifles in 2009, with a tour to Iraq in between. As a platoon commander, I was only too aware that I was training my soldiers to go out on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, to remove the safety catch and open fire, acting entirely on instinct in the heat of the moment, drawing on everything they had learned in their pre-deployment training and everything they had seen on the tour hitherto. We have to give soldiers the confidence that, on the rare occasions on which they take those decisions—on operations in hugely dangerous situations—and get them wrong, the system will back them up and will agree that they followed the rules of engagement, and that, once all the investigations in theatre are complete, that is them done.

When I was the adjutant of 2 Rifles in Sangin in 2009, arguably on the most kinetic of the Operation Herrick tours, there were lots. Every day I would start shooting incident reports and other sorts of incident report that would go on up to the Herrick taskforce at brigade and would be immediately looked over by lawyers and the Royal Military Police. That process was robust, and when there was any doubt in investigators’ minds, the investigation continued beyond the brigade, up to division, and was looked at thoroughly.

Soldiers have to know that that process is complete, and that when it is done the nation will stand behind them. Otherwise, in that split second when the safety catch has to be removed and lethal force has to be applied, they will hesitate. That could cost them their life.

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[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Sir Henry Bellingham) on bringing forward the debate. All of us in the Chamber are proud of our armed forces. Our veterans are an asset to our society, deserving of our thanks, respect and support. We support them because we are proud of them, because we know they have been trained to the highest standards and conduct themselves with the utmost integrity and because they operate to bring peace to areas of conflict.

That confidence in the behaviour of our military personnel enables them to continue carrying out their duties with full public support in every theatre of war. However, when the actions of individuals call into question the integrity of our armed forces, we must address that. That is not to say we should not protect ex-service personnel from bogus legacy cases. Members and former members of our armed forces must be treated fairly when accusations of wrongdoing are made. We know about the huge backlog of cases in the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, which means that serving members and former personnel face extended periods of uncertainty over accusations that have been made. The case of Major Robert Campbell has been mentioned today, and I think we would all agree that that is not acceptable.

We must also have confidence in the institutions of the police and judiciary in Northern Ireland to serve the people. Responsibility for policing and justice matters in Northern Ireland is devolved and should be respected as such. The PSNI legacy investigations branch should be given adequate resources for such investigations so that they are not prolonged unnecessarily. In the north of Ireland, we know that few families escaped the suffering and the violence.

This debate is timely, given the actions we saw yesterday from the Israeli military. The callous manner in which civilians, including children, were mowed down, demonstrated to the world a military not operating in a manner that we would consider exemplary, but we cannot brush over our own past. Events such as the Ballymurphy massacre, into which an inquest is currently taking place, or the Bloody Sunday murders, are a stain.

[James Heappey]

I am sure that the hon. Lady will want to clarify that. I am sure she is not, but she seems to be saying that whatever happened on the border of Gaza yesterday has perhaps some equivalency with the behaviour of the British armed forces during their service in Northern Ireland, Iraq or Afghanistan.

[Carol Monaghan]

That is absolutely not what I said. I said that that was a military behaving in a manner that was not exemplary.

We know there were terrorists on both sides in Northern Ireland, but the idea that people can murder with impunity cannot be tolerated. Those carrying out the atrocities we are talking about today were not terrorists. They were sent to Northern Ireland to keep the peace, not to enflame an already volatile situation. We expect the highest standards from our armed forces and that requires them to operate within, not outwith, the rule of law. The actions of a few individual members of the armed forces during those events brought them down to the level of the terrorists. That is something that should cause us all shame.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Heappey Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lancaster]

I am not quite sure whether I agree with the hon. Lady’s figures, but I will go away and look at them, because I do not have them to hand. I absolutely defend what we have done quite successfully in increasing the size of the reserve. Compared with where we were three or four years ago, we now have a usable reserve, which is a very positive thing.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating the Army on its new recruitment campaign, which shows the changing face and culture of our armed forces? Does he share my confidence that the corporals and colour sergeants who await those recruits in our training establishments, and the esprit de corps in our regiments that awaits thereafter, will ensure that our Army is no less professional, no less robust and no less lethal?

[Gavin Williamson]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. The British Army is the best in the world. What we want to do is recruit from every walk of life and every background; it does not matter where someone comes from, their sexuality or anything else. We want the best in our armed forces, and that is what we will achieve.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Heappey Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lancaster]

My understanding is that there is no international agreement on what an autonomous weapons system is, which is precisely why calls for, for example, pre-emptive bans would be inappropriate at this point. The task in hand is absolutely to get an internationally agreed definition, and we believe that the UN CCW is the right forum in which to do so.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that no matter what the advances of technology on the battlefield, only humans can effectively hold ground, deterring enemy activity and winning the hearts and minds of local communities, and that we will therefore always need an Army of about the current size or larger?

[Mark Lancaster]

We will definitely always need an Army.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Heappey Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

It is good to be able to agree with the hon. Lady about something today, and I join her in paying tribute to our services—the RAF, which has carried out more than 1,400 strikes in just under three years; the Army, which has helped to train more than 50,000 Iraqi and peshmerga troops;, and the Royal Navy, which has helped to guard the American and French carriers when they have been striking from the Gulf. The military campaign is not over with the fall of Mosul. There remain other towns—Tal Afar, Hawija, in Nineveh province—and there are remnants of Daesh coalescing around the Middle Euphrates river valley, so there is still more work to be done, but there are 4 million fewer people living under Daesh rule since this House gave us permission to engage in this campaign.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

T2. Further to the Secretary of State’s update on progress against Daesh, I know that he will be as concerned as I am that as we defeat Daesh militarily on the ground, its threat seems to be changing as it attacks in other ways in other places. Will he update the House on what his Department is doing to counter those emerging new threats?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

My hon. Friend is right that the military campaign up the Tigris and along the Euphrates is just part of the strategy. We need to continue disrupting Daesh’s online propaganda. We need to target its senior leadership and undermine its finances. The military campaign has to be combined, and seen as part of a broader coalition campaign to undermine this evil organisation and make sure that it never comes back.

Trident: Test Firing

James Heappey Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

Under our international treaty obligations, notice of a future test firing is given to other nuclear powers, including in this instance to France and, as the hon. Gentleman says, Russia, but operational details are obviously not disclosed.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

Without reference to any particular test and the necessary security that must surround each test, will my right hon. Friend confirm that the very point of the testing process is not only to certify the crews of Her Majesty’s submarines, but to allow Lockheed Martin to maximise the reliability and lethality of the weapons system?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

Yes, in essence, that is right. The system is tested to ensure that each of its complex parts and the various systems involved are fully understood and that the crew of the submarine concerned is ready to operate it. As I have said several times now, that operation was successfully concluded.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Heappey Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

I am sure that the future President of the United States will read the CIA briefings when he becomes the President of the United States. I am sure the hon. Gentleman saw this morning’s press coverage showing that the future President of the United States does not believe everything that he is told by the press.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

The additional support to NATO is welcome, but for our land forces that requires high-end armoured formations. Will the MOD be making new money available to properly regrow and train with that capability?

[Mike Penning]

The armed forces, particularly the Army, have the money they require. Only recently, I visited the Light Dragoons and the Rifles, which will be deploying to Poland. The equipment they have is second to none, but we will keep their equipment under review, to make sure it is fit for purpose, particularly in view of the inclement weather in Poland.

Ministry of Defence Future Accommodation Model

James Heappey Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Trevelyan]

We are looking at the issue in Northern Ireland as well.

Will the Minister give us details of any negotiations that have started with Annington Homes on a new rental framework, which would ensure that a continued level of subsidised rents could be provided to military families? My concern is that the MOD intends to hand back the bulk of the homes, and then allow Annington to rent them to service families on a private rental market arrangement, whether behind the wire or not. That would meet the 30% reduction target, but would no doubt do nothing to reduce the overall costs of subsidising housing—that is, if the MOD actually intends to price the FAM offer at a level that families find acceptable, and that allows them to choose to remain in the armed forces.

I hope that the Minister can persuade me that I am wrong, but my deep concern is that the DIO was set a financial rationalisation target without any reference to the retention risk to our human capital, and that no one in the MOD is balancing out the potential financial savings of bringing in FAM with losing the security and support of SFA. In my opinion, and that of many of our leading military leaders, our armed forces personnel are working at unsustainable levels of undermanning. If we reduce SFA—with its security, safety and community for families, and with the practicalities it offers, despite the shortcomings of the present maintenance contracts for short notice postings and so on—we risk losing many experienced personnel to the private sector, and we open up a long-term retention problem, thereby reducing the effectiveness, flexibility and world-renowned reputation of the British military.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mrs Trevelyan]

I will not, as I do not have time.

If what I just described were to happen, it would have financial and military implications for a generation. The British people would never want to hear that the MOD had put cost saving over operational effectiveness, most especially for our human capital: the men and women who put their lives on the line for us.

The MOD’s strategic defence and security review 2015 states that Joint Force 2025 and Britain’s defence will continue to depend on the commitment, professionalism and skills of our people. Recruiting, retaining and developing the right people is therefore a top priority for the MOD. The SDSR talks about a new accommodation offer to help more service personnel to live in private accommodation or own their own homes. Perhaps the Minister can answer the question that goes to the heart of whether the Government believe in the armed forces covenant commitment, which is summed up by a highly qualified and valued member of our armed forces— I have the greatest honour of being his voice today:

“Is the implementation of FAM a deliberate attempt to destroy and de-professionalise our armed forces? Given that housing is a tiny proportion of the MOD budget, why get rid of the SFA, which means so much to so many?”

Oral Answers to Questions

James Heappey Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

I was grateful for the Minister’s earlier answer on the cadet expansion programme. Will he tell us at what point, if at all, expressions of interest from schools in non-priority areas will be accepted if insufficient applications are made from priority areas?

[Mr Brazier]

My hon. Friend reflects on the problems of success. We have many applications from priority areas, according to the three criteria that were set out a number of times. I cannot make any firm promises, I am afraid, for those who do not meet the priority criteria. We are firmly on track to deliver the schools we need.

Sgt Alexander Blackman (Marine A)

James Heappey Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. For the benefit of Hansard, I encourage Members to stand if they want to intervene.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

rose—

[Richard Drax]

I give way to my hon. Friend.

[James Heappey]

Rather than mention this in my remarks later on, it is perhaps relevant to do so now. I was the adjutant of 2 Rifles in Sangin during Operation Herrick X in 2009, and there was a well-established mechanism of TRiM—trauma instant management—which is the peer-to-peer post-traumatic stress management of people after each traumatic experience. Those records should exist within Sergeant Blackman’s unit. If that process had been done properly, it should have been identified well before he reached his breaking point that he was very much at risk. Those records should exist. If they have not come to light, it is a gross injustice.

[Richard Drax]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. I cannot expand on that too much now, but we are aware that Colonel Oliver Lee, Royal Marines, had written a report identifying seven criteria that commanding officers should look out for. I also believe that, as far as Colonel Lee was concerned, Sergeant Blackman ticked every box.

From reading what we have of the executive summary of the Telemeter report—what we have got of it—there is strong reason to believe that the full report is critical of the overall command structure, including the lack of supervision over Sergeant Blackman and his men, which would certainly support Sergeant Blackman’s claims. A sergeant in the Royal Marines is probably—I will get myself into trouble here—superior to, shall we say, a line regiment sergeant, in the sense that they are trained to be far more independent. That was one explanation given to me as to why, in this instance, Sergeant Blackman was left out there for as long as he was—because he was a sergeant and highly respected, and so on.

However, what happened in this instance struck me, too, as extremely odd—my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) hinted at this earlier on, and I agree with him. We are both former soldiers, and it was our duty as officers to visit our men and make quite certain that they were safe and well and doing the job that they should be doing, because that was our task. If we did not do that, things began to unravel. Maybe that was one of the reasons why things unravelled in this particular instance.

Going back to the report—50 pages of which, as I have said, still remain unseen—it is no surprise that the Daily Mail and Frederick Forsyth thunder about a cover-up and attempts to make Sergeant Blackman a scapegoat for a much wider failure of high command. Would the full report have given Sergeant Blackman a better chance in court had it been written and published openly shortly after the events, rather than long after his conviction? Vice-Admiral Jones has reportedly asked both serving and former officers not to comment if the press start asking questions.

Also of great concern is the resignation of Colonel Lee. As I understand it, he was a high-flier who resigned his commission in disgust over how Sergeant Blackman was treated and the refusal to call him in evidence at the court martial. Colonel Lee became Sergeant Blackman’s commanding officer just six days before the incident, although they never met.

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[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

My congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) on securing the debate and on all the work he has done on this important issue. I speak as a former soldier, but also as the Member of Parliament for Sergeant Blackman’s parents-in-law, who sought my support when I was a candidate in the election and who continue to seek it.

The first thing I want to put on record is an apology for not speaking publicly on this matter before. In offering that apology, and in explaining why I feel ashamed at not having spoken out properly, I hope to shed some light on why so many in the military—those currently serving and those recently retired, particularly those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan—will feel so reluctant to speak out on this case.

We all go through the same pre-deployment training; we all get taught the rules of engagement. We all know how strong we would want to be when we face danger day in, day out over a six-month tour. We would all like to believe that we have in ourselves the self-control and restraint to remember every letter of that pre-deployment training when we face horrendous, extraordinary situations.

The reason so many of us have come home having acted like that is that we were surrounded by a chain of command and a regiment, whose members were watching our backs on the battlefield—continuing to fire as we moved forward, and continuing to fire as we replaced the magazine on our rifle. They were also watching our backs mentally and psychologically so that, when we got back from a patrol—after an explosion or after a firefight—we were talking to one another, with each of us understanding the pressures the other was under.

The reality is that there is a loneliness in command. From everything I have read, I have no doubt Sergeant Blackman was an extraordinary junior commander who had the welfare of his troops completely at heart. I know from the fact that some of his men are here today—standing up for him silently—that they would have followed him to the ends of the earth.

[Bob Stewart]

Again, I am speaking as an ex-commanding officer, albeit not in the Royal Marine commandos, or the Guards, but if this incident had not happened, this sergeant, in command of a small group—15 men—in such a situation for such a long period, would definitely be on the list for a Conspicuous Gallantry Cross.

[James Heappey]

I thank my hon. Friend.

The reality is that when someone is in a junior command position in an isolated patrol base, there is a responsibility on them to be unbreakable. They do not stint; they do not even take half a step backwards. They walk forwards because that is the only thing their men will follow.

To give junior commanders confidence and strength, and to watch out for their welfare, it is incumbent on those in the chain of command to get around, to visit, to watch, to take people to one side to see how they are and, if they do need a few days out of the line, to invent a reason to get them back down to Camp Bastion so that they can recuperate and get back to the line rejuvenated and with the moral strength they need to lead.

In Sangin, in 2009, my battlegroup was on the very front line—we were taking the highest casualties that had been taken in Afghanistan up until that point. However, I remember only too well that, when there was an incident in an isolated patrol base, the commanding officer and the regimental sergeant-major would be on the first available helicopter up there; if they could not get a helicopter, they would be on the back of the first available patrol. They had a responsibility to get to those patrol bases, not because they wanted to be seen by the riflemen, but because they knew that if the platoon commander and the platoon sergeant were doing everything they had been trained to do, they would be looking out for their soldiers, but nobody in that patrol base would be looking out for them.

And it went on. When an event shook our entire battlegroup, the brigade commander appeared on the first available helicopter from Lashkar Gah. The reason we were able to come back knowing that we had done right and that we had not once crossed the line was that there were people all the way up the chain of the command watching out for us to make sure that we remained strong and resupplied, but also that we were being looked after.

There is a lack of understanding and empathy about what we ask our troops to do, and there are people in this room who have experienced that in the raw. The reality is that operations in Afghanistan over the last five, six or seven years have not been about conventional firefights between two uniformed enemies who stand and shoot at each until one side gives up. This is about a callous, cowardly enemy who uses the cover of night to lay improvised explosive devices with no metal content whatever so that our metal detectors cannot find them. We then ask young men—18-year-olds—and their junior commanders, such as Sergeant Blackman, to step out into the dark of the Helmand night and to walk until somebody has their legs blown off.

That situation is truly extraordinary, yet when this man’s will was broken, when he had taken too much and when his chain of command had let him down, leaving him in the line to continue leading patrols when he had clearly seen too much, we allow him to come home, and we judge those extraordinary circumstances—the extraordinary danger he faced in that extraordinary place—in an ordinary court, with ordinary law, where people are intent on viewing what happened in an entirely ordinary way.

Helmand was a murderous place—a place where the enemy never had the courage to be seen. It was down to the Apaches, with their thermal imaging, to take out those IED crews overnight, because infantry soldiers would never see them by day. They were happy to sit in their compounds and to wait for the explosion, taking satisfaction from another life ruined. They would lay IEDs about 3 feet from the one they thought would get the first casualty. Why would they do that? Because they would then get the front two people on the stretcher party taking the first casualty to the helicopter landing site to get him away to Bastion. This is an enemy who did not play by the rules. This is an enemy that tried your physical and mental strength every single day.

Sergeant Blackman snapped—I believe that is what happened—because he was not looked after by his chain of command. When we brought him home, we tried him in an ordinary court, and we failed to recognise that that extraordinary man deserved the benefit of having those extraordinary circumstances taken into account.

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

I have huge respect for my hon. Friend, who has experienced things I have never experienced. He has said twice that this was an ordinary court, where the case was tried in an ordinary way, but it was not. This man was tried by a military court. As I understand it, it did not even reach a unanimous verdict. If it had been an ordinary court, where the case was tried in an ordinary way by twelve good men and true, I do not believe this man would ever have been found guilty. It was not an ordinary court; it was a rigged court.

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[James Heappey]

I had concluded, but it is quite right that I put on record that I was referring to an ordinary court martial.

[Bob Stewart]

A general court martial.

[James Heappey]

But, none the less, an ordinary process. I just think that there is a lack of awareness of the extraordinary pressures this man was under. If the case goes to the Court of Appeal, or if, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) suggested, it is allowed to be judged by 12 members of the public, an entirely different conclusion will be reached. The problem is that Sergeant Blackman has already been in prison. We have already let him down, and that is unforgiveable.