Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

James Sunderland Excerpts

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

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) in this debate.

My colleagues and I support the good intention of this Bill. It is the right thing to do to protect those who have protected us and this nation, and indeed many other innocents, in the face of the threat to life and the oppression of fundamental rights.

The Bill is not drafted perfectly, but tonight we have an opportunity to address and debate its deficiencies. One area of significant concern is torture. Amendments 1 to 10 seek to address that deficiency and, indeed, go a long way towards addressing this matter of grave public concern. That is the right thing to do. Like sexual offences, torture must fall outside the provisions of this Bill. Let us do nothing to undermine the values we hold dear as a nation. Where no investigation has taken place, it is absolutely right that the provisions of this Bill do not apply.

Cognisant of the purposes of today’s proceedings, I still wish to raise once again the plight of veterans of Operation Banner. I represent many such veterans who live in my constituency, and indeed hon. Members right across this House do so as well. While the operation was in Northern Ireland, those who served came from right across our United Kingdom and beyond. In the previous debate on this Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) and I asked the Minister to state that the provisions of this Bill will not become law until the assurances made in the House on 18 March regarding Northern Ireland are fulfilled. The Minister said in response:

“We are clear that we will deliver our commitments to Northern Ireland. In a written ministerial statement on 18 March, we committed to equal treatment for those who served on Op Banner. We will not resile from that position.”—[Official Report, 23 September 2020; Vol. 680, c. 1049.]

That is a good intention—it is the right intention—but there is no guarantee. I know from our conversations with veterans that the longer this delay continues the more suspicious they get. This is wrong, and I need to know that the Minister believes it is wrong as well, so what is the cause of the delay? Those who await the knock at the door for standing up to terrorism deserve answers, and I urge the Minister to give those answers today.

The Bill is welcome and delivers on promises made by the Government, but we must no longer leave some veterans behind as prey to vexatious prosecutions. That is wrong, especially if, as suspected, it is for no other reason than to give a sop to the political front of the very people who killed and maimed many of those they served beside.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

Having been spared the commitment of serving on the Bill Committee, I am fortunate also to have been spared some of the polarisation that has affected this Bill, so I talk today from a position of complete objectivity. Having also tracked this important journey very carefully for many years, both professionally and personally, I believe this is an essentially good piece of work that deserves a fair passage through Parliament.

As I stated on Second Reading, any new legislation needs to be set in the context of the prevailing macro-conditions and previous legislation. This Bill fills a void where little has previously existed, so I commend the Minister for his vision, resilience and fortitude to date.

The bottom line is that this Bill delivers on the Conservative manifesto commitment to address the issue of vexatious claims and makes the first substantial amendments of their kind to the Human Rights Act by limiting the time during which claims can be brought. I can say from experience that this is what our armed forces want. They aspire to better protected in law. They want to know that the country values their service. They need to know that they will be supported if they pull the trigger lawfully and, after the misery of the ambulance-chasing years, they want the threshold for prosecution to be raised so that the endless knocks at the door finally stop. This is a no-brainer.

[Bob Stewart]

Not only the ambulance-chasing lawyers, but it is really good that we will not ever see the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, which really made our soldiers’ lives hell when it investigated them. That will not happen again either.

[James Sunderland]

I could not agree more.

I am aware that several amendments were tabled in Committee, but none was agreed to. The Bill is hence essentially unaltered from Second Reading, so perhaps it is no surprise that such a large list is being considered today. I will admit that some of the amendments have merit. Having been contacted over the weekend by the eminent hon. and gallant Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), I have looked in particular at amendments 1 to 10. My view, however, is that this Bill will not prevent the UK from rightly prosecuting acts of torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, and that the Bill does not need to exclude these from its triple lock because existing provisions already exist in law.

I also struggle with the notion that the MOD would somehow fail to investigate or prosecute, because the bad apples will always face justice, as indeed they did during my time in uniform. Regarding torture, the Government’s position is that the presumption against prosecution will not prevent any prosecutor from considering the severity of the crime or the unique circumstances in which it was committed. Indeed, war is a nasty business, so I do not believe that a court should somehow be prevented from giving weight to the mental health of the individual or the prevailing conditions. Hence I am minded against amendments 21 and 22. I agree with the Minister that this would be nonsensical, as prosecutors should give recognition to the difficulty, the trauma and the acute stress of military operations, as any member of HM forces will testify.

In addition, the Bill confirms that on a case-by-case basis, a prosecutor can determine that a crime is exceptional, so there is no collision course here with the UN convention against torture, the Geneva convention, the Hague or even NATO, as nothing will be swept under the carpet. As for the five-year time limit, this is correct, as the clock will start ticking from the point at which matters come to light, not from the time of the alleged incident. That was also the overwhelming preference during the public consultation. Not only should it be possible for all the evidence to be gathered within a five-year period, but I concur with the Minister that memories do fade, that evidence does deteriorate and that it remains in the interests of everyone involved to deliver justice quickly. I do not therefore support amendments 18 and 19, which seek to lengthen the period to 10 years. This is ultimately about taking pressure off our people, not prolonging it.

Part 2 of the Bill relates to claims by service personnel against the MOD. As 94% of all employer liability claims against the MOD since May 2007 have been brought within the limitation longstop of six years, I agree that there should be a time limit here, too. To be fair, I have considered the suggestion that this Bill is more about protecting the MOD than it is about protecting HM forces, but that, too, is ridiculous. I note that the time limit extends here, too, from the point at which the issue first came to light. There is more than enough time here for any complaint to be submitted, and the MOD cannot simply write a cheque for yesteryear. I will be voting against new clauses 5 and 6 and amendment 23 if they are divided on.

Lastly, I am aware that this Bill has attracted lots of interest in the media in recent months, so I want to set the record straight: I am not convinced that the criticism from the Royal United Services Institute, the Royal British Legion, the Joint Committee on Human Rights or other senior figures is necessarily fair, as the Bill delivers what it says on the tin. Having read it in detail, I am clear, too, that any new presumption against prosecution is not a statute of limitations and does not in any way create a bar to either investigations or prosecutions. Unlike some, I have complete faith in both our legal system and our armed forces, so I commend this Bill to the House.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

We all agree that the aims of the Bill are noble, and that the idea of revolving investigations or a life in investigatory purgatory, never knowing when a vexatious investigator will come knocking at the door, is wrong and must end. The mental stress of that legal uncertainty needs clarity. The loopholes need to be closed and fixed, but this Bill does not do that. It does not even come close. In fact, in a number of areas, it makes things worse.