Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Debate between John Healey and Bob Stewart

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my friend the shadow Secretary of State for giving way. I have been tussling in my mind with why a war crime is different from torture, crimes against humanity or genocide, but I have come to understand—probably because I am a bit silly or stupid—what a war crime is. An example of a war crime is getting a whole load of the enemy when they have surrendered, putting them up against a wall and shooting them. That is a war crime, and I think it is quite a good thing that we should be against that.

[John Healey]

The right hon. and gallant Gentleman has experience of conflict. I do not know whether a legal mind, which mine certainly is not, would regard that as wilful killing, but as such, it is probably an act that is beyond the categories of specific crimes cited in the Government’s amendment that excludes them from the provisions of the Bill. That underlines the case I am making, for which I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, that that category of Geneva convention-defined crimes, including war crimes, really must be excluded from the presumption in this Bill; otherwise, we face the risks that we are discussing this afternoon of exposing our forces to potential action from the International Criminal Court, which none of us wants to see, and of dragging down the reputation of this country for upholding in full and fully adhering to the international rules and standards of military legal conduct.

I turn to Lords amendment 2, on investigations. I said earlier that the Bill does not yet do what it says on the tin. We were told that this Bill would bring an end to the harassment of forces personnel through repeated legal claims, but because it deals only with prosecutions and not with investigations, it will not do that. Only 27 prosecutions arising from Iraq and Afghanistan have been registered, yet 3,400 allegations were considered by the Iraq Historic Allegations Team and 670 from Operation Northmoor. Therefore, less than 1% of allegations were prosecuted. The problem here is investigations: the serious, consistent problems that lie in a system of investigation that has proved to be lacking in speed, soundness, openness and a duty of care to alleged victims or the troops involved. Those are all problems well before the point of decision about prosecution, which is the point at which the provisions of this Bill kick in.

The Minister describes the proposals in Lords amendment 2 as somehow premature and cites Henriques. I am aware, of course, that the Government have set up a review on this, but there have been three reviews already and he might want to ask his officials to dig them out for him. There have been three reviews in the past five years, with at least 80 recommendations on investigations that the Government could act on now. The Minister and his predecessor promised us that investigations reform would be a matter for the Armed Forces Bill, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) has said, yet when that Bill was brought before the House nothing was included.

Remembrance, UK Armed Forces and Society

Debate between John Healey and Bob Stewart

Wednesday 11th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have to say that it is an honour to follow the Minister and his moving speech this afternoon, and I pay tribute to him for his four tours of duty and his decade of service in the Rifles, just as I pay tribute to the service that other hon. Members in all parts of this House have given to our armed forces. Parliament is all the better for Members who have committed service in the forces, and this House is also all the better for the service of Members who are committed to the forces. I look forward to the contributions to this afternoon’s debate of many of those hon. Members who are on the long call list.

As we did this morning in this Chamber, this is indeed the moment we commemorate the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, when hostilities ceased in 1918. It is the focus of our national remembrance each year: the moment the nation comes together to honour those who have served, those who have fought to keep us safe, and above all, those who have made the ultimate sacrifice with their lives so that the rest of us may continue to enjoy the freedoms we do today. The Minister put it far more eloquently than many of the rest of us can, but the men and women who wear a British military uniform make a unique commitment to, if needed, put themselves in harm’s way to protect the rest of us. I want this day’s debate to recall not just the lives of those lost in the two world wars, but those of the 7,190 UK service personnel who have died in operations since 1945.

I was reminded of this on Sunday, when I, like the Minister, was proud to lay a wreath alongside the president of our local British Legion branch in Rotherham. His name is Ron Moffett; he served for more than 20 years in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, and he talked to me of comrades he had lost in Northern Ireland, in the Falklands, in Afghanistan, and in Germany in training. I want my relatively brief remarks in this debate to concentrate on the ordinary servicemen and women: on their extraordinary sense of duty, and on our duty, in turn, to them.

The Minister was right to say that remembrance has a particular poignancy this year. During 2020, we have marked 75 years since the end of the second world war—VE Day and VJ Day—and 80 years since the battle of Britain, and we have all been forced to find new ways to remember: ways that are perhaps more private, but no less important and no less personal. This year, we have also seen the hallmark values that have been there in generations of our forces personnel come to the fore again, as our troops have stood alongside frontline workers in the fight against the covid virus. I have said to the Defence Secretary that during this new national lockdown in England and the national vaccination challenge ahead, if the Government are willing to make further use of our forces in this fight, they will have our full support and strong backing from the public. The system that we have of military assistance to civil authorities is sound. It has been used 341 times for covid help since mid-March and 41 agreements are still in place, but people want to know now what the plan is. They have a right to know, and they also have a right to regular ministerial reporting on such decisions. I say to the Minister that I hope he and his colleagues will do this, because it will also help better understanding and better support for our military.

The Chief of the Defence Staff was right when he said recently that this should worry us all. He said that the level of understanding about our armed forces is at “an unprecedented low.” That is borne out by research that the British Forces Broadcasting Service published in June, which confirmed that 68% of the population do not know what the military actually do when they are not in combat. One third had no idea that our military play a part in thwarting terrorism or dealing with the aftermath of floods, and 53% believe that they use battle tanks to get around on a daily basis.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Sounds good to me.

[John Healey]

The hon. Gentleman is harking back to the days when perhaps he did use battle tanks on a daily basis, but I think we are a little short of tanks to go round these days.

On a serious point, the number of veterans in society is set to fall by a third during this decade. It is clear to me that we must do more at all levels to reinforce our country’s understanding of and commitment to our armed forces.

On cadets, community cadet numbers have been falling and we cannot just rely on private schools. We can do more to reinvest in more community cadet forces. We now rely more on the professional expertise and skills of reservists, but the numbers are still below target, and we can do more to make recruitment better and employer support stronger.

On resilience, the covid pandemic has demonstrated that national resilience is an important part of national defence, and we can do more to strengthen Britain’s total deterrence, with large-scale joint civil, corporate and military exercises. On veterans, the Office for Veterans’ Affairs was a welcome step last year, but we can do more to make the UK the best place to be a veteran by enshrining the armed forces covenant in law. I say constructively and respectfully to the Minister that if the Government are willing to take those steps, they will have our full support to do so.

In this debate, we rightly celebrate the national pride we have in our military personnel, full-time and reservist. They are respected around the world for their professionalism and their all-round excellence, but I say again constructively and respectfully that if Ministers talk up our armed forces, they must also account for the declines there have been in the past decade or two. Since 2010, our full-time forces numbers are down by 40,000. Our military has never been smaller since we fought Napoleon 200 years ago. Forces pay is down, forces recruitment is down and forces morale is down. One in four military personnel now say they plan to quit before the end of their contract.

In 2015, the strategic defence review, in 89 pages, devoted just one and a half pages to personnel. Just like the 2010 defence review, it was largely a cover for cuts, which is why our armed forces are nearly 12,000 short of the strength promised in that 2015 review. It is why essential equipment, from new tanks to the radar system to protect our new aircraft carriers, is long overdue, and it is why our defence budget has a £13 billion black hole.

The Defence Secretary has rightly said that previous reviews

“failed because they were never in step with the spending plans”.—[Official Report, 6 July 2020; Vol. 678, c. 647.]

Both sides of the House recognise that the Chancellor cut the ground from under the Defence Secretary when he postponed this year’s comprehensive spending review, but we also know that our adversaries will not pause. They confront us with continuous and constantly developing threats that no longer conform to any distinction between peace and war and are no longer confined to the land, sea and air domains of conventional warfare. So the Government’s integrated review is needed now more than ever.

As we move, as the Defence Secretary has put it, from “industrial age” to “information age” warfare, we must never neglect one fact: at the heart of our defence and security remain our forces personnel. Autonomous weapons, artificial intelligence and robotics will all become more and more widespread in the years ahead, but the essential utility of the men and women of our armed forces will remain central. Whether it is the frontline forces personnel doing city-wide covid testing in Liverpool or the special forces who took back control of the Nave Andromeda in the English channel last month, these are only the most recent reminders that although high-tech systems are essential, our highly trained British troops are indispensable. When the Chief of the Defence Staff launched our important new military doctrine, the military integrated operating concept, in September, he stressed that it

“emphasises the importance of our people—who have always been, and always will be, our adaptive edge.”

We honour them and we remember them.

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Debate between John Healey and Bob Stewart

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

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

This is not a wind-up speech. We have had a good debate, with 23 Back-Bench contributions, some really good speeches and serious concerns about the Bill raised on both sides of the House. We are legislating, and I want to say to the Minister that it is wrong to see all criticism as opposition or all opposition as hostility. The Government never get everything right, especially with legislation, and no one has a monopoly on wisdom, especially Ministers. I say to him, it is wrong to dismiss anyone arguing for amendments to the Bill as ill informed or ill willed. There has never been a Bill brought to this House that could not be improved—this is certainly one of those. That is our job as legislators.

[Bob Stewart]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Healey]

I will not give way, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind. I am going to deal with some of the points made in the debate, despite this not being a wind-up speech.

From the outset, I have said that Labour wants to help build a consensus to convince the Government on the changes needed to make this legislation fit for purpose—that is, a new legal framework for this country when we have in future to commit our servicemen and women to conflict overseas. There has been a long-running problem, with baseless allegations and legal claims arising from Iraq and from Afghanistan under both Labour and Conservative Governments. But this Bill, as it stands, is not the solution.

The Public Bill Committee heard powerful evidence on a series of problems that our amendments on Report, and others on the amendment paper, are designed to fix. I want to stress the strength and depth of those criticisms. On investigations, the former Judge Advocate General, Geoff Blackett, said:

“The presumption against prosecution does not stop the investigation; the investigation happens.”—[Official Report, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Public Bill Committee, 8 October 2020; c. 127, Q275.]

The expert from Policy Exchange, Professor Richard Ekins, who originally published “Clearing the fog of war”, said:

“It certainly does not stop investigations. In fact, if one were to make a criticism of the Bill, one might say that it places no obstacle on continuing investigations”.––[Official Report, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Public Bill Committee, 6 October 2020; c. 35, Q63.]

On criminal prosecutions, the former Commander Land Forces in the Army, General Sir Nick Carter, said:

“I do not understand why sexual acts have been excluded, but not murder and torture. I do not understand why that distinction has been made”.––[Official Report, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Public Bill Committee, 8 October 2020; c. 96-97, Q196.]

The Judge Advocate General again, as the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) stressed, said of the Bill:

“What it actually does is increase the risk of service personnel appearing before the International Criminal Court.”––[Official Report, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Public Bill Committee, 8 October 2020; c. 117-118, Q234.]

On civil claims, the former chairman of the British Armed Forces Federation said:

“Imposing an absolute time limit places armed forces personnel claimants themselves at a disadvantage compared with civil claimants in ordinary life”.––[Official Report, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Public Bill Committee, 6 October 2020; c. 9, Q6.]

The director for the Centre for Military Justice said that

“it is quite extraordinary that part 2 will only benefit the Ministry of Defence, and the Ministry of Defence is the defendant in all those claims.”––[Official Report, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Public Bill Committee, 6 October 2020; c. 57, Q108.]

The director-general of the Royal British Legion said of the Bill:

“I think it is protecting the MOD, rather than the service personnel”.––[Official Report, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Public Bill Committee, 8 October 2020; c. 86, Q163.]

When my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) pressed him—

“So it would breach the armed forces covenant, in your view?”—

he replied:

“That is what we think, yes.”––[Official Report, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Public Bill Committee, 8 October 2020; c. 84, Q155.]

Our new clause 7 and our amendment 38 are designed to sit alongside the amendments of my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). The answer to the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) about the number of investigations is this: only 27 prosecutions have arisen from Iraq and Afghanistan, yet 3,400 allegations were considered by the Iraq Historic Allegations Team and 670 from Operation Northmoor. Therefore, less than 1% of allegations were prosecuted.

The problem here is investigations. The serious, consistent problems lie in a system of investigation that has proved to be lacking in speed, in soundness, in openness, and in a duty of care to alleged victims or to the troops involved. Those are all problems well before the point of decision about prosecution, which is the point at which the provisions of the Bill kick in.

That is a widely held criticism. It is a widely held conviction, one held by the Minister himself. Before he became a Minister last year, he declared that

“one of the biggest problems….was the military’s inability to investigate itself and the standard of those investigations…If those investigations were done properly…we probably would not be where we are today”.

He was right then; he is wrong now to resist using the Bill to correct those problems.

Another review, Minister? Look, there have been three reviews—and this one will be chaired by Richard Henriques—in the last five years. There are more than 80 recommendations on investigations that the Government could act on. For goodness’ sake, get on and do that! The amendments are in scope, workable and implementable. The Bill is an opportunity to fix long-standing problems. I hope the Government will start to see our proposals on investigations as being additional to what is in the Bill, not as a direct challenge.

Part 1 of the Bill restricts prosecutions of certain offences. The Bill’s purpose is to make it harder to prosecute British troops for some of the most serious crimes under the Geneva conventions. It does that by legislating for a presumption against prosecution after five years. Our new clause 4 deals with that presumption against prosecution; it replaces it with a requirement on the prosecutor, in coming to a decision, to take into account the passage of time, and whether it prejudices the prospect of a fair trial.

The Government say that sexual crimes, in all cases, are so serious that they will be excluded from this presumption, but they are placing crimes outlawed by the Geneva conventions—torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity—on a lower level, and downgrading our unequivocal British commitment to upholding international law. That poses the direct risk that the International Criminal Court will act to put British armed forces personnel on trial in The Hague if the UK justice system will not.

Let me dwell on that point. The contradiction that we are creating in the Bill is this: under clause 2, only exceptionally are proceedings defined in clause 1 to be brought, or continued, against a person. However, as the Red Cross has made clear,

“only in exceptional circumstances will the Prosecutor of the ICC conclude that an investigation or a prosecution may not serve the interests of justice.”

In other words, in the International Criminal Court, it is exceptional not to pursue a case; we are making it exceptional to pursue a case. That is the contradiction, the risk, and the jeopardy for our troops serving overseas in future.

If we adhere to the highest standards of legal military conduct, we can hold other countries to account when their forces fall short—a point made clearly by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis). If we do otherwise, it compromises our country’s proud reputation for upholding the rules-based international order that Britain has helped to construct since the days of Churchill and Attlee.

On civil claims, new clause 5 would amend part 2 of the Bill so that claims by troops or former service personnel were not blocked in all circumstances, as they are under the Bill at present. It is simply wrong for those who put their life on the line serving Britain overseas to have less access to compensation and justice than the UK civilians whom they defend—or indeed than their comrades whose service is largely UK-based. There are already safeguards in the Limitations Act 1980, but part 2 penalises this group of people by applying to them a unique deviation from that Act. That clearly constitutes a disadvantage for those armed forces personnel, their families and veterans. It directly breaches the armed forces covenant, as the director general of the Royal British Legion has confirmed. Frankly, it beggars belief that Ministers are asking Members of this House to strip forces and their families of their right to justice—to penalise them, instead of protecting them. Our new clause 5 flatly rejects that.

On the duty of care and our new clause 6, one of the things that struck me most when talking to troops and their families who have been through the trauma of these long-running investigations is that they felt cut adrift from their chain of command and from the Ministry of Defence. We heard that clearly from Major Campbell, who gave such dramatic evidence to the Committee. When he was asked what support the MOD gave him, he simply replied, “there was none.” Of course, for veterans, it is even worse: for them, there is nothing, not even the chain of command, as Hilary Meredith, the specialist solicitor told the Committee. I have to say to the Minister that although some of the previous decisions—for instance, to cover the legal costs of those who were involved in the Iraq Historic Allegations Team investigation—were welcome, there is a higher standard to reach for us in this regard. I hope that, as we move the Bill into the Lords, he will use new clause 6 as a model so that we can establish a new duty of care standard providing legal, pastoral and mental health support to those who are put under pressure and under investigation or prosecution. I hope that he will do the same with our amendments on derogation and on the Attorney General’s veto. We need greater transparency. We need some role for Parliament in both those areas, and I know the Lords will be keen to look at that.

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel And Veterans) Bill

Debate between John Healey and Bob Stewart

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The facts of the Bill are that it places torture and other war crimes on a different level to crimes of sexual violence. That is not embarrassing; that is unconscionable for a country with a proud record of upholding unequivocally the international conventions that we helped to draw up.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Healey]

No, I will not at this point.

Ministers must think again. No wonder that the former Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Guthrie, says that the Bill as it stands would be a stain on Britain’s standing in the world. Ministers must think again. They must remove torture and other war crimes from the Bill. There are better ways of protecting our troops and Britain’s good name.

Part 2 creates a higher hurdle for civil cases after three years, as the Secretary of State said, with extra factors that a prosecutor must take into account, and a hard block on any case after six years. For British troops serving overseas with claims to make against the MOD, that does breach the armed forces covenant—a point that I made to the Secretary of State early in the summer, reinforced today by the Royal British Legion in its briefing for this debate, which says that in removing “the ability of members of the armed forces community to bring a claim for injury or death after six years, the Government will create a unique deviation from the Limitation Act 1980.” It denies those who serve our country overseas the same employer liability rights as the rest of us enjoy at home. It creates circumstances that allow the MOD to avoid claims when it fails properly to equip our troops or makes serious errors that lead to the death or injury of British troops overseas.

It is plain wrong that those who put their lives on the line for Britain overseas should have less access to compensation than the UK civilians they defend, and, since 2007, there have been at least 195 cases of troops who would have been caught by the Bill. Ministers have tried to play that down by saying that the clock on that deadline starts only at the point of diagnosis, but that is misleading because diagnosis is not in the Bill and the point of knowledge is in the Bill. That is another important provision that we must put right.

ln conclusion, we believe, and I believe strongly, despite what the Minister for Defence People and Veterans is chuntering under his breath, that the Government, Labour and the armed forces ultimately all want the same thing: we want to protect British troops and we want to protect British values, and that should not be merely a matter of party politics.

I say to the Secretary of State, during the Bill’s passage through Parliament we want to help forge a constructive consensus on the changes needed to overhaul investigations, to set up safeguards against vexatious claims that are entirely consistent with our international obligations, and to guarantee troops the right to compensation claims when MOD failures lead to the death or injury of our forces overseas. It is not too late for Ministers to think again about the best way to protect service personnel from vexatious litigation while ensuring that those who do commit serious crimes during operations are properly prosecuted and punished. As the Bill begins its passage through Parliament, I urge the Secretary of State and his Minister to work with us to ensure that it does just that.