Overseas Operations (Service Personnel And Veterans) Bill

Debate between John Healey and Tom Tugendhat

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

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

I start by also paying tribute to the role, dedication and work of our armed forces. They face exceptional risks, give exceptional service and require exceptional skills. As we face as a nation a second covid crisis, they are likely to be called on again, more heavily, including overseas.

I am pleased that we have come to the Commons debate on this legislation. I thank the Secretary of State for the way he introduced the Bill. The first duty of any Government is to protect the nation and its citizens, and the first duty of any Defence Secretary is to protect the men and women who dedicate themselves to the service of their country. We have our own British way of doing this. Since the days of Churchill and Attlee, when Britain led the global efforts to establish the rules-based international order after the second world war, we have been the champions of democracy, freedom and universal human rights. Our British forces uphold, unequivocally, international law and conventions. By adhering to the highest standards of legal military conduct ourselves, we can hold other countries to account when their forces fall short. The Bill calls into question Britain’s proud commitment to the Geneva convention, our duty as a “permanent five” member of the United Nations to uphold international law, and our moral authority to require the conduct of other nations to meet the standards set by those international conventions.

Since the end of the 2000s, all parties in this House have upheld a strong commitment to the armed forces covenant, which declares that those from the armed forces and their families

“should face no disadvantage compared to other citizens in the provision of public and commercial services.”

The Bill breaches that covenant by denying troops who serve overseas the same employer liability rights as are held by the UK civilians they defend. Our aim with this Bill is, first, to protect British troops and their right to justice from the MOD, and secondly, to protect Britain’s reputation as a force for good in the world, upholding human rights and the rules-based international order. We will work to help forge a constructive consensus through the Commons and the Lords for the changes necessary to achieve that aim.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The right hon. Gentleman must recognise—I am sure he knows this well, having spoken to his opposite numbers in socialist or left-wing parties around Europe—that many other countries follow this system of derogation and have national caveats. France itself has a reserve of emergency powers it can use to defend its troops against vexatious or inappropriate litigation. Is he seriously suggesting that France is not a law-based state, or that it is in some way immoral and has no right to sit as one of the P5? Surely he is not suggesting that.

[John Healey]

No, I am very clear that we want to and must protect our British troops against vexatious claims and repeat investigations. Important parts of the Bill are wrong; we can get them right and that is what I want to do. There has been a problem—I get that—arising especially from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the Secretary of State said. The al-Sweady inquiry chairman, when he finally cleared the troops in 2014, spoke forcefully of the “most serious allegations”—of murder and mutilation—that

“have been hanging over these soldiers for the past 10 years”.

The family of an Iraqi boy, Ahmed Jabbar Kareem Ali, who drowned in a canal in 2003 with British soldiers directly implicated, had to wait until the Newman inquiry reported in 2016 before they got the truth and the MOD issued a full apology.

Long-running litigation, repeat investigations and judicial reviews are indeed the signs of a flawed system—a system that has failed British troops and failed victims under successive Governments. I get this problem, and it must be fixed, but it is important to see it in perspective, not least so that we can see clearly the problem that we are legislating in the Bill to fix.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to follow my friend, the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald), who made some interesting points, some of which—forgive me—I am going to disagree with. He will not be surprised to hear that, because we have often entered into many civilised, and sometimes lubricated, conversations on these very subjects. These issues affect the whole House and have been discussed by many Members in here and in other places, because they really matter.

I declare an interest; I got into politics on leaving the Army, after writing a paper for Policy Exchange in 2013 called “The Fog of Law”, which covered these very subjects and highlighted many of the issues raised in this debate. I appreciate that there are difficult decisions and that it is hard to balance what the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) quite correctly said was the difference between the liability that a civilian employee could expect with their employer and that which a soldier on overseas operations could expect. I accept that that is different.

I accepted that it was different when I swore allegiance to Her Majesty and put on the uniform for the first time. I accepted it was different because the job that I had accepted to do was different; it was fundamentally different—different in every sense from any civilian job at all. Why? Because I promised, as the men and women of our armed forces still promise, to give everything even unto death. That is not something that any other employer asks of their team or their staff. Nobody who is not wearing the Queen’s uniform pledges to defend our people, our islands, our values, our country, our allies and our interests even up to their own life. That is different.

In recognising that that is what we need from our armed forces, we must also recognise that the law defending our troops and the law that applies to their terms of employment must also be different. It simply cannot be the case that civilian employment contracts are applicable to the invasion of Iraq or hard detention operations in Afghanistan, or even to training missions in other places that go wrong and become combat in ways that the people involved do not expect. Of course they must be different.

[John Healey]

Will the hon. Gentleman accept that this is a distinction not just between the armed forces serving overseas and civilians, but between armed forces serving overseas and armed forces serving and based in this country? To that extent, this legislation uniquely disadvantages the latter and reduces their rights.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I will accept that this is an overseas operations Bill and that being on patrol in Helmand is different from bringing on guard at Buckingham Palace, and therefore the rights that troops should accept in different places under different terms should of course be different.

I have served, as have many of my colleagues in all parts of the House. Indeed, my friend and former comrade in arms the hon. and gallant Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and I served in camps in places where the electricity could best be described as ropey and would fail any civilian investigation. We served in places where to walk outside the camp was to risk everything, from loss of life or limb to very real mental damage. We served in those places because the national security and the interests of our country—decided on by people here, by the way, not soldiers—was judged to be that important.