Overseas Operations (Service Personnel And Veterans) Bill

Debate between Jonathan Edwards and John Healey

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

[John Healey]

In his typical way, the hon. Member puts his finger on an important point. He understates his argument, as there is more than just some concern; there are, for instance, according to the Royal British Legion, very clear grounds for concern that the provision breaches the armed forces covenant, and I will come on to that point.

Let me deal with getting this problem, which does exist and must be fixed, in a proper perspective. My right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) was absolutely right about how hard it is to get hard, clear information out of the Government. Over recent months, I have had to prise figures out of the MOD. There is a deep resistance to releasing full, open information. The first important figures to give a broad perspective are these: over the past 15 years, there have been 25 cases brought by injured British troops against the MOD for every one case brought by alleged victims against our troops. You can see why, Madam Deputy Speaker, some of the veterans I have talked to about this Bill reckon it is more about protecting the MOD than it is about protecting troops. Britain deployed 140,000 troops to Iraq over six years. The Government cite—the Secretary of State did so today—1,000 civil claims, all against the MOD, not individual service personnel, as evidence for the Bill to end vexatious legal claims. One third of those cases—330—have had the MOD pay compensation. Clearly, they were not vexatious as the MOD rightly insists on only settling cases in which it accepts liability. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says, “No, we don’t,” but if he looks at the annual report on the cases that the Department publishes and takes, he will see exactly that commitment and clarification. It does not have the power to settle claims where it judges that it would not be found liable in a court. However, one fifth of the cases—217—have been withdrawn or struck out. They may well have been vexatious cases—they were certainly baseless. They may have taken too long, but the system, even as it stands, has dealt with them.

Two fifths of the cases—414—are ongoing, according to the MOD, although that definition could mean that those cases are settled and the MOD has agreed to pay compensation, but there may still be outstanding arguments over legal costs. Those cases may again be long-running, but they are hardly vexatious if they have not been struck out by now.

On the criminal side, the Government cite 3,400 allegations. The Secretary of State referred to the Iraq Historic Allegations Team that looked into them. Despite deep flaws in that investigation, 70% were ruled out as there was no case to answer or no proportionate grounds for a criminal investigation. In other words, those allegations did not warrant a full investigation so got nowhere near the point of decision about prosecution. They would have been wholly unaffected by the Bill if the measure had been in place because, as the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) said, it does not deal with investigations—as it should—but only with prosecutorial decisions and process. By the way, just seven prosecutions have been brought against British soldiers from the remaining allegations and investigations, and all but one have now been dropped.

On Afghanistan and criminal cases, the Operation Northmoor investigation in 2014 examined 675 criminal allegations from 159 people. The investigation closed and no charges have followed. Indeed, the investigation concluded a year before the MOD confirmed in public in June that it had closed.

On judicial review, the Government have cited 1,400 JRs of civil and criminal Iraq and Afghanistan cases as justification for the Bill. I can only find evidence that two judicial reviews are continuing. The court gave the MOD permission to strike many of the others out three years ago. Yet in April, the Minister told me in answer to a written parliamentary question that the MOD had still only notified fewer than half—630—of the court’s decision not to take the investigations further.

To put the matter in perspective, certainly some vexatious claims have been lodged and the current system has taken too long to weed them out, but the bigger, more serious, more consistent problems lie in the system of investigations, which lacks speed, soundness, openness and a duty of care to alleged victims and to the forces personnel who may be in the frame. Those are the problems, which occur well before the point of decision about prosecution, which is the point at which the Bill starts to operate. They are what the Bill should and can deal with. Our aim during its passage through Parliament is to help ensure that it does.

To pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Stuart Anderson), I must confess that when I first looked at the Bill, I thought that it was designed to draw a line under the cases still caught up in the problem of so-called lawfare. The first paragraph of the explanatory notes gives the same misleading impression. It says:

“This Bill aims to provide greater certainty for Service personnel and veterans in relation to vexatious claims and prosecution of historical events, that occurred in the uniquely complex environment of armed conflict overseas.”

But this legislation will have no impact on any past or any continuing cases, and clause 15 on commencement makes that clear, so it offers no hope and no help of faster resolution either for the troops or for the alleged victims, who may still be involved in long-running litigation or in repeat investigations. I want to make sure that no one in this House and, much more importantly, in the armed forces and the veterans community is misled by what they may have heard or may have understood before now.

Similarly, nothing in this Bill applies to Northern Ireland, despite the same commitment in the Conservative manifesto, similar concerns on the Government side about drawing a line for British troops who served in Northern Ireland and the Secretary of State’s letter to all MPs last week in which he confirmed his eagerness

“to ensure also the equivalent protections of our veterans who served in Northern Ireland.”

The Secretary of State’s speech looked back, but we now legislate for the future. The Bill is not a framework fit for the future point when Britain must again commit its forces to armed conflict overseas. The Government have got important parts of the Bill badly wrong, and I want to see Ministers work with all parties in both Houses and with groups beyond Parliament who have expertise to offer on this—from the British Legion to Liberty—to get this legislation right.

There are problems. The Bill is silent on the command responsibility and the role of commanders in some of these cases. There is a problem, I think, with the Attorney General’s consent, as it risks political factors coming into prosecutorial decisions. There is nothing on the disclosure rights, responsibilities and duties of the MOD. Let me summarise our biggest concerns about the Bill.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I agree with many of the points the shadow Secretary of State has made during his very valid contribution. Does he agree that one of the fundamental weaknesses with the Bill was put forward by the UK’s most senior military judge, who has argued that the consequence of the legislation is that UK military personnel are more likely to find themselves in front of the International Criminal Court?

[John Healey]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for conceding that I am making some valid points. His point is certainly valid, and it will be a point of central argument, probably in the debate today, but certainly as the Bill passes through both Houses.

Let me return to the biggest problems in the Bill. Part 1, as the Secretary of State said, introduces what the Government have called their so-called triple lock to make prosecutions for the most serious crimes harder. The presumption against prosecution for all crimes except sexual violence clearly creates the risk that the very gravest crimes, including torture and other war crimes, go unpunished if an incident does not come to light for five years or if the investigations are drawn out beyond that deadline.

National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill

Debate between Jonathan Edwards and John Healey

Friday 21st November 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I would expect these trade negotiations to stretch into at least the end of next year, so I hope and expect that the responsibility for making sure that this deal is good for Britain will become that of a Labour, not a Tory, Government and of Labour Ministers, not Tory Ministers.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

rose—

[John Healey]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman before finishing on the issue of the Prime Minister, which my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) has just raised.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making a very important point about TTIP. I know that the Scottish Government want the Scottish health service excluded and I would hope that the Welsh Government would have the same position. Is there not an onus on the UK Government to make those representations on behalf of the devolved Governments?

[John Healey]

Indeed. There is an onus, a responsibility and, I would argue, a duty on British Ministers to make those representations and to secure those protections in any deal for the whole of the UK.

Finally, the Prime Minister made his most personal pledges before the last election to protect the NHS and to stop top-down reorganisations. He has broken those pledges to the British people, and the damage that he and his Tory Ministers have inflicted through this NHS reorganisation and legislation has been unwanted, wasteful and wrong. It will fall to a Labour Government, after May, to put right this damage and to rescue the NHS, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham said in his opening speech, just as we did in 1997. This Bill—it is why I am pleased and proud to support it—is an essential step towards doing that, but the election of a Labour Government must follow if we are to do the job properly.

National Insurance Contributions Bill

Debate between Jonathan Edwards and John Healey

Thursday 13th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

It is an extraordinary state of affairs that a series of serious and significant pledges, set out formally in the coalition agreement in May, should have been broken in the White Paper produced by the Health Secretary in July. My hon. Friend is right: the one thing that the Government promised not to do in the coalition agreement was to go ahead with a top-down internal reorganisation, but that is exactly what is now planned. It could cost up to £3 billion. It is high risk and high cost; it is exactly the wrong thing to do at this stage, when the NHS is facing such tight financial pressures. I also have to say to the Minister that his colleagues are already showing signs of strain.

I am anxious to return to the amendment that the House is discussing. The House will notice that it refers to the National Audit Office, which is an independent, authoritative body. The Minister will appreciate the assessments, analyses and authoritative views of independent bodies. He and his colleagues set up the Office for Budget Responsibility. Its independence has—shall we say?—been put on perhaps a slightly more questionable footing than that of the NAO, but it is nevertheless an important organisation. Indeed, the problems of the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues were compounded when their Office for Budget Responsibility updated the economic forecast and the fiscal numbers in November. One of the significant changes in its independent, authoritative assessment of this country’s economic prospects was to its forecast for inflation, thereby changing the deflator—in other words, the amount by which the Government and everyone else anticipate that costs in general, and Government spending in particular, will rise. Instead of a GDP deflator for 2011-12 of 1.9%, as set out in the OBR’s June report, its updated economic forecasts in November gave a deflator of 2.5%.

In other words, even before we take into account the double-counting of funding for both the NHS and social care, we have, instead of the wafer-thin rise of 0.1% for England that the Chancellor promised, a much heavier cut, of 0.5%. That has been confirmed by the Library, and by independent, authoritative bodies in the health field and the Select Committee on Health, which said in its report into public expenditure on 14 December that

“the Government’s commitment to a real terms increase in health funding throughout the Spending Review period will not be met.”

So the Government are breaking their promises to protect NHS funding in England, Scotland and Wales. Next year, Scotland is now being short-changed in NHS funding by £70 million, while Wales is being short-changed by £40 million. In total next year, there will be a shortfall from the promise made by the Government to the British people in their coalition agreement of more than £1.3 billion—not a rise in NHS funding next year, but a cut. On 20 October, the Chancellor promised to increase health spending over and above inflation. That promise is being broken by £1.3 billion.

Our amendments today, including amendment 8, are intended to be helpful, as I said to the Minister. They are intended to demonstrate how the Government can deal with the problem, if they have the will to keep their promises on funding for the NHS. We endeavour to act as a responsible Opposition, as our leader promised we would. The amendment is therefore designed to show helpful ways in which the Government can use this legislation to keep good both the Chancellor’s word and the Government’s promise to protect NHS funding, and thereby to see a real increase each year in this Parliament, and not, as at present, to deliver a real-terms cut.

The amendment suggests having an independent assessment and a report carried out by the National Audit Office. The independence is important: it is designed to try to give the public more confidence in what the Government are doing; to give this House more confidence in what they are doing; and to give everyone more confidence that what was a central promise from the Government and a personal promise from the Prime Minister is in fact being met.

This subject came up at the last Prime Minister’s Questions before Christmas, and it was interesting to note that the Prime Minister told the House:

“I am confident that we will fulfil our goal of real-terms increases every year in the NHS.”—[Official Report, 15 December 2010; Vol. 502, c. 902.]

That will not happen next year. The Exchequer Secretary is a talented Minister and he has an opportunity to give his big boss, the Prime Minister, the confidence that he clearly wishes to see by accepting the amendment and allowing the NAO to do an independent report, demonstrating the extent of the shortfall and the extent to which the Government are breaking their promise fully to fund the NHS. By doing so, he would do the House and perhaps even himself a favour.

[Jonathan Edwards]

In the light of the situation that he has explained applies in England, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is reckless for the Conservatives in Wales to promise in the forthcoming National Assembly elections to increase spending on health above the retail prices index?

[John Healey]

One of the two consequences of devolution is that in this area of health such decisions are taken in Wales for Wales. The second, however, is, I have to concede to the House, that I, as an English shadow Health Secretary do not follow those decisions in detail, so I think the hon. Gentleman is going to have to prosecute that argument in his home area.

Finally, the House will note that the date in the amendment is anticipated to be after the expected Royal Assent to the Bill, so it is tied to the Finance Act. The Exchequer Secretary might want to discuss with the Chancellor the idea of doing this assessment, publishing the report and highlighting the shortfall, showing the extent to which the promises they made to protect NHS funding and give it a real-terms increase in each year of this Parliament are being broken. The Budget, of course, provides the Chancellor’s opportunity to make good his word and make good the promises that his Government have given to the British people on the NHS.