Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill (First sitting)

Joy Morrissey Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th October 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Jones]

Q I might be able to answer some of that. Partly it was a cultural thing in Iraq. In the early days, the Americans and others were seen to be paying money out for car accidents and other things. It got to a situation where the MOD copied that and made compensation offers in the field. There were cultural issues that paying money somehow drew a line under the issue. It was partly related to the insurgents and trying to track that as well. It was possibly well intentioned, but that is the consequence of what you say.

Hilary Meredith: I think those payments fuelled the allegations of crime. Maybe there should be a review of why large amounts of money are paid in compensation when there is no guilt there.

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

Q When you refer to the Human Rights Act, are you referring to upholding in the ECHR as opposed to the Court of Justice at the European Union? I find that interesting, given that the EU Court of Justice does not accede to the European Court of Human Rights or acknowledge all of its remit. The EU Court of Justice ruled that it had the right over rulings of the European Court of Human Rights, which is a separate entity. Did we then adopt the European Court of Human Rights ruling as sacrosanct and did we go on with that, prosecuting people in a specific way? Is that what we did?

Hilary Meredith: I am not quite sure I understand the question.

[Joy Morrissey]

Q The EU Court of Justice has decided that it has jurisdiction over the European Court of Human Rights in terms of the Lisbon treaty and other national security elements. Why did we go backwards and adopt the European Court of Human Rights, and hold ourselves to that level? Is that where things went awry?

Hilary Meredith: I think there are two issues. The Human Rights Act civil cases were brought for abuse and detention. When you look at the charge sheet, there are masses—hundreds—just as abuse and detention. The civil human rights were brought by the Iraqi civilians against the Ministry of Defence. That, then, culminated in human rights criminal activity against individual members of the armed forces. Which takes precedent? I think you will have to ask a constitutional lawyer, but my concern is that if we are putting time limits on the Human Rights Act 1998, I am not sure if in the UK we have the power or authority to do that. A constitutional lawyer would be able to advise you better.

[Joy Morrissey]

Q What about the national security element of the person’s defence? Who was there to make that national security defence for the armed forces personnel that was being prosecuted? Many of the things they were asked to do were a result of a national security issue, so who was there to defend them in terms of the national security element?

Hilary Meredith: Nobody.

[Joy Morrissey]

No one.

Hilary Meredith: No, there was nobody there to help them.

[Joy Morrissey]

Q So for a whole aspect of what they were being prosecuted on, there was no information and no knowledge being shared.

Hilary Meredith: No, and I think one of the issues that the members of the armed forces have is that they have to step out of the military environment into civvy street and find a civilian lawyer or even know that they are allowed to find a civil lawyer, there was no information there for them. That is why I am suggesting there should be an independent civil advocate from the Bar Council or the Law Society with criminal knowledge to help them.

[Joy Morrissey]

Q I do not know what your feelings are, but the European Court of Human Rights also uses the primary method of judicial interpretation as a living instrument, as a current-day interpretation of events and modern-day facts, where you are not taking into consideration national security, armed forces personnel or procedure. You are not taking the wider NATO or other alliances that you are entering. They are just taking it on the modern-day interpretation. Would you say that that had an effect on how people in service have been or were prosecuted?

Hilary Meredith: I do not know. I am not a criminal lawyer, but I think that many of those—imagine that you are completely innocent and you are accused. First, there are so many different laws now that affect you on the battlefield, so many different conventions, and then throw in human rights as well. It is a difficult, complex scenario.

[Sarah Atherton (Wrexham) (Con)]

Q I was reading your discussion points and I was interested to read that the majority of lawfare cases arose out of compensation claims brought by Iraqis and Afghans. That opened the floodgate, which paved the way for lawfare civil compensation claims. Can you expand on that? Can you give the Committee some idea of the numbers we are looking at? How many criminal allegations, how many prosecutions, and how many were false?

Hilary Meredith: Going back to the Al-Skeini case: the decision that opened the door for human rights in a foreign territory where we had control, and the situation where we had control was detaining prisoners. Of those who claimed civil compensation—I keep using Major Campbell’s case. That was not in detention but that was somebody who was said to have drowned in a river. These prosecutions just go on and on. I have forgotten the question.

[Sarah Atherton]

Q How many of those were false?

Hilary Meredith: I understand that, out of the 4,000, there were possibly 30 worth investigation. Of those 30, it was whittled down to around five, and of those five, there was insufficient evidence to say whether there was any issue or not. Somewhere along the way, somebody decided that the British military were “rotten to the core” and they were not given a chance, so they were almost guilty before being proven innocent. That is where the presumption against prosecution is so important.

[Joy Morrissey]

Q What help are personnel given when they are accused?

Hilary Meredith: There are two scenarios, depending on whether you are still in service or you are a veteran. If you are a veteran, there is nothing—there is no chain of command. A number of times, the MOD said to me that veterans can go and see the chain of command, and I say that they are retired and are veterans, so there is no chain of command, or their commanding officer has retired. Who do they contact? If you are in service and have a good commanding officer, you can go and seek help through them. I know that the Army legal services tried to help in some instances, but I think there is a conflict of interest with the Army legal services protecting the Ministry of Defence and trying also to protect individuals.

[Mr Jones]

Q Hilary, you talked about an advocate, and obviously people who have been falsely accused need redress, in terms of getting their name cleared. Do you think there is an opportunity, particularly with veterans—you might be able to do it for serving personnel as well—to give responsibility to the armed forces ombudsman to review cases once they have actually concluded if people feel that they have been ill-treated, in terms of malicious prosecutions or delays in investigations, for example?

Hilary Meredith: That is one thing I considered. The remit of the ombudsman would have to be extended to do that. To look into 4,000 falsely brought accusations is a big job. Whether the ombudsman has the resources and the remit would have to be looked at, but I think that is a good idea.

[Mr Jones]

Q Even if we stay it for current cases, could that responsibility be given to the ombudsman for future cases?

Hilary Meredith: If their remit is extended and they could cope with the volume, yes, definitely. My idea is for an independent person, which the ombudsman is, or somebody from the Bar Council or the Law Society, or even a panel appointed on a rota basis that could assist.

[Joy Morrissey]

Q Hilary, do you agree that it is impossible to actually reach a fair verdict if you do not have the national security background or the military files on what was decided at the time? If that is restricted information—some of those documents may be classified for several years or decades—how is the service person supposed to defend themselves if they do not have that level of information?

Hilary Meredith: I agree; it is extremely difficult. When I am putting forward an independent person, I am talking about somebody in civvy street, which would be even more difficult. Unless you sign up to the Official Secrets Act and there is a full cards-on-the-table procedure, it would be very hard to defend.

[Stuart Anderson]

Q Going back to when you said the time limit is a red herring, how do you think the serving personnel and veteran community will take it if we took your recommendation and removed the time limit from the Bill?

Hilary Meredith: The time limit, on the face of it, is welcomed by most veterans and military personnel, but the reading of it is a concern. For example, time limits will be introduced if military personnel serving overseas are killed or injured in service. Putting a time limit on that puts them in a worse position than civilians. That alone outweighs the prospect of a time limit on a criminal prosecution. Most criminal prosecutions were done in a timely manner. It was the process that caused them to be historical. Differentiating between the two and sorting out the process is more welcome than actually putting a time limit on an allegation.

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill (Second sitting)

Joy Morrissey Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th October 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Carol Monaghan]

Q Finally, having heard what the three of you have said about how we carry out investigations, do you understand that some people would have concerns that the Bill will not solve the issues of people like Major Campbell and the difficulties that he has had over the past 17 years?

Dr Morgan: It is the point I made, so I agree that it will not solve all of the problems as it stands.

Professor Ekins: Yes, it is a real concern.

John Larkin: I think it is wrong to see a so-called independent investigation as the answer. The issue is not the independence or otherwise of the investigation. In fact, investigations are substantially independent at present. The issue is efficiency and the fairness of what is investigated.

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

Q I have two questions on the point raised earlier about the territorial reach of the Human Rights Act. How would you limit that within the Bill? What would you suggest?

[The Chair]

Who are you addressing the question to?

[Joy Morrissey]

I would welcome feedback from each of the witnesses. How would you limit the territorial reach of the Human Rights Act within this legislation? You mentioned it as a point, and I wanted to hear how you would do that.

Dr Morgan: The Human Rights Act would have to be amended to say that the Act itself did not apply extraterritorially. Parliament could do that; what Parliament cannot do is of itself reverse the decision of the European Court of Human Rights. The nearest thing to do is for the Government to derogate using the process in the European convention. Those powers are already there in the Human Rights Act.

[Joy Morrissey]

Q My question in response to that would be, why are we confusing the two things? The European Court of Justice ruled that it had supremacy over the ruling of the ECHR, and we opted out of the Lisbon treaty in terms of the acceptance of certain aspects of the Home Office and Justice type of rules—we opted out of that. Within the EU structure, they sort of opted out of accepting the ECHR in terms of jurisdiction within their own court systems. I feel that there is a bit of muddying of the waters in terms of what exactly is the jurisdiction of what. Could there be a review of that?

Dr Morgan: In my view, this is nothing to do with the European Union. This is purely a European convention matter, so Brexit, thankfully, is out of the picture on this particular issue. It is purely a decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which extended the extraterritorial reach of the convention in the Al-Skeini case.

There are two things that one could do about it. One is to derogate in future conflicts, which the Government have said they will consider doing. Another thing is for the Government vigorously to fight cases, such as Hassan v. United Kingdom, where the Government rather successfully argued that the European convention should be interpreted in line with the law of armed conflict or international humanitarian law.

Those are two things that one could do. A third thing, which would require fresh primary legislation, would be to amend the Human Rights Act so that domestic UK courts may only hear claims relating to things that happen within the territory of the UK. That will not stop the Strasbourg Court from hearing claims against the UK. Parliament cannot unilaterally change the meaning of the European convention on human rights, but it can change the meaning of the Human Rights Act. Richard Ekins is more expert than I, so I would like him to answer.

[Joy Morrissey]

Q It just gives me pause for thought about why we have decided to do it, when the Court of Justice held that the EU could not accept the ECHR under the draft agreement and held that the agreement was incompatible with the TEU article 6.2, for the reason that the draft agreement undermined the Court of Justice’s autonomy. It allowed for the dispute resolution mechanisms. I am just curious why we have gone down this road. Perhaps the witnesses can clarify.

John Larkin: May I come in on that point? The Member is referring, I think, to decision 2/15 of the Court of Justice of the European Union—[Inaudible.]—incompatible with the European treaty. Many of us smiled at that decision, because it showed the Court of Justice of the European Union was not particularly enthusiastic about being subject to the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg Court—[Inaudible.]—

[The Chair]

Were you able to hear that answer, Joy?

[Joy Morrissey]

No.

[The Chair]

When you write to us on the previous point, Mr Larkin, will you also set out your thoughts on the question that has just been asked? We come to you, Professor Ekins.

Professor Ekins: It was a surprising decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union, holding that the EU was not really able to make a treaty commitment to join the ECHR. It shows that the EU legal order guards its legal autonomy jealously, but I do not think that it helps in this context.

In answer to the question about how one limits the territorial reach of the Human Rights Act, one thing would be to include a clause in the Bill that amends the Human Rights Act to specify its territorial reach. That could be the more limited reach of only applying in the United Kingdom, or it could effectively restate the position as it was held by the European courts in 2003 and accepted by our senior judges for many years thereafter, that the convention applies in the United Kingdom and in some very limited extraterritorial circumstances. I drafted a provision to that effect, if anyone is interested, in submissions to the Defence Committee and in other papers to the Policy Exchange. It is open to question, obviously, but it is certainly possible to frame a limitation in a clause that could be adopted in the Bill. It is not impossible; it depends on whether Parliament wishes to do so.

As Dr Morgan says, though, that would not change the UK’s position in relation to Strasbourg, the European Court of Human Rights. Derogation is an important addition to the meaning of the Human Rights Act. If you want to deal with the prospect of continuing litigation, investigations and reinvestigations, you have to address the scope of the Human Rights Act. The same thing is true in relation to Northern Ireland and those historic allegations as well. The intention is that that should be dealt with in a separate Bill.

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill (Third sitting)

Joy Morrissey Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 8th October 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I am going to call Joy Morrissey, who is going to address us from the standing microphone.

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

Q What is the military international framework that our military allies adhere to for overseas operations—specifically, France, the US and Poland—or in NATO operations? I ask that for my second question: why is their rate of prosecution against their servicemen and women so much lower than it is here? If we are all adhering to the same legal framework that you keep referring to, why is it that our servicemen and women are open to investigation while others who serve with us are not? Can you explain that for me?

General Sir Nick Parker: I cannot answer for the Americans and the French, but I would revert to my original point: we might not be keeping effective records and investigating them as rapidly as some of those other countries are. I know that the American situational understanding, because of their investment in information technology—certainly when I was serving—meant that they got a very quick and clear picture of events in these conflict situations. I can only assume that they have a more effective investigative system.

[Joy Morrissey]

Q Could you also assume that it may be an investigative system on the chain of command and the point you have alluded to? I appreciate that, but it could also be that they are not under the same international legal frameworks that other countries, or perhaps we, are under. That allows them to protect their servicemen and women more effectively. What is your opinion on that?

General Sir Nick Parker: It comes back to the point that we need to conform to international norms so that we are seen to be legitimate, but the way we protect our people is by ensuring that they are properly commanded, that we keep accurate records and that we investigate any claim very quickly, so that we can ensure that our people are properly looked after. I do not think the comparison is relevant from the perspective of what we do about this particular issue, which badly needs to be dealt with.

[Joy Morrissey]

Q But if we engage in joint military operations with allies, is it not more important that we are aligned with what our military allies view as the legal framework, rather than anything else? Is that not the most important component of how we protect our servicemen and women, by all operating in the same framework—for example, if we are on a joint NATO operation overseas—and that all the countries engaged in that military operation share in the same framework?

General Sir Nick Parker: As I said, I believe that we need to be consistent with our coalition partners. All I would add is that you cannot predict who your coalition partner will be, because we do not know whom we will be fighting with in the future. Therefore, there has to be a certain consistency that is probably provided by international norms.

[Stuart Anderson]

Q General, it is good to see you. I was barely out of school when I came under your command in Dover, where you were the CO, the commanding officer. We were at very different ends of the spectrum of rank structure, but it is a pleasure to see you again.

A lot of what you discussed there is the chain of command. You talked about implementing different procedures within the chain of command. I would argue that that is an internal military adjustment, not for a Bill or other legislation, but I would then say, looking back, with your experience and what you know with hindsight—we always want to learn from the past to move forward—what would you have done differently, and what could be done differently by the chain of command, outside legislation, to protect our troops?

General Sir Nick Parker: The irony, then, is that I am now subordinate to you, an elected representative in the House, so congratulations, and—

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Joy Morrissey Excerpts

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

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for being a tireless advocate for veterans and making this Bill possible. I also thank the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) for his loquacious advocacy for veterans throughout the Bill Committee. He raised questions about the participation of other Members, but I would wager that his words that poured forth throughout the Committee covered every aspect of anything we may have an interest in.

[Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)]

I was not in the Chamber when that was said earlier, but it is fair to say that I made over 40 interventions in the Back-Bench debate, so I certainly contributed to the Bill Committee in that regard, as did many other Members. It would therefore be unfair to say that there was no contribution from Conservative Members.

[Joy Morrissey]

It was indeed an honour to serve on the Committee, because I myself, although not serving in the military, had two brothers who were veterans, and I saw the way that war and conflict tore their lives and our family apart.

I have spoken to many veterans who have said that they were at the point of wanting to kill themselves—some attempted it—for the fear of being prosecuted through these kinds of claims. The Bill protects the men and women who have risked their lives and fought to keep us safe and free. It allows our brave servicemen and women to go overseas to fight and represent us, and then come back and safely carry on their lives. That is what the Bill was intended to do, and I believe that that is what it will do.

I appreciate the plethora of amendments presented by the right hon. Member for North Durham. I am grateful for his studious nature in making sure that we have covered every aspect of these clauses. As my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) mentioned, the investigative system is out of control. The Bill goes some way towards mitigating that, and we could perhaps have gone even further. The issue of derogation, which was raised at the start, was not further discussed, but we could have done so with a greater level of debate.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Joy Morrissey]

Not at the moment.

The issue of derogation before an overseas conflict or an overseas mission is started might go a long way in any claims made retrospectively after the mission and whatever conflict we have engaged in is completed.

Those are small things that we could have looked at in further detail, but I appreciate and support the Bill. I am grateful to all those who have contributed, and I hope that we will be able to do what we promised in our manifesto commitment, which is to take care of veterans.