Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Kim Johnson Excerpts

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

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

When the Government brought this Bill forward, their aim was to end vexatious claims against former service personnel and the Ministry of Defence, but the evidence does not bear out what the Government say is the scale of the problem. No service personnel, present or former, deserve to be investigated and prosecuted for a crime they did not commit, or to be repeatedly investigated without good reason, but the figures, as the Government well know, are not of a scale that would justify the proposals in the Bill.

In relation to Iraq, only a handful of prosecutions have been brought against junior personnel.

Of the civil prosecutions against the MOD over the past five years, just 0.8% related to Iraq. The Minister has said, in relation to the majority of the repeat investigations or delayed prosecutions, that

“one of the biggest problems…was the military’s inability to investigate itself properly and the standard of those investigations…If those investigations were done properly and self-regulation had occurred, we probably wouldn’t be here today”.

Rather than put forward proposals to tackle the real reason behind any repeat investigations or delayed prosecutions, the Bill instead proposes unprecedented and dangerous legal protections, which will create a legal regime that secures immunity for serious offences and inequality before the law for victims of abuse and armed forces personnel.