Overseas Operations (Service Personnel And Veterans) Bill

Debate between Lloyd Russell-Moyle and John Healey

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

[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.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

My right hon. Friend was touching on an important point that Members on the Government Benches have touched on as well. The problem is, as it stands, the long investigations and the repeated investigations that allow double jeopardy not via the courts, but by intimidation of investigation. The Bill does nothing whatever to deal with some of those issues. Is that not a reason for the Government to go away and rewrite parts of the Bill or even issue proper investigatory guidelines to stop that kind of thing happening?

[John Healey]

I sincerely trust that the Government will rethink and will be prepared to rewrite parts of the Bill. If they do so, I think they will find broad consensus for some of the changes that could be made to the Bill to help protect our troops and protect Britain’s reputation worldwide at the same time.