Armed Forces: Legal Challenge

Lord Astor of Hever Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Astor of Hever) (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lord Faulks for tabling this Motion. It is timely for this House to take stock of recent legal developments which could, in different ways, have important consequences for the ability of our Armed Forces to conduct operations and, therefore, for our national interest.

All military operations carry a degree of risk. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Guthrie, said, armed combat is a unique activity. Good commanders are adept at forecasting, assessing, and carefully managing risks in the preparation and execution phases of operations. The Armed Forces of the United Kingdom must at all times seek to operate within the rule of law and to take account of how the law changes. There is nothing new about that. But what does cause the Government concern is the extent to which legal developments are creating uncertainty and imposing costs which may have an impact on how our Armed Forces are able to train and operate.

One direct consequence is that the Ministry of Defence has been grappling with rapidly increasing numbers of legal claims arising from operations, together with escalating costs, largely as a result of these legal developments and the increasing willingness of individuals to litigate. I welcome the fact that these issues are of increasing interest and concern to others. The House of Commons Defence Committee recently announced an inquiry into the legal framework for UK military operations in future, including the protections and obligations for operational and deployed UK Armed Forces personnel. The Ministry of Defence has submitted its observations to the Committee, and we look forward to learning of its conclusions.

The recent report by the Policy Exchange called The Fog of Law, to which a number of noble and noble and gallant Lords have referred, was therefore a timely contribution to the discussion and raised a number of very important questions. It was written by authors with a great deal of hands-on experience of military planning and operations, so its conclusion,

“recent legal developments have undermined the armed forces’ ability to operate effectively on the battlefield”,

deserves respect and careful consideration. None the less, I would not go quite that far, or not yet. I do not believe we have reached the stage where the ability or operational flexibility of our Armed Forces has been significantly impaired or that military decision-making has been hamstrung. I think that that answers the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. Crucially, I cannot point to any specific incident in which it appears that concerns about legal liability have been responsible for failure to take operationally necessary measures in the course of combat.

Ministers and the military chain of command have been clear that commanders and other military personnel, at whatever level, who make reasonable decisions in good faith in the course of operations will receive the full backing of the services and the Government. I hope that this reassurance will have put any doubts to rest. I am also reassured that there has been no decision by the courts that would suggest that they would impose liability in such circumstances. Nevertheless, the Government are certainly concerned about the long-term trends which the report analyses. The law remains uncertain on some key matters—unhelpfully so, from the Government’s point of view—and this situation will continue until some of the key cases now before the courts have been ruled upon authoritatively.

The Government are very concerned in particular about the potential effects of the Supreme Court’s majority judgment in the cases of Smith and others, Ellis, and Allbutt and others versus the Ministry of Defence, which were handed down together on 19 June. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, pointed out, these cases relate to a number of extremely tragic incidents in Iraq arising out of lethal attacks on soldiers patrolling in Snatch Land Rovers and out of a so-called “friendly fire” accident involving Challenger 2 tanks. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, set that out very clearly. It gives us no satisfaction at all to have to defend cases brought by the families of the brave men who died or were injured in these events, but the principles involved are extremely important, and the Government’s case needs to be put robustly.

Briefly, and at the risk of oversimplification, these cases turn on the extent to which the European Convention on Human Rights applies to military personnel on overseas military operations, and the precise scope of the legal doctrine known as combat immunity. In this litigation, the Ministry of Defence contended that it was not reasonable or appropriate for the courts to take the role of final arbiters of military decisions, including, as in these cases, decisions about the provision of equipment to our forces. Our case failed in a split judgment in the Supreme Court. I think it reasonable to point out the minority speech by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, which offers an admirable and compelling analysis of the dangers of opening up the conduct of military operations to litigation.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, who delivered the judgment, has spoken with his accustomed clarity about the issues at stake in this case. The Government took comfort from the clear warnings in the majority judgment that the scope for such litigation must inevitably be limited. While the effect of the judgment is that the cases considered by the Supreme Court must now be heard on their individual merits by the High Court, their Lordships were very clear that, to quote the judgment:

“The court must be especially careful, in their case, to have regard to the public interest, to the unpredictable nature of armed conflict and to the inevitable risks that it gives rise to”.

I listened carefully also to the advice of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown.

To reassure the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, we will therefore be defending vigorously any legal cases which turn on the issue of combat immunity. For that reason, although we have considered the option of legislating for a statutory definition of combat immunity, and we have not ruled out any legislative possibilities, we have made no decision as yet to bring forward any such proposals. We will study very carefully the judgments in the cases to which I have referred when they appear. It is our hope that the case law will develop in a way which recognises that there must be limits to the extent to which military decisions should be replayed and contested in the courts. I must make it clear that our position is underpinned by the provisions of the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme, which assigns compensation on a no-fault basis for injuries sustained by members of the Armed Forces in the course of their service.

So far, I have been speaking mainly of legal actions brought against the Government by current or former military personnel or their families. There has also been a good deal of concern about the volume of cases against the MoD brought by UK firms of solicitors on behalf of Iraqi and Afghan nationals who were detained by UK Armed Forces. The claims typically allege that individuals were abused on arrest and unlawfully detained, which amounted to a violation of their Article 3 and Article 5 European convention rights. These are the right not to be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment, and the right to liberty. They seek damages, sometimes for very substantial amounts, as well as declarations that their human rights have been breached, and in some cases they argue that a full investigation is required into their alleged ill-treatment. In a smaller number of cases, unlawful killings and breaches of Article 2—the right to life—are alleged.

A key issue in these judicial review challenges and personal injury claims has been whether people detained or allegedly killed, injured, or mistreated by UK Armed Forces come within the jurisdiction of the convention. On 7 July 2011, the Grand Chamber of the Strasbourg court handed down judgments in the two important cases of Al-Skeini and Al-Jedda. These judgments resulted in a substantial extension of the extraterritorial application of the convention to Iraq. In addition, the Al-Jedda judgment had what I can only regard as the deeply unfortunate consequence that compensation has had to be paid to a large number of people who were detained solely because there was good reason to think that they posed a threat to security in Iraq and to the safety of members of our Armed Forces.

I need hardly say that the Government in no way dispute the need for the legal accountability of our Armed Forces. Nor do they suggest that the Armed Forces are at all times without fault, as we know from the tragic death of Baha Mousa, the Iraqi hotel owner mentioned by my noble friend Lord Thomas. He was beaten to death by soldiers guarding him in 2003. There is no question that his killing was a tragedy and a shameful incident in the history of the Iraq conflict and of the British Army. Those soldiers who knew the truth refused to come clean and no one was convicted of Baha Mousa’s murder, although one soldier was convicted of a lesser offence.

Noble Lords will, I think, be pleased to learn that there remains the possibility that those responsible for the death of Baha Mousa will be brought to justice. As suggested by the previous Defence Secretary, a new investigation of the case is under way, conducted by the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, which was set up as a mark of the Government’s serious commitment to get to the bottom of the allegations of abuse and unlawful killings in Iraq. Despite repeated legal challenges, the competence and integrity of the Iraq Historic Allegations Team has been vindicated by the High Court and it is getting on with its important work, carried out under difficult conditions.

These investigations are important because we need to ensure, as I have said, that the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom will be held to the highest standards of conduct. They are also important because, by establishing how abuses were allowed to happen, remedial action can be taken. The Baha Mousa public inquiry, chaired by Lord Justice Gage, provided a cogent analysis of the conditions which led to the killing and made 72 recommendations to prevent any recurrence, all but one of which were accepted by the Government. We intend to make an announcement shortly on progress on implementation of the Baha Mousa inquiry recommendations. The department will also shortly be publishing the first annual report on systemic issues identified from the investigations of the Iraq Historic Allegations Team.

I mentioned earlier the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Al-Skeini and Al Jedda, which had important implications for the application of the human rights convention to our operations in Iraq. It is important to be clear that in our view the situation in Afghanistan is different. This is in part because the UK operates in Afghanistan through ISAF, a multinational force under the ultimate authority and control of the United Nations Security Council. Consequently, we contend that the UK’s acts and omissions are, for convention purposes, attributable to ISAF and hence to the United Nations, not to the United Kingdom. But even where the convention does not apply, there are legal challenges that need to be grappled with. The English courts are all too aware of the serious and difficult outcomes that can arise. Through a combination of recent legal challenges seeking to put a stop to UK detention and transfer operations in Afghanistan, the Defence Secretary came close to being put in a position where he could neither lawfully detain captured persons nor transfer them into Afghan custody. The problem was eventually solved, thanks in part to co-operation between the British and Afghan Governments, but this illustrates the way in which judicial action in the domestic courts can potentially have the most serious effects on operations which the Government consider vital for national security.

Given the centrality of the European Convention on Human Rights to many of these issues, some have suggested that derogation from the convention for military operations should be considered. Article 15 of the convention allows for parties to derogate from the convention’s obligations, but only from certain articles and then only in time of war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation. There are different views as to the circumstances which would satisfy this condition. The legal and political questions which derogation would raise would be difficult ones, and we would need to be very clear that the benefits outweighed the disadvantages before proceeding with that option. The coalition agreement is also clear that no such changes would be contemplated at present.

I should like to say a word about the costs of litigation arising out of military operations. The Ministry of Defence is required to spend millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money each year to defend claims. These are resources which have been voted by Parliament for defence purposes and which would be much better employed in support of the front line. I wish to place on record my appreciation of the work of the Secretary of State for Justice in seeking to ensure that public resources are allocated as far as possible only to the most meritorious cases.

My noble friend Lord Thomas referred to a paper produced by Army personnel on the problem of risk aversion, which was subsequently leaked to the press. I can confirm that this was what is known as a “think piece” and in no way reflects the policy of the Government. My noble friend Lord Freeman was absolutely right to remind us that these matters are potentially of vital concern to reservists as well as to the Regular Forces. His call for an early resolution of these uncertainties is very pertinent. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, mentioned Northern Ireland. I was also there in August 1969 and well remember the yellow cards that we were all given and the extreme care that we had to take. There are some misconceptions about derogations from the European Convention on Human Rights by some of our key allies. Their obligations are, in all key respects, the same as ours.

In closing my remarks, I should like to emphasise once again that the Armed Forces are thoroughly committed to the rule of law. We mount a strong defence in litigation wherever justified, but we will also call members of the Armed Forces to account where it is right and proper to do so. The vast majority of our service men and women have served, and continue to serve, the country with integrity and courage, many of them in situations of danger and stress which we civilians can only try to imagine. I pay tribute to them today.