Asset Freezing (Compensation) Bill [HL]

Lord Brennan Excerpts

Friday 10th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brennan (Lab)]

My Lords, having consulted the Clerk of the Parliaments, I wish to make the following declaration of interests. I have appeared in Northern Ireland against the Real IRA for the families of the Omagh bombing; for a group of plaintiffs in the United States against Libya in the Gaddafi period; and recently against a Libyan investment agency in respect of sanctions. None of what I am about to say affects this Bill or the content of what I wish to put to the House. In addition, I need to point out that I went to Libya in 2009 with a parliamentary delegation involving, among others, the noble Lord, Lord Bew. We negotiated for a broad reconciliation settlement for Northern Ireland but did not succeed.

I commend the Bill to the House. It is reasonable in its scope, necessary in its objectives and gives Parliament the occasion to exercise one of its ultimate duties—to protect its citizens against terrorism and its consequences.

Let me start with necessity. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, is right that the decision by Libya to supply Semtex to the Provisional IRA and other agencies of the IRA was a contributory factor to the explosions that occurred all over the United Kingdom. In Northern Ireland, in Enniskillen on Remembrance Day 1987, there was absolute carnage, and there have been many more explosions in Northern Ireland since. In London there were explosions at London Bridge, St Mary Axe, the Baltic Exchange, London Docklands and the street outside Harrods. It was terrible. It is not to our advantage historically to say that that has passed. It has not.

Semtex was used by the IRA as the trigger explosive for car bombs. You could load the boot with enough fertiliser to create a major explosion. The evil of supplying Semtex was that it enlarged the area of blast damage. In the first number of metres it blew people apart; in the next number of metres there was thermal damage, which burned people alive; and shrapnel damage from the car itself was spread over several hundred metres. These days the car bomb is more controlled but suicide bombers operate the same technique. They wear a waist belt packed with explosives, nails, bullets and all kinds of projectiles which will be sent out to damage people once they have blown themselves up. This is a constant.

What should we do about it? The United States in 2008 required Libya—capital “R” required—if it wanted to come off the terrorist list, to pay American victims of bombings $1.5 billion or else it would stay on the terrorist list. It was a straightforward, tough negotiation in public and it led to a settlement. Libya was taken off the terrorist list and then resumed its protection under the American sovereign immunity legislation. My case in America, to which I have referred, ended because of that settlement, after which the President issued an executive order terminating all other foreign claims. They were simply stopped. State immunity was returned to Libya and our case died the year after. The presidential order said that negotiations for those citizens from other countries claiming compensation should be left to them or to their Governments to achieve a settlement. That was the message in 2008.

The objectives of the Bill are necessities. Something has to be done. Is it reasonable in its scope? First, unlike America, under our law states do not have immunity. If they kill, injure or destroy property they can be sued or held responsible in our courts, as might occur under this Bill in a negotiation. Secondly, although Gaddafi has gone, under the principle of successor state liability, the state takes on the obligations of the past—otherwise the world would be in chaos. In April 2011, soon after the Libyan civil war started, Mr Jalil, the head of the then National Transitional Council, issued a statement of reconciliation, negotiated by lawyers from England, in which he said that Libya would look favourably in the longer term on a settlement because it was felt to be a national obligation. Since then there has been nothing except the interregnum which the noble Lord, Lord Empey, described. The Government have admitted that they did nothing until 2014, when matters resumed with an investigation by the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in the other place. This is not your Government or my Government but every Government for the past 15 years.

I shall finish on the question of sanctions and reasonable scope. Sanctions are the product of political negotiation which is then framed in a legal text. It is open to Governments to negotiate what goes into sanctions and what can be taken out in relief, such as is contained in the Bill. The motivation, therefore, is essentially political from now on, not legal. The framework may be put into legal form, but the initiative has to be political.

What should Parliament do? The reason the Americans settled as they did was that Congress said, “If you don’t, Libya stays on the terrorist list”. Congress forced the settlement on the American side. We can do the same here in a parliamentary way; it is up to us. The Americans have been matched by France and Germany. When a French plane was shot down over Africa, the French simply punished Libya financially and they tried its head of military intelligence in absentia and gave him a jail sentence. After our explosions, nothing of that kind was even contemplated.

Forgive me for being forceful but the people we are here to represent, and represent legislatively, can expect us to act—to adapt the words in the first reading at Prayers this morning,

“from whence cometh my help”.

The Bill is short, to the point and effective. The victims of terrorism are the front line in our societies—the conscripted “military” who suffer the injuries. They are not volunteers and they take the consequences. When they do, we should look after them, and this Bill seeks to do that.