Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Lord Caine Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 20th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Caine (Con)]

My Lords, the motives and purpose behind the Bill ought to be regarded across the whole House as unimpeachable. Our Armed Forces are the very best of us and they do a superb job to keep the people of this United Kingdom safe and secure in an ever-dangerous world. In return, they should command our respect and admiration, and enjoy our strongest possible support, not only in the tools they have to do the job we ask of them but through the legal framework in which they operate.

As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, made very clear, our Armed Forces should always carry out their duties to the highest standards of professionalism and integrity, and within the law, as the vast majority do. Where individuals fall short of those standards and in some cases act unlawfully, they should always face proper investigation and the consequences. At the same time, they should not have to act in a conflict situation fearful that at some unspecified point in the future they will be subject to spurious and vexatious claims or hounded by corrupt individuals, such as the odious Mr Shiner.

That is what the Bill seeks to address, and I look forward to the detailed scrutiny of its provisions in Committee and on Report. In this context, I too commend the paper published today by Policy Exchange entitled Ten Ways to Improve the Overseas Operations Bill, by Professor Richard Ekins and the former Northern Ireland Attorney-General, John Larkin QC.

In the short time I have today, I wish to focus on the one area not covered by this legislation and to explain why, importantly, it is right that it is not. I refer of course to Northern Ireland.

The purpose of the Bill is to protect service personnel deployed in military conflict or war situations. I am conscious that for many soldiers there is little distinction between the dangers they faced in Basra or in Belfast—a point made to me forcefully by the Veterans Commissioner for Northern Ireland, Danny Kinahan, in a conversation this morning.

However, there is a critical legal and political distinction between the two. Operation Banner in Northern Ireland was never an overseas military conflict or a war. The role of the Armed Forces was to provide support for the civil power in upholding democracy and the rule of law against a criminal terrorist threat in an integral part of our United Kingdom. To characterise it any differently or by referring to what happened in Northern Ireland as a conflict or, even worse, as a war, as some have done, risks playing directly into the hands of those who wish to rewrite history, legitimise terrorism and promote some kind of moral equivalence between those who upheld the law and those who sought to destroy it. These are things that the United Kingdom Government must always resist. We should avoid anything that allows former terrorists to justify past misdeeds or, indeed, helps dissidents to recruit today.

It follows, therefore, that Northern Ireland requires bespoke arrangements that give protections to former members of our Armed Forces and the Royal Ulster Constabulary while, at the same time, providing potentially better outcomes for victims and survivors. They need to reflect the fact that 90% of deaths during the Troubles were caused by terrorists, both republican and loyalist, and they must be consistent with the rule of law. I have always opposed amnesties or statutes of limitation that would have to apply equally across the board to include former terrorists—something that many of us would find absolutely repellent.

As noble Lords have pointed out, on the day that this Bill was published in March last year, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland issued a Written Statement setting out the Government’s latest thinking on legacy issues in Northern Ireland. Like other noble Lords, I wonder whether the Minister, in winding up, will be in a position to update the House on where we are with that process.

In conclusion, all of us who believe in the union, and indeed all of us in these islands who cherish democracy and the rule of law, owe those who served throughout Operation Banner—both the RUC and the Armed Forces—the most enormous debt of gratitude. As I have said on many occasions, they are the unsung heroes of the peace process, and it was their efforts—and, sadly, in too many cases their sacrifice—that provided the space for politics eventually to succeed in Northern Ireland.

We need to repay that debt but never in ways that, unwittingly or otherwise, undermine all that we stood for in ensuring that the future of Northern Ireland would always be determined by democracy and consent. So I fully support the fact that Northern Ireland remains outside the scope of the Bill as we give it its Second Reading, but I look forward to the Government’s proposals in due course.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Rogan, has withdrawn from the debate, so the next speaker is the noble Lord, Lord Hain.