Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

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

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe. She made a clear and compelling case for the Bill. One thing on which I agree with her is that we need clarity, so that troops and former troops who have served our country well have clarity.

I thank the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, for engaging with Members of the House who wish to engage with her on the Bill. It has been helpful and, if I may say so, she is a remarkably good listener. I want to add to her tribute to Her Majesty’s forces. As is clear from my entry on the Register of Members’ Interests, I have a connection with the Royal Navy for a charity that I chair and I very much wish to ensure that we do the best that we can for all those who so courageously serve their country. We need to take all reasonable and proportionate steps to protect them against injustice. I fear, however, that the Bill, in its present form at least, fails to do just that.

The Bill has its origins in a 2013 report by the respected think tank, Policy Exchange. I look forward to its director, my great friend Dr Dean Godson’s arrival in this House, I believe in early February. His interventions in future stages of the Bill could well be instructive. Yesterday, Policy Exchange issued a document entitled, Ten Ways to Improve the Overseas Operations Bill. I take that as recognition by Policy Exchange, seven years after its report, The Fog of Law, of 10 material deficiencies in the Bill. It is a little shocking that after a gestation of seven years, with all the scans, scrutiny and consideration that it will have had, the Bill comes to this House having left the Commons with so many deficiencies.

What Policy Exchange highlights fairly is that, for all the cases envisaged to be dealt with, there must be efficiency, expedition and fairness. Unfortunately, I cannot accept at least five of its 10 suggested improvements to the Bill. For example, Policy Exchange has suggested changes in the approach to the public interest test for prosecution but appears to have done so without even having taken the elementary step of carefully reading paragraphs 4.9 to 4.13 of the Crown Prosecution Service code dealing with the public interest test. Clear care is already taken with such decisions and it is possible in exceptional circumstances for a public interest decision to be taken before examination of the evidence. Policy Exchange has suggested the Attorney-General’s consent to prosecutions. I listened with enormous respect to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, who is a former law officer, and an excellent one. I admire him enormously. However, I wonder why the independent Director of Public Prosecutions, who is appropriately accountable to the law officers, is not sufficiently independent to make the requisite decisions.

I suggest to your Lordships that, despite a seven-year gestation period, this Bill is far from being oven-ready, to coin a phrase. It still has many deficiencies, as Policy Exchange has recognised, and will need concentrated work in Committee if it is to be given a Third Reading. I am grateful to the highly respected Bingham Centre, which has made thoughtful and well- argued criticisms, with which I agree—one of which is that the Bill undermines our obligations under the Geneva conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture, and this would take us outside international law. I commend to your Lordships the Bingham Centre’s rule of law concerns about the Bill.

In truth, the Bill as it stands would diminish the United Kingdom’s enviable reputation for adherence to the rule of law. We cannot accept that in your Lordships’ House. Major amendment is required.