Lord Empey
Main Page: Lord Empey (Ulster Unionist Party - Life peer)Asset Freezing (Compensation) Bill [HL]
Lord Empey Excerpts
Lord Empey (UUP)
My Lords, this is the second consecutive year that I have drawn No. 1 in the ballot for Private Members’ Bills.
Noble Lords
Lord Empey
Fifty-one Members put Bills forward in this year alone, so assuming a similar number did so last year, the odds were very high indeed. So I wish to place on record my thanks to the Legislation Office of the House, and to Nicole Mason in particular, for turning our scribblings into a real Bill in such a short time. I will be trying, if I am spared, for a hat trick next year.
The Bill is not mine alone. It is the brainchild of the all-party support group for the UK victims of Libyan-IRA terrorism—chaired by Romford MP, Andrew Rosindell—of which I am a member. Earlier this year, we decided to pursue our aims by attempting to change the law by introducing a Bill in Parliament. At this point, I want to set the scene for noble Lords as to why the support group exists and why it is campaigning for real change in the attitude of Her Majesty’s Government towards the Libyan issue and the environment for the numerous victims of Gaddafi-sponsored terrorism throughout the United Kingdom.
On 23 February this year, a Westminster Hall debate was secured by Poplar and Limehouse MP, Jim Fitzpatrick. It was the nearest date he could get to the 20th anniversary of the London Docklands bombing, in which two people were killed and 39 seriously injured, some of them permanently. Mr Fitzpatrick has long campaigned on behalf of the Docklands Victims Association.
There has been a perception that Gaddafi-sponsored terrorism was primarily a Northern Ireland issue, but I assure noble Lords that this is not the case. Although most victims are located in that part of the United Kingdom, they are far from alone. If we look at the number of GB-based soldiers who were killed or wounded during incidents such as the Hyde Park bombing, the Baltic Exchange bombing and the Docklands bombing, it is clear that people across the UK have a keen interest in these matters. In the past week, we have been reminded of the tragedies that have occurred over the years, such as the Birmingham pub bombing, and it goes to show that victims of IRA terror are located all around the United Kingdom.
One must ask why it is that people have to wait, sometimes for decades, before they get an opportunity for either justice or legitimate compensation. We have witnessed the long struggle of the Hillsborough families, and that tragedy had no terrorist involvement. Is there something peculiar in our judicial system that spawns these long-running campaigns?
During the early 1970s, Gaddafi began to ship weapons to the IRA because he sympathised with their cause. He was also impressed with the 1981 IRA hunger strikes. After the Government of Margaret Thatcher allowed UK bases to be used by US war planes to attack Libya in 1986, Colonel Gaddafi began to hit back at the UK by providing training bases for IRA terrorists and others on his territory. He began to smuggle arms to Ireland on an industrial scale, with, it is believed, four massive shipments of weapons and explosives successfully getting through. Only the last of the five shipments was intercepted, when the “MV Eksund” was boarded by the French navy in the Bay of Biscay on 1 November 1987.
The sheer volume of weaponry that was supplied to the IRA, ranging from rifles, ammunition, RPGs, machine guns and missiles to tonnes of the Czech explosive Semtex, along with loads of cash, meant that at the peak of its campaign the IRA had an oversupply of weapons. However, Semtex was the game-changer for the IRA, as it is hard to detect, has a long shelf life and could detonate homemade explosives to make the threat from terrorists much more credible. There were more victims and fatalities resulting from Semtex than from all the other weapons in the IRA arsenal put together, to say nothing of the physical damage.
I submit that the actions of the Government of Libya from the early 1970s until the 1990s were a clear attack on the integrity of the United Kingdom and that Libya was prosecuting a war by proxy on the British people. In retrospect, I find it chilling that, given the widespread intelligence that we now know was available to our Government of Libyan involvement in supplying weapons to the IRA, no action appears to have been taken to prevent Libya pursuing its proxy war.
The Bill is an attempt to provide Her Majesty’s Government with the means to right the wrong that has been done to the many victims of Gaddafi-sponsored terrorism. As the House Library note for this debate states:
“Clause 1 subsection 1 of the Bill would require that the Treasury must ‘take all actions necessary’ to prevent the release of particular assets based in the UK (outlined in subsection 3) that have been frozen under European Union Council Regulations, until circumstances described in subsection 5 have been met”.
In the debate in Westminster Hall on 23 February this year, responding for the Government, Exchequer Secretary Damian Hinds MP indicated that HMG are bound by both EU Council regulations and UN resolutions, and therefore are unable to help the victims out of the massive £9.5 billion of Libyan Gaddafi assets frozen in London.
I fully understand that the UK has to work along with our partners in the EU and via the UN to ensure that sanctions are implemented and assets seized internationally. New European Council regulations came into force on 18 January this year in view of the situation in Libya, which repealed EU Regulation 204/2011. Articles 8, 9, 10, 11, 13 and 14 of the regulations deal with derogations that can apply in certain circumstances. Thus the principle is well established that “frozen” does not mean “untouchable”. There is also mention of the prospect of a lien or judgment being in force in Article 9. This could be of interest to the victims as well.
My sadness through all this—and I have been writing to various Governments since 2002, when the then MP Mike O’Brien was at the Foreign Office—is at the lack of any sense of urgency on the part of Her Majesty’s Government, let alone any burning desire to seek justice and recompense for the victims. Other nations seem to have more fire in their bellies and show a greater determination to see that their citizens get the best deal possible. Why is this?
It is not good enough to hide behind a European Council regulation. What representations have Her Majesty’s Government made to our European partners to encourage them to agree to a specific derogation for our victims, even if it is just for humanitarian reasons? Humanitarian issues are referred to in the regulations and Minister Hinds mentioned this in the Westminster Hall debate.
I wrote to the Prime Minister on 30 August 2011 to ask about the frozen Libyan assets being used to pay compensation. The PM replied to me on 15 November in the following terms:
“As I told the House of Commons on 5 September”—
that is, 2011—
“the issue of compensation for UK victims of IRA terrorism will be an important priority for a revitalised relationship between Britain and the new Libyan authorities. I have raised this with NTC chairman Jalil and the new Prime Minister, al-Kib. To take the issue forward, I have asked the Foreign Office to prepare detailed plans for a sustainable and effective partnership with the new Libyan government, which will provide a forum to address all outstanding legacy issues dating from the Gaddafi period and the many victims affected by his actions. Our objective is a comprehensive resolution of these legacy issues. You asked if frozen assets could be used pending a successful negotiation with Libya. I have examined the case closely and concluded that, as the assets belong to the people of Libya, we have no legal basis for withholding Libyan assets once the Libyan entities meet the conditions for unfreezing as set in UN Council Resolution 2009 … We will engage the new Libyan Government on the case for voluntarily setting aside assets as a gesture of good faith and intent while negotiations proceed”.
So it is clear that the Prime Minister was very keen at that time to ensure that a resolution to this issue was found. I subsequently went to see his national security adviser, Sir Kim Darroch, in 2013—he is now our ambassador in Washington DC—because the Libyan Government of that time collapsed and the state has become effectively a lawless area ever since.
But that was not what shocked me most. In January 2014, I asked a routine Parliamentary Question—as I have done from time to time—to see how the Libyan issue was going. On 22 January 2014, the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, who was the Foreign Office Minister at the time, replied in the following terms:
“The Government is not involved in any negotiations with the Libyan government on securing compensation payments for the British victims of Qadhafi sponsored Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorism”.—[Official Report, 22/1/14; col. WA 136.]
So the Government were effectively saying that, from 2011 to 2014, they were not involved in any negotiations. That illustrates a chaotic approach. On the one hand, the Government were saying, “We’re going to pursue this vigorously”, while, on the other, they were saying, “We’re not actually engaged in any negotiations”. This was a dramatic change and the contrast with the Prime Minister’s position in 2011 is disturbing.
The question is: will this Parliament and Government tackle the issue seriously and with purpose? If not, why not? As this Bill moves through its stages, every opportunity will be provided for Her Majesty’s Government to revise their consideration of the issue. I do not believe that it is enough to say to the victims that Her Majesty’s Government will be quite happy if they take out individual legal actions against the Libyans. Some have started down that road with their legal advisers, but that does not absolve the Government of their wider and primary responsibility to protect their citizens, which I believe that successive Governments have singularly failed to do.
With a fledgling Libyan Government beginning to emerge, yet another opportunity arises to resolve these issues. One of any new Government’s requests will be for the release of frozen assets. I do not doubt for one moment that the greatest number of victims flowing from the Gaddafi years is to be found among the Libyan people themselves. Nobody can deny that many were tortured and killed by a brutal dictator. Nevertheless, Her Majesty’s Government have a responsibility to look after the interests of the people of the United Kingdom, and, with good will, appropriate arrangements can be arrived at. A condition of releasing those assets should be a resolution of the compensation issue for our victims. Now may well be the time. Will the Minister give an undertaking to take this proposal back to his colleagues?
While reluctant to pick out any individual in this campaign, I must put on record my thanks to stalwart campaigner and former Member of the other place Andrew MacKinlay for his contribution to this Bill and the tenacity that he has shown over many years of hard work on behalf of the victims.
Given the circumstances in which we now find ourselves and the new potential opportunities, I hope that the Government will seize the chance to resolve this issue once and for all. The Hillsborough families have been fighting for decades on behalf of the people they lost and it is disturbing that, while other countries such as France, Germany and the United States of America have resolved matters on behalf of their citizens, we, with the largest number of victims, are the only major country that has achieved nothing for our victims. We owe them all a great debt and it is our bounden duty to see that the matter is resolved. I beg to move that this Bill be given a Second Reading.
Lord Empey
My Lords, I take this opportunity to thank the participants in this debate. First, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, for his vivid and chilling explanation of the actual effects of Semtex, and his dealing with the stance of the United States in 2008, the successor-state liability principle and of course the fact that Congress forced the settlement. The words of my colleague and noble friend Lord Rogan, with his considerable experience and knowledge of the outworkings of Semtex in our own part of the United Kingdom, and his concern that a certain volume of that material still exists in the hands of dissident terrorists, are also something to be worried about. Of course, his reference to the difference in treatment between victims of the Harrods bombing illustrated why we have this Bill before the House today. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, speaking on behalf of Her Majesty’s Opposition, for expressing his, as he put it, enormous sympathy with the Bill, his reference to the United States example, and to his friend Jim Fitzpatrick, who, as the noble Lord rightly pointed out, has been in the trenches on this one for many years, and continues to be, and who represents his constituents to the very best of his ability.
I must say that the Minister, on behalf of the Government, shocked me to some extent with his reply. Only we, in this part of Europe let alone anywhere else, could come up with the European Convention on Human Rights as an obstacle in the path of getting funds for the victims. What about the rights of the people who were blown to smithereens? Have we got the world on its head that that is a defence for doing nothing? We are talking here about the state of Libya, the successor to Gaddafi, whenever it emerges from whatever struggles it is having.
I understand and quoted from the articles from the European Union’s decision of 18 January and the EU resolutions. I asked in my speech whether we have asked our European colleagues for help with this. Have we just asked them? Have we put forward proposals to amend this or put in another derogation? Have we gone to the United Nations and asked it for help or put forward proposals? Have any of these people turned us down? That is what we need to find out. We are not asking for anything so why not? Is there a hidden hand somewhere, or a deal in the background that we know nothing about? Why not? Our responsibility is to the people of the United Kingdom first and last. What happens to the rights of individuals named in the United Nations list is not our primary concern. Our primary concern is our own people.
I must say to the Minister, with the greatest respect to him—I have enormous admiration for him—that it is precisely that approach that is the root cause of the failure to make progress on this issue. It is not a private matter between individuals and the Government of Libya. As the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, said, the United Kingdom Government plc should be up front and centre dealing with this matter—and fighting.
Lord Cormack (Con)
Will my noble friend enter into early discussions with the Minister to see whether some amendments can be framed that would enable this Bill to be accepted by government?
Lord Empey
I thank the noble Lord for his, as usual, helpful intervention. As a former long-serving chair of the Northern Ireland Select Committee in the other place, he knows the subject well. I have it absolutely clear, and we all know the rules as regards Private Members’ Bills. We know what we are doing and we know what it is about. I would be delighted to sit down with the Minister and look at this, and so would all our colleagues in both Houses and in all parties. He knows, as well as I do, that a Member is limited in the amount of help that he or she can obtain for a Private Member’s Bill. A few weeks ago, the Legislation Office was crammed with all the other Bills, is very short-staffed and can do only a certain amount. I accept that a lot of the technicalities of the Bill are not perfect. That is why we have a parliamentary process. That is why we go through different stages. I entirely agree with the noble Lord and would be delighted to do what he suggests. We cannot simply leave things as they are. They are totally unacceptable.
If we are talking about human rights, what about the rights of the people who have had to live with the consequences of these actions throughout their lives? The legal niceties about the European Council regulations, or resolution this and resolution that, are secondary: we are dealing with people, individuals and families. Our task is to ensure that they get a fair deal out of all this. We are not asking to plunder the people of Libya. I said earlier that the vast majority of the victims are the Libyan people themselves, and we know that, but we have a specific group of people who have been left to fall down the grating and slip through the cracks on this issue. I appeal to the Minister to go back to his colleagues and revisit some of those issues. Those of us who are behind these proposals would be very happy to sit down with him, or anybody else, and discuss any amendments, or anything we could do, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, suggested. We would be delighted to talk to both Front Benches on this issue to see whether we can get a consensus.
Lord McAvoy (Lab)
I assure the noble Lord and your Lordships’ House that the Labour Opposition would be pleased to fulfil a role in such negotiations.
Lord Empey
I am deeply grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, for that very helpful intervention.