Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

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

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, if the Bill passed unamended, it would put the UK at serious risk of being in breach of the Geneva conventions and other international treaties. Far from protecting veterans from prosecution, it would

“increase the risk of service personnel appearing before the International Criminal Court.”—[Official Report, Commons, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill Committee, 8/10/20; col. 118.],

as Armed Forces Judge Advocate General, Jeff Blackett, pointed out. By reneging on the UK’s legal obligations, what is set out in the Bill would in fact betray those who serve our country with bravery. How can high standards of professionalism in our Armed Forces be reconciled with giving them effective legal immunity?

But on the back of the introduction of the Bill in the other place, another related issue was raised—referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Caine—which gave an ominous insight into the Government’s dangerously flawed understanding of the Northern Ireland peace process and the central importance to it of dealing sensitively with the legacy of the past.

On 18 March 2020, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland issued a two-page Written Ministerial Statement, thus conveniently avoiding scrutiny on the Floor of the House, outlining proposals to

“ensure equal treatment of Northern Ireland veterans and those who served overseas”

and to address the broader legacy issues of Northern Ireland’s violent past. Unilaterally and without reference to any victims and survivors stakeholder groups, political parties or the Irish Government, he announced that the cross-party-backed Stormont House agreement and the legacy proposals contained it in were to be set aside. Instead, he proposed a speedy—for “speedy”, I fear we can read “cursory”—desk-top review of all unresolved cases and, unless there was compelling new evidence that could lead to prosecution, they would be closed for ever, never to be reopened.

This would be a de facto amnesty that would cover the vast majority of murders that were carried out by republican and loyalist paramilitaries. Not only would the permanent closure of unresolved cases be without legal precedent, but it would deal a devastating blow to all those bereaved—including the families of many of the over-500 military personnel killed during the Troubles—to be told that the state no longer has any interest in what happened to their loved ones. The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee initiated an inquiry into these proposals by Brandon Lewis in April, and I gave evidence to it, along with the noble Lords, Lord Caine and Lord Cormack. However, in a damning interim report, the committee reached the unanimous conclusion that the proposals were “unilateral and unhelpful”.

I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State will belatedly give evidence to NIAC this afternoon—he may already have done so—and I also welcome his acknowledgement that the Operation Kenova model is worth looking at because it has won widespread support from victims. What victims and survivors want above all is to know that the life and death of their loved one mattered and that their murder has been properly investigated. That can only be achieved through a robust investigative process, one that is truth-seeking rather than prosecutorial, like Kenova.

I am struck by the link between the words “amnesty” and “amnesia”: the great fear that many victims and survivors have is that they are forgotten. It is one of the cornerstones of our democracy that everyone is equal before the law and subject to the rule of law. To tamper with those precepts, in the case of the overseas operations Bill, by granting partial immunity to veterans should be done only when there is an absolutely compelling case that some greater good will result. The Government have not made that case with this legislation, and what the Secretary of State proposed in relation to the legacy in Northern Ireland takes us even further into dangerous territory. Both should be firmly resisted.