Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Lord Robathan Excerpts

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

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, a soldier is not as other men. When he thinks that he is, he ceases to be their guardian. I was told many years ago that that was a quotation from Julius Caesar. I have tried to verify it, but I am afraid that I could not find it, so it may not be a quote. However, it is apposite because it shows that we expect higher standards from our soldiers.

In this debate, I should like to put the Bill in some context, using examples—some of which will be from Northern Ireland, of which I have some personal experience, although it is not in the Bill. The context is both complex and confused. We—that is, this Parliament —send young people of 18 and 19 years of age into an alien environment in which people who are not in military uniform but in civilian clothes are trying to kill them. All civilians are therefore suspect because we cannot identify terrorists. We send the soldiers to protect us and the national interest, often in ghastly and uncomfortable conditions. We expect them to carry out their duty at our behest. So let us start by being grateful. I should declare a family interest in that my son recently passed out of Sandhurst.

Soldiers are not perfect but they usually try their best. They are not lawyers with many years of study and training. They are not policemen. They are trained to defend us by killing people, if necessary, with rifles and bayonets; that is why they have them. Training is mandatory in the Geneva conventions and the law of armed conflict. Every solider knows, for instance, that torture is illegal. When I was in Northern Ireland, we used to have a yellow card that told you when you could open fire. There are always rules of engagement, and the watchword is “restraint”.

I want to give two examples from Northern Ireland. The first is the pitchfork murders, carried out near Newtownbutler in Fermanagh in October 1972 by soldiers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. They had lost eight men, murdered on a four-month tour. Newtownbutler itself saw five murders in the preceding seven months, including those of a Garda instructor, off-duty local soldiers and Protestants. Nothing excuses these murders. When, finally—after several years—the ex-solider murderers were convicted, they were rightly jailed for life. However, the context is relevant. Nobody has been tried for a huge number of the murders of soldiers, UDR and policemen in Northern Ireland, some of whom were friends of mine.

My second example is particularly pertinent to this debate: the murders in March 1988 of Corporals Howes and Wood, who inadvertently drove into a funeral in Andersonstown. When trying the murderers, the judge described the murders as “particularly savage and vicious”. Both corporals had 9 millimetre pistols but were uncertain whether they could use them when surrounded by a screaming mob, which included IRA gunmen. These soldiers did not shoot the 20-odd people they could have done if they had been so minded.

I also have two examples from Iraq. The first is the Battle of Majar al-Kabir, where six Royal Military Policemen, each armed with 50 rounds, were killed in June 2003. They were surrounded by a hostile crowd of some 600 people, including the gunmen who shot them in the end. They were murdered because the RMP’s standard operating procedures do not include firing on a crowd.

The second example is that of Trooper Williams, who in August 2003 was in a patrol that stopped a group of Iraqis pushing a cart full of mines and ammunition. A scuffle ensued and 18 year-old Williams shot a man whom he believed to be about to shoot another solider. This was properly investigated by the Special Investigations Branch and the Army Legal Services Branch advised that there was no case to answer, so it was dismissed. However, the Adjutant-General later wrote a letter in March 2004, saying:

“With the current legal, political and ginger-group interests in the deaths of Iraqi civilians … there is a significant possibility that … our investigation and subsequent failure to offer for prosecution could become a cause célèbre for pressure groups.”


Williams was put on open arrest for a year before being tried in the High Court. For a 19 year-old boy, it was pretty traumatic. When he finally got to court, on day one, the Crown offered no evidence and Mrs Justice Hallett formally acquitted him.

Finally, I refer to a well-known case that has already been mentioned: that of Sergeant Blackman, who was filmed as he criminally and foolishly shot a Taliban fighter—who was probably dying anyway—saying, “Shuffle off this mortal coil.” More than 400 British soldiers may have been killed by the Taliban and he may have been under huge stress and pressure—he had seen comrades blown to pieces—but he was rightly tried and sentenced for his crime.

These and other cases, which are sometimes confusing, mean that young soldiers now spend a long time debating when they may open fire. When I worked in the MoD under the coalition Government, the appalling Phil—not Paul—Shiner and other lawyers were scouring Iraq and using public money to fund spurious cases against soldiers. Shiner was found to have been paying people to bring vexatious complaints, and some allegations were found to be “deliberate and calculated lies”. In Northern Ireland, which is not part of the Bill, Sinn Féin and the IRA are pursuing 14 year-old cases against soldiers. The IRA is now winning the peace.

So, on the one hand, we have public servants putting themselves in harm’s way and doing their duty to defend us, our country and the national interest, often in terrifying, dangerous and ghastly circumstances. On the other, we have pressure groups and very clever lawyers—often not well disposed towards the Armed Forces and often left wing—sitting in comfortable, warm offices in London and picking over every split-second decision made in a foreign country by scared young people doing their duty. Soldiers do not always get it right. Some behave maliciously or criminally, and some rightly go to jail, but I stand up for the young men doing their duty to the best of their ability who have been pursued by smug, overpaid lawyers.

I thought that my noble friend the Minister’s speech was excellent; I agreed with almost every part of it. I am disappointed by some of the criticism that has been dragged up, but I found it entertaining to be lectured on moral leadership by a Liberal Democrat. The Bill may not be perfect in this difficult context and it may warrant amendment, but it goes a long way to protect those who put their lives on the line to defend us.