Armed Forces Bill

Lord Thomas of Gresford Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)]

My Lords, there is no limitation on serious criminal cases, and that is part of the criminal law. In this area, I think of the war crimes that, until very recently, were still being brought forward relating to the Second World War as a result of investigations into the actions of German soldiers in prison camps and elsewhere. The thought that that type of case would be barred through limitation would have a very unfortunate effect on the victims of the Holocaust, who feel those crimes so strongly, and rightly so.

As a result of the debates we had on Tuesday, and this debate, my view is that the clever and ingenious lawyers in the Ministry of Defence should be thinking about putting the concept of combat immunity into some statutory form, to define the boundaries of it so that commanders who are engaged in warfare know that if they are in a combat situation they do not have to worry about criminal civilian law affecting them personally, and so that the soldiers involved do not subsequently face criminal charges as a result of their conduct in the clash of arms—the warfare itself. But “military operations” as in the amendment can cover such a wide area and I do not think that we should go against the whole thrust of the common law and the whole purpose of the criminal law by an amendment of this sort. There are other ways. What is combat immunity? What are the boundaries? They may be fuzzy at the edges but I am sure they are capable of statutory definition.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood]

I do not want to be tiresome but combat immunity, as I understand it, has never applied in the context of criminal law at all. It is a purely civil law concept.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

Perhaps it could be used as a criminal law concept. Perhaps the lawyers would like to think about it. I follow what the noble and learned Lord says on that.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment would introduce a time bar on bringing prosecutions against members of the Armed Forces, shielding them from prosecution for their actions while engaged in military operations outside the United Kingdom. The time bar would apply to their acts where more than 20 years had passed since those acts took place.

It is important to be clear, as noble Lords have observed, that the amendment would prevent personnel being prosecuted under either the service justice system or the civilian criminal justice system. It would cover all offences, not only against civilians or prisoners of war but against members of our own Armed Forces; for example, if evidence eventually came to light that a soldier had murdered another soldier while on operations, there could not be a trial if more than 20 years had passed.

I have much sympathy with the reasons that I know underlie the amendment. If criminal allegations are raised many years after the events in question, witnesses may be dead, memories may have faded and documentary evidence may have been lost. Indeed, those difficulties can be encountered even after a few years, never mind many years. However, I was grateful for the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord Thomas of Gresford, and the two noble and learned Lords, among others. Members of our Armed Forces engaged in military operations must be subject to the rule of law and I cannot support a blanket ban on prosecutions of members of the Armed Forces after a stated period.

As the Committee is aware, the Armed Forces Act 2006 contains a system of service law that applies to members of the Armed Forces wherever in the world they are operating. This makes provision that a member of the Armed Forces commits a service offence if he or she commits any act overseas which would be an offence under the law of England and Wales were it done here. I am afraid I cannot see on what principle we should make an exception from the criminal law for those in military service overseas.

It is worth emphasising that, in both the civilian and service justice systems, when considering any case prosecutors are required to consider not only whether there is sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction but whether a prosecution is in the public interest. It has never been the rule that a prosecution will automatically take place once the evidential stage is met. Similarly, in the service system prosecutors are required to consider whether a prosecution is also in the service interest, including service interest factors. Clearly, if the offence is more serious, the public interest for a prosecution is more compelling.

It should also be noted that before a former member of the Armed Forces can be prosecuted for a criminal conduct service offence in respect of things that they did during their service, the consent of the Attorney-General must be obtained if more than six months have passed since they left the Armed Forces.

I am of course aware of the concerns expressed by the noble and gallant Lord over investigations by the service police of events in Iraq many years after those alleged events. In many of these cases, the allegations were not made immediately—for reasons which are not always clear. I assure the noble and gallant Lord, and the Committee, that intensive efforts are being made to bring these investigations to a conclusion as soon as possible. We are investing considerable resources in this area. We are looking at streamlined processes to ensure that those cases without substance are weeded out quickly, and so on. The Iraq Historic Allegations Team is doing an excellent job given the difficulties it faces. It has completed a number of investigations.

I do not believe for a moment that this process will still be in progress when the 20-year limit envisaged by the new clause would be reached. Indeed, the only theatre in which, so far as I am aware, criminal investigations or prosecutions of soldiers or veterans are in progress relating to events from more than 20 years ago is Northern Ireland, which is excluded from the scope of this clause because it covers only operations outside the UK.

I also assure the Committee that, while the Ministry of Defence will discharge its duty to provide any information in its possession relevant to such police investigations, it will also provide effective support, legal and pastoral, to veterans who may find themselves facing investigation for matters related to their duties. Although, I repeat, I sympathise with the concerns behind the new clause, in principle it would be wrong to provide an exception to the criminal law for members of the Armed Forces serving overseas in this way. On that basis, I hope that the noble and gallant Lord will agree to withdraw his amendment.

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Moved by

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

17: After Clause 14, insert the following new Clause—
“Inquests
Every violent or unnatural death of every person subject to service law whether within or outside the United Kingdom shall be reported as soon as practicable to a coroner who shall determine by what means and in what circumstances the deceased came to his death.”

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

My Lords, in 2006 I moved an amendment in these terms to the 2006 Bill with the support of my noble friend the late Lord Garden. At that time, inquests involving the services were very much a controversial area. There were long delays and lots of families were very concerned about the fact that these inquests took such a long time and seemed to be so unsatisfactory. At the same time, coroners were making some very trenchant criticisms. Lord Garden and I thought it would be right to have a statutory duty making it quite clear that the coroner should have jurisdiction in this area and that cases should be reported to him by commanding officers, in the terms of the amendment that I put forward.

That amendment was not accepted, but after that the Army itself became concerned and set up Project Ajax, and in 2008 the Defence Inquests Unit was formed. It is interesting to note that Mr Mike Venables, the head of that unit, said that,

“the MOD was struggling with how we handled inquests because there was no focus … The families were dissatisfied by the service they were getting and by the way that inquests were working. Many didn’t understand why we were having them or what they were for”.

The unit went to work. It seemed to have a number of aims. On the first aim, Mr Venables said:

“Our role is to support bereaved families”.

Its next role was to train coroners and explain the particular circumstances in which a death had taken place, to identify and locate military witnesses, to furnish reports and information to the coroners and to organise a familiarisation event—annually, as it turned out—so that coroners would know what vehicles and kit were used on operations and what mine clearance drills were, and could experience the weight of packs that troops carried, and so on.

Case officers under the unit read through the Royal Military Police reports, Special Investigations Branch reports and witness statements before handing them to the coroner. Colonel Newell, who was in charge, said:

“We read through everything first and redact them for security—which is something that they do worry about so we explain that … We point them”—

the coroners—

“to what we see as the salient information and suggest who we see as the key witnesses who should be called to the inquest. We provide them with a Rolls-Royce service”.

The next function was to provide support to witnesses. Mr Venables said:

“It can be a hugely difficult experience for some witnesses … we don’t…coach them. All we say is, ‘you’ve got nothing to fear from this, all you have to do is tell the truth’”.

So the unit seems to have various conflicting aims.

The purpose of my tabling this probing amendment today—in identical terms to the one we tabled in 2006—was to inquire into how the system is working and whether it is satisfactory. Case officers under the unit appear at inquests for the Ministry of Defence, so not only are they training and advising coroners, and redacting witnesses’ reports; they are actually appearing for the Ministry of Defence at inquests. That must cause concern to families who wonder whether their purpose is to protect the Ministry of Defence from the sort of trenchant criticisms that, as I indicated, were very much abroad in 2006 when we first approached this problem.

I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response. I may not have expressed quite clearly the full scope of my intention in tabling this amendment—I apologise for that—but I commend it to the Committee.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, for raising the issue of inquests. He has raised some important issues.

For many years, I have not been able to give my counsel on this matter because sadly we were taking many casualties on operation and, therefore, the timing was completely wrong. I must stress that I have no intention of pressing any of my own amendments relating to this issue at a later stage—I am merely giving my counsel—but I intend to compete with noble Lords who are lawyers in terms of the amount of detail that I will give. I accept that matters have improved with these inquests, but I am still not convinced that holding detailed inquests into fatalities incurred on operations overseas is likely to reduce casualties or be a good use of resources. I hope the Committee will allow me to explain why before calling for the silken rope.

All members of our Armed Forces should be highly motivated. Most of them will have a secret dream of being able to have strategic effect, even if it involves a significant risk to themselves. By “strategic”, I mean an action they take that significantly alters the outcome of the campaign. That is why many servicemen with particularly good qualities seek selection for Special Forces. Their incentive is that they are very likely to be able to have strategic effect at some point. One can also have strategic effect by denying the enemy’s strategic effect. That is what the off-duty serviceman did in France in that train attack, and it is an issue to which I will return at a later stage.

I understand that, prior to the mid-1980s, it was not necessary to have an inquest into an overseas operational fatality. The law changed, but it did not matter, because there were very few hot operations. If we had ever engaged in conflict with the Warsaw Pact, we would not have been worrying about inquests. I am very sorry, but I think that these inquests into operational fatalities have limited utility. If we think that we need inquests to learn from what went wrong, we are deluding ourselves. As I touched upon in the human rights amendment on the first day of Committee, quite often the deceased, or someone closely involved, made a misjudgment or a mistake. That is the nature of military operations. As I said then, this makes it extremely difficult for the MoD or the chain of command to explain these facts, because we would be shocked if those on the ground at the time were blamed. According to Wikipedia, in Sergeant Roberts’s case, very unfortunately, the soldier who fired the coaxial machine gun on the Challenger tank did not know, or he forgot, that there was a parallax effect in short range. Does anyone seriously think that that error would not have been immediately reported back to the Armour Centre in Bovington and compared with the existing training plans? Of course not.

One inquest that I read about centred on electronic countermeasures. The feedback cycle in this area is extremely fast: days, if not hours. It must be extremely demoralising for the experts—sometimes, I think the term “boffin” is rather more complimentary—at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, to read these unfair criticisms in the press. The reality is that we have a fabulous capability in this area and we should be very grateful. Think how demoralising it must be for the Taliban to take the very real risk of planting an IED, only for the initiation system to fail for some mysterious reason at the crucial moment.

Some argue that we need the coronial system to identify any defects in training and procurement. I touched on this during the first day of Committee and remind your Lordships of my inverse law: the attention and scrutiny applied to a fatality on operations is inversely proportional to the number of fatalities taken. That is why I believe that inquests into operational fatalities have limited utility. I also remind the Committee that they soak up considerable amounts of staff effort that could be better spent on prosecuting the campaign. I fear, however, that this is nothing compared to the negative effect.

In order for the enemy’s leaders to motivate their own side to make a very risky or even suicidal attack on coalition forces, it would be an enormous help to them if they could show that the attack would have strategic effect. We cannot avoid the MoD making the formal announcements of casualties or fatalities: we know perfectly well that it would be deeply damaging to mislead the nation regarding the level of casualties that we are taking on an operation.

What we actually do is have an exercise to publicly blame Ministers and then the chain of command for things that have or are alleged to have gone wrong when, for reasons I explained, they cannot effectively defend themselves without acting improperly and damaging morale. It should also be remembered that service personnel in theatre read newspaper reports and have access to the internet. It must be quite easy to damage confidence, especially that of more junior personnel. Reports of discord can also be shown by the enemy’s leaders to their subordinates to motivate them to make an attack which they can, frankly rightly, claim will have strategic effect.

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[Lord Hope of Craighead]

My Lords, there is one aspect of this amendment to which I think I should draw attention. It arises because of its scope. The amendment applies to every violent or unnatural death of every person subject to service law within the United Kingdom. The coronial system does not apply in Scotland. I do not know whether it is the intention that we should extend the coronial system to Scotland in the case of every violent or unnatural death, but the system which applies in Scotland is very simply this: every death of that kind is reported to the procurator fiscal of the area in which the event occurred. There is then an exercise of discretion because it does not follow that every death is subject to an inquiry. It is a matter for the procurator fiscal, possibly with the advice of a law officer or his counsel, to decide whether it is in the public interest that there should be an inquiry. If there is such an inquiry, it goes not to a coroner but to a sheriff, who does indeed determine by what means and in what circumstances the death occurred. It is there that the public interest is served because if there is something to learn from the event, the opportunity is taken through the accident inquiry to determine the circumstances and in some way to improve practice or inform the public about how events of that kind could be avoided in future.

As I listened to the debate I wondered whether that system applied in the case of persons subject to service law. I think I am right in saying that when one reflects on the tragic events on the Mull of Kintyre, when a Chinook helicopter flying from Northern Ireland to Scotland with a number of very senior people on board crashed and everybody was killed, that event was dealt with under the Scottish procedure. I would have thought that that procedure is perfectly adequate to cope with all that one would expect from events of this kind and the need for the circumstances to be inquired into.

There are two features that need to be stressed. First, not every death of this kind is the subject of an inquiry because it is only if the public interest requires it. On the other hand, where the inquiry is resorted to, it is a full inquiry, with the results that I think the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, is looking for; that is, the lessons to be learned from the evidence that is laid. I wonder whether he really does intend that every death—even a road accident, for example—occurring north of the border should be subject to this system; or, to take another example, whether training exercises in the Highlands, where unfortunately deaths do occur due to the very severe weather on mountains, should be subject to the coronial system. I think the Scottish prosecutors—the procurators fiscal, I should say—would rather that they retained control of these events and dealt with them under the Scottish procedure, which they would believe is perfectly adequate to provide the lessons that people need to avoid these events occurring again.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

My Lords, there were specific provisions in the Coroners Act 2009 relating to investigations in Scotland. Sections 12 and 13 provided that the Secretary of State would notify the Lord Advocate if,

“the Chief Coroner thinks that it may be appropriate for the circumstances of the death to be investigated”,

and there would be an inquiry under the Fatal Accidents and Sudden Deaths Inquiry (Scotland) Act 1976. I think that is the position.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, talked about training fatalities. My view is that all training fatalities, wherever they arise, should be subject to an inquest. I think there is a far bigger problem with training accidents than with operational fatalities. Those occur where the enemy has a better position on you and sadly some servicemen are unlucky, but with a training accident, it is quite likely that something has gone wrong.

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[Lord West of Spithead]

In the Navy, the rules are not quite so direct, but you are given guidance to be sure that you do not raise issues that would become extremely difficult. But I always felt that that gave you quite a lot of scope. As we know, rules are for the obedience of fools, and one was able to do quite a lot in those letters.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, who drew my attention to a Scottish television report of September 2012, which says:

“Investigations into the deaths of Scottish military personnel killed abroad will be able to take place in Scotland for the first time from later this month. Up until now inquests into the deaths of servicemen and women have often had to be heard in England, forcing their bereaved families to travel long distances to take part in the hearings. But a change in the law means that from next Monday, September 24, the inquests will be able to be held north of the border”.

The mechanism is that the chief coroner, Peter Thornton, can,

“recommend to the Lord Advocate … that an investigation be transferred to Scotland”.

It arises out of 14 servicemen dying when their Nimrod crashed in Afghanistan; they were based in Moray, at RAF Kinloss, and the inquests were held in England.

[Lord West of Spithead]

We have gone down the route of the coronial system. As Plato said, only the dead see the end of war. Sadly, I am afraid that at some stage we will be in a war when we lose thousands of people, and I have no idea how the system will work at that stage or what the thought processes are about that.

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[Earl Attlee]

I do not really expect the Minister to give me a precise figure, but I am very grateful to him for saying that he will reflect on what I have suggested. I do not expect him to get particularly far, but I am grateful for his attitude to my speech.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

My Lords, those of us who were around in 2009 will recall the great controversy in the Coroners and Justice Bill about whether we should have a chief coroner. Eventually the argument prevailed that we should have a chief coroner. We have a highly competent, able and experienced person in the shape of Peter Thornton. I am sure he will deal with many problems unless and until the system is overwhelmed, as the noble Earl suggested. I am very reassured, and I am grateful to the Minister for his careful response which brings me up to date on where we stand with the inquest system. I will reflect on what he said to see whether there is any necessity for me to take this issue further. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 17 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Smith of Newnham]

My Lords, I welcome the probing amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. He is absolutely right to raise one of the issues that upsets huge numbers of the British population in any military intervention—the danger of civilian casualties. The idea that that should be added to the report that is brought quarterly is clearly welcome. I very much hope that the Minister will be willing to look into that. One advantage of the United Kingdom entering into the war in Iraq and over Syria was precisely that we have precision weapons. The suggestion that we have not caused any civilian casualties in the past three months is clearly welcome.

I realise that this is only a probing amendment, but I am slightly concerned that the noble Lord suggested that for the quarterly report there should be working definitions of the terms “civilian” and “combatant”. How do the UK Government define those terms? I would hope that it would be something in the glossary, not something that would be redefined every three months. There is a suggestion that perhaps the United States has a rather more generous definition of combatant that we would in the United Kingdom, and that males over the age of 15 are seen as combatants if they are in certain areas. I would very much hope that that is not a definition we would ever consider.

This is a welcome probing amendment, and we would very much like the definitions. My noble friend Lady Jolly has also asked whether the Minister could tell us what work has been done to assemble figures so far.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

The Minister will recall that I asked a Question on this topic two or three weeks ago. I support the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. There is a danger, when we are concerned with a definition of UK deployment that includes,

“any airstrikes carried out by UK personnel operating manned or unmanned aircraft”,

that we may forget that we are part of a coalition under joint command. It is a joint operation and, in such a situation, we cannot say that we are responsible only for these bombs but not for other bombs dropped by other countries under the same command as ourselves. This country is bound legally and morally by the activities of all those operating in the coalition. We carry that responsibility for the deaths and maiming of civilians, whoever’s bomb it is. Civilians do not care whose bomb it is if they are maimed. If it is under joint command, we have a responsibility.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, living as we do in a time when news reporting is constant, continuous and around the clock, the public rightly expect Governments to be the same, especially when reporting on conflicts in which our Armed Forces are engaged. Parliament and the British people have the right to be kept informed about not only what happens to our forces but also the impact our actions might have on civilians in the conflict zone. The Government currently report on civilian casualties in a number of different conflicts that we are involved in, including Iraq, Syria, west Africa—the Ebola response—and Afghanistan. That is the right thing to do. It demonstrates openness, transparency and proper regard for the loss of life that inevitably occurs in conflict, whether military or civilian deaths.

None of us who supported the Government’s decision to use air strikes against ISIL in Syria did so lightly. I have not spoken to a single person who did not have concerns that there would be casualties among the civilian population. To date, the Government have stated that there have been no reports of civilian casualties as a result of our air strikes. Having said that, I look forward to hearing from the Minister what guidelines the Government set themselves for collecting data and reporting on casualties, whether military or civilian, in any conflict in which we are currently engaged.

On this side, we certainly welcome the aspirations that motivated this amendment but we have doubts that it is the best way to deal with the issue of reporting on civilian casualties—I am grateful for the excellent briefing on this that I was given earlier today. For example, the amendment addresses the matter of reporting civilian casualties caused by air strikes but says nothing about reporting civilian casualties caused by ground forces. Often, ground operations are in play as well as air strikes. More than that, if we are to enshrine in primary legislation the reporting of civilian casualties in conflict, this is not the right vehicle to do so. Some might argue that reporting on civilian casualties is not simply an Armed Forces issue alone but has wider foreign affairs and international development implications. If that argument were accepted, we would need a cross-government input and approach to legislation to achieve the objectives that would be set out.

We certainly welcome the opportunity that this amendment gives us for debate and we have had some important and useful contributions. I look forward to the Minister’s reply and hope that we will have regular reports to Parliament on the conflicts, especially details of the number of casualties—even where there are none. That is very important. We welcome the opportunity for debate that the amendment affords but in its present form we would not support it.