Al-Sweady Inquiry Report

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

May I just remind noble Lords that there are 20 minutes for Back-Bench interventions? It would be much appreciated if Members could keep their contributions succinct to enable all those who wish to contribute to do so.

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[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I, and I am sure the whole House, would agree with what my noble friend says. He asked me about the Legal Aid Agency’s inquiries into Mr Shiner. The agency was asked by the previous Lord Chancellor to investigate whether Public Interest Lawyers withheld these documents, thereby improperly obtaining public funding for the judicial review. The LAA has referred some concern to the Solicitors Regulation Authority and we understand that the SRA had already commenced an investigation into whether PIL or Leigh Day & Co breached any professional standards.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, I welcome this report, which has been thoroughly done—and thank goodness it has put to bed those dreadful claims. However, I have some real concerns. We seem to be more willing now to concern ourselves with the human rights of people who set out to kill us—these men were actually intending to kill our soldiers, and often people are intending to kill civilians as well—than with the human rights of our own soldiers. I also have a real concern, to which the Minister alluded, about the impact that it might have on operational considerations. There is no doubt, when one looks back over the past few years, that these pressures, concerns and behaviour have an impact on operations. It has happened within the Royal Navy and in the Army. War is a nasty, bloody and horrible business; we cannot pretend it is anything else. People have to make decisions in seconds. When you are trying to get operational information, sometimes it is not the nicest thing possible. That does not mean that we should break all the human standards and behaviour that we expect—and we do not. But we have to be very careful about putting too many limits on them. I share the view of the noble Lord opposite about Mr Shiner and his firm and the other firm. I have managed to read only the first part of the report but clearly there are issues that need to be looked at by more than the Solicitors Regulation Authority. They should be looked at in great detail because we should never allow this sort of thing to happen to our own people by firms in this country. An ambulance chaser is too good a term if what is said in the report is true.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his support. I agree very much with what he says. He is concerned about service men and women on operations. I have discussed this issue at some length with the noble Viscount, Lord Slim, who I know also has concerns on this. I have spoken to many service men and women in the Army and the Marines, and I think that we have got it right at the moment. We learnt a lot of lessons in Iraq and Afghanistan—lessons learnt by the previous Government—regarding detention, interrogation and the rules of engagement. The lawyers learnt a lot of lessons, too. A few years ago I had many complaints about lawyers from soldiers, but I have not had a single one since I have been a Minister. I feel quite comfortable—from talking to soldiers, especially to the Special Forces, although we cannot say too much about that—that we are in a good place at the moment.

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[Lord Astor of Hever]

I very much agree with the noble Lord that any statement to the press should point out the presumption of innocence. I know that the noble Lord takes a great interest in this subject, and indeed I think I sat next to him on a C17 going out to Afghanistan a few years ago.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, I apologise for coming in again, but the point made by my noble friend does raise something. There is a perception around the globe that we are guilty of doing ghastly things because of the way it was put out by so much of the media. In terms of our Prevent strategy and our outward-looking strategy, can I ask the Minister whether we are really going to make sure that it gets around that there was absolutely nothing behind this? We need to put that out through all the channels like the Prevent strategy and others.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes a very good point and I will take it back to the department. I shall talk to other Ministers and to our media people to see what we can do to get into the outside world the very important message referred to by the noble Lord.