Armed Forces (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

Friday 24th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak—I hope relatively briefly—about an important issue. As I am sure hon. Members are aware, this is my second attempt to change the law on the protection our society offers to members of the armed services, including the reserves and veterans, as well as their families.

I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), to her place. To begin on a consensual note, she has a very hard act to follow in her role, because her predecessor, the Minister for the Armed Forces, cares deeply about armed forces and their welfare. I think that the whole House congratulates him on his new role. I hope that the hon. Lady and I will continue the debate in the same manner that he and I finished it at approximately this time last year.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

We are all delighted to see the Minister in her place. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman is slightly surprised, as I am, to see her there, because from my reading of it, the Bill appears to be more a criminal justice one than an armed forces one. What are his thoughts on which Minister should respond to this debate?

[Thomas Docherty]

I think that the hon. Gentleman is on occasion slightly closer to the Government than I am, so he is better placed to speculate about which Minister should reply. Perhaps the hon. Lady will pick up that point when she speaks.

I hope that the House will unite on the issue. I very much welcome the constructive way in which hon. Members on both sides of the House have approached the subject not just today, but during the past 18 months. Of course there are times when we have different perspectives on the future of our armed forces and on how they should best be deployed and equipped. However, I hope that the whole House will agree on one point—that we owe a special duty to the brave men and women who risk their lives defending our freedoms and our rights. I very much welcome the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), to his place, which is a welcome sign of my party’s commitment on this important issue. I think that the whole House recognises that we owe a very special debt to those who risk their lives abroad to defend our freedoms in ensuring that they receive, as they deserve, the full shield of Government protection when they return home.

I will not repeat what I said last year, but I want to talk briefly about the first two clauses. Clause 1, which would amend the Criminal Justice Act 2003—the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) has already mentioned criminal justice—simply says that an assault on a member of the armed forces or their family that is motivated by their service to our country should be treated as an aggravated offence.

The House will recall that the noble Lord Ashcroft, who I suspect is in the other place—I understand that a minor issue is being considered at that end of the Building—carried out a survey, with the support of the Ministry of Defence, of some 9,000 serving personnel across the three armed forces in 2012. Some quite astonishing and, dare I say, horrific figures came out of that survey. About 5% of members of our armed forces reported that they or their family had suffered physical or attempted physical assault during the previous five years, while 18% or 19% of them reported that they had been the victim of verbal abuse in that period. I am sure we can all think of the type of abuse that, regrettably, is hurled by a mindless minority at members of our armed forces, and I will cite one example that my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling might also refer to.

A few years ago the Royal Anglian regiment came back, I think in 2010, for its homecoming parade, and an extremist organisation called Muslims Against Crusades organised an attack on that parade, which I think crossed the line between free speech and intimidation. The survey by Lord Ashcroft also reported that almost one in five members of the armed forces have been refused service in shops, pubs and clubs for being members of the armed forces, and clause 2 of the Bill covers that issue.

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman said earlier, if I heard him correctly, that he was trying to extend the law to cover somebody who was, or was presumed to be, a service person in the course of their duties—or along those lines. I wonder where the Bill refers to that, because it states simply

“the victim being, or being presumed to be, a service person,”

without any qualification. He seemed to be adding a qualification to his remarks that I cannot see in the Bill, and I wonder whether he can clarify that.

[Thomas Docherty]

I expect the hon. Gentleman was wistfully thinking about all the times he has supported his Government, and he therefore misheard what I said earlier on. This measure is not about people who are carrying out their duties, but about those who are members of the armed forces. If he will indulge me, I will explain that briefly as I do not wish to detain the House.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and the House will want to pay tribute to his work championing the armed forces in Scotland. He served on the Defence Committee for a number of years, and has taken a keen interest in his local barracks at Glencorse.

It might help if I give a couple of examples of what we are talking about.

[Philip Davies]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Thomas Docherty]

The hon. Gentleman has tempted me, so I will let him intervene once more.

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman was right about what he said earlier, and the qualification he referred to—which I mistook—is someone being a member of the armed forces. Nobody disagrees with any of that sentiment, but I wonder where the Bill refers specifically to the fact that the abuse is happening because someone is a member of the armed forces. I cannot see that in the Bill. I understand that that is its purpose, but I cannot see where it states that specifically.

[Thomas Docherty]

If the hon. Gentleman looks, for example, at clause 1(a), (b), (c) and indeed (d), “service person” is mentioned repeatedly. I want to make a bit of progress because otherwise there is a danger that we could be perceived as trying to slow the progress of this important Bill.

We all saw with horror the events that took place in summer last year in Woolwich, and I am sure the whole House was in a state of revulsion at what happened. That is an extreme example, but later in the summer there was a lot of media interest in the Bill, and the BBC made a series of case studies as part of a day covering the issue of discrimination against the armed forces. The number of anecdotal examples that service personnel had suffered—although not on that same extreme level—was astonishing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a genuine pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), who knows full well that I am a big fan of his. He made it clear today why I am such a fan, because he set out his case reasonably clearly and in a way that many of us could subscribe to. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), who is a regular on a Friday. He pursues his agenda with vigour, and has done the same again today, and I do not doubt the sincerity of the case he makes. The shadow Minister made one of the most pertinent points when he said this was not about our regard for the armed forces. It goes without saying that we are all strong supporters of the armed forces, on both sides of the House; I am not aware of anybody who is not. The issue is whether the Bill is the right way to proceed.

[Thomas Docherty]

Has the hon. Gentleman ever been to Bradford West?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Yes, I know Bradford West. It is my neighbouring constituency. I have not heard even the hon. Member for Bradford West (George Galloway) say anything against our armed forces. He might disagree with the conflicts in which they participate, but I have not heard my parliamentary neighbour say anything adverse about them—but that is for him to deal with.

In this debate, I generally come down on the side of my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), who I thought made an excellent speech, as he always does in this place. He made an excellent case and one to which I wholeheartedly subscribe. My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), who I rarely disagree with, and the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife said several times that the Bill was important in order to send a signal. My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border rightly picked up on that point. Yes, it is often important to send a signal about things we consider important, either individually or collectively, and that is often the purpose of our debates. What I question, and what I think my hon. Friend questions, is whether that is a sensible basis on which to pass a law. That is my issue with the Bill.

[Thomas Docherty]

It might help if I clarify this point. Sending a signal is a valuable part of the Bill, but the simple hard facts, which the MOD has not been able to dispute, is that from Lord Ashcroft’s studies and our experiences as MPs, we know that one in four members of our armed forces has reported, through the study, that they have suffered discrimination. With that level of discrimination, it is not a matter of symbolism, but a need that requires action.

[Philip Davies]

I am not sure I totally follow the hon. Gentleman’s logic. Of course we want to send our support to the armed forces; we all agree with that. For goodness’ sake, they put their lives on the line to defend our freedoms. I have no doubt either that members of the armed forces—he gave examples—have faced discrimination for being members of the armed forces. I do not quibble with that. Personally, I think that any attack on or discrimination against service personnel based simply on their being service personnel should be and would be wholeheartedly condemned by every right-thinking person not only in the House but in the country. Of course it would. I do not think anybody is disputing that for one minute.

If we follow the hon. Gentleman’s logic, however, we could name all sorts of categories of people who might say that their category has faced discrimination on many occasions, and it goes way beyond the already protected characteristics that my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border set out. I know lots of people who would say they had been discriminated against in the workplace because they were bald, fat or had ginger hair, or for all sorts of other reasons. I am sure that the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife accepts that many people in those categories have said that from time to time they have faced discrimination that has been totally unfair, without merit and irrational. I am not sure whether he is suggesting that everybody who comes along and says, “We have faced discrimination at some point in the past,” should have their characteristic protected. Surely even he would not want to go that far.

[Thomas Docherty]

Let me say first that I cannot imagine why anyone would ever discriminate against people with reddish hair, Madam Deputy Speaker—except, perhaps, out of jealousy.

If the hon. Gentleman can point to a category of people in which one in four has suffered physical or verbal assault or have been turned away from trade and sales outlets, I genuinely think that that should be looked into, but I suspect that he cannot name a single such category.

[Philip Davies]

I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman can prove beyond any doubt that people in any category have not been discriminated against. I suspect that no research has been done to ascertain whether people with the characteristics that I have mentioned have or have not experienced discrimination. It just so happens that the characteristic identified by him has been the subject of research by Lord Ashcroft—whose excellent polling activities I am sure we all welcome—and the hon. Gentleman knows about it for that reason. There may be other discrimination issues that we do not yet know about because no such polling has been carried out.

[Rory Stewart]

It may be worth looking at the statistics. My instinct tells me that employees of railway companies are more likely to suffer physical or verbal assault than members of the armed forces. That is just one example of another category.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. Indeed, I think that we could go somewhat further. We have probably all come across evidence of people working in jobcentres who have faced terrible abuse because they have had to turn someone down for a benefit. As I have said, we all appreciate the work done by our armed forces, but I struggle to understand why attacking someone for being a member of the armed forces—bad though that is—should necessarily be considered any worse than attacking someone simply for being a member of staff at a jobcentre who happened to implement a policy that he or she was employed to implement. Surely those attacks are equally unacceptable and equally unjustifiable.

Similarly, we hear of accident and emergency staff being subjected to terrible attacks and abuse on a regular basis, and I consider that to be as unacceptable and unjustifiable as any attack on someone simply for being a member of the armed forces. I cannot for the life of me understand why the hon. Gentleman wants to restrict himself to members of the armed forces. If he feels that a certain category of people should not be abused simply because of the role that they perform, surely he must want to extend that to those in all the other occupations I have mentioned. If he does not, I should like to know why. It seems to me that they, too, do a fantastic job in the public service, and should be recognised for that reason.

[Thomas Docherty]

I do not think that I need probe my own logic. My position is absolutely clear. I have established that there is a systemic problem: evidence provided, with the support of the Ministry of Defence, shows that one in four members of our armed forces has suffered physical or verbal assault, or other forms of discrimination. The MOD has yet to provide any evidence to refute that. As I said, it promised last year to undertake a study, but has so far failed to do so.

[Philip Davies]

We seem to be going round in circles, and I am trying to resist doing that, because I am sure we all want to hear from the Minister.

I have not yet heard anyone—including my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border—deny that people may well, on occasion, feel that they have been discriminated against or abused simply because of their membership of the armed forces. I have heard no one disagree with that premise as yet. The fact is, however—and this is what the hon. Gentleman does not seem to accept—that the same thing happens to plenty of other people simply as a consequence of their jobs. Staff in jobcentres, people who work in accident and emergency departments, and other public sector workers who do a fantastic job for the country should not suffer assaults and abuse either, and yet they do.

I do not want to start trying to decide which jobs are more important than others, because I do not think that would be particularly healthy. They are all crucial jobs. We all rely on the people who do those jobs, and, in my view, they all deserve equal protection before the law. For instance, I cannot think of anything that the hon. Gentleman has said that would not apply to police officers. They get terrible abuse simply for being police officers. I hear them being called all sorts of names that are totally unacceptable. The police do a fantastic job.

Where the law does apply specifically to the police is the special offence for an assault on a police constable in execution of his duty. I might be reasonably sympathetic to the hon. Gentleman’s case if he came along and said, “I think that what happens for the armed forces should mirror what happens for the police,” but he is not trying to bring in an equivalent measure. He is trying to bring in something completely different which has nothing to do with the execution of duties. It simply relates to the occupation of members of our armed forces.

My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border touched on the point that there is a slight irony in the Bill and I want to highlight it. Clause 2, on the prohibition of discrimination, is designed to ensure that members of the armed forces are treated equally with everybody else in the country. It is a perfectly laudable aim that people should be treated equally. It is one that I agree with. However, clause 1 tries to ensure that members of the armed forces are not treated equally compared with everybody else, but that in some respects they should be treated differently from other people in the eyes of the law. I have always thought that an essential tenet of the law is that everybody is equal in the face of it. I think that should apply to victims as well as people who commit crimes. We should not be trying to separate out different categories of people. We should look at the offence committed and prosecute people based on the seriousness of the offence, and the victim should be treated equally whoever the victim happens to be, based on what happened to them. When we start trying to pick and choose and say attacks on one category of people are more serious than those on another, we are going down a dangerous road.

There are some exceptions; my hon. Friend touched on them. I particularly feel that attacks on people who have a disability are especially abhorrent for all sorts of reasons, but the main one is that they are often vulnerable people who are in no position to defend themselves. Cruelty to children can be put in a similar category. But these are all matters of individual viewpoint and down to our own values.

Beyond that, however, it becomes very difficult to decide which person is more important and which offence is more suitable simply based on the fact of who has been attacked as opposed to the nature of the offence.

[Bob Stewart]

But Members of our armed forces are different. They are treated differently. They are subject to civil law and on top of that they have to answer to military law. In that respect, they are different to everyone else.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend says that, but, of course, police officers would say their terms and conditions are very different from the situation of people in everyday life; they do not have the same protections. Also, what he does not refer to in making that point is that this Bill’s reach goes way beyond people who are currently in service. It talks about people who have been in service. It also talks about relatives of people who are in service, and the Bill’s definition of a relative specifies that it “shall mean any relative.” We are not even talking about parents or siblings, therefore; we are talking about any relative no matter how distant they may be. I am not entirely sure on what basis my hon. Friend thinks they should be protected compared with everybody else. I see absolutely no justification for that, yet there it is on the face of the Bill. The hon. Gentleman has made a special case for any relative, which I think goes way beyond what even my hon. Friend believes is reasonable. It worries me that what the hon. Gentleman is doing is trying to send a signal—make a political point—rather than provide a serious basis for what the law of the land should be.

I want to make a couple of other brief points, explaining how I think the hon. Gentleman would be better served. First, offences against people in the public sector and in public service is already an aggravating factor in the law. Given the Minister’s background, she will know all about that. The sentencing guidelines on assault, for example, have as an aggravating factor an offence committed

“against those working in the public sector or providing a service to the public.”

Given that that is already in the sentencing guidelines, I am not entirely sure why we need a new law. Judges can take that into account as an aggravating factor when it comes to passing sentence. On that basis alone, the Bill is unnecessary.

There is a great irony. Although it is not like me to get party political about such matters, I have to say that the hon. Gentleman represents a party which, when it was in government, introduced a law that insisted that people who were sent to prison had to be released—not had to be eligible for release—halfway through their sentence irrespective of the crime they had committed. The shadow Minister was part of that Government and so is more culpable in that matter.

If the Bill is aimed at people who commit assaults and attacks on members of the armed forces, it would be far better and more productive if the hon. Gentleman were to work to scrap that law passed under the previous Labour Government, to ensure that when people are sent to prison they serve in full the sentence handed down by the courts. That would ensure that those people whom he wants to see spend longer in prison actually do spend longer in prison. If he wants to go down that line, it would be far more productive if we ensured that everybody served their sentence in full.

Everyone in the country was absolutely horrified at what happened to Drummer Lee Rigby. I am not sure whether that was what prompted the hon. Gentleman to introduce this Bill. The Government have already changed the law in relation to those who are convicted of the murder of transsexuals and people with disability. The starting point for their life sentence and the minimum sentence they should serve has gone up. If that is what he wanted to do—to make the starting point for a conviction for the murder of a member of the armed forces 30 years as it is for those other hate crimes where a murder is involved—he should have tried to ensure that we rejected the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights on life sentences and followed the line that if someone is sentenced to life in prison for murder, they serve the rest of their life in prison.

If the hon. Gentleman really wants people who are committing those particular offences to serve the time in prison that we all want them to serve, it would be far better to ensure that life means life and that prisoners serve their sentences in full. That would achieve what both he and I want, which is for serious offenders to be treated properly no matter who the victim is. That would suit the people in the armed forces who are victims of these crimes; they would see that justice had been done.

Although we can all agree with the sentiment behind the Bill—that we should support our armed forces and that we think any attack on them or discrimination against them is unjustifiable and unnecessary—I, like my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border, think that passing a Bill to send a signal is not what this House should do. On that basis, I cannot support it. I hope that the Minister will come down on the side of my hon. Friend and me, and not think that this Bill is the right vehicle with which to proceed.