Awards for Valour (Protection) Bill

Stephen Doughty Excerpts

Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 24th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. New clauses 8 and 9, in many respects, go together. If we had a sunset clause, we would need to be able to measure the success, or otherwise, of the legislation, and the reporting set out in new clause 8 would help with that task. He is right to draw attention to the fact that, in many respects, new clauses 8 and 9, though not reliant on each other, flow nicely from each other.

I appreciate that that was a quick canter around the course of new clauses.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I listened closely to the hon. Gentleman as he set out his new clauses, but I wonder whether he actually read the Official Report of the Public Bill Committee, where the Bill enjoyed strong support from Members on both sides of the Committee, including from former members of the armed forces. Many of the issues he raises have already been addressed, particularly those on mental health and family members wearing medals. Why is he continuing to frustrate this process?

[Philip Davies]

If the points had already been covered, my amendments and new clauses would not have been selected. They were selected because those points are not covered by the Bill. That is the whole point. I cannot table an amendment to do something that is already in the Bill, because it would not be an amendment. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman has not grasped that basic point during his time in the House.

Let me now deal with my amendments. Amendment 1 seeks to remove clause 1(b). The Bill refers to

“something which has the appearance of being an award”.

It is one thing to have an offence relating to people wearing actual medals, but it is quite another to extend this to something with the “appearance” of a medal. The whole Bill is rather over the top, but this takes it one stage further. If someone can be guilty of a criminal offence by wearing, in an attempt to deceive, something that looks like something else but is not that thing, I worry where we are going with our legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I thought that my hon. Friend was going to make a sensible point, rather than bandying about more accusations. I am trying to improve his Bill. The fact is that, by his own admission, he brought forward a Bill that was a bit of a dog’s breakfast, because he changed it radically in Committee. If he had had his way, his Bill would have gone through on the nod; no one would have said anything and it would have gone through in its original form, which he accepts was a dog’s dinner of a Bill; it is now half a dog’s dinner. I accept that he made some improvements in Committee, but just because he is on a tight timescale is no basis on which to pass legislation in this House. It cannot be appropriate to say, “Well, I know that it is not a very good Bill, that there are deficiencies in it and that there are lots of concerns with it, but, I tell you what, we are on a bit of a tight timescale so we will forget about all that, just nod it through and to hell with the consequences.” Are we saying that, if someone gets sent to prison and gets a criminal record when no one in this House ever intended that they should get a criminal record, then so be it—hard cheese? That might be the attitude that my hon. Friend takes, but it is not one that I take. We must take these provisions seriously.

[Stephen Doughty]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

No, I will not give way. The hon. Gentleman has not yet made any sensible contributions. He seems to talk a load of old nonsense, so I will press on with the whole point of my amendments, which is to try to turn this Bill into something worth while. We still have other days on which to consider other private Members’ Bills in this Session. I hope that we can conclude this if time allows.

[Stephen Doughty]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

No, I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Perhaps if the Bill had been drawn as narrowly as my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford is now trying to draw it, it may well have been acceptable to all concerned. Unfortunately, he did not do so, and decided to go way over the top to include all sorts of people who were never envisaged to be included originally. That is why we must try to sort out some of these issues.

[Stephen Doughty]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

No, I will not. I am going to crack on.

[Stephen Doughty]

You’re scared.

[Philip Davies]

The idea that I am scared of the hon. Gentleman is bizarre, particularly given that he did not even understand what an amendment was in his first intervention. He has a lot of learning to do.

I have dealt with the custodial sentence part of the Bill. Now, I come to the part on fines. I am trying to reduce the level of fines because they are disproportionate. With the way the Bill is drafted, it seems that somebody could be given an unlimited fine by the courts for this offence. Again, I cannot honestly see how an unlimited fine is appropriate for committing this offence, but that is what it would be in England and Wales following the changes to fines a few years ago. It would be rather different in Scotland and Northern Ireland, with a maximum of £5,000, which is still too high. Amendments 16 to 23 are about reducing the level of fine from unlimited to something more manageable. I have suggested a range of options. The lowest I have gone down to is £200, which is a level one fine in the courts, and I have gone up to a level four fine, which is £2,500. At least that sets a limit because an unlimited fine seems rather over the top.

Clause 1(4) provides that the Secretary of State may change the schedule of medals at any point. Amendment 24 would mean that the Secretary of State may not change the schedule of medals. When my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford introduced the Bill, he said that the challenge in drafting it was knowing where to stop. As I have said before, he may know where he wants to stop but, as with many things, where the legislation stops and where other people might want to stop are the most important. We should not encourage legislation giving the Secretary of State unlimited power to change the schedule willy-nilly. It obviously has the potential to apply to many more medals and other awards for non-armed forces personnel—and, in many cases, why not? But we should not be giving the Secretary of State that power. Amendments 25 to 27 are consequential amendments to that.

Clause 1(5)(b)(ii) states:

“The regulations may add an award to the Schedule only if it is awarded in respect of…a level of rigour significantly greater than might normally be expected in a non-operational environment.”

If the right to include medals in the future remains, it should only apply to those involving danger to life from enemy action, not

“a level of rigour significantly greater than might normally be expected in a non-operational environment.”

I am not sure who would be the ultimate judge of or who would determine the phrase

“greater than might normally be expected”.

Amendment 28 would deal with that issue.

Amendment 29 would delete the wide-ranging provisions regulations. Why do we need to hand over all these powers to make regulations that are in the Bill? Surely these things should be on the face of the Bill. Amendments 31 to 34 would delay the Act coming into force by two months, four months, 10 months or a year and 10 months respectively.

I have been through my amendments as quickly as I could. They would all make the Bill stronger and deal with some of the potential unintended consequences that were not envisaged when the Bill was conceived. I hoped that my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford would have taken them in the spirit in which they were intended. I could have gone on at greater length on every single one of those amendments, but I went through them all as quickly as I could. I hope they are helpful because I worry that if we are not careful, we will end up criminalising not the people who my hon. Friend wants to criminalise, but people who we never had any intention at all of criminalising. That is all I seek to avoid in this legislation, and that is a duty that we should take very seriously.

Giving someone a criminal offence is a serious matter; it is not something that should be taken lightly—it can have devastating consequences for people—and the same is true of sending people to prison. Yes, of course we want to expose Walter Mitty, but do we really want to criminalise and imprison Walter Mitty? That is where I draw the line with this legislation. If we think we are sending too many burglars and robbers to prison, surely the solution cannot be to send these people to prison, too.

[Gareth Johnson]

The main purpose behind the Bill is to protect veterans. It is intended to ensure that when anybody sees someone wearing medals proudly at a remembrance service or in any other sphere, they can have confidence that that individual is the legitimate article. That has always been my intention.

I find it grotesque in the extreme that certain individuals—we have had numerous examples of them—can parade in front of others and cause deep upset, hurt and ridicule to those who have actually served and those who have lost loved ones. It is grotesque to see that bravery undermined by those who do not have the courage to put their own neck on the block for our country.

It is because of that that I put forward the Bill. Legislation has worked very successfully in many countries around the world, and it worked successfully in the United Kingdom; in fact, legislation was originally introduced by Winston Churchill after the first world war. He said that when anybody sees a person wearing medals, that should radiate an opportunity to say, “There is a man in whom we can all have confidence and pride.” That is exactly the motivation behind my Bill.

I leave it at that. There is very much more that I could say, but I hope that we can make it at least to Third Reading.

[Stephen Doughty]

I just want to add my voice in support of the Bill. The hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) has gone about it on a very cross-party basis. It is something we all support. It was gone through at great length in Committee, when many of the aspects that have been raised today were dealt with. Fundamentally, what I cannot understand is why, if the Bill is supported by decorated veterans who have put their lives on the line for this country, and indeed by Members of this House who have put their lives on the line for this country, it should not go forward.

[Mr Chope]

I want to speak briefly to some of the amendments. It is sad that there is a falling-out among people on the detail of the Bill. I do not think anybody is against making it an offence for an individual to wear medals or decorations that were never awarded to them. The problem is that the way in which the Bill has been drafted goes much wider, and is in danger of having a whole lot of unintended consequences.

If the law prior to 2009 was as simple and straightforward as I have said, why do we have to make it so much more complicated in reintroducing one of its provisions? I am sure everybody thinks it is despicable for anybody to wear medals or decorations to which they are not entitled, and we condemn that behaviour without equivocation, but that is a very different proposition from bringing in a Bill with a whole lot of other technical measures designed to widen the offence far beyond what it was originally.

I cannot understand why my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson), who is promoting the Bill, has not been able to reach an accommodation with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) in the spirit of consensus. If we do not finish the debate on this group of amendments today, it may still be possible for an accommodation to be reached before the Bill comes back to be considered further. I still hope that that will be so, because we all feel very strongly—certainly I do—that, as the promoter of the Bill says, we must protect our veterans and ensure that there is confidence that people wearing medals on parade on Remembrance Day have in fact been duly awarded those medals. In my constituency, where we have some of the finest remembrance parades anywhere in the country, I do not think there has ever been an incident where somebody who was not entitled to a medal was wearing one.

We have to think about the proportionality of the issue when working out how we are going to address it, particularly if we are to do so through the criminal law going beyond what is already contained in the Fraud Act 2006. I suspect that the provisions that were previously in place on the wearing of medals or decorations that were not awarded were repealed in 2009 because it was thought that the offence was covered by the Fraud Act. Under that Act, it is an offence to make, or attempt to make, a financial gain by fraudulently wearing uniforms or medals or by pretending to be, or to have been, in the armed forces, with a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment. It is a very serious offence, and so it should be. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford is trying, in a sense, to replicate part of that, and using emotional arguments in support of it, while not drawing the public’s attention to the fact that these are already serious offences subject to a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment. So why do we need this Bill? In particular, why do we need a Bill that goes unnecessarily wide in its sanctions and its interpretation of what would be the criminal behaviour?

That is why the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley are well worth considering. Of all his amendments, I cannot understand why anybody would be against amendment 1, because it would mean that clause 1 would read,

“A person commits an offence if, with intent to deceive, the person wears…an award specified in the Schedule”,

and would no longer include a reference to

“something which has the appearance of being an award specified in the Schedule.”

I cannot see why my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford is not prepared to accept that amendment. I hope that given a bit more time for reflection, he may be willing so to do.

Some of the other amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley have a lot to commend them. It is sensible that the offence of wearing awards with intent to deceive should be triable summarily, bearing in mind that under the Fraud Act, as I said, there is a maximum of 10 years’ imprisonment, and no summary trial, for much more serious offences. We do not want people to be criminalised for what is, in effect, frivolous conduct on their part. That is why the suggestion in new clause 3 that this should apply only to wearing awards in a public place is very sensible. My hon. Friend referred to what goes on in public houses, but I am not so sure that I am necessarily persuaded on that point. Nor am I sure that he is necessarily very knowledgeable about what goes on in public houses, because he is teetotal. I might therefore be able to give him the excuse of not having fully comprehended that matter.

New clause 5 is well worth considering, as is the issue of post-traumatic stress disorder. One issue the whole debate raises is how we deal with private Members’ Bills in Committee, because if they are completely changed in Committee—