Overseas Operations (Service Personnel And Veterans) Bill

Stephen Farry Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)]

Sadly, I rise to speak in opposition to the Bill, but at the outset, I place on record my enormous respect for all those who have served the UK in uniform and have acted in various theatres around the world with great honour and distinction, and from my perspective, for those who served under Operation Banner in Northern Ireland. In saying that, we have to recognise that at times things have gone very badly wrong in Northern Ireland, and there are legitimate issues around accountability and investigations in that respect.

The Bill is regrettable in its own terms, but we are seeing quite a lot of Members referring to the pending legislation regarding Northern Ireland, and I want to make a couple of comments on that at the outset. Dealing with the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland is an even more thorny and difficult issue than Brexit, to put it in some context. It is something that people have been wrestling with for over 20 years. We have had the basis of some type of agreement through the Stormont House agreement from 2015, which the Government have struggled to implement over the past five years. I want to say this very loud and clear, so that everyone is aware: if this Parliament acts unilaterally over one aspect of legacy in Northern Ireland—around veterans—they will destroy any prospect of an agreed way forward to deal with the contentious past in Northern Ireland. This has to be a rounded process, and it has to involve all the parties in Northern Ireland, the victims’ groups in Northern Ireland and the Irish Government. Those have not been the characteristics of what we have seen so far with the statement from 18 March.

The narrative of vexatious prosecutions is one that I do not recognise. We have seen many claims of this from Ministers and others, but we never hear any reference to particular cases, so it is a narrative. Indeed, it has been debunked on many occasions by eminent persons—most recently, by the Lord Chief Justice in Northern Ireland. I have to say, I am somewhat bemused to see the references to the former Attorney General for Northern Ireland, John Larkin, as somehow the intellectual force behind what is happening, because he has been far from infallible, as many people in Northern Ireland will recognise, over the past number of years.

The triple lock in the Bill will make things more difficult, because it undermines the whole legitimacy of the people who served in Northern Ireland and overseas. They feel they do not need the system to be rigged and changed to give them an advantage. They can stand on their legacy. They were serving to uphold democracy, human rights and good governance—the values we need to project around the world.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Does the hon. Gentleman think it might also cause difficulty because part of the triple lock is a political decision, which might, particularly with the balance in Northern Ireland, cause real mistrust?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Farry]

Indeed. I see a lack of accountability around those measures. The checks are very ill defined. We have had a pattern of substandard investigations, and that is often what lies behind some of the concern arising around the narrative of vexatious claims: the standard of investigations catches up with that. There will, of course, be the opportunity for more rigorous investigations to happen sooner, when issues are raised, and hopefully that will address the issue. However, whenever I hear references to human rights potentially having to be compromised to get the Bill through and have a new basis for dealing with claims, we should all be extremely concerned.

It is worth recalling that one of the very few rights under the European convention that cannot be qualified in any circumstances is the freedom from torture. We should reflect very heavily on that. It is eminently possible for people to serve and have clear rules of engagement that can be respected without going into situations that compromise either human rights law or humanitarian law.