Immunity for Soldiers

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Southport (Damien Moore) for bringing the debate.

It is a common truism and an error when people pay credit to debates by saying they are the most important they have heard; on this occasion, that is not an exaggeration. We have been privileged to hear some extraordinary testimony, not just from eye witnesses, but from people who have made it their business to study this awful, tragic business over many years. On the one hand, we have the ugly, unfortunate and unacceptable image of pensioners being dragged from the golf course, but on the other hand we have to look into the eyes of those whose relatives were killed. I am glad that some people mentioned the victims; it is important to mention them.

We have to ask ourselves: are we seriously saying that at no stage, at any time in the 30 years of Operation Banner, no person in British Army uniform committed murder? I think we all know that there were incidents: four soldiers were convicted of murder during that period, although in one instance, the case was then downgraded to manslaughter. All four were sentenced to life imprisonment; all four were released by the royal prerogative after fewer than five years; and all four rejoined the British Army. I have not met a single person serving or formerly serving in the armed forces who has anything but contempt for soldiers who break their oath and act outside the area that they should; that is incredibly important. We have to recognise that there are two sides. Obviously, we have sympathy for people.

In many ways the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts) encapsulated the heart of the problem. He implied—he may have meant to do more than that—that we should have prosecuted at the time; the problem is justice delayed. As these cases were not prosecuted at the time, we are led to the present situation. To have prosecuted at the time might have been more sensible.

The hon. Member for Southport said that over 3,000 people died during the troubles; that bears repetition. Probably the most chilling statistic I have ever heard is that more than that number have killed themselves since the Good Friday agreement. There have been over 3,000 suicides in Northern Ireland. That tells us something about the continuation of the horror that has bitten deep into the soul. When we hear the testimony of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—I call him my friend—we realise how raw these emotions still are. That is why, if at all humanly possible, we have to be as dispassionate as we can be. That is not easy. We are talking about points of law, and about decisions that we take in this House that will echo down the ages, for years to come; we have to be cautious and careful in what we say.

My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) rightly referred to the chain of command, which has not been discussed overmuch. In some cases, ordinary troops—ordinary soldiers, ordinary sailors, ordinary airmen and women—were let down by the chain of command.

That brings me to the extraordinary speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). I was privileged to be in the House on the incredible occasion when he quoted Kipling:

“it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Chuck him out, the brute!’

But it’s ‘Saviour of ’is country’ when the guns begin to shoot”.

I never saw active service, but from the emotion that he showed on that occasion and has shown today, I felt the real importance of the debate.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman spoke about the yellow card. There has been much discussion about the yellow card, but I think we need to have a few facts. It was amended six times between 1969 and 1972, and was never, ever intended to supersede the common law, which gives the right of self-defence. Nobody ever suggested that the yellow card was anything other than a source of guidance; it did not supersede the common law. The central point is that the law has to apply to all on every occasion.

[Mr Francois]

Will the shadow Minister give way?

[Stephen Pound]

I happily give way to the former Defence Minister.

[Mr Francois]

I am grateful. Will the hon. Gentleman remind us what colour the card was that the IRA had to abide by before opening fire on civilians or servicemen?

[Stephen Pound]

If there is one thing that has echoed round this Chamber today, it is that there is no equivalence between troops and terrorists—between people who wear uniform and people who wear balaclavas. I am sorry, but I resent the right hon. Gentleman’s point; I think that the attempt to make it demeans the quality of the debate. He was a very distinguished Defence Minister, and he speaks with good sense on many occasions, but that point was slightly unworthy of him.

The hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) rightly spoke about the rule of law. He mentioned something that I still find almost too agonising to think about: the on-the-run letters. I can do no better than quote Mark Durkan, formerly of this parish, who said that he felt those letters blighted the peace process

“with their penchant for side deals, pseudo-deals…shabby deals and secret deals”.—[Official Report], 26 February 2014, c. 249.]

That is recognised on this side of the House, and I hope on all sides. They are not defensible, and we would not seek to defend them today.

The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) raised an extremely interesting point, to which a few others have referred: the almost unbearable tension in the mind of a 17, 18 or 19-year-old person who knows that at any minute something they do could have lethal consequences—against them, or from them. That is the point: it is just as terrifying for them to think of the damage they could do to someone as to think of the damage that that person could do to them. The point that the right hon. Gentleman made about that fear is something that only people who have been in the situation can understand, and I am grateful to have heard what he said. The hon. Member for Strangford talked about the environment of tension, and that is something we need to talk about.

The hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) widened the horizons of the debate, and talked about IHAT and lawfare. I have no case to make for lawfare or those ambulance-chasing scoundrels of lawyers who somehow manage to infest the lower reaches of the legal system like foul leeches, trying to take blood from our people. I have no time for those people who came up with trumped-up cases to embarrass, and in many cases threaten and terrify, people who had served with distinction and honour. I have no time for those leeches, those bloodsuckers, those ambulance-chasing scumbags.

[Robert Courts]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Pound]

I have another half-dozen insults to go. I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman has today confessed in public to being a lawyer, so if he wants to redress the balance, I happily give way to him.

[Robert Courts]

I was enjoying listening to the stream of insults, but I feel I should perhaps stick up for my profession and reiterate my point that lawyers just interpret the law as it stands. It is for Ministers to act and Parliament to make the law. If there is a problem, as many of us will accept there is, it is for us to deal with it, and not blame the lawyers.

[Stephen Pound]

Fabrication of evidence is not a legal requirement of the British Parliament. We have not at any stage stated in part 3, paragraph (27)(b) of schedule 2, “thou shalt go forth and fabricate evidence”. There are more than enough cases in which people have fallen way short of the high standards of the legal profession so gloriously and elegantly exemplified by the hon. Gentleman.

I have heard many speeches by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), and have never regretted a second that I spent listening to them, because he speaks with profound good sense. Today he gave us the slightly unusual perspective of the man in the caravan in the masonic hall car park. Again, he made the point about the impact of tension on young people. Often in groups of young people in such a situation, one person tends to lead, and if there is one person in a platoon with a contemptuous and contemptible attitude towards the people they are supposed to be protecting, that will often ratchet up. A person will say things that are unforgivable, and other people in the platoon, in the file, or on the mess deck, will be uncomfortable about challenging it. That happens with human behaviour. It is human. It is important to realise it.

We cannot mention too often the name of the late Captain Robert Nairac. We are at the anniversary of his disappearance and death. What a tragic waste of a life it was. It was one of 3,500, by all means, but he was a man who gave his all—everything—for his country, and I do not think that we can forget him.

I found it extraordinarily moving when the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) talked about arriving, as a newly commissioned officer, in civvies on a civilian transport into Northern Ireland, and finding he was in a country—a place—he did not recognise. Is that not part of the problem? On our relationship with “John Bull’s Other Island”, we often do not understand Ireland or the Irish. It would have been even more honest of the hon. Gentleman to say that he had, perhaps, some preconceptions about Ireland, but he had the courage to say that when he arrived there, he did not realise the full nature of the place he was coming to. I think that that shock was dramatic, and what he said was much to his credit.

[Richard Drax]

The shadow Minister is covering all the speeches that have been made with great eloquence. Can he give us a flavour of where Labour stands on what, as he clearly indicates, is a very emotive issue?

[Stephen Pound]

Yes, indeed. The hon. Gentleman will be delighted to know that our shadow Secretary of State for Defence has issued a statement via something called Twitter that sets out the whole thing. Rather than take up the time of the House, which is short, I shall send him across a copy, which enunciates precisely what we are doing.

The hon. Member for Wells (James Heappey) talked about Kabul and about a wider situation. However, what the issue comes down to, and the point I shall finish on, is that I am not precisely sure what the petitioners are asking for. They are not asking for an amnesty or for a statute of limitations, because, frankly, justice cannot be time-expired. We cannot have a situation in which a crime is a crime one day and, a few years later, is not, so I should like to know exactly what they want. If there is one thing that everybody in the Chamber agrees on, it is that this matter has been dealt with without sensitivity, subtlety or good sense. The idea of a cavalcade of police rocking up at someone’s house at 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning is indefensible. We cannot go there, so we need to be much more sensitive. If we cannot turn the clock back to investigate the cases that happened at the time, and if we are going to investigate them now, we need to be sensible. Above all, we need to remember two groups: the veterans, by all means; but also let us never forget the victims.