Immunity for Soldiers

Debate between Steve Baker and John Penrose

Monday 20th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Penrose]

I certainly am. I hope to come on to at least some initial comments about the actions we might be able to take as a Parliament, a Government and a society.

[Mr Baker]

Will the Minister allow me?

[John Penrose]

Very briefly, and then I must make progress.

[Mr Baker]

I am sure we are all concerned to get to root causes, so I hope the Minister will get to the Stormont House agreement.

[John Penrose]

That is indeed one of the points I will make when we come to the actions. I will briefly mention the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who made one of the most emotional contributions; he served, I think, in Northern Ireland himself, and he is absolutely right in his enjoinder that we must all be honourable and do right by our veterans.

One of the most thoughtful examples of controlled anger of the afternoon came from my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), who said that we must do more. I think everybody here would agree with that. He also said that we are not asking for an amnesty for war crimes and that a statute of limitations, pure and simple, cannot work because there should never be a time limit on serious criminal behaviour, although he also said that something around the announced presumption of non-prosecution looks promising. In a point that I think we would all echo, my hon. Friend was also rightly contemptuous of the false narrative of hope that the legal teams of the lawfare profession are using to manipulate victims’ grief.

I will not go through everybody, but I wanted to say that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) rightly stated the point I was just making: the fact that this is UK law rather than service abroad cannot be used as an excuse for failing to help Northern Ireland service versus service abroad. That cannot stand, and it is a deep injustice.

I am under pressure of time, so I will gloss over some of the other comments, but they were all valid. My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset, himself a former Grenadier Guard, made the point that our words must match our actions, and he is right. My hon. Friend the Member for Wells, a former rifleman, asked how legal cases can justly be tried decades later, after the fog of war has passed.

My right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), himself a former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and thus a man with personal experience of many of these policy issues, said something that, again, I think would be echoed rightly around this Chamber: no further legal process should happen unless there is clear and categorical new evidence, a point also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts), who said we should not go anywhere near what used to be called the double jeopardy rule, under which someone cannot be tried twice for the same offence.

What must we achieve? We must achieve an answer that will do several things. Of course it must work for veterans in the armed forces, but it must also work for former police officers, prison guards and wardens too. They are not in the armed forces and they work on a different legal basis, but the answer must work for them as well. It must work for innocent, peaceful Catholics and Protestants alike in Northern Ireland—people who have never served or wanted to serve, but were potentially in the line of fire from some of the actions that look place.

Our answer must work for the victims and the families of the victims. We have heard some of that, but it needs to be emphasised. Most importantly, it must work in court so that, when the inevitable legal challenges come from the lawfare brigade, this thing is robust and stands up; if it does not, we will have failed in our duty to protect our former servicemen and women. There is no point coming up with something that sounds great, but falls over the first time a clever lawyer pokes it in court. That will not stand.

Finally—I have treble-underlined this in my notes—our answer must draw a line and allow people to move on. It must allow not only the victims and the veterans, but the whole society in Northern Ireland, to draw a line. That is why I come back to the point made by the Chairman of the Defence Committee. There is not an exact comparison between Northern Ireland, which is a unique place, and South Africa, but there are many parallels. We must find some way of creating an approach that will allow people to get closure, truth and justice.

What I hope and expect we will do is, first, to publish very soon the results of the consultation so we can all see what people in Northern Ireland genuinely think about the details of the questions. Secondly, promptly after that, I expect us to announce the Government response, which must be actions, not words. The Stormont proposals are a starting point, but there are genuine concerns on all sides about the details of those proposals. They cannot stand as they are, but they are a good starting point and we need to work on the details of how we modify them so that we can bring forward a Bill.

The crucial thing is the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green: when natural justice collides with the law, the law must change. That is what we do here.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Steve Baker and John Penrose

Committee: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baker]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. and learned Friend, and I would be happy to meet him, our legal team and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield to take their suggestions on board. I am keen to address this, and I know that the Secretary of State is keen to do so, but I am not in a position today to have tabled or accepted an amendment. I ask them to bear with me and have further meetings with us and our legal teams to try to find a way through.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

The Minister is being very generous and carefully considered in his responses. May I just check what he has said? Is he saying that he intends, if he can, to bring forward an amendment, perhaps on Report, to fix this, after these conversations have taken place, given the sympathy he says both he and the Secretary of State have for the amendments, or is he unable to give that promise to the Committee?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Baker]

I think what we would say to the hon. and learned Lady is that “appropriate” will follow the plain English definition, which she will find in various places, but what I want to do is move on.

I want to set out why it is important that the test of appropriateness extends to the use of the power in clauses 8 and 17, to which the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber has tabled amendments 205, 207, 208 and 216. For example, leaving the EU, the customs union and the single market may alter the way in which the UK complies with its international legal obligations in relation to taxation, and there will not always be a clear single choice about how to comply with those obligations. Clause 8 will give Ministers the flexibility, as necessary, to make those changes. Using the word “necessary” would risk constraining the use of the power to the extent that where it is appropriate for the UK to adjust our domestic legislation to ensure compliance with international obligations but where there are multiple ways to do so, we might not be able to ensure compliance with our important obligations under international law, thereby undermining the core intention of clause 8.

[John Penrose]

rose—

[Mr Baker]

I shall be here for some hours if I take too many interventions, but I will give way to my hon. Friend.

European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Steve Baker and John Penrose

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baker]

A great many fascinating and important points have been made about impartiality of the media and spending by political parties. I will speak briefly about amendment 22 and my amendment (a) to amendment 2, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), which deals with the EU institutions and their spending.

It has been put to me that if the EU institutions spent heavily in the referendum campaign, it would greatly assist the campaign to leave, particularly if some of the Commissioners came over on speaking tours and explained their plans for a federal Europe. Notwithstanding that, it is a matter of concern that the EU institutions might end up being the only unregulated parties in the course of the campaign. I am therefore keen to hear the Minister’s thoughts on spending by the EU institutions, but I know we all want to hear him cover the wide range of points made during the debate, so I shall sit down.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)]

This is a very large group of amendments, covering almost the entirety of the Bill, it is late and I have less than 10 minutes, so I shall skip lightly over anything covered during Committee stage with the Leader of the House and focus on the new points and the new areas raised this evening. I commend all the Government amendments in the group and will try to summarise the most important ones briefly, before moving on to some of the others in the group.

First, there are amendments dealing with changes to the campaign rules. They broadly have the support of the Electoral Commission and will ensure that the Bill and PPERA operate together and that campaigning is fair and transparent. They include changes to allow the lead campaigns to be designated quickly if needed, so that they do not cut into the short 10-week campaign period, and to allow the Electoral Commission to reject applications from campaigners with offensive or obscene names. Second are the amendments dealing with changes to the administration rules. They are all technical and deal primarily with the interaction between UK law and Gibraltarian law. Third are amendments responding to concerns raised by Members in previous debates to rule out holding the referendum on 4 May 2017 and to add Irish citizens resident in Gibraltar to the franchise.

I will deal first with clause 2 and the referendum franchise. Quite a lot of this was dealt with in Committee, and given the limited time, I will have to skip very lightly over it. I will, however, mention Government amendment 24, which makes a small change to permit Irish citizens resident in Gibraltar to vote in the referendum to bring equality to who can vote in the UK and Gibraltar. The Government of Gibraltar support the change, and I am pleased to see consensus across the House with an Opposition amendment for the same purpose, amendment 18, having been tabled. I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) for raising the matter in Committee.

Given the limited time I have, I do not propose to spend a great deal of time—in fact, any—on votes at 16, because we covered it in Committee. I will come back to the issue of EU citizens at the end, if time allows, but there is an awful lot of other ground to cover.

As I said, the Government amendments on campaigning broadly have the support of the Electoral Commission and will ensure that the Bill and PPERA operate together and that campaigning is fair and transparent. On designation and the time allowed for the campaign, we have proposed changes which I hope will please my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), as they address concerns he raised with me in Committee and again this evening. He was worried that we should have a full 16-week campaign and that designation should not eat into the final 10-week short campaign period. I promised him that we would find an answer to make sure that it did not. These changes mean that the required statutory instrument to fix the date for the referendum should, as is usual for an affirmative resolution, take six weeks to go through the House. Only once that process is complete does the 10-week short campaign period start. Obviously, six plus 10 equals 16. I hope that my hon. Friend and others will be reassured that we will have adequate time to debate during that entire 16-week period.

Equally, it is important that the designation process means that the decision on who are the lead campaign groups for the in and the out campaigns is properly arrived at that and those groups are clearly designated before the start of the 10-week campaign, since that will allow them to access the money that designation as lead campaign groups allows and also to spend that money correctly to put their points as strongly as possible during the last 10 weeks of the campaign. We have therefore decided to table an amendment that will allow the designation process to be done via a negative resolution and, if necessary, for that resolution to take effect immediately on the day, at the latest, that the SI setting the date for the referendum is tabled. That will mean that while the SI setting the date is going through Parliament, the work by the Electoral Commission to designate lead campaign groups can be going on in parallel and will be complete on or before the start of the 10-week period so that designation will be complete in time for the full 10 weeks to be carried out properly. I hope that that answers, very briefly, the major concerns that were raised in Committee and again here today.

I should also mention that the negative resolution I have described would need to take effect very promptly on the day that it was tabled. That is unusual; we usually wait for two to three weeks after tabling something before it takes effect. I have already spoken to the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments to discuss the importance and exceptionality of getting the provision to take effect immediately rather than after three weeks. I look forward to working with him on this wherever possible.

I now move on to some of the non-Government amendments. Amendment 1, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, would require that the referendum period be no shorter than 16 weeks. I hope we have already dealt with that and therefore do not propose to dwell on it any more strongly.

Amendment 3, also in the name of my hon. Friend, would require that the legislation be clear at least six months before it is required to be implemented or complied with. I think that his rationale is based on the Electoral Commission recommendation that the rules be clear six months before they are enforced. We can satisfy that recommendation in a slightly brisker and less onerous fashion, because we have already published the detailed draft regulations on how the vote should be held. They have been available in the Commons Library since July, and the Electoral Commission has been assessing them carefully too. The rules will already have been extremely clear for six months by spring next year, and I hope that that will give everybody plenty of chance to consider and absorb the details and subtleties as needed. I hope that my hon. Friend will therefore be able to withdraw his amendment.

New clause 11 deals with spending caps, which were mentioned by a number of colleagues. The new clause would mean that all political parties seeking to campaign in the referendum would not be able to spend, in total, more than £14 million. This would replace the individual spending limit set for political parties that register as permitted participants under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone is seeking to reduce the impact that political parties—presumably the major ones—can have in campaigning in the referendum, but I am afraid that the new clause would not necessarily achieve what he may intend. For example, assuming that the 11 parties had secured between them 99% of the general election vote, the Lib Dems and the UK Independence party would find that their spending limit fell by between 55% and 60% compared with the levels currently set in PPERA, and the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the Democratic Unionist party would find their allocations falling by over 90%. Instead of £700,000 each, Plaid Cymru, for example, would be stuck with a limit of £84,000.

If political parties wanted to get round my hon. Friend’s proposal they could simply register several other permitted participants and funnel any extra money that they might have into them. Their total spending would be well above the limit that he suggests, and the new clause would not be able to stop it. It also opens up the option for political game playing, whereby parties may not want to campaign but simply register to impact on and reduce the limits of other political rivals. That would not reflect well on the quality of rules underpinning the referendum. I therefore hope that he will be able to withdraw the new clause.

I hope that I can reassure my hon. Friends in relation to the various amendments on the European Commission’s role. For a start, neither EU institutions nor foreign Governments are legally permitted donors under UK election law, so any campaign group that took money from them would be committing an offence. I note that the Electoral Commission announced on Friday that it does not support the amendments for that reason. There are well-tested rules, modelled on election rules, to prevent anyone from circumventing that by using middlemen. Equally, to take an example entirely at random, if my hon. Friends are considering supporting the out campaign, I gently suggest that any attempt by the EU to interfere in the campaign would be a huge boost to my hon. Friends’ side, and although the EU is many things, it is not stupid, so I suspect that it already understands that point.

Time is very tight, but I propose to speak very briefly about the changes proposed to broadcasters’ impartiality. I simply say that the existing regulators already have many of the required powers; the question is about turning principle into practice and getting them to use those powers. I am delighted to confirm that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has urged them to do so. I therefore hope that we will not need to add any further regulators to the panoply that already exists.

I will sit down to leave the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), who moved the lead amendment, a few moments to round off the debate.