Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill (Third sitting)

Stuart Anderson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 8th October 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Before we move into the evidence session, are there any declarations of interest?

[Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)]

I served with General Nick Parker in the same battalion.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much.

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[The Chair]

Indeed. I think we will have the opportunity for some of the issues that the Minister has raised in the parliamentary debate and in the subsequent discussion in Committee.

[Stuart Anderson]

Q I have a supplementary question on that point. Everybody keeps talking about the longstop, but nobody brings in the one year from point of knowledge. That point of knowledge could be 25 years afterwards. We cannot have the longstop argument without that point. If there was no—[Interruption.]

[The Chair]

Just to explain it to you, General McColl, that bell is not a fire alarm or for a vote; it signals the fact that the House of Commons has suspended its sitting in the Chamber for three minutes. We will hear another bell shortly, so just be aware of that.

[Stuart Anderson]

If that one year from point of knowledge was not in there, I would get your argument. I believe that we are here to try and get the best for our service personnel and veterans. However, that one year from point of knowledge has to have the weight. That is why it has been put in there—it could be 20 to 30 years later. We heard the other day about asbestosis. That is not within a six-year period. There will be things that some in the veteran community experience in 20 years that we do not yet know exist.

Charles Byrne: We recognise and understand that there is that point of knowledge, which is a really powerful and important principle in there. Then we look at the recent sample survey of that limited pool of data and we find 19 cases where, even from point of knowledge, they would have fallen outside that six-month period. Even allowing for the point of knowledge, there are still 19 families and veterans who would not have been able to bring a case under the Bill.

[Stuart Anderson]

Q When I got involved in politics, I found out through Facebook about the armed forces covenant. When I was shot, I paid for all my own treatment. I did not get any support from the charities or anything else. I had fallen out of the system and I did not know about the covenant. I am now under the trauma unit in Birmingham, where they review me regularly. I think it was two years after that was formed, and I still did not know about it.

There has to be education about the Bill as well. I really respect the work your organisation does, but within and outside the military there is a need to educate our troops and let people know about this. How do we connect with people who are now 60 or 70 years of age and let them know about the point of knowledge? It is not all about the Bill. I believe we have a role to educate the community, which we know well, about the point of knowledge. At the armed forces breakfasts and through all the different routes of communication, we can try to reduce that number. There will always be people who fall through, but we should do everything to stop them and there is a role for education. Do you see that role?

Charles Byrne: The Legion was always the organisation that championed and brought the armed forces covenant into law, so education is part of that. In an ideal world, we would get all that is good in the Bill and we would also address this area of concern, because we would not want anybody to fall out of that. We are looking to make sure that no veteran or member of the armed forces community is disadvantaged by a six-year stop, even allowing for the point of knowledge. It does not exist today. If we were to introduce it, it would be a limit that does not exist today.

[Stuart Anderson]

I have another supplementary on that.

[The Chair]

If you have a short supplementary, you can ask it.

[Stuart Anderson]

I will come back to it.

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[Peter Gibson]

Q How would you propose to improve the Bill, if we were to improve the Bill, to rectify that? How would that be done?

Charles Byrne: That is a good and fair question, which the Minister has also asked us, to which we say, in fairness, that we think that is your job. It is our job to try to point out where it can be improved, but not how. That is a bit unfair, but that is the way it works.

[Stuart Anderson]

Q This is the first Bill Committee that I have sat on as a new MP, and I have watched the process get to where it has got to already, notwithstanding the years it has taken to get to this stage. On Second Reading, and even in our last witness session, there were multiple calls to stop the Bill. If we produced a Bill that had everything in it that the British Legion has asked for, there would still be an organisation against the Bill. I saw on Tuesday that, broadly, veterans are in favour, legal firms are not. I am trying to figure that one out and I am sure I will get there in the end. What will the impact be for the veteran community if the Bill does not pass Third Reading and come into law? I ask that to General McColl first. If the Bill is stopped, what will the impact be on the veteran community?

General Sir John McColl: Both Charles and I started off this hearing by saying that we welcomed the intent of the Bill. What veterans want to see is the pernicious harassment of veterans following operations by the legal profession stopped. If the Bill achieves that, they would regret the fact that it had been stopped.

I accept that there may be some trade-offs in doing so. Whether or not it is a breach of the covenant, there will be roughly 6% of people who may have brought cases against the MOD or the Government who can do so now and who will not be able to do so in future. We would wish to see that ameliorated. We would wish to see that in some way worked around. It is up to the Government to see if they can do that. The bottom line—I think that is what your question is getting at—is that we want to see harassment stopped. There may be some compromises required in doing that.

[Stuart Anderson]

Thank you very much, General. I know I said veterans, but I also mean serving personnel.

Charles Byrne: Thank you for that response, John, which helps to lay it out. The point of this process, and the consultation and the debate that we had, is to produce a better Bill at the end of the day. As I said before, the Minister has always been very clear that he welcomes our constructive challenge and disagreement.

You said that if this Bill addresses everything the Legion is looking for, it might not get through. There is not everything in there; there is a single focus point. There is a restriction introduced by the Bill, and if it can be removed, the Bill will be better. It seems to me that that is a good thing to do. As Sir John says, everybody wishes vexatious, pernicious claims against veterans to be addressed and reduced, and we fully support that intent. We want to make this better, which is why we have contributed and have always been very clear about our concerns in this area. If the Bill can be made better, I am sure you and veterans would welcome that.

[Stuart Anderson]

Q To follow on from that and a point you made earlier, let us say that this Bill goes through the Committee and Parliament with no changes and becomes law. Would then a major campaign from the British Legion and others to educate about that one-year point of knowledge be a core focus of what you would be looking to do?

Charles Byrne: Is this the Government offering to pay for a massive campaign from the Legion?

[Stuart Anderson]

That is outside my remit.

Charles Byrne: We are just about to go into our poppy appeal in the most difficult time we have ever had, so I would not give a commitment to any campaign. We do a lot to drive awareness of the armed forces covenant as it is, and we always have done. We are trying to build the awareness of all our services. We would welcome any support and help that you are able to give us on that.

[Stuart Anderson]

Thank you. I appreciate the comments.

[The Chair]

Are there any further questions for either witness? As there are no further questions, I thank you, General McColl for your appearance online, and thank you, Mr Byrne, for your appearance in the room. I am grateful for your forbearance with the logistical issues we are managing today. Thank you, on behalf of the Committee, for your evidence.

Examination of Witness

General (Retd) Sir Nick Parker gave evidence.

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[Joy Morrissey]

Q But if we engage in joint military operations with allies, is it not more important that we are aligned with what our military allies view as the legal framework, rather than anything else? Is that not the most important component of how we protect our servicemen and women, by all operating in the same framework—for example, if we are on a joint NATO operation overseas—and that all the countries engaged in that military operation share in the same framework?

General Sir Nick Parker: As I said, I believe that we need to be consistent with our coalition partners. All I would add is that you cannot predict who your coalition partner will be, because we do not know whom we will be fighting with in the future. Therefore, there has to be a certain consistency that is probably provided by international norms.

[Stuart Anderson]

Q General, it is good to see you. I was barely out of school when I came under your command in Dover, where you were the CO, the commanding officer. We were at very different ends of the spectrum of rank structure, but it is a pleasure to see you again.

A lot of what you discussed there is the chain of command. You talked about implementing different procedures within the chain of command. I would argue that that is an internal military adjustment, not for a Bill or other legislation, but I would then say, looking back, with your experience and what you know with hindsight—we always want to learn from the past to move forward—what would you have done differently, and what could be done differently by the chain of command, outside legislation, to protect our troops?

General Sir Nick Parker: The irony, then, is that I am now subordinate to you, an elected representative in the House, so congratulations, and—

[The Chair]

I am not sure that is how it works.

General Sir Nick Parker: I am now decaying in my shed at home.

I feel very conscious of the responsibility that I had at every level, and I am also acutely aware of the nature of the responsibility that you have as a platoon or section commander, which is different from the responsibilities you have as a company commanding officer and so on, but there is a critical connection between every level of the hierarchy that requires us to enact things like mission command effectively. So, if you are going to tell somebody what to do, you need either to resource them properly or, at least, to have a conversation with them about why are you not giving them sufficient resources, so you both understand and manage the risk. That is something that should be inherent in our training anyway.

To your point, why this is all nothing to do with the Bill, my answer is, I do not think it is. I think there is a worry that the Bill goes through Parliament and yet does not actually address the real issue. To go back to my experience, what I would have liked is to have had much more effective operational record keeping, a credible and properly resourced investigative organisation that one did not see as the dodgy people who came sweeping in to start testing you, but people who would be able to look at the records that you had been keeping, have a mature conversation with those who had given the orders, come to their conclusions and have the ability not to penalise those who are focused on the operation.

I acutely remember somebody being placed almost on the naughty step, because they were being investigated, and I think that was because of the culture that we were promoting. It might well not be the case today, but while I was always part of a transforming organisation, I am not sure that the chain of command was as good as it should be at balancing this duty of care with the need to ensure that you deal with those who behave badly quickly and efficiently.

You need resource to do it. What I can be accused of is worrying too much about wanting to spend money on tanks, when I should have been spending money on a really effective operational record-keeping system.

[Stuart Anderson]

Q Thank you for that. I think we had a saying in our regiment, “Once a rifleman, always a rifleman”, so we were always the same rank there. On that point, I am well aware of how well you are respected within the community. If you go back to Dover, when you were the CO, that era of the young riflemen—I went through my military career with many of them and some are still serving now, while others have retired and ended up warrant officers or officers—is a band of men with whom I am in communication. From the communication I have had, they very strongly want to see the Bill come through. I understand the points you raise. With the Bill in its current form—it is in Committee to be reviewed—is it better to have it or not to have it?

General Sir Nick Parker: That is a political question.

[Stuart Anderson]

That is why I am in this role.

General Sir Nick Parker: I am very prepared to give a view, but treat it with the contempt it deserves. As I said right at the beginning, I welcome the willingness of the Government to deal with this issue, and I welcome the fact that it was an election pledge and we are going to deal with it really quickly, but I am really concerned that that good intent could end up creating more challenges than we need and indeed not address the issue, which, as you said, may not need to be brought to Parliament at all.

Now, you have to decide how the Bill proceeds, and I am sure the Minister would expect it to proceed. What I would like is to try to mitigate against the risks of legitimacy that I perceive—you may not agree—and concurrently for much more energy and effort to be put into the business of how we investigate these things effectively so that the people who are guilty are dealt with quickly and the people who are not are properly protected.

I will just go back to Dover. I know you would believe that if somebody had done something that was genuinely illegal and outside the orders they were given, you would pray that they would be dealt with quickly and effectively.

[Stuart Anderson]

One hundred per cent.

General Sir Nick Parker: And I am not sure that we are able to do that if we are so vulnerable to malicious claims, because that is clogging the system up. We need to address that.

[Stuart Anderson]

Thank you. It is a pleasure to talk to you again, General.

General Sir Nick Parker: I am wearing a rifles tie, rather than—

[Stuart Anderson]

I had my green jackets one on yesterday.

[The Chair]

If there are no further questions from Members, I thank you very much, General Parker, for your evidence and for joining the Committee online. That brings us to the end of our morning session. The Committee will meet again in this room at 2.30 pm under the chairmanship of Graham Stringer to take further evidence.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Leo Docherty.)