Awards for Valour (Protection) Bill (First sitting)

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Committee Debate: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st February 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Gareth Johnson]

If it is a foreign medal, it would not be. Trying to keep the list down to a manageable level is difficult enough with British medals. To try to include all medals from around the world as well would make it unworkable. It covers civilian awards such as the George Medal, the George Cross and the Queen’s Gallantry Medal. Quite often those awards are given to military personnel in any event.

The schedule does not cover awards from around the world. It was very tempting, when drafting the Bill, to include knighthoods and OBEs. The list goes on, frankly, and one has to decide where to draw the line. The line I have decided to draw is on awards for valour that have been sanctioned by Her Majesty the Queen.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a good point but the hon. Member for North Durham also raised an interesting one. The Sultanates of Oman and Brunei, I suspect, are the areas that he is particularly thinking of. At various points, the Sultans have awarded medals. They are not normally awarded on exactly the same grounds as they would be in the United Kingdom. For example, teachers in the Sultanate of Oman have sometimes qualified if they were teaching the Sultan’s military personnel.

We must remember the comments of Queen Elizabeth I on foreign awards:

“My dogs shall wear no collars but mine own.”

However, in this circumstance, it makes sense to focus, as my hon. Friend does, on awards for valour issued by the Defence Council.

[Gareth Johnson]

Yes, of course.