Sanctions

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend on that. He is completely right, as usual, in highlighting that the protection of whistleblowers is an essential part of the exposure to justice of those who have committed crimes. We need to think again about crime. We need to look again at the institutions, law enforcement bodies and agencies that are charged with protecting us and think really hard about their budgets. They are not simply ways of stopping the taxman from getting his hands on a little bit more loot; they are fundamental to our national security and to the protection of our people. We need to think of them as agents of the state in the same way as we think of the armed forces or the intelligence services. We need to think of them on the frontline of the protection of the people we are lucky to represent. Frankly, we need to put the money where so often our mouths have been when we have passed Acts in this House that have not had the resources to make them not just law but actionable law.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I am going to bang on about the draft Registration of Overseas Entities Bill. I served on the prelegislative scrutiny Committee on the Bill with several colleagues from different parties. We agreed a set of amendments and the Government accepted them, but they failed to bring through the Bill and the powers for Companies House and the Land Registry. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is about not just money but the fact that the Government have been sitting on their hands in respect of powers for the relevant organisations?

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

I will carry on.

It is also an issue for the human rights of some of the people we are fighting. Bizarrely, there were situations in Afghanistan where individuals could only be detained for a certain number of hours. They could not, for various reasons, be handed over to the Afghan authorities, despite the fact that we were, in theory, supporting the Afghan Government. It meant that after a certain number of hours—normally about 96 hours—they had to be released. The fact that they were known bomb makers who had definitely been handling explosives because chemical evidence showed it, could not be used, because in order to be used, those people would have had to be handed over to the Afghan authorities, and various people argued that the Afghan authorities were too inappropriate, too corrupt or too violent.

So, what happened? What do you think happens when someone who has taken up arms against you, literally tried to kill you and planted bombs to try to maim you cannot be detained? It is simple: after the legal limit was reached, the prisoners were released and followed for a number of hours, until they did exactly what we would expect: they went back to a weapons cache or arms unit and were engaged again as lawful military targets. How is that a defence of the human rights, even of the individual concerned?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

The hon. Gentleman, who is a good Member and a friend, is making a really interesting argument, but I fail to understand how it has anything to do with the Bill. How has limiting the ability of service personnel to take civil action against the MOD got anything to do with what he is talking about? How is requiring a five-year statute of limitations on things like torture anything to do with what he is saying about the operation in war? Can he explain how the interesting points he is making are relevant to what is in the Bill? I and, I think, my colleagues fail to see it.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am sorry that the hon. Member is failing to see it, because I thought I explained it quite clearly with the Ukraine example. We also see in other operations how the use of law has undermined the combat effectiveness of the armed forces. We see time and again in operations the opportunity for an individual with nefarious intent to try to bring legal action against the MOD to prevent operations.