Al-Sweady Inquiry Report

Viscount Slim Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

I agree entirely with my noble friend. There is no provision for the sponsoring department to recover costs incurred during a public inquiry. However, in light of the inquiry’s findings and the claimant’s disclosure failure, I assure my noble friend that we intend to appeal a costs order in the stayed judicial review, with a view to recovering some of the costs of that litigation.

[Viscount Slim (CB)]

My Lords, I ask noble Lords to think carefully and—as you always do—sensibly about this business of tactical questioning. This could have been an action with a wider content in the overall Iraqi plan. Further down the road or within 24 hours another major ambush such as this may have been contemplated, was being prepared for and would take place. Therefore, the immediate tactical questioning was very important to discover whether the incident was isolated or part of a larger plan. One has to be severe in the questioning, and there are ways of doing that, harsh and not so harsh—they could be offered a cigarette, for example, but there is no need to go into details. But it is vital to find out if there is more to come, immediately.

Therefore, when you use tactical questioning, which is not deep interrogation, minds should allow for this up to a certain period. The Ministry of Defence has now defined what can take place immediately after the battle, which is for the good and necessary for the future. If the Iraqis had captured nine of our soldiers, we would not have nine soldiers to speak to today and it would have been a slow process of death. It is worth remembering these things.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I am assured that there is now a clear policy on tactical questioning and interrogation. This policy has been in place since 2005. The policies were separated in 2010 to emphasise the distinction between the two disciplines. They were further revised in 2012 to incorporate recommendations from the Baha Mousa inquiry and have been reviewed following the Court of Appeal judgment on the Hussein case.

Obviously, as the noble Viscount said, I cannot go into details of interrogation, but again I have spoken to a large number of service men and women about this subject, which interests me a lot, and I have visited military police. I accept that we still have many lessons to learn from noble Lords with a lot of experience in this and I am always ready to hear whatever advice they may have.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, as, I suspect, one of the few ex-NCOs here, I feel considerably outgunned by one or two of the contributions.

[Viscount Slim]

In World War II, we all joined up as private soldiers and the lucky ones later perhaps became officers, which was extra responsibility. I myself was an unpaid lance-corporal.

[Lord Snape]

Well, like the noble Viscount, my father joined up in World War II and became an NCO. I was fortunate enough to join the Armed Forces during a period of peacetime. What I was attempting to put to the Minister was that I believe that no other army in the world could behave with the restraint shown by the British Army, particularly after incidents such as the Danny Boy incident.

As for the report’s conclusions about ill treatment, does the Minister agree that the question of inadequate food and sleep would apply to the soldiers as much as to the detainees? On the question of Public Interest Lawyers, is the Minister aware that Mr Shiner made his reputation by attacking members of the police force, largely unsuccessfully for many years, before moving on to trawling round the battlefield looking for people prepared to make allegations against the British Armed Forces?