The right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) set me a target of 30 minutes, Madam Deputy Speaker, and you have reduced it to eight. It is a crying shame.
The Bill’s importance comes down to the penultimate points that the right hon. Gentleman was talking about. The importance of the Bill is all about the Human Rights Act. It is all about the defence not just of British service personnel—which is absolutely right—but of these islands, this nation and our citizens. The point about this Bill is that the law not only interferes inappropriately in the way that the combat forces of our
country conduct themselves, but it actually weakens the defence of our realm. Let me break down what I mean by that and explain clearly why this is a problem.
We are seeing today armies being stopped from deploying in certain areas and individual personnel being asked to stop operations because the law is geared to a civilian environment. We have seen legal action brought against the MOD to protect the rights of an individual on operations who has volunteered and specifically stepped up to serve in a risky environment, knowing the dangers and the consequences. The important difference between the civilian environment and the military one and between, to use the jargon, international humanitarian law and international human rights law—or the Geneva convention and civilian law, if you like—is that the law is geared to the environment. If it is not, we end up doing something most unfortunate that nobody in the House wants to do: we end up giving ammunition to the enemy and power to those who would seek to take power from us.
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Let me give one example. Today, British forces are actively involved in operations in Ukraine. They are not actually on the frontline fighting Russian forces—I suppose I should more politely call them mercenaries, acolytes or something like that. British forces are training the Ukrainian armed forces, and in that sense, they are supporting the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe mission. As part of that job, they are driving around the country. We can imagine a situation where the environment changes and the United Kingdom Government decide to change the order from merely supporting through training to taking an active part in peacekeeping or peace enforcement. If they were to do that, we can imagine the next scenario: legal action bought and paid for by a Russian hand. [Interruption.] If you do not believe it, you had better start listening.
We can absolutely see the possibility that a Russian hand will use the Human Rights Act, which is currently being deployed in various other ways, to stop our forces from deploying by arguing that kit is inappropriate and that operations are therefore too dangerous for soldiers to be deployed. It may be true that the operation is too dangerous or that the risk is not appropriate, but it is the job of this House, of Ministers, of generals and officers to decide. It is not the job of lawyers.