May I say what a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Stuart Anderson)? He is a fellow member of the Defence Committee and always speaks with authority and passion. Do I agree with him? Yes, I do. I do not wish to make a party political point, but the genesis of the covenant was the Command Paper from the Labour Government in 2005 and the work that Bob Ainsworth— I pay tribute to his work on this issue—took forward, resulting in the covenant. It was sad that, in respect of one of the Armed Forces Acts—I think it was in the early years of the coalition Government—when we asked for the covenant to be put into statutory law the Government at the time opposed it.
I believe I have served on every Armed Forces Bill for the past 20 years, either as a Minister or as a Back Bencher. Like others, I pay tribute to the members of
our armed forces, as we come up to Armed Forces Week. This is an important day in terms of saying thank you, but we should have in our mind every day the work they do for us to keep us safe.
I rise to speak to my new clause 9, and I do so with frustration and disappointment that this issue has not been addressed. I have spoken on many occasions to say that we need to make sure that our armed forces are not faced with these frivolous and vexatious claims, but the Government have made a complete mess of this.
We had the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act, a piece of legislation that was not necessary at all. The issues in it could have been covered in this Armed Forces Bill, but, as with the worst legislation we see in this House, it came out of rhetoric and election slogans and when it came into practice it did not do what it said on the tin. That was a missed opportunity.
When we took evidence in the Committee that considered the overseas operations Bill, it was clear, and not just from Judge Jeff Blackett, a former Judge Advocate General, that we stop frivolous and vexatious investigations and stop the torture—I will use that word—of reinvestigation that people such as Major Bob Campbell went through for 17 years by sorting out the investigation process. That is not—the Minister alluded to this in relation to my new clause 9—to say that we just ignore accusations or wrongdoing. We should not do that, but we have to have a proper managed system, which is overseen by judges, to ensure that there is timely investigation, and those investigations that are not found to be of any veracity should be dismissed at an early opportunity. We could do that through the proposals in my new clause.
I moved similar amendments to the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill—I believe they were new clauses 8, 6 and 7—which would have put time limits on investigations, as I say, not dismissing evidence, but making sure that the investigators need, after a certain period of time, to bring their evidence before a judge to see whether it warrants further investigation. That would have been a way forward. That Bill was oversold to a degree that was obscene at times, with people believing that the Bill would stop investigations and the ambulance chasing solicitors. It did nothing of the sort. It did not get to the root cause, which is investigations. As Judge Jeff Blackett said in evidence to that Committee:
“The Bill is effectively looking at the wrong end of the telescope.”––[Official Report, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Public Bill Committee, 8 October 2020; c. 120, Q246.]
It was looking at the prosecutions—limiting prosecutions —rather than dealing with the investigations.
I am on record as saying that, like most Members of this House, I would not want members of our armed forces to face vexatious claims or investigations. However, when I moved those new clauses, the Minister at the time, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), said that those issues, which had been raised not just by Judge Jeff Blackett but by many other campaigners, would be dealt with in this Armed Forces Bill. This new clause today is an attempt to address those issues.
I think that it is worth recapping what the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View said last November on Second Reading of the overseas operations Bill in response to the concerns raised by my right hon. Friend
the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), who raised the idea of time limits. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View stated that
“time and again the issue of the investigations”—
comes up,
“but he knows that they are for the forthcoming armed forces Bill and will be addressed there.”—[Official Report, 3 November 2020; Vol. 683, c. 258.]
He then went on to accuse my right hon. Friend of being disingenuous for raising the matter. I ask the Minister today: when will these matters be addressed? A clear promise was given then that they would be included in this Bill. [Interruption.] Well, they were not, because the Government got into a right pickle. Having not addressed them in the overseas operations Bill, if that was where they wanted to do it, they then set up the Henriques review, which was a good civil service way, as we have seen over the years, of kicking things into the long grass, but it has left a gap. These issues were not addressed in the overseas operations Bill and they are not going to be addressed in this Armed Forces Bill either.
That leaves a real issue: when will that legislation come forward? These are sensible proposals, which were put forward in evidence to the overseas operations Bill by Judge Jeff Blackett and others. As I have said, those proposals would have ensured that we had judicial oversight of investigations to ensure we did not have a rerun of what we have had with the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, or Operation Northmoor. Those allegations went on for years, which meant that armed service personnel who were being accused of torture, suffered, in some cases, long delays while their cases were being looked at. I suggest that Members read the evidence of Major Bob Campbell to the overseas operations Bill, because that poor man not only went through long delays, but reinvestigations, investigations and investigations. That should have gone at an early stage. My new clause would do that. We would have judicial oversight. May I just re-emphasise this point for anybody who is listening carefully? This is not about putting members of our armed forces above the law. The new clause is saying that these matters should be investigated. It is saying not that we should have no investigations, but that those investigations should be timely and dealt with.
We have now got into this mess where we have the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act in place, which does not deliver on most of the hype that went with it. We also have the Armed Forces Bill going through, but, clearly, the Government will resist putting anything in it about investigations as they have kicked it into the ongoing review. Again, we do not know when that review will report. As a veteran of the last 20 years of Armed Forces Bills, I know that they come round every five years. If I am still in the House in five years’ time, I shall no doubt be dragged into the next one. But five years is a long time for people to wait for this legislation. The only other option is that the MOD will secure Government time to bring in a specific Bill on investigations. You will know, Ms Winterton, that Government time is very precious and trying to fight and argue for a Bill will be very hard, so I do not see that this matter will be addressed for another five years. That is just not acceptable.
This leads me on to another issue that was raised earlier, which is the issue around Northern Ireland veterans. One of the worst things that we can ever do in politics is to make promises to people and then not
deliver. What has happened both with the overseas operations Bill and the claims that have been made to our Northern Ireland veterans is a disgrace. It is clear to me that the Government will not bring forward a Bill before the summer recess; I struggle to understand how they are going to bring such a Bill forward. That is not just letting people down, but being completely dishonest with people. Brave service men, mainly, from ordinary working-class backgrounds across this country went to Northern Ireland to do their duty, to protect not only the citizens of Northern Ireland but those of the UK, and we are letting them go through this tortuous process. I would have more respect for the Government if they came out and said, “We can’t do it, so we are just going to leave it”, rather than what we have got at the moment.
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It galls me to see the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View parading in front of courts in Northern Ireland and talking about defending veterans, when he did very little, or nothing, to advance their cause when he was a Minister. At that time, he had the power and the influence do to something, but he just moaned afterwards that he was not being listened to. Anyone who saw his performance during proceedings on the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill and at the Armed Forces Bill Committee will not be surprised that he was ignored, because frankly he made very little attempt to engage actively with colleagues. He made a lot of promises about listening, but basically sat and read out his civil service brief without taking many interventions from Members on either side of the Committee, who raised quite legitimate concerns. I think it was the laziest performance I have seen from a Minister during the 20 years I have been in this House.
The Government now need to be straight with veterans and say when they will deal with the issue around investigations. It is not going to go away, and it is relatively simple. On Northern Ireland, if they are not going to do anything, they must just be honest with people. I accept that in politics, people sometimes say things in the height of enthusiasm, but I have spoken to some of the Northern Ireland veterans, who were expecting a lot from this Government, and I think they will be sorely let down.
The Armed Forces Bill is always a unique opportunity; I refer to it as a Christmas tree Bill, because we can add things to it. Because of the performance of the Minister who guided the Bill through Committee, however, very few of the sensible ideas suggested by Bill Committee Members were added to it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne mentioned the effects on members of the armed forces who were dismissed because of their sexuality. There are outstanding issues there, which must be addressed. When the Committee took evidence from Fighting With Pride, we heard that there are people who were prosecuted and still have related offences on their criminal record, or who were put on the sex offenders’ register, and it is affecting their employment today. That cannot be right, and it has to change. There was an opportunity to do that in the Bill Committee, but because the Minister was not prepared to listen to anything that had not been written down by his civil servants and put in front of him, the opportunity was missed.
The other missed opportunity will be around the covenant. As someone who introduced the welfare pathway that led on to the covenant, I think it has been great in engaging local communities. I think the Minister is right; most local authorities and communities want to engage with it and want to do what they can in difficult circumstances. In most cases the lack of finance, which has been cut from local government, is hindering the work that they would like to do.
There is a gap in the covenant when it comes to central Government. It is all very well the Minister saying, “This goes in the annual report,” but I come back to the point—I remember having similar discussions when I produced the Green Paper in, I think, 2010 about how we should implement it in law—that if it is to be meaningful, we have to give it teeth. I do not think it has teeth. We had evidence from the ombudsman in Committee, and I would certainly have liked people to be given the opportunity to take failures through the ombudsman system, rather than through judicial review, as is the case now. I would have applied it also to Government Departments, because without that there is a disconnect. As I asked the Minister in my earlier intervention, how would someone take forward a complaint against a Department about the fact that they were not being given their rights under the covenant? He said, “Well, possibly judicial review.” No, that would be very difficult because the Departments are not covered. It is a missed opportunity. It could have been done easily. I understand why civil servants do not want to be opened up to scrutiny nationally, but, if they are prepared to recommend it for local government and other institutions, why is it not good enough for them?
The Government have got themselves into a real mess of their own making over investigations. I accept that the Minister is new. I have written to him on this matter and asked for a meeting. He clearly has not worked out how to get round his civil servants and insist that something goes in his diary, but he will learn. I have got to say that his intentions are good and he is taking a more grown-up and mature approach to the job. He has a real passion for making sure he does the best for our armed forces, but he must grasp the nettle of investigations. I will ask again for a meeting with him, but I would like to know how the Government propose to legislate when the review is finished. It cannot wait another five years for another Armed Forces Bill.