My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, for raising the issue of inquests. He has raised some important issues.
For many years, I have not been able to give my counsel on this matter because sadly we were taking many casualties on operation and, therefore, the timing was completely wrong. I must stress that I have no intention of pressing any of my own amendments relating to this issue at a later stage—I am merely
giving my counsel—but I intend to compete with noble Lords who are lawyers in terms of the amount of detail that I will give. I accept that matters have improved with these inquests, but I am still not convinced that holding detailed inquests into fatalities incurred on operations overseas is likely to reduce casualties or be a good use of resources. I hope the Committee will allow me to explain why before calling for the silken rope.
All members of our Armed Forces should be highly motivated. Most of them will have a secret dream of being able to have strategic effect, even if it involves a significant risk to themselves. By “strategic”, I mean an action they take that significantly alters the outcome of the campaign. That is why many servicemen with particularly good qualities seek selection for Special Forces. Their incentive is that they are very likely to be able to have strategic effect at some point. One can also have strategic effect by denying the enemy’s strategic effect. That is what the off-duty serviceman did in France in that train attack, and it is an issue to which I will return at a later stage.
I understand that, prior to the mid-1980s, it was not necessary to have an inquest into an overseas operational fatality. The law changed, but it did not matter, because there were very few hot operations. If we had ever engaged in conflict with the Warsaw Pact, we would not have been worrying about inquests. I am very sorry, but I think that these inquests into operational fatalities have limited utility. If we think that we need inquests to learn from what went wrong, we are deluding ourselves. As I touched upon in the human rights amendment on the first day of Committee, quite often the deceased, or someone closely involved, made a misjudgment or a mistake. That is the nature of military operations. As I said then, this makes it extremely difficult for the MoD or the chain of command to explain these facts, because we would be shocked if those on the ground at the time were blamed. According to Wikipedia, in Sergeant Roberts’ case, very unfortunately, the soldier who fired the coaxial machine gun on the Challenger tank did not know, or he forgot, that there was a parallax effect in short range. Does anyone seriously think that that error would not have been immediately reported back to the Armour Centre in Bovington and compared with the existing training plans? Of course not.
One inquest that I read about centred on electronic counter-measures. The feedback cycle in this area is extremely fast: days, if not hours. It must be extremely demoralising for the experts—sometimes, I think the term “boffin” is rather more complimentary—at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, to read these unfair criticisms in the press. The reality is that we have a fabulous capability in this area and we should be very grateful. Think how demoralising it must be for the Taliban to take the very real risk of planting an IED, only for the initiation system to fail for some mysterious reason at the crucial moment.
Some argue that we need the coronial system to identify any defects in training and procurement. I touched on this during the first day of Committee and remind your Lordships of my inverse law: the attention and scrutiny applied to a fatality on operations is
inversely proportional to the number of fatalities taken. That is why I believe that inquests into operational fatalities have limited utility. I also remind the Committee that they soak up considerable amounts of staff effort that could be better spent on prosecuting the campaign. I fear, however, that this is nothing compared to the negative effect.
In order for the enemy’s leaders to motivate their own side to make a very risky or even suicidal attack on coalition forces, it would be an enormous help to them if they could show that the attack would have strategic effect. We cannot avoid the MoD making the formal announcements of casualties or fatalities: we know perfectly well that it would be deeply damaging to mislead the nation regarding the level of casualties that we are taking on an operation.
What we actually do is have an exercise to publicly blame Ministers and then the chain of command for things that have or are alleged to have gone wrong when, for reasons I explained, they cannot effectively defend themselves without acting improperly and damaging morale. It should also be remembered that service personnel in theatre read newspaper reports and have access to the internet. It must be quite easy to damage confidence, especially that of more junior personnel. Reports of discord can also be shown by the enemy’s leaders to their subordinates to motivate them to make an attack which they can, frankly rightly, claim will have strategic effect.
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The losses we sustained in recent operations are deeply regrettable and tragic. I suspect that the majority are the only son, the only daughter or even an only child. Each loss hurts like hell. However, in strategic terms the losses are sustainable—although we must not forget life-changing injuries and mental damage. I suspect that the Armed Forces have always had many more fatalities due to road traffic accidents at home than from operations. Also, the rate did not adversely affect recruitment or morale. Right up to the end of Operation Herrick, units were happy to go on operational tours. Sadly, what gave each fatality a strategic effect was the way we handled it at home.
What is to be done? We could simply not involve the coronial system at all, but I can see serious difficulties with that. I suggest that we limit the role of the coroner to determining whether the deceased serviceperson succumbed to enemy action or perils of the operation—which largely means road traffic or industrial-type accidents. Suicides would need very careful consideration as to the appropriate procedure. The finding available to the coroner could be “Died while on Her Majesty’s service”, which seems extremely descriptive.
Of course, that is nowhere near enough for the loved ones and families. The current system for looking after the family is, I submit, simply not fit for purpose. The next of kin gets very little official information and fact. What information they get comes from the media, the internet and, worse still, unauthorised disclosure. The MoD has an absolutely terrible culture of secrecy—a point touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford. It always says nothing or the absolute minimum. That means families can understand less than anyone
else and wait months and months for the inquest to give them some information. I explained some of the difficulties with the inquest system. One of the worst aspects of this, touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, is that families do not achieve closure for a very long time.
I suggest having a retired one-star personally tasked with very frankly explaining what happened. I am not merely thinking of a sympathetic chat over a mug of tea. It may take several days to explain what happened. Of course, inquests takes several days. It is very difficult to explain everything that relates. I can think of two cases, for instance, where a visit to the Armour Centre at Bovington might have been appropriate if the next of kin wanted it. In one case involving the issue of arcs of fire and identification of the target, a visit to our training centres in Canada would have been extremely enlightening because the suggestion was that our servicemen went on operations in Iraq improperly trained. We have fabulous training facilities in Canada. We should not spare any effort in this regard and we should be frank. If we need to clear the next of kin for secrets, why not?
There is a counterargument that it is impossible to prevent families misunderstanding and believing that there is some conspiracy at the MoD. That is certainly possible, but it is not a very good reason for not trying. I believe that knowledge counters fear and misunderstanding. It would enable the next of kin to explain to families and friends what actually happened from a position of strength and perhaps pride, rather than anguish.