My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow a West Country SIGINTer. I will speak to Amendment 14 in support of my noble friend Lord Robertson and the noble Lords, Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Campbell of Pittenweem. It is extraordinary that the presumption against prosecution applies to war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and torture. These crimes have a special place in the rubric of human rights unacceptability. In its current form, this legislation would seem to decriminalise such crimes by members of the Armed Forces if they are reported after five years. This cannot be the intention and serves the interests of no one. Indeed, in their attempt to protect the military, the Government will in fact damage our Armed Forces and cause our international standing serious harm, as has been said by all of the previous speakers.
If the Government say that the threat is more apparent than real because this will not happen, that will not wash, as the very strong perception remains, and that in itself can be damaging. As has been said before, there are a number of things about this Bill where the perception is almost more important than the fact. There should be no doubt in people’s minds about the commitment of the UK Armed Forces to adherence to international law in relation to war crimes. If their enemies believe they are not, they will feel that they have a right to be unconstrained in their behaviour against our people.
The Government initially seemed to understand that it is in the interests of all for allegations of torture to be investigated fully whenever they might arise. I have to say that I do not understand why they have changed their position. If war crimes are excluded from this, as has been said by a number of speakers,
there is also an increased likelihood of UK service personnel being brought before the ICC. In debate on the International Criminal Court of 2001, it was made very clear that accusations of crimes mentioned would be tried by British courts, and we put huge effort into making sure that would be the case. It would be a disgrace if inadvertently, by reducing the scope for prosecutions in this country, we were to increase the scope for prosecutions in the Hague and possibly, as has been said, elsewhere in the world. That does not help our servicemen and women. I believe strongly that this amendment would ensure that that will not happen and I will vote for it.
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