My Lords, I enter this set of amendments as a lead signatory but as somewhat of an interloper, being the only speaker in this set of amendments and the subsequent two who is not a lawyer and does not have legal training. I will defer to my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford and his excellent opening remarks, but I want to add a couple of points and reasons why this set of amendments is so important.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, pointed out, this is a minor amendment—essentially, the four amendments are doing the same thing in the various parts of the United Kingdom—but I believe that it is a necessary amendment. That is precisely because Her Majesty’s Government have spent a lot of time telling us that this Bill is about the interests of service men and women and veterans, and yet, if one looks at the briefing, which I suspect other noble Lords have received, from the Royal British Legion, there is particular concern about Part 2 of the Bill. There is a whole set of representations that has been sent to me, and I assume to other noble Lords who are participating—for example, from the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, which is urging Peers to accept the amendments in my name and that of my noble friend to Clause 11 and Schedules 12 and 13.
Also, this is very much in line with the evidence received by an inquiry undertaken by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Rule of Law and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drones. I declare a prospective future interest in that my name has been put forward to become a vice-chair of the APPG on Drones. I took no part in the work that it has been doing, but it has produced an excellent briefing. It is important to reiterate from that evidence that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, pointed out, in Part 2 we are talking about claims brought against the MoD. This looks as if it is a protection for the MoD rather than supporting claimants. I believe very strongly that, if our concern is to support our Armed Forces and veterans, then we should be looking to protect them and not the MoD. That point was also made by Emma Norton, the director of the Centre for Military Justice, in her briefing:
“In terms of impact on soldiers which the MOD states it wants to minimise, it is worth remembering that all of these civil claims – whether brought by a civilian or a soldier - are brought against the MOD as defendant, not individual soldiers, though of course soldiers may have to give evidence.”
Our modest amendment is very much about securing the rights of claimants, and as the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, pointed out, there should be no cases where service men and women and veterans are being disadvantaged, and yet as the Royal British Legion pointed out, even in the Government’s own impact assessment of the Bill, a minimum of 19 injured and bereaved members of the Armed Forces communities would have had their claims blocked if the limit being proposed had been in place. And that is just for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Therefore I would like the Minister in his response to consider whether it would not be appropriate to balance the two subsections already proposed for “particular regard” for our amendment to be added as paragraph (c).