My Lords, once again, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hendy. In considering all these amendments, we should bear in mind that not all the claims that this legislation is concerned with—in fact, only a small proportion—are actually brought by veterans. The majority of the claims that have given rise to this litigation are brought by those who allege that they have been the victims of wrongs done to them by the military. One advantage of trying to put an end finally to litigation is that those members of the military who might be involved in this litigation, potentially as witnesses for the defendant or, indeed, for the claimant, can put an end to the matter in their minds. Nobody would be concealing anything deliberately but, once you have left theatre—overseas operations come to an end—it is a considerable burden to be troubled by some incident, about which there may be little corroboration or evidence, and to have to go to court, if necessary, to deal with allegations more than six years after the event.
These amendments are, of course, concerned with date of knowledge, and the legislation provides for an extension from the six-year long-stop period for date of knowledge. Incidentally, long-stop periods are not only in this Bill; they exist in other fields of law—for example, in the Latent Damage Act. As I said previously, and as the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, acknowledged, the date of knowledge is a difficult matter for courts, but they have shown themselves—helped by provisions in Sections 11 and 14 of the Limitation Act—able to find a proper response to difficulties that individuals may have in being aware that they have a cause of action.
The real issue is when the clock starts ticking. In the normal event, it starts ticking when the incident that gives rise to the claim occurs; in these cases, the possibility for litigation will end after six years, unless there is an extension of one year because of an extended date of knowledge. The provisions in the Limitation Act dealing with personal injury claims do not actually provide for a six-year period from the date of knowledge, as these amendments do; they provide at the maximum for three years. In other words, the clock starts ticking for three years after the incident occurs, in the normal case, and three years if there is a postponed date of knowledge. So this six-year extension is in fact wider than exists in conventional limitation periods for negligence
cases. There is no equivalent of a date-of-knowledge provision in Human Rights Act cases; it is all dealt with under the provisions of Section 7 of the Human Rights Act.
One must be careful not to make too close a comparison between claims in negligence and claims under the Human Rights Act. As Lord Bingham said in a famous case, the Human Rights Act is not a tort statute. For the most part, these claims for personal injuries are much better brought in negligence. In fact, the claims under the Human Rights Act were usually advanced on the basis of an investigative duty that tends to be attached to these claims, which is one of the reasons why they were relied upon.
I respectfully suggest, although I understand what lies behind them, that these amendments go into territory that they should not go into and extend the period longer than it is desirable that anybody concerned in these types of cases should have to endure.