My Lords, I realise that I run the risk of striking a discordant note in this afternoon’s debate, and I very much understand the widespread criticism of this Bill from virtually every quarter that has been identified. However, I choose to identify with the remarks made earlier by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and take issue with just one of the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, when, in the list of those opposing the Bill, she mentioned veterans.
Veterans are not a homogenous group; veterans come in very different categories. I feel that this debate would be lacking if someone did not speak for UK-based veterans who, for 38 years, served and did their duty, in the main, to the utmost of their ability. Yes, of
course, there were tragedies, and errors were committed by the British Army. We know what they were, and I am not going to go into those; but the vast majority of soldiers, as we have debated in this Chamber before—I have had debates in my name making exactly these points over the years—did their duty to the best of their ability. Their voice must be heard.
We do not want, as a veteran group, to set ourselves against all the other powerful arguments against the Bill, but the voice that I speak for is the voice that has had enough of investigations being mounted on now quite elderly soldiers on the whim of evidence, often causing them a lot of fear and upset, some of them going to their grave with the allegations not fully investigated. If the Bill is intended by the Government to stop that process, it is a very blunt instrument to achieve a particular aim. On that basis, I would ask the Government to think again about the Bill, but if the Bill is lost, for all the very good reasons that people have been talking about, what must not be lost is some way for veterans who did their duty to be protected.
I am not going to personalise it; I am one of them. My colleagues and I, on the whole, did our best, serving to the best of our ability. There must be some protection for us. We tried to raise it in the context of the overseas operations Bill, but those protections were dismissed by the Government, who said we would come back to it in the Northern Ireland Bill. We are back now. If we lose this Bill, the vast majority of UK-based veterans—not all—will feel that they have been let down by the Government and that successive promises have been broken. That is the only point that I will make.