Awards for Valour (Protection) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-11-25
Topic: Defense
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): I appreciate that that is my hon. Friend’s view, but I want to set out why it is not my view The current legal position is neatly summed up by the Ministry of Defence’s response to an e-petition in May last year, which stated: "The Government does not believe that the UK requires an equivalent of the USA’s Stolen Valor Act The Stolen Valor Act 2013 makes it a federal crime to fraudulently claim to be a recipient of certain military decorations or medals in order to obtain money, property, or other tangible benefit Under UK law the making, or attempting to make a financial gain by fraudulently wearing uniforms or medals, or by pretending to be or have been in the Armed Forces is already a criminal offence of fraud under the Fraud Act 2006, as is the pretence of being awarded an official medal. The offence carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment. It is also an offence under that Act (carrying up to five years’ imprisonment) for a person to possess or have under his control any article for use in the course of, or in connection with any fraud. It is also an offence against The Uniforms Act 1894 for any person not serving in the Armed Forces to wear the uniform of any of the Armed Forces under such circumstances as to be likely to bring contempt upon that uniform However, it is not automatically against civil law to wear a veterans badge or decorations or medals which have not been earned and there are no plans to make it an offence. There are many instances where relatives openly wear the medals earned by deceased relatives as a mark of respect, albeit on the right breast and we would not wish to discourage this practice." As far as current UK prosecutions are concerned, the details are a bit sketchy, to say the least. The Defence Committee reports in its written evidence that the "MOJ has provided data in relation to prosecutions under the Uniforms Act 1894. Data on a number of other offences was requested but was either not held or not held in a form that allowed the types of offence requested to be distinguished." To illustrate this point, I shall give the House the numbers of people proceeded against in magistrates courts and found guilty under the Uniforms Act 1894. There were none at all in 2011, 2013 or 2015, and one was found guilty in 2012 and one in 2014, so this is hardly a big issue. "Next to none" would probably be the best phrase to use I submitted freedom of information requests to West Yorkshire police and the Metropolitan police to see what information I could gather about the use of existing legislation by their forces. The reply from West Yorkshire police stated: "A search was conducted for all arrests which were made between 1st August 2011 and 31st July 2016 inclusive and contained any of the keywords "medal", "military" and "uniform" within the arrest circumstances description. As well as a search for arrests between 1st August 2011 and 31st July 2016 that were made for an offence under Sections 2 or 3 of the Uniforms Act 1894…a manual assessment was then carried out to find any records which related to the arrest of any individual wearing war or valour medals they were not entitled to wear. No such records were found." The Metropolitan Police Service responded: "To locate the information relevant to your request, searches were conducted…The searches failed to locate any information relevant to your request, therefore, the information you have requested is not held by the MPS." So, if the existing legislation appears to be used infrequently, as we think, we need to consider carefully the extent of the problem that this Bill seeks to address.