Armed Forces: Historical Cases — House of Commons, 2017-02-23
Topic: Defense
Julian William Hendy Brazier (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend. Many Conservative Members share the view that a transparent procedure to show that fresh evidence has emerged should be required for any case of this kind to be pursued Let me now say something about the other aspect of the motion and about some of those other operations. The difference between the operation in Northern Ireland and the other three operations to which the motion refers is that we were in Northern Ireland as aid to the civil power. In Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan, at many points there was very little civil power; in fact, at some points there was none at all My right hon. Friend the Northern Ireland Secretary stressed, just after mentioning IHAT, the importance of upholding the law. We have to be clear, however, what we mean by the law when dealing with these other operations. The fact is that when a force has just captured a city, as we had in Basra, there is no civil law, as was the case then. In conflicts throughout the 20th century, it was always accepted that only one law matters on the battlefield: humanitarian law, grounded in the Geneva convention. In the past 15 or 20 years, there has been a creeping process whereby a second form of law—human rights law—has started to be introduced into the picture. When I served on the Select Committee on Defence, a number of organisations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, deprecated that. They made it clear that humanitarian law, which is tried and tested for protecting the interests of the vulnerable, should be the law that applies On IHAT, I ask the House to think about two questions. First, why did no other country—all countries in the west claim to uphold the rule of law—choose to set up a body like IHAT? Secondly, what exactly did we expect our soldiers to do in the very dangerous circumstances that applied in a number of the cases, which are likely to survive the IHAT process and go forward, in those months after we captured Basra, when, effectively, there was no police force and no rule of law? We had large numbers of dangerous people around, and we were dealing with rioting, looting and so forth. Some colleagues might have read the recent account of how the Americans dealt with one looting problem: they shot two or three of the looters and a potential riot was supressed. There was never any question of any follow up for that We have to realise that in such circumstances, while we can have humanitarian law in the background and rules of engagement and so on, a young officer with a very small number of soldiers in a dangerous situation and seeing vulnerable people threatened might have to make split-second decisions that would not stand up in a court of law in any context anywhere within the United Kingdom. Trying to retrospectively establish such rules, with human rights law being substituted somehow or other into the picture for the old, very clear and simple principles of humanitarian law, has exposed members of our armed forces in a way that many of us find unacceptable I want to end by making two points. First, while I was delighted by the way my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland stressed the importance of Mr Shiner being struck off as a lawyer, it seems to me to be extraordinary that there has been no criminal prosecution. When we look at what the Solicitors Regulation Authority—which I have hitherto regarded as the most toothless of all professional bodies, from my own constituency casework—has found against him and realise what that implies for our armed forces, it is extraordinary that he has not been charged, and I very much hope that he will be My final point is about the operations that our armed forces are involved in today. The Government made a pledge that if we were involved in further combat operations, we would derogate from the Human Rights Act, and we are now engaged in two operations. We are increasing the number of soldiers in Afghanistan, where the mission has turned from a purely support mission back towards increasingly being a combat one. At the same time, we are very heavily involved in the bitter fighting in Iraq and we have airmen regularly bombing areas. We have the most accurate bombs and the most failsafe systems—civilians sheltering in an area being bombed by the RAF are safer than those sheltering in areas where any other air force might be operating—but the RAF’s activities in the attacks on Mosul and so forth could nevertheless threaten civilians. We do not talk about it in this Chamber, but some members of the special forces are also involved. What protection is in place? Why have we not derogated from the Human Rights Act for those two theatres I want others to have the opportunity to speak, so I will end by saying that I wholly support my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk and those Members on the Opposition Benches who are calling for an end to the pursuit of veterans unless serious new evidence emerges in Northern Ireland, and I believe we owe more to the troops engaged in operations elsewhere today.