Sir Julian Lewis
MP for New Forest East · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I will share with the House one particular case that is representative of many. My constituent, Mrs Gillian Pothecary, lost her husband almost a year ago. She wrote to me in July about her valiant but so far unavailing quest to obtain a civil service widow’s pension.”
“She said: “Mrs Pothecary’s…case falls under the commitment to be fully resolved by early September at the absolute latest. Capita has assured me that her case is on their escalation log and has been flagged for priority handling.” I rang up Gill just before coming into this debate and—you’ve guessed it, Dame Siobhain—she has not yet recei…”
“As the Minister seems to have run out of supportive Back Benchers, I shall endeavour to ask him a helpful and easy question. Accepting that it will be some years, to put it mildly, before we can eliminate our dependency on oil and gas, does he accept in principle that we are more secure if we exploit our own domestic oil and gas resources…”
“I warmly endorse almost everything the Secretary of State has said today, and I genuinely congratulate him on his appointment. In my first speech in this House almost 30 years ago, I promised to support Labour Governments as long as they supported the nuclear deterrent, the conventional armed forces and NATO.”
“On Monday, just as campaigners from the New Forest and Waterside were handing into Downing Street a 32,000-signature petition against the appalling and unfair outcome of local government reorganisation affecting our area, the welcome announcement was made by the Government that the local government reform proposals for Hampshire and three…”
“We are now in a situation that is worse than that at the height of the cold war, so the comparison we have to make is between what we are spending now and what we spent during the cold war, which was, in modern calculating methods, between 4.5% and 5.1% on defence. So let us not talk about increases to 2.7%.”
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“When I married my second husband John in 1993 I automatically lost my pension. To me this was highly unfair, as older widows and now younger widows have got to keep their pensions, what is the difference, between widows like them and me? I have endured the same trials and tribulations as them. I detest writing this letter and find it extremely difficult, to me it’s like a begging letter, yes I have endured financial hardships in the past and if my pension was reinstated it would mean a lot to me financially, it would be extremely useful for my two sons’ further education and for repairs to our home.”
“If I start to see urgent signals from those on the Front Bench when I really need to get a move on —[Interruption.] I am getting a few of them now, so I shall do this as concisely as possible. I come to the case of Margaret, whose first husband, William, was a part-time member of the Ulster Defence Regiment. He was murdered—blown up—in 1986. She says: “At the time we didn’t know if we would even be able to have William’s coffin open due the extent of injuries…in the end all we could see was his face, with a wee cut just above his right eye. No one has ever been convicted of William’s murder. She talks about the “rituals” that they always had to go through for their own security, and the circumstances in which what happened took place. She continues: “I am now happily remarried to my second husband, John and we have two sons.”
“That is a wonderful idea, and it is exactly the sort of constructive suggestion I would expect from the hon. Lady. I suspect that at the root of this situation is probably not a flaw in the Ministry of Defence, but a problem being raised by people from the Treasury saying, “If we do something for this group, we’ll have to do something for another group. We will be opening some sort of Pandora’s box.” And so on and so on. I say, frankly: if that is the argument, they should hang their heads in shame. Although I think I have already made the point quite forcefully, I intend, if I may, to read out two or three more of these extracts, so that the point cannot be escaped, because every one of these stories has a different dimension. I hope that is acceptable.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing this debate to the Chamber. Can I ask him about retrospection? My constituent, Alan Williams FCA, points out that HMRC already had sufficient power to recover tax from individuals, so it is rather its own convenience and its unwillingness to apply its existing powers that have led to this legislation. My constituent Andy Pocock points out that in his case, he has procedures under the existing legislation whereby he is allowed to appeal, but all that will be cut off retrospectively by the new legislation and he will not have a chance to fight and defend his corner.”
“Can the Prime Minister describe any surer way of frustrating the referendum result, and ultimately remaining in the European Union, than to accept a Hotel California Brexit deal, which ensures that we can never truly leave the EU, with all its manipulative, entangling and undemocratic practices?”
“The fifth lesson is, do not repeat the failed methods of warfare time and again. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) said that the troops were well led in 1918. Well, they were, at the tail end of the war; it is just a great pity that they were not a lot earlier, because time and again it was shown beyond doubt that attrition did not work, and time and again—at the Somme and Passchendaele most outstandingly—it was tried long beyond the point where failure was an absolute certainty.”
“The idea, before the great war, that civilians would be deliberately targeted by the fighting services would probably have been scornfully rejected, yet as early as December 1914 we had the bombardment by the German navy of the seaside towns of Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby, when 137 people were killed in their own homes and 455 injured. That was followed by the Zeppelin airship raids, and the more lethal but less scary Gotha bomber raids—and who can forget that, in 1915, we saw the barbaric initiation of poison gas warfare? The fourth lesson is, do not imagine that individual valour can overcome the mechanisation of warfare. We had the lethal combination of the machine gun and the barbed wire emplacements. Those defences could not be breached by hurling wave after wave of human bodies against them.”
“I do not wish to be controversial in this debate of all debates, but that is why we have to be careful about other organisations, including the European Union, issuing security guarantees willy-nilly here and there, because we do not wish once again to get into a cross-cutting system of obligations and alliances that can lead to a chain reaction such as happened so disastrously in 1914. The third lesson is this. Do not think that humanitarian restrictions on methods of warfare at the outbreak of a conflict will last very long.”
“In the terrible connected development of circumstances that led to the catastrophe of 1914, we saw how individual separate alliances triggered one country after another in a process of what I suppose one could call falling dominoes, which meant that we ended up with a global conflict out of something that started on a relatively small scale. That is what explains the success of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation—the certain knowledge that any aggression against any one of its members will immediately trigger defence of that member by all the rest.”
“I have often quoted in the House Sir Maurice Hankey—I shall not quote him again today—who in 1931 reviewed all the previous great conflicts in which the nation had been involved. He pointed out that, far from having 10 years’ warning—which is how far ahead people were saying in 1931 that we ought to be able to predict a great conflict—in the run-up to world war one, we had had barely 10 days’ warning of that war. The second necessary lesson is not to sign up to multiple bilateral alliances rather than a single multilateral alliance.”
“Each unit in the village commemorates a first world war battle, and service families can have respite breaks in the poppy pods at weekends, free of charge. The Tile Barn where they are sited was one of three New Zealand general hospitals set up in 1916, during the first world war, to care for the wounded. Thousands of New Zealanders passed through it, and the 93 who did not survive are buried in nearby St Nicholas’ church. I am sure that in this debate we will hear many tales of poignant recollection of the sacrifices made in villages such as Brockenhurst up and down the country, so I wish to list briefly what I regard as nine necessary lessons from the first world war. First, we must not think that we can successfully predict when a war will break out.”
“It is truly an honour to follow two such humane and comprehensive opening speeches. Seventy-nine men from the village of Brockenhurst in the heart of the New Forest lost their lives in the great war—21 of them in the last year of that war alone—so it is hardly surprising that the village of Brockenhurst should have been early in the process of commemorating this particularly poignant centenary. Only last Saturday, I attended an outstanding commemoration concert that was held in the village. Back on Trafalgar Day, 21 October, the Tile Barn Poppy Pod village was dedicated to the memory of Enda Ryan, Hampshire County Council’s greatly respected outdoor facilities manager who recently died, far too young, from cancer.”
“Let us hope we never face such a choice as our great-grandparents did.” The eighth lesson is, do not settle for anything less than unconditional surrender in a conflict of this sort. Germany did not accept that she had been fully and fairly beaten in the field. The myth of the “stab in the back” gave fuel to Hitler’s subsequent evil campaign to say that Germany had not been defeated but betrayed. The final lesson speaks for itself and requires no elaboration because we have heard it time and again in the present day in this House: do not stint in peacetime on investment in our armed forces—or we will pay a cost thousands of times greater when we fight a war that we might otherwise have deterred and completely avoided.”
“The war was fought because Prussian militarism and sense of entitlement to invade, overrun and occupy Prussia’s neighbours proved to be something that could be stopped only by force. Again, there are revisionists who say it would have been better if we had just let Germany get on with it and done nothing about it. I would just briefly quote the former Cambridge professor of French history, Professor Robert Tombs, who wrote recently in The Daily Telegraph that “democracy and liberal government would have faced a bleak future. Authoritarian regimes would have been in the driving seat.” He concluded: “If tomorrow the Russian army marched through Poland and we were faced with the prospect of hostile aircraft based just across the Channel, would we react any differently?”
“I know there is a revisionist view of history that says the lessons of the Somme and Passchendaele were needed so they could get it right for the 100 days campaign at the end of 1918, but frankly, with the greatest of respect, I do not buy it. The sixth lesson is, do not underestimate the value of surprise. The decisive allied breakthrough on 8 August 1918, the so-called “black day of the German army”, depended crucially on the strictest operational secrecy and dominance of the airspace over the battlefield, just as the Normandy landings did a quarter of a century later. The seventh lesson is, do not forget—we have heard a bit of this today—why the war was fought in the first place.”
“I hesitate to disagree with my right hon. Friend, particularly because of his own gallant service and that of previous generations in his family, but I would refer to accounts at the time, such as that of such a considerable figure as Sholto Douglas, later Lord Douglas of Kirtleside, who became one of the most senior RAF officers in its history, who was flying over the battlefield of Passchendaele, and who observed in his memoirs, with all that retrospective knowledge, that it was still inconceivable that the troops were sent forward time and again into a sea of mud, when it was absolutely clear that the attack had failed and had no prospect of success.”
“Does the Minister share my surprise at recent press reports suggesting that EU citizens living in the United Kingdom after Brexit would be offered full voting rights in Westminster parliamentary elections? Will she confirm that that is not going to happen?”
“I am not certain what the attitude towards gambling is in the Secretary of State’s household, but would she care to place a bet that if the universal credit system is up and running and if, heaven forbid, the Labour party comes into government, it will be most unlikely to replace it with a mish-mash of different cross-cutting benefits such as existed previously?”
“Does the Secretary of State accept that someone must cut the Gordian knot that is preventing us from ensuring that our armed forces veterans are not persecuted and pursued in the courts decades after they have faithfully served us?”
“Will the Prime Minister give reassurance to those of us in this House and in the country who voted to leave the European Union that under no circumstances will she recommend or agree to any alteration in the exit date of 29 March next year?”
“As I am sure you will vividly remember, Mr Speaker, on this very date 35 years ago the largest ever demonstration by the campaign for one-sided nuclear disarmament marched in London. Just under 100,000 people marched—although, typically, four times that number was claimed—and the then leader of the Labour party, a lifelong unilateralist, told the rally that NATO should not deploy cruise or Pershing II missiles. If that policy had been followed, we would not have had an intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty. What assessment have my right hon. Friend and his Department made of whether that INF treaty, which has been successful for so long, has now been violated by Russia?”
“Given that the EU never makes its final concessions until just before any given deadline, what could possibly be gained in 24 months that could not be gained in 21?”
“The next time shroud-waving EU negotiators claim that a hard border is necessary on the island of Ireland, will the Prime Minister kindly ask them who would actually construct it? The Irish certainly will not and the British certainly will not, so unless the EU army plans to march in and build it, it surely can never happen.”
“The Secretary of State mentioned that she is taking these steps in the national interest. Does she feel that it is in the national interest that old soldiers who participated in securing the successful outcome after the years of the troubles and the creation of civil government in Northern Ireland should be dragged through the courts, as is happening at the moment, decades after the events in which they were involved?”
“May I urge the Prime Minister to make more of the passage of a law in July 2006 by the Russian Federation Parliament specifically enabling and empowering its President to order the assassination of Russia’s enemies abroad? As we know, this happened only weeks before the killing of Litvinenko. If she really wants to send a strong message to the Russian Government, will she have a quiet word with the Chancellor about enabling defence to get the uplift in its budget that it needs if further cuts in our ability to deter Russia are not to be inflicted by the Budget?”
“The combat air strategy signals the Secretary of State’s commitment to the importance of conventional armed forces in the future. How is his combat ground strategy going in persuading the Treasury to pay for it?”
“Does the Prime Minister agree that any idea that Europe could defend itself conventionally against an aggressive Russia is a dangerous fantasy if the United States is not involved?”
“For the avoidance of any doubt, will the Secretary of State confirm that none of these proposed arrangements would in any way be adversely affected if we left the EU without a deal and found ourselves operating on WTO terms?”
“I understand that this deployment sends a very strong signal, as my right hon. Friend put it, to the Taliban that they will not be allowed to win, but does it send a sufficiently strong signal to the Treasury—an even more formidable opponent—that an uplift in the defence budget towards 2.5%, and eventually 3%, of GDP is necessary to fund our global role adequately?”
“I am very sympathetic to the case that the hon. Lady is making, but the consequence of going down the route that she recommends, and which I am inclined to support, is that the black hole in the defence equipment budget will become even greater. If we accept that there needs to be an uplift in the defence budget to be able to make this sort of investment and get the long-term gains that she describes, will she confirm that her party’s policy is to support an increase in the defence budget?”
“As an immoveable Defence Committee commitment means that I have to leave this debate for a period, though I hope to catch Mr Deputy Speaker’s eye later on, I would not like the Minister to sit down without knowing how much we on both sides of this House appreciate that he has been prepared to speak out as strongly as he has in favour of an increase in the defence budget. I hope that he will continue to press the Opposition to operate on a bipartisan basis in this way, because if we want to invest to keep shipyards open that might otherwise close, surely the logic is that the defence budget must increase.”
“The Defence Committee will warmly welcome the setting up of the dedicated team. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 means that soldiers and terrorists alike cannot be sentenced to more than two years in jail, of which they will probably serve only half, and that in those circumstances, it is right that we should move to a statute of limitations so that we do not have an unfair imbalance where some are prosecuted and others are not?”
“Does the Secretary of State accept that existing black hole in the defence equipment budget cannot be filled by the small annual increase in that budget?”
“Given that, exactly 12 years ago, the Russian Federation Council passed a law permitting the extra-judicial killing of opponents overseas, is it not rather strange that Sergei Skripal was living in plain sight in Salisbury? Can the Home Secretary assure the House that those other defectors, such as Oleg Gordievsky, who has been sentenced to death in absentia, and Victor Makarov are having their security arrangements suitably reviewed and any protection that they require afforded to them?”
“May I urge the Secretary of State to realise that the protagonists in this bitter debate are sometimes trapped by their own rhetoric? The truth of the matter is that one side wants there to be an amnesty for one group of people, but not the other, and the other side wants the reverse. If she likes, she can come to the conclusion that there is no support for a drawing of the line for everyone, or she could conclude that it is up to the Government to take a lead and draw the line for everyone in the knowledge that those who cannot speak out for that policy could nevertheless live with it.”
“Just for the sake of clarity, the Defence Committee has never used the word “amnesty” and has always used the phrase “statute of limitations”. However, the point I made earlier applies equally if that phrase is substituted for “amnesty”. One party, as it were, wants it for one side but not the other, and vice versa. It is disappointing that the Government’s response to the Committee’s report was originally going to have a special section in its consultation exercise to consider the possibility of a statute of limitations, but they went back on that pledge that had been given in writing in their response to our report.”
“The Government response, HC 549, was published on 13 November 2017, and there was a Westminster Hall debate on these reports on 25 January 2018, all of which bear future study. The Defence Committee has put in our entire report as evidence under a covering letter to the consultation process that is going on.”
“We heard from the Secretary of State that, earlier today, the Defence Secretary made the very welcome announcement that a dedicated unit is being set up inside the Ministry of Defence to try to grip this problem, and I think that it will try to grip it at every level—not just for Northern Ireland, but for these wider conflicts. However, for this evening, I will obviously concentrate on the Northern Ireland situation. I wish to start by making brief reference to the report previously produced by the Defence Committee, which was referred to by the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) in his very strong contribution to this debate a little while ago. Our report entitled “Investigations into fatalities in Northern Ireland involving British military personnel”, HC 1064, was published on 26 April 2017.”
“I believe some form of consensus is emerging that a statute of limitations might be the correct way forward, especially if it could be applied in a wider context than just the Northern Ireland scenario. I know that the Conservative manifesto at the last election talked about protecting troops from malicious charges such as had been posed most irresponsibly and on an industrial scale in relation to Iraq by invoking the law of armed conflict for future conflicts and ensuring that the criteria of the civil law could not be applied to them. That is where a problem might creep in in connection with Northern Ireland, because there is no way in which the law of armed conflict could be said to apply to that situation, which was internal to the United Kingdom.”
“This should be coupled with the continuation and development of a truth recovery mechanism which would provide the best possible prospect of bereaved families finding out the facts, once no-one needed to fear being prosecuted.” This is what might be termed the Nelson Mandela solution, which of course proved to be such a success in South Africa.”
“The recommendations were as follows: “It is clear from the experience of these legacy investigations that, unless a decision is taken to draw a line under all Troubles-related cases, without exception, they will continue to grind on for many years to come—up to half-a-century after the incidents concerned… Accordingly, we recommend the adoption of Option One—the enactment of a statute of limitations, covering all Troubles-related incidents, up to the signing of the 1998 Belfast Agreement, which involved former members of the Armed Forces.”
“I see the Secretary of State acknowledging that fact. She will know that the Defence Committee was particularly disappointed about something that I mentioned earlier in an intervention. In the Government’s response—the one that was published in November 2017—they reprinted two of our recommendations and it gave the following answer to them.”
“Member for North Down (Lady Hermon)—the passage of the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998. If I understand the Act correctly, and I think I do, it means that nobody can serve more than a two-year sentence, no matter how heinous the crimes that they committed, in the context of the troubles in Northern Ireland, which presumably means that, in practice, no one will spend more than half that length of time—12 months—in jail. Whether it be a question of pursuing terrorists decades after the event or of trying to pursue security personnel or members of the armed forces decades after the event, at the end of that whole process, even if anybody is found guilty of a crime that would normally attract a life sentence, they will end up spending no more than 12 months in jail.”
“I have heard it said time and again—this evening and in previous debates on the subject—the rather obvious truth that there is no moral equivalence between terrorists or people accused of terrorist offences, and people accused of having committed offences when they were members of the armed forces or security forces trying to protect the people of Northern Ireland. As I said, that is an obvious truth; there is no moral equivalence. However, it can be argued—and I feel that it must be argued—that there is a legal equivalence, because everybody who is accused of a crime is, in a sense, equal before the law. But something strange and particular happened in the context of Northern Ireland, and that was—this is where I come to the intervention of the hon.”
“The consultation will invite respondents to give their views on ‘the potential effectiveness and appropriateness of alternative approaches such as amnesties and a statute of limitations to address the legacy of Northern Ireland’s past’. Following the consultation’s conclusion, the Government will consider all views carefully to inform next steps.” Now, all I can say is that the Committee was greatly encouraged by that positive response, and we were then considerably discouraged by the fact—which may or may not be connected with the change in Secretary of State—that we subsequently found that the consultation was not going to include the section as described officially in the response to our report. That seemed to be a step backwards.”
“The Government said: “While the Government believes that the most effective option to address Northern Ireland’s past is to implement the proposals set out in the Stormont House Agreement, the Government acknowledges that others have different views on the best way forward, including approaches such as that proposed by the Committee which do not involve recourse to the criminal justice system. As such, the Government intends to include within its forthcoming consultation on the draft Northern Ireland (Stormont House Agreement) Bill a section entitled ‘Alternative approaches to addressing the past’. This section of the consultation will discuss alternative ways forward and include a description of the Committee’s recommendation.”
“I acknowledge the hon. Lady’s making her own position clear. I trust that, in the remarks that I am about to make, I will address precisely that point. It relates in particular to the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998. If I fail to mention that later, I hope that the hon. Lady will leap up and remind me to do so. I just wish to continue with my theme for the moment, which is the Government’s initial response to the passages—the recommendations—that I just read out.”
“I entirely agree with every syllable of what my right hon. and gallant Friend says. We are now in a perverse situation where people are being pursued decades after the event without any scintilla of a suggestion that new evidence has been found. They are put through this disproportionate and agonising process, and at the end of it, in the unlikely event that they were found guilty, any sentence that they served would in no way be proportionate to the crime. The whole process has been undermined, because while one might make a moral, political or legal case to pursue someone to the ends of time for a capital crime—a crime of murder—if one knows right at the beginning that at the end of that huge process they are going to serve only a derisory sentence, that has to call into question the legitimacy of the proceedings.”
“If people who had committed heinous crimes years and years ago were, at the end of the process, going to serve a proportionate sentence, one could perhaps make out an argument that the matter should be allowed to proceed to the end of time. However, given the way in which terrorists, on the one hand, and armed forces personnel and security forces, on the other, have all been swept up into the concept of the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act, meaning that they will serve, at most, a derisory sentence if eventually convicted—which most of them will not be—the way to proceed is the Nelson Mandela solution.”
“I cannot comment on that particular case since it is now sub judice, but cases of that sort fall squarely within the situation that I am describing. As my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) said, it is the process of pursuit, proceedings and trial, rather than the actual derisory sentence at the end of it, that amounts to cruel, unusual and almost certainly unjustified punishment that is inflicted so long after the event. Nobody is suggesting that crimes that would be called war crimes, if this were an international rather than a civil conflict, should be excused and that people should be put above the law; but the provisions of international law can be met by combining a truth recovery process with a statute of limitations.”