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Armed Forces: Chain of Command

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, for initiating this debate, although I feel that none of us would prefer to be in this position of discussing an issue that, frankly, should never have arisen in the first place. I have some sympathy for my noble friend the Minister who is to answer the debate, because some of the responsibilities in the Trooper Williams case, which has become the cordon around which we have all drawn, are not totally political. There are many answers to come from the MoD itself. I am pleased that the debate has drawn my noble friend Lord Moonie to make his maiden speech. He had a period at the Ministry of Defence, probably when the International Criminal Court and the Human Rights Act were being debated. I look forward to his contribution and I am delighted that he has joined us in this House. Last week we were all expressing our support for our emergency services, and rightly so. The threats that those people bravely faced last Thursday are the kind of threats that the young men and women in our Armed Forces face day in and day out when they are on operations. They are in an entirely different situation from the sort that any of us in this Chamber, or anywhere else in civil life, face from day to day. They are well trained and professional. I had the privilege of seeing them in operation in different parts of the world when I was chairman of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body. I was always impressed by their commitment. Things do go wrong, however. Wrong decisions and actions sometimes take place. When that happens, I do not think anyone in this Chamber would say that a duly diligent investigation and discipline are not required. That has to take place. However, I am concerned about the element of double jeopardy, which emerged strongly in the case of Trooper Williams. My concern is about the way in which the case appears to have been handled. A decision was taken to hand it to the Attorney-General. That was, frankly, irresponsible. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, said, it was totally remote from the realities of the situation and the report submitted by the officers in the field in command of Trooper Williams. That is just picking up one case. My noble friend Lord   Hoyle rightly identified another case in the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment. As a Lancastrian, I too am concerned about that. The concern has to be not in highlighting two cases—one real and one potential—and perhaps others; it has to be in getting this situation right. If we ask people, as part of their compact, to defend our country, to go out and project the policy in the field of operation, we have a responsibility to them. They have a responsibility to follow the regulations. The commanding officer in the Trooper Williams case said that he did. We have a responsibility to answer that. The ramifications of this case go right the way through the Armed Forces. The young man and woman joining the forces need to know, when they are sent out on an operation, that they have the leadership behind them and that leadership will be demonstrated in a responsible way. In these cases, their judgment was reasonable, as they were dealing with people who were up to no good and may have threatened their lives. I do not know what went wrong in the MoD. I rather suspect that at the moment it is a case of passing the parcel. My goodness, it went very badly wrong. We should be aware of why those decisions were taken. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, has identified that. But I wonder whether the case would have reached the notice of this House if Trooper Williams had not had the support of his own regiment, other people in the services and outside. I know that there are concerns about the International Criminal Court and the European Convention on Human Rights. Perhaps we need to review that. I know that we need some answers. We must carry through our commitment, our part of that compact with the Armed Forces. We need to ensure that they feel safe in their regulation and leadership. If they take a wrong decision or break the regulations—none of us knows how we would react if faced with the situation that Trooper Williams faced—if their errors were genuine and they had tried to keep and did keep within the regulations, they need to know that they will not then face what I call the double jeopardy of a charge of murder. The Trooper Williams case took two years, and I can just imagine the feelings in his home. I cannot think of many people who would have carried it with the dignity shown by Trooper Williams. Later this year the Armed Forces (Parliamentary Approval for Participation in Armed Conflict) Bill will be debated in the other place. Eventually it will come here. These cases highlight the need to pay great attention to detail when we come to discuss the Bill. When my noble friend the Minister comes to reply, will he help us, first, by indicating that these experiences will be taken into account when the Bill comes before us and, secondly, by assuring us that the Government will have a listening ear when we raise the issues that come out of decisions in a court where they should never have appeared?