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Armed Forces Bill

While I am generally sympathetic to the noble Earl’s approach to this question and to having consistency of offences, we have to think about the onus his new clause, which would include the failure to suppress looting, would put on particular service men to identify that the process going on was covered by Clause 5—that people who were subject to service law were conducting the looting. As an example of the difficulty they might be placed in, I quote the comments of the former Defence Secretary, Mr Hoon: "““The hon. Gentleman referred to looting, and I know that right hon. and hon. Members will be concerned about that issue; indeed, I have sought to identify the extent of it—" he was talking about Iraq, during that operation— "““Fortunately, it appears so far to be confined to Iraqi citizens—shall I use the word—‘liberating’ those items that are in the charge of the regime by entering its former facilities and the secret organisations, and redistributing that wealth among the Iraqi people””—" this is Mr Hoon, the Defence Secretary, speaking— "““I regard such behaviour as good practice, perhaps, but that is not to say that we should not guard against more widespread civil disturbances””.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/4/03; col. 24.]" Your Lordships now know, with the benefit of hindsight, that that looting period in Iraq led to the chaos and anarchy that have developed since. It seems hard that we are putting the onus for making difficult decisions about looting on junior servicemen when our Defence Secretary seems unable to come to the right conclusion.