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Armed Forces Bill

My Lords, we are very sympathetic with the thinking behind these amendments, although we are not very happy with the actual wording. It should be quite simple: if a serviceman acts within the rules of engagement, he will not be prosecuted—never mind convicted. He will not have—as certain servicemen have arising out of the Iraq conflict—years of worry that prosecutions are pending against them. It should be one of the foremost principles on which the Director of Service Prosecutions acts. He should consider, where the rules of engagement were conveyed to the proposed defendant, whether the defendant deliberately breached those rules and, if so, what the consequences of that were. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said that the question is whether the soldier acted in good faith. He pointed out that there are difficulties in defining ““in good faith””. The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, said that a soldier should know where he stands. In the case of the paratroopers tried at Colchester last September—I declare an interest in that I was involved on behalf of one of them—it was apparent that no thought had been given in the prosecution to what the rules of engagement were at the time. The defendants were a platoon of soldiers who had been patrolling in the Maysan province. As far as they were concerned, they had been told by an officer, ““Well, it’s back to Northern Ireland rules now. We have just won this war””. In fact, it was not and those were not the rules of engagement. The rules of engagement that were still in force at the time of the incident with which they were concerned were the rules of engagement that were employed on the invasion into Iraq—to seek out and destroy the enemy. That was the broad concept in operation. But the paratroopers thought that they should be acting like policemen in the role that they were familiar with in Northern Ireland. Your Lordships will remember that, for a time, berets were worn in an attempt to win hearts and minds in the southern part of Iraq. The situation was that they did not know what the rules of engagement were because the rules of engagement had not been conveyed to them. Therefore, the Director of Service Prosecutions, when he is considering a prosecution, should think, ““Did they know what they were supposed to do? Did they act in good faith within those rules or were they deliberately disobeying orders?”” It is far better for the decision on whether to prosecute to be taken at that point, rather than for a defence in the terms of this amendment to be discussed years later on whether the defendant had the intention not to comply with orders and rules of engagement when charged with murder, manslaughter or breach of international convention. We are not happy with the amendment because it looks at matters at too late a stage. The issues that the noble Lords, Lord Campbell and Lord Kingsland, have very properly raised should be considered when the decision to prosecute is made.