One of my personal concerns about leaving the ECHR was always the instinctive worry I felt about the kind of company we’d be keeping if we left – ie, Russia, a country that is not only our most immediate military threat, but a regime wholly at odds with the values of freedom and democracy that we hold so dear.
And yet, since becoming first a Defence Minister and now Shadow Defence Secretary, I’ve come to a far starker conclusion: the ECHR is making it harder for us to defend ourselves against the growing threats we face – not least of all from Russia itself. Last week Labour launched its Strategic Defence Review with grand promises – albeit, without a credible plan to pay for them. These promises include a larger regular army and a bigger reserve force – though not until well into the next Parliament.
But here’s the extraordinary thing: on the one hand Labour talk about boosting military recruitment and retention. And yet, on the other hand, they are about to repeal the law the last Conservative Government put in place to protect our veterans from a new round of legal persecution.
In her speech on Friday, Kemi Badenoch rightly called this ‘lawfare’ – the use of legal means to pursue vexatious claims against British army veterans. The last thing any UK Government should be doing is removing protections from those who served our nation decades ago, and took huge risks to their own safety in order to protect our society from terrorism.
So why are Labour on the verge of reopening Pandora’s box when it comes to our Army veterans? December’s statement on Legacy from Northern Ireland Secretary, Hilary Benn, told us the answer: “aspects of the Legacy Act have now been found by the Courts to be incompatible with our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights”.
Just when we need to be boosting morale, and thereby recruitment and retention into the British Army, it is hard to think of a worse course of action to take than reopening a witch hunt against our brave veterans.
And the public agree – the petition to protect Northern Ireland veterans, strongly supported by this paper, has achieved over 134,000 signatures. This means hopefully that we will soon debate this matter in Parliament, giving us the chance push the Government to think again.
But this isn’t just about deployments from the past. Starmer has promised a ‘coalition of the willing’ in Ukraine. Yet on other overseas deployments, particularly Iraq, our troops were subject to hundreds of vexatious legal claims. When Russian nationals have been adept at pursuing lawfare through our own courts, do we seriously think if our troops were sent to Ukraine for some kind of peacekeeping mission that Putin’s ‘little green men’ wouldn’t seek to cause mischief and mayhem?
After all, as one veteran of Operation Banner told me: “Northern Ireland was a peacekeeping mission, too”.
So I’m delighted that Kemi Badenoch has made the second test of her Lawfare Commission the ‘Veterans’ Test’. We mustn’t have a situation where our soldiers are more fearful of being sued on their return from an operation, than of any action they might face whilst deployed.
But Kemi is also right to set up a Commission to ensure any departure from the ECHR is delivered effectively, rather than in kneejerk style, with full consideration of potential unintended consequences. This requires a detailed plan, not an empty promise.
We need our soldiers more than ever, in order to face the threat that matters most – that from nations opposed to human rights; opposed to democracy. The military will always operate within the rule of law – our laws, and those of armed conflict, such as the Geneva Convention.
But we cannot expect them to do their job with one hand tied behind their back, or under constant fear of lawfare when they return home. So Kemi is 100% right to look at how we could leave the ECHR, and to make the protection of our veterans and our service personnel one of the top reasons for doing so.
