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Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I think he will derive reassurance from the remarks that I am shortly about to make, so I ask him to bear with me.

These concerns are that, by not excluding other serious offences, the Bill risks damaging not only the UK’s reputation for upholding international humanitarian and human rights law, including the UN convention against torture, but the reputation of our armed forces. Although we can be absolutely reassured that our armed forces would never resort to acts of genocide or crimes against humanity, and that it would be extremely unlikely for individual members of the services to be charged with such offences, not explicitly excluding these offences from the Bill is clearly an omission that must be rectified, and I am therefore happy to propose that now.

In addition, in order to prevent any further perceived damage to the UK’s reputation in respect of our ongoing commitment to uphold the rule of law and our international

obligations, particularly the UN convention against torture, the amendment would add torture offences to the list of excluded offences in schedule 1. The intent of the Bill as drafted is to ensure that the part 1 measures will apply to as wide a range of offences as possible in order to provide reassurance to our service personnel that the operational context will be taken into account in relation to allegations of criminal offences on historical overseas operations. Excluding further offences beyond those of genocide, crimes against humanity, torture and sexual offences would, however, undermine that reassurance by excluding a considerable list of offences from the application of the measures in part 1. We believe that we can take this approach safe in the knowledge that the prosecutor retains their discretion to make the appropriate decision about whether to prosecute a service person on a case-by-case basis, including in respect of other serious offences. The presumption, therefore, against prosecution is a high threshold; it is not a bar.

In proposing this amendment, which will see the exclusion of a greater number of offences from the measures in part 1, the Government believe that it is appropriate to also propose the removal of the delegated power in clause 6, which allows the Secretary of State to amend schedule 1.