The UK’s ruling Conservative government on Tuesday is set to announce plans to protect Britain’s armed forces from legal claims made against its members for actions during war.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon is expected to announce at the Tory conference in Birmingham new measures to protect soldiers from being sued or going to prison.
Fallon will say that most of the “vexatious” legal claims against soldiers who “risk their lives to protect us” are made under the European Convention on Human Rights and that the UK government’s new move will effectively suspend Article Two (right to life) and Article Five (right to liberty) during future conflicts – another huge post-Brexit blow to the European Union.
“Our legal system has been abused to level false charges against our troops on an industrial scale,” Fallon plans to say in his speech.
“It has caused significant distress to people who risked their lives to protect us, it has cost the taxpayer millions, and there is a real risk it will stop our armed forces doing their job.”
While the EU says it is not "bound" to the rulings of the ECHR, a protocol in 2010 allowed the EU to accede to it; EU members are subject to its human-rights laws and external monitoring.
The EU has pushed for the ability to have more say over the EU Court of Justice's opinion on cases. For example, if the EU Court of Justice provided an opinion, it would need unanimous support from EU members.
As a non-EU member, Britain would be able to secure new protective laws, like the one Fallon will propose Tuesday, which would mean it would not have to wait EU members to unanimously vote on it. Basically, this move shows that outside the EU, a country is able to create new sovereign laws that do not need the unanimous vote of 28 nations when part of the bloc.
Johnny Mercer, a Tory MP who is a former Army captain, tweeted his support for the government's new measure:
Delighted to have some success on this. This affects operational capability; we now have a more effective Military than we did before this. pic.twitter.com/9ZVUa2kwlf
— Rt Hon Johnny Mercer (@JohnnyMercerUK) October 3, 2016
Fallon will say the new legal measure will be "an important step towards putting that right."
Human-rights laws under the EU's European Convention on Human Rights have been a point of contention for many Brits and some in the Conservative government for some time. It may have been a part of why some people voted for a British exit from the EU on June 23.
Mercer has campaigned for changing the laws over the prosecution of soldiers during war while families and friends of those who have faced legal action have called for change since suspected Taliban bomb makers and insurgents started to sue the armed forces.
Former Prime Minister David Cameron also promised back in January last year that he would try to bring a stop to "witch-hunt lawyers" who help people prosecute soldiers for their actions during war after the Daily Mail launched a national campaign "revealing how troops who served in Iraq are being mercilessly hounded by legal aid lawyers."
One example is that of Joseph McCleary, who was a guardsman in Iraq. He was charged with manslaughter in the death of an Iraqi looter in 2006 but was cleared of the charges that year. He then faced another investigation 10 years later, however, because the Iraq Historical Allegations Team is allowed to investigate historical claims under the human-rights act.
Britain's Ministry of Defence has spent about £100 million ($127.4 million) on investigations, inquiries, and compensation related to the Iraq War, which since 2004 has led soldiers to be prosecuted for anything from ill-treatment during detention to death by shooting during the conflict.
War-crime claims made against British troops in Afghanistan have also hit about 600.