Awards for Valour (Protection) Bill

Craig Mackinlay Excerpts

Friday 25th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) for introducing the Bill. We are very aware that today is Black Friday. I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is present, and he will doubtless be joined by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall). May I recommend that they do a bit of discounting in their interventions, and perhaps go shopping? We have much business to conduct, not least my own later in the day.

Much has been said about the nature of people who wear false medals, or wear medals falsely. They do it primarily to deceive. While we may have a view on the Walter Mitty Hunters Club, whose activities are perhaps a little aggressive at times, it is in the nature of such people to try to advance themselves in the community and to create a standing that they simply have not earned. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford demonstrated ably how manipulative they are. They seek admission to an exclusive club when they have not earned the right. They often join parades on Remembrance Day, when we as the public pay particular tribute to what people who earned their medals have done in the service of this country.

There is already a certain amount of legislation that can help us. When financial fraud results from the use of this standing that has not been earned, it can carry up to 10 years’ imprisonment. I know of no cases thus far in which that legislation has been applied to people who have used medals for their own advantage, but I am sure that there are a number of cases out there. My hon. Friend mentioned a local councillor—no longer a councillor, in fact—who may be an example.

Other Members have mentioned mental health. I am sure that many people who use medals that they have not earned for their own advantage, in an attempt to gain some standing, have mental health issues to a degree, but there is plenty to cover that in the criminal code. It would be up to the police, then the Crown Prosecution Service, and then, of course, the courts to determine the mental state of such people. That is normal and proper practice in other parts of the criminal code. I therefore do not think that mental health issues would be a problem if the Bill were passed.

The main reason why I am supporting my hon. Friend’s Bill is for its deterrent effect. We have no deterrents, following the Armed Forces Act 2006, which sadly dropped the old Army Act 1955 offence; prior to that, there was the offence in Winston Churchill’s Act after the first world war. Apart from having a deterrent effect, the Bill will create certainty for the public: we will be absolutely sure when we see veterans that we can pay an appropriate tribute to them and honour them, knowing that they are the real deal and have earned what they are displaying. So there are two benefits to my hon. Friend’s Bill.

There was discussion about the appropriate penalty. Three months’ imprisonment has been suggested, although there could be an opportunity for community payback —a certain number of hours worked in the community. That would probably be the more likely outcome through the courts, but that would be decided on a case-by-case basis.

[Gareth Johnson]

I mentioned Roger Day; he was the last person prosecuted under the 1955 Act, although the Act had expired a few days beforehand. The court gave him community service, as it was at the time, which shows that courts often feel that a community penalty is appropriate, but this has to be an imprisonable offence in order to make those penalties available to the court.

[Craig Mackinlay]

Absolutely; my hon. Friend gives a good account of his knowledge of the law in such cases.

What greater community payback could there be for people convicted under my hon. Friend’s proposed legislation than to do service to war widows, perhaps, or war graves, or the great memorials around our country by repairing and cleansing them? I want to mention the case of Kevan or Konnor Collins in my constituency. He was elected as a UK Independence party councillor last year. He made a remarkable array of claims: that he had served in the Paras, and had been awarded an MBE, the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, the Military Cross, and the Distinguished Service Cross. If that had been true, he would have been the most decorated veteran in the entire country. He was outed online.

[Bob Stewart]

He would also have had to have served in practically all three services to have got those medals.

[Craig Mackinlay]

My hon. Friend highlights the ridiculousness of the situation. Mr Collins was outed by campaigners, and later resigned as a Thanet councillor. He was further found to be a bigamist. He was a Walter Mitty character of enormous proportions. I would not usually mention such cases and rely on the privilege of this House, but Sky News has covered this, as have The Sun and the Isle of Thanet Gazette, and he has even belatedly offered an apology for his lies and deceit.

How can we solve this? The United States has created, under its 2013 Act, an online database. That might be a sensible route for us to take, but love it or loathe it, the great internet already affords us a great deal of information about people who claim to be what they are not.

There is an international dimension to this. This country would not be doing something unusual through this Bill; we would be aligning ourselves with what happens among the rest of our friends in the EU, and also in Australia and the United States. For the deterrent effect, such an offence, which was taken away in 2006, is long overdue. I very much support the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford, and I hope that his Bill makes progress today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am not entirely sure whether my hon. Friend has been following the debate thus far, but it seems to me that what I am doing for the benefit of him and others is demolishing bit by bit the points made by the people who are proposing this Bill. It is yet another of the arguments we have had for the Bill that we should be doing these things because that is what other countries are doing. That was one of the key planks of the opening remarks by my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford, but I did not hear my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset pull him up on that point and say it was irrelevant. If he had said at that point, “Why on earth are you on about other countries? That is irrelevant,” or if he had made a similar intervention after my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East had made similar points, I would have had a bit of sympathy with them, but it seems that he is now clutching at straws to try to defend a Bill that is becoming increasingly indefensible because it is completely unnecessary. I have been knocking down each point that has been made, and he cannot actually answer my points; all he can say is, “The point we made at the start about why this Bill is so necessary is not really one of our main points.” I cannot second-guess what the real points are, and I can base my points only on the arguments that have been made by the people who propose the Bill. If people want to make other arguments, I am prepared to listen to those, but, thus far, I have not heard any. One of the key planks was that we have to do these things because other countries are doing them—my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East made that point himself.

With regard to Australia, the Library said:

“Australia’s Federal Prosecution Service publishes some slightly more useful figures but even then it is difficult to say with certainty that they were related to stolen valour. In 2012-13”—

the latest year for which figures are available—the service

“dealt with 2 cases under the Defence Act 1903. However, the statistics don’t state what the specific offences were.”

The Library also states:

“much of the information found has been the result of media searches. For example, an article in The Herald Sun in September 2014 suggested that in the state of Victoria alone, over the last ten years…‘five people have been charged by police with impersonating a returned soldier, two people have been charged with impersonating a member of the defence force and seven people have been charged with improper use of defence service decoration.’”

In New Zealand, statistical information of this nature is presented in the same way. The offence of wearing an unauthorised military decoration could feasibly be included in fraud, public order or miscellaneous offences in the country’s database, so it is difficult to pinpoint the extent of the problem.

In Australia and New Zealand there is a group called ANZMI—the Australian and New Zealand Military Imposters group—which is dedicated to exposing military imposters. It has a section on its website that lists individuals it considers to be military imposters. The information it provides is not official, and has not necessarily led to a prosecution, so it should be treated with some caution. It does not appear that there are lots of prosecutions for all offences, never mind for the offence of wearing a medal.

Some people who wear medals to deceive will be evil characters—most likely with the intention of gaining something for themselves. That will be something financial in a lot of cases, or it may be to impress other people. The ones who set out to deceive for non-monetary purposes must have a different reason for doing so—maybe to gain respect, to big themselves up or to attract a member of the opposite, or the same, sex. Who knows?

However, I am concerned that people with mental health issues may be disproportionately affected by this offence, rather than by the fraud offence.

[Craig Mackinlay]

I thank my hon. Friend for the list of countries that have already enacted similar pieces of legislation. He finds very few cases of people being taken to court because of them. Is that not entirely the purpose of the Bill—to have a powerful deterrent effect? Given the small number of cases abroad, that legislation has obviously worked.

[Philip Davies]

The problem with that argument, attractive though it is superficially, is that we have not been able to find a great many cases of these things happening in the UK when there is no legislation in place. It seems that these things are just as rare in countries such as ours, that do not have legislation, as in countries that have legislation. In fact, I suspect that one reason why many countries do not have legislation is that nobody has ever found this to be a problem. That is the whole reason why many things are not legislated for in countries; things tend to be legislated on when there is seen to be a problem, and something needs to be done. The fact that nothing is happening in countries with these laws would indicate that there must be even less happening in those countries without them. I do not follow the logic of my hon. Friend’s position.