Armed Forces Bill

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I am afraid I have disobeyed my late great friend Lord Weatherill who said, “If you are at all in doubt do not listen to the debate”. I have listened to the debate and I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Newton. It really is nonsense. I am actually standing before your Lordships wearing a decoration—Commander of the Order of the Lion of Finland. When I received it for services which do not begin to compare with the bravery that the people we are talking of displayed in the Malaysian jungles, I received a letter from the Queen’s private secretary giving me unrestricted permission to wear it whenever I wished to. It seems a total nonsense to give permission to these brave people to accept this medal and then to say, “But you cannot wear it”. There is no logic in that argument whatever and I hope that my noble friend who will be replying to this debate—for whom I, too, have very real regard and respect—if he cannot give the logical answer will say that we ought to let Parliament make up its mind to allow these brave veterans, most of whom are very old people now, to enjoy at least one Remembrance Day where they can wear this decoration of which they are rightly proud.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

My Lords, I rise as someone with no military medals, though my late father had some. I find it incomprehensible that we are not proud that service people fighting for this country were awarded medals by one of our Commonwealth nations. If we are proud that they should be awarded such medals, why should they not be allowed to wear them? It seems incomprehensible that they are not. We talk in your Lordships' House about the cost of this and the cost of that—I was told that the cost of national defence medals would be higher than I imagined—but the cost of doing this is nothing other than perhaps a dent in some civil servant’s pride. There is no reason why this House should not encourage the Government to allow people to wear medals such as the PJM medal.

Having been awarded a medal from a Commonwealth country, the recipient does not have to wear it. There is no saying that if you have received a medal from a Commonwealth country of which you might, for current reasons, disapprove you have to wear it, but the idea that you cannot wear it seems anathema.

The Bill has to go to the other place. It is not on this one amendment that it may ping-pong. Therefore, contrary to my normal loyalties to the coalition, I will vote with the noble, valiant Lords in favour of the amendment.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I listened to the debate on medals in Grand Committee. I said at the end of it that our position was neutral but that I had found many of the arguments very persuasive. I have read the letter from the Minister of 23 September and welcome it as far as it goes. It is good that there is to be a review, and I am pleased that it will be relatively rapid. I apologise for not being present on Report, but I have carefully read the debate in Hansard. As a consequence, I assume that, arising out of those debates and that letter, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, and his colleagues have produced what is now a very narrow amendment about a particular anomaly.

We have taken enough time on this; I shall not repeat the arguments except to say that I unknowingly applied the test described by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, to a peculiar group of people called the opposition Whips. I tried to explain to them that we were going to debate how the King of Malaysia had presented a medal to British soldiers, how the Queen through Her Majesty's Government had agreed that they could accept it, and how they were not then allowed to wear it. It took me 10 minutes to convince them that I was being serious, especially, as I recollect from Committee, there is one day or one week when the soldiers are allowed to wear the medal.

We will support Amendment 8. I take this opportunity to say how flexible and how positive the Minister, his fellow Ministers and their team have been throughout the Bill. I earnestly invite him to maintain that theme and accept the amendment. Unfortunately, if he is unable to do so and there is a Division on it, we will join the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, and his colleagues in the Lobby.