HC Deb 18 March 2002 vol 382 cc16-7
12. Vera Baird (Redcar)

If she will take steps to obtain pardons for soldiers executed during the first world war. [40908]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr. Lewis Moonie)

The question of granting pardons to those executed during the first world war was the subject of a careful and detailed review by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton, North and Bellshill (Dr. Reid), the then Minister for the Armed Forces. The legal difficulties in considering pardons were fully explained in his statement to the House on 24 July 1998.

The position has not changed but that should not obscure the important and very positive steps taken to recognise those men as victims of the war and to remember them among their fallen comrades. Their public commemoration in the new memorial in the national memorial arboretum is very fitting.

Vera Baird

I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful reply. I ask him to consider two factors that have reignited the issue for some of my Redcar constituents. The first is that New Zealand passed the Pardon for Soldiers of the Great War Act in 2000, which pardoned the few people that it had executed in the first world war, thus showing that it can still be done. The second is that the independent Criminal Cases Review Commission routinely reviews convictions that are more than 50 years old, including executions, and makes sensible suggestions. Do not those two factors together suggest that a short independent inquiry might be able to give at least some people more satisfaction?

Dr. Moonie

Again, I should refer my hon. Friend to the careful and well-researched statement that the Minister made in 1998. The whole subject has been considered with great sympathy and care. The review took a wide range of expert legal, medical and historical advice from within and from outside the MOD, including from those who seek pardons. The representations from the families of those who were executed and the views of surviving veterans of the war were of course fully considered, as was surviving evidence on the individual cases.

We understand that many people still seek pardons for the executed men, but pardons are an exceptional legal remedy requiring a level of evidence that, particularly in relation to medical matters, no longer survives. However, the difficulties over considering pardons should not obscure the important measures that have been taken publicly to recognise those who were executed as victims of the war.

Michael Fabricant (Lichfield)

The Minister is right to say that this subject is far from simple. He may recall from the history books that when many of the executions took place there were mass desertions from the French army and that, rightly or wrongly, it was feared that similar events might occur in the British Army. He is also right to mention the national memorial arboretum at Alrewas in my constituency. If he has not already visited it, may I invite him and his colleagues to see that fitting memorial to those who tragically lost their lives?

Dr. Moonie

Yes. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that I have every intention of visiting the national memorial arboretum in the near future, and I shall of course inform him, as a local Member, when that visit is to take place.