Fighting for your country or for the peace and security of an entire nation must be one of the most difficult jobs to do. Yet the members of our army have chosen to do just that. The one thing they must expect is to receive the correct equipment and resources to do the best possible job and minimise loss of life.
Unfortunately many in the Armed Forces and their families feel that this simply isn’t happening and it is leading to the loss of soldiers, it seems on a daily basis. The families of men and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and those injured, are now starting to ask for compensation and it seems that they are being granted the right to do so.
Until 2008 the Ministry of Defence (MoD) was able to claim “combat immunity” which meant that they couldn’t be held responsible for loss of life during a war. The MoD claimed that a war zone is a special environment and that effectively, these things happen. This attitude was questioned and finally put to rest by a test case involving the death of a young man from heat stroke.
Private Jason Smith died from a lack of care and a serious failure to spot his condition. The ruling by Justice Collins stated that the families of those killed or injured in a war zone should be able to sue under the Human Rights Act and should be entitled to legal aid.
This ruling has paved the way for people to sue the MoD for a lack of proper equipment as this also is a breach of human rights.
The most recent case involves the families of four soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan from roadside bombs. The families argue that the transport they were provided with was not properly armoured and should not have been used. The Snatch Land Rovers were originally designed to be used in the Irish conflict and were described by lawyers as “vulnerable”.
In the last 4 years, 37 military personnel have been killed whilst in a Snatch Land Rover, this is despite warnings from Army officials that use of the vehicles would lead to deaths.
This case is likely to be put on hold while a decision is made into weather a previous ruling refusing a public enquiry into the vehicles was wrong.
This case is further highlighted by the death of Capt. Tony Philippson who was killed in 2006. His father has vowed to take the MoD to court over allegations that a lack of proper night vision equipment and weapons was a contributory factor in his death. The coroners verdict recorded his death as being due to a “lack of basic equipment”. The MoD claimed the death was down to “tactical error”.
Another family currently facing a court room battle are the parents of Steve Roberts, whose death first alerted the media to the lack of basic equipment for the troops in 2003. He was ordered to hand over his body armour to another unit of infantry who were thought to need it more than tank units. This decision led to his death when he climbed from his vehicle to try an calm an angry crowd. He had previously sent a tape to his wife complaining about the disgraceful lack of equipment.
Meanwhile a Government spin doctor is also suing the MoD for disability discrimination. He claims that the fact he had to lie about the lack of equipment, sometimes to the families of dead soldiers, has left him traumatised. His job was to support the dead soldiers families, attend funerals and to deal with the media. His comments regarding the Snatch vehicles, claiming they were safe, has made him feel responsible for the resulting fatalities.
The war in Iraq and Afghanistan at a time of a worldwide recession is always going to be difficult to finance. However the Government needs to be able to prioritise its spending and ensure that our troops are properly equipped. They can send billions to overseas tsunami and earthquake victims, hand over millions for failed banker’s bonuses, set up (useless) million-pound funds for car dealers to sell cars and set aside billions for Trident missiles that we’ll never actually have the necessary human disregard to fire — yet body armour is beyond them.
The concern may be that the MoD will be financially strapped by ever mounting compensation payments and the current troops may end up with even less.
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