Andrew Griffith
Last week, I seized the chance to learn more about the work of our dedicated servicemen and women as part of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme.
The scheme was founded in order to improve the quality of Commons debates on defence issues and gives Members of Parliament the opportunity to volunteer with one of the services introducing them to the military and life for those in uniform.
This experience was a helpful initial insight ahead of a new law that I am proud to be supporting in Parliament next week; the Operations Overseas (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill. This seeks to provide greater legal protections to our brave servicemen and women on military operations overseas.
While our Armed Forces should not be immune from prosecution, there have been an increasing number of vexatious claims against innocent veterans. For example, the Al-sweady Inquiry launched in 2009 found that the vast majority of allegations brought against British personnel in Iraq were found to be wholly without merit, resulting in one lawyer who had personally brought hundreds of claims against our soldiers rightly being struck off for professional misconduct. A similar investigation in 2014 found that over 90 per cent of cases were discontinued as being without foundation. It is completely right that we protect our serving personnel and veterans who put their lives on the line for us in moments of extreme danger from these vexatious claims which place their futures and that of their families on hold for years at a time.
Supporting the annual Steyning
Food & Drink Festival last Saturday (which mercifully went ahead despite the Covid pandemic) I was reminded of the relative health of our local high streets compared with those of what are increasingly ‘ghost centres’ of the big cities. We asked everyone to #shoplocal and there has been a terrific response. A typical historic high street has a variety of shop sizes from very small units to larger stores without becoming dominant and they act as natural incubators of small enterprises. The Government has helped support the high street by giving retailers 100 per cent relief on their business rates until April 2021 at the earliest and, given the competition from online retailers, I believe that there is a case to look at making this permanent. Last year, despite Brexit, over 670,000 new companies were started in the UK.
That was before Covid, but it would not surprise me if when the numbers are released for this year it was also a surprisingly resilient number.