Tom Tugendhat has launched a strong attack on his Conservative leadership rival, Robert Jenrick, after he made comments in a campaign video pledging to pull Britain out of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)
Jenrick claimed that special forces soldiers were deliberately killing terrorists rather than capturing them because of the ECHR.
In a video posed to social media, the former immigration minister explained why he believed Britain should no longer be a signatory to the convention. He claimed: “Our special forces are killing rather than capturing terrorists because our lawyers tell us that if they’re caught the European Court [of Human Rights] will set them free.”
Jenrick has since doubled down on the remarks by citing an article written by former defence secretary Ben Wallace as evidence for them.
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In an article entitled “Human rights laws are protecting terrorists”, Wallace said “because of international treaties such as the [ECHR] defence secretaries are being forced to choose between killing individuals, generally by drone, or leaving them to continue plotting”.
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Tugendhat, the shadow security minister, has now strongly rebuked Jenrick’s remarks, labelling them “wrong” and suggesting they are “irresponsible.”
Asked what he thought of the comments at a Conservative conference fringe event on Tuesday, Tugendhat replied: “He’s wrong. Let me just be quite clear, he’s wrong. That is, first of all, that’s not what Ben Wallace said. And if you read his article, it’s quite clear that’s not what he said.”
“And secondly”, he added, “I’m not going to talk about special forces operations. As the security minister, I was one of the very few people who was regularly briefed on intelligence matters.”
Tugendhat continued: “I was lucky enough to serve alongside members of our Special Forces community in various different ways, and I should just be very clear, the idea that our Special Forces, or in fact, any branch of our armed forces, whether it’s Royal Air Force drone operators, or whether it’s troops on the ground, conduct themselves in any way other than in keeping with the values and standards of the British Armed Forces is extremely — it’s an extremely serious allegation, and without very specific examples, it would be, I think it would be irresponsible to do that.”
He added: “Now, I’ve heard somebody say that we couldn’t have conducted an operation like that against Osama bin Laden, that’s simply not true. I mean, it is just simply not true. If you present a legitimate military threat to the United Kingdom, then we have, under the laws of armed conflict today, the legal ability, and, in fact, the military capability to conduct operations to keep the British people safe.
“I’m afraid that’s simply a fact and if you don’t know it, please don’t comment on military matters, you know nothing about.”
Tugendhat and Jenrick are two of the four remaining candidates making their pitches to party activists at Conservative conference, alongside Kemi Badenoch and James Cleverly.
Tory MPs will narrow the field to just two in further votes at Westminster on 9 and 10 October.
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on X/Twitter here.
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