Lord Hermer must go – spiked

A Telegraph investigation has revealed the role Richard Hermer KC, the UK attorney general, played in the Al-Sweady scandal, which led to British servicemen facing false accusations of murder and torture for over a decade. As a result, senior MPs have reported Hermer to the Bar Standards Board for misconduct.

The Al-Sweady scandal centred on claims brought by Iraqis who alleged that British soldiers had tortured and executed civilians after the Battle of Danny Boy in southern Iraq in 2004. These claims originated with the now disgraced solicitor Phil Shiner, who broadcast them to the world in a widely publicised press conference in 2008.

The subsequent Al-Sweady Inquiry (2009-2014) into these allegations concluded that they were ‘wholly without foundation and entirely the product of deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hostility’. It turned out that Shiner’s clients were not innocent farmers and labourers murdered by malevolent British soldiers. They were in fact members of the Mahdi Army – an Islamist militia backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It later emerged that Shiner had advanced the claims using dubious intermediaries to gather witness evidence. He used cold-calling to invite people to give testimony, with the promise of remuneration. He also made fraudulent claims to the Legal Aid service, receiving money from the public purse to fund his discredited litigation. He was struck off. Shiner later pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud and was sentenced on 10 December 2024 to two years’ imprisonment, suspended for two years.

Hermer played a significant role in the litigation. In the words of the Telegraph, he ‘acted as lead counsel in civil claims against the Ministry of Defence and pressed for lucrative compensation despite mounting evidence that his eight Iraqi clients were “on the make”’.

These are very damaging claims for Hermer. Barristers often say they have a professional obligation to act in cases irrespective of their personal views. They cite the ‘cab-rank rule’, which requires them to accept instructions in cases they may not personally support.

But the cab-rank rule did not apply in this case. Hermer worked instead under a conditional-fee agreement at double his normal fees. This is what most people would call a ‘no win, no fee’ agreement. That meant he would not be paid unless the claims succeeded. It also meant he could have withdrawn from the case without breaching the cab-rank rule. Indeed, if he had doubts about the credibility of the claims, he would have been under a professional obligation to withdraw.

That is why Hermer has now been reported to the Bar Standards Board. It appears that he had concerns about the claims but remained involved. In one internal email advising Shiner on how to ‘get the big story out there’, Hermer admitted that there needed to be ‘wriggle room if the killings did not in fact happen’. Other emails also appear to show that Hermer was enthusiastic about litigating against British soldiers, saying in one message, that ‘these Iraqi cases are a good reminder of why I wanted to be a lawyer’.

Hermer denies any wrongdoing. He has distanced himself from Shiner and maintains that his work on the case was entirely proper. This may all be true. But Hermer cannot expect to be politically immune from the professional decisions he took as a lawyer. He could have withdrawn from the case if and when he had concerns about the credibility of the allegations. Yet he failed to do so. He was plainly committed to what he was doing. He will now need to explain that to the Bar Standards Board.

Regardless of what the regulator decides, this ought to be politically catastrophic for Hermer. He was involved in one of the most shameful scandals to hit the legal profession in living memory. One can only imagine what those young men went through. They survived a firefight with Islamist insurgents, only to return home and face false allegations of the gravest crimes imaginable.

Hermer must be held to account for his role in all this. His position as the most senior law officer of the Crown is no longer tenable. He should either step down, or be forced out. Either way, Hermer must go.

Luke Gittos is a spiked columnist and author. His most recent book is Human Rights – Illusory Freedom: Why We Should Repeal the Human Rights Act, which is published by Zero Books. Order it here.