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Saudi Arabia Medal.
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Post Saudi Arabia Medal. 
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait Liberation Medal.

A request was made at the House of Commons Library through a constituency MP about the Saudi Arabia and Kuwait Liberation medals which the civil servants and MP’s in the FCO have said were similar to the PJM in that permission to wear them was not given.

Eventually, (it took about six months or more) the Senior Defence Analyst, International Affairs and Defence Section, House of Commons Library, reported as follows -



 Further to your email, I have done an extensive search of all of the Library’s holdings and the various briefings that I have written over the years on medals, and the Library does not hold any information with regard to the liberation medals which were awarded to British service personnel after the Gulf War in 1991.

 I do know that the decision to award both medals was taken by the Honours and Decorations Committee which is responsible for all recommendations to the Sovereign for the award of honours and medals, including those that are offered by foreign governments. Medals are not within the gift of the Ministry of Defence but must be approved through the HD committee.

 Both the Saudi and Kuwait medals are also among only a handful of foreign medals that personnel have been able to accept. To date permission to wear the Kuwait medal has not been granted, although a small number of personnel in receipt of the Saudi liberation medal were granted permission to wear the award. The permission to receive both awards was not announced to Parliament either orally or by way of a written statement. It is more likely to have been the subject of an internal memorandum from the HD Committee.

So it seems we have been misled by the self-professed crown and public servants who are required to maintain high standards of fairness, impartiality and integrity. Is it fair to deliberately state that the Saudi and Kuwait liberation medals are similar to the PJM when some who have been awarded this medal can wear it; it is not a Commonwealth award; was not awarded to British private citizens until about fifty years after the events, and some have been given permission to wear it.

The plot thickens. Not being fully satisfied with the above answer the MP concerned was then asked to find out who or what persons were actually given permission to wear a medal which the majority of British coalition forces were not allowed to wear.

The following answer was received -

 Further to the information I sent you last week on the Saudi Arabia medal for the liberation of Kuwait, your constituent raised one further question regarding the ability of some personnel to wear the medal and not others.
 Reference to a few of the 45,000 British servicemen that were awarded this medal being granted permission to actually wear it is widespread among the publicity available medal reference books and buyers guides. I have attached an extract from the Medal Yearbook 2010 as an example. Among the various discussion forums it has been suggested that permission to wear the medal may have been granted to personnel such as defence attaches who may not have been in receipt of the British campaign medal for this theatre of operation. However, it should be noted that these comments are without citation, and therefore should be treated as speculation.
 Those reference books do not give much detail and therefore I have been trying to obtain some official clarification on this issue, albeit with limited success as the discussions and decisions of the HD Committee are not made publicly available.
 May I suggest, therefore, that you either table a Parliamentary Question and ask for clarification on this issue or suggest that your constituent submit a freedom of information request to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
 I hope that this is useful.


This medal was awarded to British crown servants yet some were allowed to wear, whilst the crown servant for life stigma which they say verifies the non-wear of the PJM, is applied not to some but to all who were awarded the PJM.

It is also interesting to note that the House of Commons library which is part of our democratic system cannot ask the HD Committee or the FCO to clarify the situation because one acts in secret and the other keeps secret matters which can only be possibly divulged by a FOI Act request.

The Honours and Decorations Committee was formed in 1939 at the behest of King George VI and it has continued to this day with its current terms of reference as ‘To consider general questions relative to the grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals; to review the scales of award, both civil and military, from time to time; and to consider questions of new awards and changes in the conditions governing existing awards’. There is nothing in this brief which gives the unelected civil servants in the HD Committee authority to make rules or laws which can be imposed upon British private citizens. Yet this is what it has done and has recommended to Her Majesty The Queen that its is within the rules for Her Majesty to discriminate against her British veterans and to act unconstitutionally by imposing a restriction on the freedom of British private citizens without the elected Houses of Parliament being fully involved.

There is no doubt whatsoever that this unelected committee of civil servants has acted beyond the terms of reference guiding it but the malfeasance must rest entirely with its Chairman.

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Andy, a most revealing piece of info. I think we are getting there.

David,

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Post HDC own goal 
Knockout stuff Andy, well done.

yours Aye

Arthur R-S

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