Northern Ireland Troubles Bill
Tuesday 18th November 2025
(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Northern Ireland Troubles Bill 2024-26 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
18:58 - The House divided: - Ayes: 165 / Noes: 327 - Question accordingly negatived.
19:12 - The House divided: - Ayes: 320 / Noes: 105 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
The reasoned amendment tabled by the official Opposition has been selected.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
On 11 June 1966, a 28-year-old storeman, John Patrick Scullion, was shot dead on the doorstep of his home in west Belfast by the Ulster Volunteer Force. It is regarded by many as the first sectarian killing of the troubles. By 10 April 1998 and the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, the death toll from this horrific period of violence in our country had risen to over 3,500, including almost 2,000 civilians and over 1,000 people who were killed while bravely serving the state, and 90% of those who lost their lives were killed by paramilitaries.
Some of the incidents—Warrenpoint, Bloody Sunday, the Kingsmill massacre, the Miami Showband killings, the Birmingham pub bombings—are, sadly, all too well known. Many others are less well known, although for each family, their grief, privately borne, has been just as strong and just as painful—fathers and brothers, mothers and daughters, children, people from all walks of life—and each one is a tragic and needless loss of a loved one. I say “needless” because there was always an alternative to violence, an alternative made real when the Good Friday agreement was signed.
Some found that agreement, which included the early release of prisoners convicted of troubles-related offences, very hard to accept, but over 70% of voters in Northern Ireland backed it in a referendum, because they knew that this was the moment to lay a foundation for peace that could give hope to citizens right across these islands for a future free of violence.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
I think it is appropriate that the Secretary of State opened his speech in the way that he did, but he should recognise that when he gave dates for when the troubles started and concluded, he finished on 10 April 1998. He knows well that that means he did not include the largest atrocity of the troubles, which occurred four months later in the town of Omagh, and he knows that nothing in this Bill will make provisions available for those families. Although an inquiry is ongoing into the Omagh atrocity, that does not answer the questions relating to the Irish Republic. Will he consider extending the dates to include the largest atrocity from the troubles?
Hilary Benn
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising that point, which we have discussed in the House before. As he has acknowledged, there is currently a public inquiry, set up by the last Government, into the terrible events that occurred at Omagh. I think the right and proper thing to do is to let that inquiry proceed with its work and, I hope, provide the answers that families are looking for.
Northern Ireland is now a largely peaceful place, but many people—including those I have had the privilege of meeting and who have shared with me their grief, their pain, their anger and their loss—still live with the effects of those decades of violence. Far too many have still, all these years later, been unable to find an answer to the simplest of questions: what happened—how did my loved one die?
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Further to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), the Republic of Ireland Government and the Garda Síochána have to respond on the things on which they fell short. For instance, when my cousin was killed and others were killed, the killers crossed the border to sanctuary and safety. There was collusion between the Garda Síochána and the people responsible for those murders. Those are some of the things we need within this process. Can the Secretary of State assure all of us, on behalf of our constituents, that the justice we all seek will happen through this Bill, because I am not quite sure of that at the moment?
Hilary Benn
I say to the hon. Member, for whom I have enormous respect, that I hope very much that that is the case, because one of the consequences of the agreement reached between the British and Irish Governments, which was published on 19 September, is that the Irish Government will move once our legislation has been put in place. They will move from their current position, which is that they will not co-operate with institutions that we know have failed—I shall come on to that point in a moment—to the fullest possible co-operation with the Legacy Commission and, by doing so, will open up the possibility of people seeing information they have not seen for too long.
The architects of the Good Friday agreement knew that the suffering of victims and survivors needed to be addressed, but they were not able to do so. If we are honest with ourselves, we know that this unfinished business falls to us—to all of us—because time is running out. I want to say directly to all the families—some are here in the Gallery today, and others are watching our proceedings—that we have heard their call, as I hope has the whole House, for us to do more to help them get the answers they seek.
What is this Bill aiming to do and why is it needed? It seeks to put in place a means of dealing with legacy that can actually command broad public support in Northern Ireland, in particular for families who have been trying to find answers for so long. It is needed because the previous Government’s legislation—the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023—whatever its intentions, fundamentally failed. It failed because it has been found in many respects to be incompatible with our international obligations, so creating a legal quagmire of uncertainty.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
How confident is the Secretary of State that his provisions for preventing compensation for interim custody orders will withstand challenge in the courts, and would the Government’s case be undermined in any way by their decision not to challenge the original ruling in the High Court?
Hilary Benn
If the right hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I shall come to his question a bit later.
Crucially—this is something that the House has to recognise—the 2023 Act failed because it did not command any support in Northern Ireland among victims and survivors, or the political parties. That was no basis for progress or reconciliation. That point has to be acknowledged. One of the principal reasons for that lack of support was the Act’s attempt to offer immunity from prosecution, including to terrorists who had committed the most appalling murders. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), who is intervening from a sedentary position, needs to go back and read the legislation that his Government passed. I have it here. Immunity was a false promise. It appeared to offer soldiers something that was completely undeliverable. The measures were never implemented, and were struck down by our courts. Families who had endured unimaginable suffering through paramilitary violence were simply not prepared to see those responsible given immunity.
Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)
I have spoken to many veterans in my constituency who are understandably concerned about the repeal of that law, and the vacuum that it leaves. Can the Secretary of State set out how the Bill supports our veterans?
Hilary Benn
I shall do that. If my hon. Friend will bear with me, I shall come to that directly.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
On what I hope is a non-contentious point, will the Secretary of State explain to Members in all parts of the House something that not everybody realises, which is that the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 means that no matter how heinous the crime, and no matter whether it was committed by a member of the armed forces—unlikely, but possible—a republican terrorist or a loyalist terrorist, no one will serve more than two years in jail? People need to realise that. Compromises have had to be made—and they have to be made by those on both sides, equally, if international law is not to strike them down.
Hilary Benn
The right hon. Gentleman is indeed correct. That was, in part, the basis on which the Good Friday agreement was reached, and 71.7% of the people of Northern Ireland gave their support to it. Compromise, of course, is essential in the interests of peace.
There was anger from many of those who served in Northern Ireland, who saw immunity as an affront to the rule of law that they had sought to protect, and as implying some sort of moral equivalence between those who served in our armed forces and terrorists. There is no moral equivalence whatsoever between those members of our armed forces who acted lawfully in carrying out their duties, and paramilitaries who were responsible for barbaric acts of terrorism. We owe our Operation Banner veterans an enormous debt of gratitude. I say to those watching, and to those in the Gallery: your service and your sacrifice will never be forgotten. We have a duty to care for all those who served. That is precisely why we are putting in the legislation new measures that are designed specifically to protect veterans, and why the Ministry of Defence always provides legal and welfare support to any veteran asked to participate.
The safeguards that we are supplying have been designed specifically for veterans, following close consultation with veterans. Some will necessarily apply to others, including former police officers, while others will apply only to veterans. Veterans will be protected against repeat investigations. Part 3 places a duty on the Legacy Commission not to do anything that duplicates any aspect of previous investigations or proceedings unless it is essential. That is a very high threshold. If a veteran is asked to give evidence publicly to an inquest, or in the commission’s inquisitorial proceedings, they will not be forced to travel to Northern Ireland. They will be able to do so remotely.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State just clarify: essential for what?
Hilary Benn
The hon. Gentleman says “Ah”. It was established by the previous Government’s legislation. They argued very strongly that the body had to be independent. “Essential” is a very high bar. It is for the commission to make that judgment.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
I am very grateful to the Secretary of State for clarifying a number of issues already, but I think that the veterans I have spoken to will be looking for clarity that they cannot and will not be placed on trial simply for carrying out orders.
Hilary Benn
I shall come on to this point, but decisions about prosecutions are made by prosecutors independently—that is the absolute foundation of our independent legal system—based on the evidence. If one looks at the facts, in the 27 and a half years since the Good Friday agreement, one veteran has been convicted for a troubles-related offence; going back to the point made by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), that veteran received a suspended sentence.
If asked to give evidence to an inquisitorial proceeding, any veteran will be entitled to seek anonymity, as is already the case for public inquiries and inquests. The commission and coroners will have to consider the health and wellbeing of elderly witnesses, and whether it would be appropriate for them to give evidence at all. A new statutory advisory group will provide an opportunity for victims and survivors of the troubles, including those from a service background, to be heard during the commission’s work. This group will, of course, not include anyone who has been involved in paramilitary activity.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
The Secretary of State says that the group will not include any former paramilitaries, but where in clause 8—or elsewhere—is there a prohibition on such participation? The clause is about victims and survivors, and those terms are undefined. Under our current iniquitous definition, a victim could be somebody who made themselves a victim by blowing themselves up with their own bomb. According to the clause, such a person could serve on the advisory panel.
Hilary Benn
I would ask the hon. and learned Gentleman to reflect on what I have just told the House: anyone who was previously involved in paramilitary activity will not be appointed to the victims and survivors group. I am giving the House that assurance as the Secretary of State.
These measures will be complemented by other commitments to ensure, for instance, that no veteran is cold-called. The Defence Secretary and I will continue to work with veterans, the Royal British Legion, the Veterans Commissioners and others to ensure that we get this right.
Ben Obese-Jecty
Whereabouts in the Bill does it say what the Secretary of State said about the victims and survivors group? If it does not say what he told us, will he amend it to ensure that it does?
Hilary Benn
I have given the House a very clear assurance on this point. I point out to the hon. Gentleman that nowhere in the legacy Act, which is the previous Government’s legislation, is there such a prohibition. Indeed, nowhere in that legislation does the word “veterans” appear.
Several hon. Members rose—
Hilary Benn
I will make progress.
There are those who have claimed, wrongly, that this legislation will somehow lead to a huge increase in prosecutions of veterans, or that it is only veterans who have been prosecuted in recent years, or that on-the-run letters have given IRA members an amnesty—an issue we have discussed in the Chamber. None of those things is the case. As I have just said to the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), just one soldier has been convicted since the Good Friday agreement, and the majority of those who have been convicted, and indeed of those facing live prosecutions, are paramilitaries, including republicans. As for the on-the-run letters, Prime Minister David Cameron could not have been clearer when he said in 2014:
“There was never any amnesty or guarantee of immunity for anyone, and there isn’t now.”
What is more, the legacy Act also shut down more than 1,000 police investigations into unsolved troubles-related killings, including the deaths of 264 members of our armed forces who were murdered by terrorists. A great many families have spoken of the distress that this caused them. Mary Moreland, who was widowed when her husband John, a reservist in the Ulster Defence Regiment, was killed by the IRA nine days before Christmas in 1988, says:
“As a veteran and war widow I strongly believe in accountability and the rule of law for all and take pride in the fact that the British Armed Forces are the finest in the world. Like many others I have always been opposed to the Legacy Act. It was legislation that was fundamentally flawed. I tentatively welcome the process of repealing and replacing the Legacy Act…the new legislation must be balanced, fair, rights-based and capable of delivering meaningful outcomes for victims and survivors.”
I agree. Or there is Paul Crawford, whose father was murdered in 1974 by the UVF. He says:
“I understand that British Army veterans are an important constituency, but so are we…victims and survivors of the conflict. Our voices matter too. Our experiences of loss, pain and trauma are very real. Many of us have been waiting for more than fifty years for truth and justice and none of us are getting any younger. The legacy of the conflict needs to be addressed, and this legislation needs to be passed.”
I agree.
Or there is Paul Gallagher, who shared his response with WAVE, which does such important work supporting victims, survivors and families. In January 1994, Paul was 21 years old. He was a civil servant. There was a knock on the front door of his family home, and paramilitaries took him and his family hostage. He was shot six times as they left, and has spent the rest of his life using a wheelchair. He is a campaigner who I have had the privilege of meeting several times. WAVE writes:
“What the party opposite proposed in 2023 enraged Paul. He is not naïve. He knows that securing a prosecution against the people who did this would be difficult. But offering an amnesty to these people so they could walk forever free. That to Paul is a moral outrage. How can someone like Paul, who has been betrayed by the system, believe once again in the rule of law.”
The troubles Bill seeks to right the wrongs of the legacy Act, so that together with the remedial order, which we have laid before Parliament under the Human Rights Act 1998, the Bill returns us to the broad principles of the 2014 Stormont House agreement negotiated by the last Conservative Government. It seeks to achieve greater confidence among communities across Northern Ireland. As for those families who have already approached the commission for help, their cases will transition seamlessly under the new arrangements, when the troubles Bill hopefully becomes law.
We announced a joint framework in September. The Irish Government have made important contributions to that, including by co-operating fully with the reformed commissioned by sharing information that, for far too long, far too many families have not been able to see. Let me be clear, however, that it is simply untrue for anyone to suggest that the Irish Government have been given any control or veto over the work of the Legacy Commission.
I turn to the contents of the Bill. The first part provides for the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery to be renamed the Legacy Commission. It also repeals part 2 of the legacy Act in its entirety, and confirms the meaning of “the troubles” and other terms. Part 2 outlines the structure of the Legacy Commission, its principal functions, and how appointments will be made. It will establish an oversight board, led by an independent non-executive chair, to hold the commission to account, and the Secretary of State will consult when making appointments. There will be two co-directors for investigations, of equal standing, one with experience of conducting criminal investigations in Northern Ireland, and one with experience of conducting such investigations elsewhere.
Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)
May I raise the issue of the Birmingham pub bombings? The Secretary of State says that the reformed Legacy Commission will have greater fact-finding powers. Can he set out why the families, including those who are part of the Justice 4 the 21 campaign, should have confidence in the reformed commission to get to the truth of the Birmingham pub bombings?
Hilary Benn
My hon. Friend raises an extremely important point. It is for the simple reason that the commission has the power to see all the information and evidence—everything. It is already investigating the Guildford pub bombings, the M62 coach bombing, and the Kingsmill massacre, and I hope that others—
Hilary Benn
And Warrenpoint, indeed. It is already investigating those terrible incidents, and I encourage anyone who is looking for answers to approach the commission and see the changes that we will make.
I shall now finish my description of what is in the Bill and bring my remarks to a close. All public appointments made by the Secretary of State must follow consultation with relevant persons, a list of whom will be published before the beginning of the appointments process. Part 2 will fulfil our commitment to create a fairer disclosure regime, ensuring that the commission has access to any and all information it requires and is able to publish as much of that as possible, subject to proportionate safeguards, which are necessary because even historic information can pose a direct risk to life and safety today or threaten our national security. However, the Bill ensures that any decision to prevent public disclosure is subject to a balancing exercise—with reasons given where possible, akin to the Inquiries Act 2005—and can be legally challenged. Part 2 also includes provisions on reviews into the performance of the commission’s functions, and for the winding up of the commission.
Part 3 deals with the conduct of both criminal and fact-finding investigations, and expands the referral process to enable family members, surviving victims and certain public authorities to request investigations. In all cases, following a case review, the director of investigations will decide whether the investigation is to be carried out as a criminal investigation or a fact-finding investigation. The commission will be able to refer any relevant conduct to prosecutors, as is already the case with the legacy Act, so there is no change in that respect. In the conduct of its investigations, the commission must comply with the statutory conflicts of interest duties set out. Each investigation will conclude with a report produced by a judicial panel member.
Under part 4 of the Bill, inquisitorial proceedings will be established to handle cases that would otherwise have been inquests but are transferred to the commission. These proceedings will draw on the Inquiries Act. They will be chaired by a judicial panel member and be able to consider evidence in public. Crucially, unlike inquests, these proceedings can also consider sensitive information in closed hearings. With that in mind, the Bill provides the Secretary of State with the power to direct inquisitorial proceedings in respect of the small number of cases that were halted prior to 1 May 2024 due to the exclusion of relevant sensitive information.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
If the Bill is as good as the Secretary of State would have the House believe, why have nine very senior four-star officers—eight generals and one air chief marshal—written to The Times and described it as
“a direct threat to national security”?
Hilary Benn
I do not agree with that assessment. There is nothing in this Bill that can be described as a direct threat to national security. I also note—[Interruption.] It would be good if the right hon. Gentleman would acknowledge this point. I note that those generals did not call for immunity. Maybe those on the Opposition Front Bench would like to reflect upon that.
Hilary Benn
No; I am going to have to finish, because many people want to speak.
Part 5 makes provision for the inclusion of personal statements, allowing families to describe what the death meant to them. The commission will have the power to refer troubles-related criminality by police officers to the ombudsman for Northern Ireland. Part 6 puts in place the necessary provisions to set up, on a pilot basis, the Independent Commission on Information Retrieval, as originally proposed in the Stormont House agreement. This will be an international body established jointly with the Irish Government to give families an additional means of retrieving information. Any information disclosed by individuals to the ICIR will be inadmissible in criminal and civil proceedings. Part 6 also includes provisions to ensure that the work of the ICIR does not impede on criminal investigations.
The Government have long been committed to restoring the troubles-related inquests that were halted by the legacy Act, which is why, under part 7 of the Bill, the inquests that were in progress prior to 1 May 2024 but subsequently halted will resume. Inquests that had been directed by the Attorney General but were not in progress will be subject to an independent assessment by the Solicitor General as to whether they are most effectively progressed in the Legacy Commission or the coronial system, and the Solicitor General will have regard to three statutory criteria.
I turn to part 8 and to the point raised earlier about interim custody orders. In short, these provisions seek to address the interpretation made by the UK Supreme Court in R v. Adams, regarding the application of the Carltona principle, with which this Government—and indeed the previous Government—disagreed. That principle is vital for Government, and it is right that it should be protected, including by dealing with what are considered incorrect inroads into it. Clauses 89 and 90 put it beyond doubt that the Carltona principle applied in the context of interim custody orders, by stating that any order made by a Minister of State or Under-Secretary of State is to be treated as an order of the Secretary of State. I refer the House to a written ministerial statement that I have today laid in Parliament setting out in greater detail the Government’s position on that matter.
The Bill will leave in place part 4 of the 2023 Legacy Act, meaning that the important provisions relating to oral history, academic research and the memorialisation of the troubles remain intact. Those measures stem from the Stormont House agreement and have been widely supported in principle. Part 8 of the Bill will also require the commission to produce and publish a historical record.
Separately, part 8 also allows any conduct that does not meet the definition of serious or connected troubles-related offences in the Bill to be investigated by the relevant police force. As a result, potentially serious offences, including sexual offences, will always have a route to investigation should evidence come to light.
Part 9 deals with general matters in relation to the Bill such as various definitions and its commencement.
I will bring my remarks to a close. I am acutely conscious that, for many families in Northern Ireland, time is running out. With every year that passes, memories fade, witnesses are lost and crucial evidence grows weaker. That is why the Government have to fix the mess that we inherited. But what is this really about? It is about those who continue to live with the pain of what happened to them or to someone they loved. We know that the overwhelming majority of those who were killed died at the hands of paramilitaries, and, as the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) so powerfully reminded us just over a month ago, the people who died were not in the wrong place at the wrong time; it was the terrorists who were in the wrong place doing the wrong thing.
We must be clear that terrorism is always wrong. Although we must recognise that the vast majority of those who served in Northern Ireland did so with distinction and bravery, in the words of apology offered in this House by the former Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis following the Ballymurphy inquest,
“it is clear that in some cases the security forces and the army made terrible errors too.”—[Official Report, 13 May 2021; Vol. 695, c. 277.]
I believe that this legislation represents our best and possibly final chance to fulfil the unrealised ambition of the Good Friday agreement. I accept that nobody will like everything contained in the Bill, as is inevitable given the differing views held by many. If fixing legacy was easy, we would not be discussing it 27 years later.
Let me read from a letter that the Commissioner for Victims and Survivors for Northern Ireland has sent me about our approach, which he says has been received
“with cautious optimism by victims and survivors.”
He goes on to say that we—he is talking about all of us—should
“get a move on rather than waste more precious time”,
and encourages all of us as parliamentarians
“to continue to show courage and determination to deliver for victims and survivors.”
It is no wonder that he refers to caution, because victims and survivors have been let down so many times before. That is why it is now our responsibility to take this forward.
I will continue to talk to victims and survivors, veterans and others, and colleagues in all parts of the House, during the passage of the Bill to consider where amendments might further improve it. Equally, I hope that all who seek a fair and effective way forward will recognise that the Bill represents a fundamental reform of current arrangements, and that it should be given a chance to succeed. I commend the Bill to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I ask those on the Front Benches to keep their opening statements short, because it eats into the time for contributions from Back-Bench Members.
Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:
“this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill because, by removing the conditional immunity scheme introduced by the last Government in the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, and reintroducing inquests and restoring civil claims for Troubles-related incidents halted by that Act, the Bill will lead to veterans once again being dragged before the courts facing potential prosecution for incidents that happened decades ago, while former paramilitaries are largely untouched; because the Government’s published list of so-called protections for veterans remains unclear and not fulfilled by this Bill; because the Government has not confirmed which of these protections will also apply to former paramilitaries; because the Bill does not prevent former paramilitaries holding key roles associated with the Legacy Commission; and because the Bill risks undermining the morale of, as well as both recruitment to and retention within, the armed forces at a time of significantly heightened international tensions and threats to the national security of the UK.”
I would like to start by paying tribute to those brave souls who served in Operation Banner—the longest and, surely, one of the most difficult operations that our military forces ever undertook. I know that some of them are in the Gallery today, and some of them are sitting behind me. I would like to thank them with my whole heart for the service they gave and extend that same thanks to the brave men and women of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The generations who have come after cannot fully understand what they went through, what they saw and what they did for peace.
The last Government chose to draw a line under the litigation of the troubles, and today that line is being erased. Our legacy Act was a response to the emerging legal reality—no less true than it was three years ago—that the legal system was ceasing to provide meaningful answers to victims, while dragging veterans through the courts in clearly vexatious cases. The process itself had become a means of punishment, and time is reducing the chances of convictions.
We created a new means of providing victims and their families with information—one that offered the opportunity to claim conditional immunity in return for information retrieval. That process is now up and running, and thanks to the excellent work of Sir Declan Morgan, to whom I pay tribute, I understand the ICRIR is currently considering about 250 cases and is taking on more every month. Confidence is growing; it is working. But the Bill before us today strips out the conditional immunity introduced by the legacy Act and reopens the door to vexatious litigation against veterans, while leaving it very unlikely that terrorists will be prosecuted. The Secretary of State himself has confirmed that there have been only five terrorist convictions in the past 13 years, and as time passes, the chance of successful prosecutions will reduce further and further.
In the past year alone, we have debated the manifest failings of the current system in this House: the terrible decision in the Clonoe inquest; the 1991 incident in court in Belfast last month, where a special forces soldier was acquitted by a judge, who said the case was “ludicrous”, but not before the man in question had been investigated for four years; and, of course, the case of soldier F, where no conviction was possible, despite one of the longest inquiries in British political history.
The legislation before us today will perpetuate disappointment for victims and despair for veterans. The Government are claiming that they have no choice but to legislate. They are making that claim for three reasons. The first is that they object to conditional immunity. The second is their belief that the legacy Act is incompatible with the European convention on human rights, and the third is the fact that the legacy Act lacked cross-party support.
Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)
Does the hon. Member recognise that the immunity that was promised never came into action because the British courts rejected it? Does he accept that we are not taking away immunity, because it was never possible in the first place?
Alex Burghart
It was never given a chance because this Government dropped their appeal—something I will return to shortly.
Alex Burghart
No.
Let me start with conditional immunity. The legacy Act provided immunity to individuals in return for their providing an account to the commission that was true to the best of their “knowledge and belief”. That is the immunity to which the Government are now opposed, but I am afraid that that objection is born of acute political amnesia. This House will know that the Blair Government accepted that the price of ending the conflict was a departure from the norms of criminal justice in Northern Ireland. They gave us the early release of 483 prisoners, 143 of whom were serving life sentences, including, it must be said, the man who in 1984 tried to kill the entire British Cabinet; the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998, referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), which limits prison terms to two years; the decommissioning of weapons legislation, which allowed for the destruction of forensic evidence that would have led to convictions; and an effective amnesty for all those who provided information to the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains—in short, immunity in return for information.
We also had the controversial letters of comfort—156 of them. One was received by John Downey, thought to have been the Hyde Park bomber, the case against whom collapsed on the production of his letter. It had apparently been issued in error, but nevertheless that letter effectively granted him immunity from prosecution. Even if, as Labour now claims, the on-the-runs were not intended to grant immunity, the use of the royal prerogative of mercy on at least 13 occasions certainly was.
Even if that was not enough, it was very much the intention of the last Labour Government to create a scheme for immunity. We know that because in November 2005, Peter Hain, now Lord Hain—the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland—brought legislation to this House in the form of the Northern Ireland (Offences) Bill, which was explicitly intended to create immunity from prosecution for terrorists. That was on the face of the Bill. The now Secretary of State was in the Cabinet at the time; he will have been supportive of that legislation—legislation that he now refers to as a moral outrage. That Government eventually dropped the legislation, not because of opposition in this House, but because of the opposition of Sinn Féin, who withdrew their support once they discovered that the scope was being extended to cover the security forces and the police.
Colum Eastwood
Let me take this opportunity to refresh the shadow Secretary of State’s memory. Sinn Féin actually supported that piece of legislation. Gerry Adams is on record as supporting that piece of legislation—I wonder why. Sinn Féin also supported, at one point, amnesty for everybody because it suited them. Why was that piece of legislation overturned? Because the Bloody Sunday families pressurised Sinn Féin, who in turn pressurised the Government, to drop it. That is what happened.
Alex Burghart
I hate to disagree with the hon. Gentleman, but if he goes back and looks at the news stories from the time, he will discover very clearly that Sinn Féin withdrew their support for the Bill once the Labour Government decided they would extend the scope of the Bill to cover security forces and police officers. The republicans never wanted equity; they wanted a one-sided agreement that would privilege only the terrorists and not the Army. I say all that to highlight the absurdity of Labour’s opposition to our legislation, and to remind the House that the proposals presented to us today are the opposite of what Labour believed was necessary, in the words of Peter Hain, to complete the peace process 20 years ago.
No doubt the Government will say, as the Secretary of State already has, that they have no choice but to change our legislation because it was found to be incompatible with the European convention on human rights. But that is only partially true. While it is the case that the High Court in Belfast found that conditional immunity was incompatible with the ECHR, I am sure that the Secretary of State knows that that court, despite its considerable strengths, is not the summit of the UK legal system. The last Conservative Government were appealing the court’s finding, but when the Labour Government came into power in July 2024, they dropped that appeal and they have never explained why. They had every opportunity to take it to the highest court in the land, and they declined to do so.
In legal circles, the finding of the High Court in Belfast is considered highly disputable. Why? Because the law strongly suggests that if the same logic was applied to the peace process legislation that I have already mentioned—the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998, the Northern Ireland Arms Decommissioning Act 1997, and the Northern Ireland (Location of Victims’ Remains) Act 1999—then all of that legislation would be deemed incompatible with the European convention and would have to be struck down.
Sir Desmond Swayne
Even if the Supreme Court had opined on the matter and judged it to be incompatible, that would not have changed the law. This House is not required to respond in any way to a declaration of incompatibility by a court. This House remains supreme.
Alex Burghart
As ever, my right hon. Friend is entirely correct. The courts have no power to strike down statute; they can advise this House to remove legislation.
Sir Julian Lewis
My hon. Friend says that it is highly likely that an appeal would have succeeded. In support of that, I cite the fact that the Defence Committee took evidence in great detail from four professors of law in 2017. They were not talking about that specific legislation, but they all agreed that it was possible and legal to combine a statute of limitation, providing that there was a truth recovery process. A range of people gave evidence, from Professor Richard Ekins on the right of centre, shall we say, to Professor Philippe Sands on the left of centre. It was possible, it was legal, and even if that law was struck down, something similar could have been put in its place.
Alex Burghart
I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention; I remember that he made a similar intervention in 2017, and again in 2023, on just that point, based on the work his Committee had done.
The Secretary of State has now introduced a draft remedial order to eliminate those parts of the Bill that are deemed to be incompatible. As he knows—I have written to him twice on this subject—the official Opposition do not believe that that remedial order is appropriate, and certainly not yet. That is because earlier this year the Northern Ireland Veterans Movement was granted permission to intervene in the case of Dillon before the Supreme Court, specifically on the issue of compatibility. On 15 October that intervention was heard, and if those arguments are accepted, the Supreme Court has the power to quash the declarations of incompatibility.
That means that the Secretary of State has no legal basis at this time for that remedial order. He has acted—or rather, if he pushes it to a vote, he will be acting—ultra vires, because under section 10 of the Human Rights Act the Government can only issue such an order unless and until all appeals in relation to the declarations of incompatibility have been “determined or abandoned”. In this case, they have not been, and the Government must not call a vote on the order unless and until they have been. I hope that the Minister will offer some clarity on the next steps during his closing remarks.
The Conservative party has been clear: the European convention on human rights should no longer be considered an obstacle to doing the right thing. It is not a holy text, and its jurisprudence is forcing Governments to do unholy things. Since legal advice of the highest order has now twice shown that the United Kingdom can leave the convention without breaking the 1998 agreement, this is what the next Conservative Government will do.
The current Government have previously said that they have to legislate because the legacy Act did not have cross-community consent, but where is that cross-community consent today? It does not exist. If there had been a cross-community solution on legacy, Stormont would have found it. I suspect that no solution is to be found, which means it is the responsibility of this House to protect those now abused by the system. The Bill will fail to do that. It will not help victims to find out the truth. It will not give comfort to our veterans. It will reopen old wounds and allow infection to come in.
Fleur Anderson
The hon. Gentleman has talked about doing the right thing, but is not doing the right thing getting justice for over 1,000 families, including 200 veteran families, who have waited too long for answers about their loved ones? Putting victims at the heart of this process would be doing the right thing—getting on with legislation that will deliver the justice needed, instead of the delays and dithering that the Conservatives’ legacy Act provided?
Alex Burghart
With all due respect to the hon. Lady, who I enjoyed working opposite, the last Government did not offer delay and dithering; we offered firm legislation. What she outlines, I am afraid, is an unrealistic view of the future. We have seen many cases come forward and very few convictions, and the people who suffer in that process are veterans. They are veterans like the gentleman I referred to a moment ago, from a case in 1991—four years of investigation, with a ludicrous case at the end. What is happening today is that victims are being promised something that will never be delivered, and veterans are being told that they do not matter.
Several hon. Members rose—
Alex Burghart
I am going to make some progress. We will have plenty of time in Committee to discuss our particular concerns with this legislation, but I will raise a small number of them today. First, the Bill deliberately shifts the focus towards criminal prosecutions. Clause 36 states that investigations are
“to be carried as a criminal investigation unless…there is no realistic prospect of information obtained…being provided to a prosecutor.”
I suspect that those most likely to be prosecuted will be veterans.
Secondly, the Bill creates a five-year time limit for family members and victims to request an investigation, but there is no such time limit for public authorities. Can the Minister tell us why not? This could rumble on forever.
Thirdly, the Bill pays lip service to not repeating previous investigations, as the Secretary of State said, by saying that the Legacy Commission will do so only when repetition is “necessary”—that is in clauses 30, 31, 36, 51 and 84—or when “duplication is essential”, as in clause 36. I imagine and I fear that some lawyers will have a great deal of fun with those words. How long before every attempted reinvestigation becomes “necessary” or every attempted investigation becomes “essential”? I believe and I fear that this is no protection at all.
Fourthly, the protections for our veterans here are a mirage, not just because they are largely available already, but because they clearly apply to terrorists as well as veterans.
Fifthly, in the past few days I have received a lot of communications from veterans about the role that Ireland will play in the new commission. I am sure that they will be reassured by the Secretary of State’s remarks in his opening speech that Ireland will have no formal process within the Legacy Commission. But what is clear that the Bill makes provision for the involvement of international figures. Will those international figures be given access to national security information? Will the Minister please be clear about that in his closing remarks?
Several hon. Members rose—
Alex Burghart
I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) and then to the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson).
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for setting out the wrongs of the Bill so clearly. A number of veterans called my office yesterday in great distress. One of their concerns is what the Bill means for future recruitment to the armed forces, which so far has not really been covered in this debate. They believe that if people sign up willing to give the ultimate sacrifice, their country should stand behind them. Will my hon. Friend set out why the Bill risks so heavily future recruitment to the armed forces, and therefore why that is another reason that this Bill is absolutely wrong?
Alex Burghart
I concur greatly with my hon. Friend’s remarks, and I will return to them in a few moments.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
The shadow Secretary of State pointed out that the Secretary of State assured us that there will be no input from the Irish Government set out in the Bill. Yet, first, the Irish Government were the only ones consulted. Secondly, there will be appointments made. Does he see the possibility that a Government who have acceded to the demands of the Irish Government in this Bill could also accede to suggestions for people to be nominated to the advisory committee, meaning they could therefore have Irish proxies under the Bill, despite the assurances given by the Secretary of State?
Alex Burghart
The right hon. Gentleman raises interesting and important points. We are concerned about the question of who will have access to sensitive national security information within the legacy commission’s framework? It would be good to have clarity on that from the Minister later.
Sixthly, there was some confusion on the Labour Front Bench recently about whether former IRA personnel would be able to serve as a legacy commission officer or as a member of the victims and survivors advisory group. Perhaps when we get to Committee the Minister could clear that up and provide legal guarantees that that will not be the case.
Colum Eastwood
Will the shadow Secretary of State remind the House who is actually in Government in Northern Ireland and if there are any former paramilitaries involved at all?
Alex Burghart
The Labour party is in power in Northern Ireland—it has formed the Government of the United Kingdom.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) said, it would be good to get legal guarantees about who will be able to serve on the legacy commission and the victims and survivors advisory group.
Lastly, veterans have been asking publicly for the inclusion of the word “veteran” in the Bill. They do not consider themselves victims or survivors; they consider themselves veterans, and they hope that the Government will recognise them as such in legislation.
Claire Hanna (Belfast South and Mid Down) (SDLP)
Many in this House believe in the rule of law and in the equality of every person in front of the law. Between 30,000 and 40,000 people were properly convicted of paramilitary offences, and 300,000 soldiers served under Operation Banner. Can the shadow Secretary of State outline how many of those have been in court?
Alex Burghart
I think the hon. Lady is misunderstanding my point. The point that I am making is that when it is clear that vexatious complaints and vexatious investigations can begin, then everyone who served feels under threat—[Interruption.] For the benefit of Hansard, the hon. Lady said from a sedentary position, “Are they vexatious?” It is very clear that the case that was heard in Belfast last month was a vexatious complaint. The judge said it was “ludicrous” and that it should never have come anywhere near the court, but for four years a member of the special forces was pursued, and all his comrades and colleagues thought that if such a thing could happen, they might have the same legal action brought against them in future.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
The way in which the last intervention was made suggested that this is a numbers game based on the numbers who were out there in Northern Ireland. The fact is—[Interruption.] No, with respect, I actually served out there, and I can tell you something about this. The reality is that the British Army was sent to hold the peace against terrorists who set out to kill people deliberately for their own political ends. Is it not wrong to equate the two as though the numbers were ridiculous?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Before Alex Burghart responds, let me say that it is important that we keep the debate well-tempered. The term “you” should not be used by a senior Back Bencher.
Alex Burghart
As ever, my right hon. Friend is a bastion of good sense. He reminds us that there is no moral equivalence between the people who were sent to try to keep the people and services of Northern Ireland safe, and the people who were terrorists.
Finally, we note that, under the terms of the agreement, the Republic of Ireland has committed to legislate to enable the fullest possible co-operation of the relevant Irish authorities with the Legacy Commission. We sincerely hope that this is true, as there are many secrets of the troubles that are yet to be disclosed from sources south of the border. From the huge number of extradition requests that Dublin refused between 1973 and 1999 to the long, long list of cases of collusion between the Garda and the Provisional IRA that have not been properly dealt with, it is clear that the south has never taken full responsibility for the blind eyes turned and the bad acts abetted. The test of this Government’s approach will be whether Dublin delivers, or whether this—as one representative of victims has said to me in the past few days—turns out to be another case of “tea and sympathy” with no action to follow. For the record, it is my party’s strong view that if this Bill receives Royal Assent, the Secretary of State should not commence the legislation until this House has at least seen the Irish legislation.
In conclusion, this Bill contains no meaningful protections, it has no cross-party support, and there are no legal barriers to continuing what the last Government began. We find ourselves in a situation where retired generals, SAS veterans and the like are all telling this House not to proceed. They are telling us that there will be consequences—for recruitment, for retention and for national security. This morning in a statement, Soldier Z said that
“the damage being done to the morale and fibre of UK special forces and armed forces…must be understood by the public, because it’s very well understood by the SAS.”
When such people speak, this House has an obligation to listen.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
All Back-Bench contributions will be limited to six minutes.
Mr Paul Foster (South Ribble) (Lab)
The peace process in Northern Ireland was hard-won, and tough compromises had to be accepted by all parties. The Good Friday agreement was never going to have the wholesale support of all, but it brought about an end to the horrendous violence. However, it did not include a mechanism for dealing with unresolved killings during the troubles—either by terrorists or by the security forces—and nor did it provide an amnesty for crimes that had not yet been prosecuted.
Let us also not forget that, according to data from the House of Commons Library, around 3,520 people lost their lives during the troubles. They included 1,441 British service personnel, 722 of whom died at the hands of paramilitaries. Three hundred RUC officers were killed, and 301 individual deaths were the responsibility of the British military. Of those, 121 were republican terrorists, 101 were loyalist terrorists, and the remainder were all civilians. We therefore have a duty to ensure that all legacy issues arising from the troubles are dealt with compassionately, diligently and legally.
The previous Government’s legacy Act has been found to be unlawful by both the High Court in Belfast and the Court of Appeal. The High Court found several provisions of that Act to be incompatible with the European convention on human rights, and it was therefore deemed unlawful. It also found that it was incompatible with article 2 of the Windsor framework and should therefore be disapplied. The Court of Appeal upheld this decision, and also found additional aspects of the legacy Act to be incompatible with the ECHR.
There are many separate elements of the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, but I will keep my contribution to two specific areas: immunity from prosecution for historical crimes, and the concerns of my fellow veterans moving forward under the new legislation. As a veteran, I have never sought or agreed that, as a British serviceman, I should ever be permitted immunity from prosecution for my actions during service. We work within the law of armed conflict, the Geneva convention and the laws of the United Kingdom when serving here, to name but three. We are trained to undertake operations within strict legal protocols, whatever the provocation we are experiencing or the hostile environment we are in.
There has been much opposition to the immunity offered within the legacy Act. The three veterans commissioners in July said:
“This is not a call for immunity from the law, but for fairness under it”.
Ben Wallace, the former Defence Secretary, said that the British Army is “not above the law.” Brigadier John Donnelly, who served in Northern Ireland and is now chair of the Centre for Military Justice, said only last week:
“You cannot have a system of law that applies to some groups and not to others. It is vital that soldiers operating in support of the civil powers are held fully accountable to the laws they are required to enforce. That is the difference between the soldier and the terrorist.”
We must also understand that it is not just British service personnel who were granted immunity from prosecution under the previous legislation; it was also terrorists who murdered civilians and British servicemen and servicewomen. More than 200 investigations into deaths of Operation Banner soldiers were shut down upon the enactment of the legacy Act, against the wishes of those soldiers’ families.
Immunity from prosecution is dangerous, because it invalidates the justice system, sacrifices victims’ rights, weakens deterrence, violates international law and undermines long-term peace and trust in our institutions. I will never agree that immunity is the appropriate solution. It sets an awful precedent. If it were to be implemented by foreign Governments currently in military conflicts, we would be rightly appalled.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)
Does the hon. Member have any views on the South African truth and reconciliation commission that did exactly that?
Mr Foster
I have plenty of views on that, but it does not change my view on immunity. I believe immunity is wrong, particularly for soldiers.
Moving on, I understand the concerns of my fellow veterans that any investigations into historical deaths have previously disproportionately focused on the actions of the armed forces and former police officers, rather than the paramilitaries. The Government have recognised that and introduced a number of key protections for anyone asked to provide information. Those include protection from repeated investigations, a right to stay at home, a right to anonymity, protection from cold calling, protection in old age and the right to be heard.
Mr Foster
I am almost done.
Another important issue is that we must and will protect our veterans from vexatious and unwarranted investigations. The creation of a reformed Legacy Commission must not only provide for accountability, but provide the protection of the innocent. Legacy cases have dominated the inquest system in Northern Ireland, where coroner legislation dates back to 1959 and desperately requires modernisation. The 1959 legislation was never created to deal with the numerous and complex types of legal issues the system now faces. Coronial law in Northern Ireland is a devolved matter, but a modernised inquest system could dictate new rules of procedure, change evidential standards, affect disclosure processes and reshape how article 2 is applied, thus providing multiple additional layers—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)
Although I have not held this spokesperson role for long, I have met veterans, victims and survivors, academics and Members from across this House and the other place. Those conversations have been humbling and instructive, reminding me of the horror that Northern Ireland endured and the courage of those who lived through and served during the troubles.
I begin by recognising the Secretary of State’s work in bringing forward this Bill. Dealing with the legacy of the past requires legislation and practical action that the public can trust. I want to make it clear that the Liberal Democrats welcome the intent to repeal and replace part 2, and certain aspects of part 3, of the Conservatives’ failed legacy Act. That legislation was a profound misjudgment. It commanded no confidence in Northern Ireland, was opposed by every major party and placed the UK in breach of its human rights obligations. Not only did the Tories provide conditional immunity for serious troubles-related crimes, but they offended victims and—the shadow Secretary of State seemed to forget this—alienated veterans by appearing to equate them with terrorists.
This Bill rightly removes those provisions, ends immunity and restores the principle that no one is beyond the law. Clause 1 confirms that the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery will continue under a new name—the Legacy Commission—with reformed governance and functions. That recognises the need to rebuild the process to have one that the people of Northern Ireland can trust.
We support the Government’s intention to reform the commission, but expectations are high and confidence is fragile. Any effective legacy process must also ensure that the narratives of the troubles remain accurate and that victims of terrorism are neither forgotten nor morally equated with perpetrators. At the same time, they were victims of lawful, and occasionally unlawful, acts by the state, whose right to truth is equally important. Only a system founded on transparency, independence and fairness can command confidence across all communities, which previous actions, such as the letters of comfort issued to paramilitaries in the past, did so much to undermine.
Clause 3 sets out the Legacy Commission’s structures and functions, including investigating deaths and serious harm, holding inquisitorial proceedings, producing a full record of deaths and securing public confidence—a requirement I strongly welcome. It also establishes an oversight board to provide strategic direction and scrutiny, but with a board drawn from within the organisation, the real test of its effectiveness will lie in the independence and integrity of those appointed to lead the commission in the first place.
Clauses 4 to 6 give the Secretary of State power to appoint commissioners, directors of investigation and judicial panel members. Even with the consultation requirements under clause 9, that concentration of powers risks undermining trust. Appointments through the Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments Commission or a similar independent mechanism would surely strengthen public confidence. My concern is heightened as the Secretary of State also appoints the victims and survivors advisory group under clause 8. When one person controls both the commission’s leadership and its advisory body, independence is difficult to discern.
Turning to the fundamental issue of veterans protections under the Bill, those amount to the following. Unsolicited contact would be limited to official channels, which is clearly important. There will be an end to repeat investigations, but the undefined caveat of “unless it is essential to do so” leaves the scope unclear. Veterans will have the ability to seek anonymity, although a provision to that effect already exists under the Criminal Evidence (Witness Anonymity) Act 2008. Veterans will have the right to give evidence remotely, but there will not be a default presumption to do so. Veterans’ welfare will have to be considered, which is at best vague, and veterans will be represented on the ministerial advisory group, which while welcome does not in itself offer protection.
Veterans are surely right in arguing that this is not enough. This has implications not just for them, but for our current service personnel and potential future recruits. As the nine four-star generals who wrote to The Times last week made clear, the provisions of the Bill have profound implications for both service morale and future recruitment.
Mr Angus MacDonald (Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire) (LD)
My family has served in the Army for many generations, including myself in the troubles in Northern Ireland, and indeed my son is serving now. We have seen and deeply admired the Army’s core values of courage, discipline, respect, integrity, loyalty and selfless commitment. Would my hon. Friend accept that the retired generals and the many serving friends of my son make an extremely pertinent point when they say that the Bill will negatively impact retention and recruitment in the British Army, and at a time when we are desperate to bolster our armed forces?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Before Mr Kohler resumes his speech, let me say that we must keep interventions short. Many Members wish to contribute.
Mr Kohler
I absolutely agree. The Bill will have profound implications for both service morale and future recruitment, particularly with respect to our special forces. That is why it must go further.
With more than 10% of the Lib Dem Benches made up of former members of the armed services, my parliamentary party is acutely aware of the risks that veterans talk about and the sacrifices they and their fallen comrades made. Our concern is fairness, not shielding wrongdoing.
Under this Bill, many veterans will remain exposed to uncertainty, possible retrospective judgment and scrutiny of sensitive personal data and service records. That concern is heightened by the stark disparity in record keeping. The actions of veterans were documented in detail, whereas the activities of those engaged in terrorism were not. That results in an imbalance in documentary evidence that must be acknowledged and addressed. It is noteworthy that while the state has protected itself through the Secretary of State’s discretion over the handling of sensitive information, the Bill gives veterans no such safeguards.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
The IRA’s campaign of terror against the British people was one of the darkest chapters in our history; the shields of Airey Neave, Ian Gow, Robert Bradford and Sir Anthony Berry demonstrate that. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the armed servicemen represented here today defended us, and it is the job of this Parliament to ensure that they are now defended?
Mr Kohler
I absolutely agree. We must never equate our armed forces with the paramilitaries and terrorists on both the nationalist and Unionist sides.
Veterans deserve assurances that their service rights and data are treated fairly, securely and proportionately. That is why we call on the Government to come forward with binding statutory safeguards, including a clearer presumption against repeated investigations without objectively certified new and significant evidence; an expanded duty to consider operational context; strengthened welfare protections; and a presumption of remote participation.
It is important that the voices of not just veterans, but all victims and survivors are heard. Clause 8 does that by establishing a group to advise both the Legacy Commission and the Secretary of State. However, its members will be appointed by the Secretary of State, with its numbers limited to as few as three and no more than seven, which risks its voice being limited and its independence being compromised. By concentrating sweeping powers in the hands of the Secretary of State, the Bill risks creating an opaque system that offers little genuine parliamentary oversight or scrutiny.
As hon. Members are aware, there is already a Commission for Victims and Survivors, which has for almost two decades ensured that those most affected by the troubles are heard. There is a danger that the proposed victims and survivors ministerial advisory group, despite its separate function, might trespass into the existing forum’s domain, which, with its wide range of perspectives, including veterans from both Unionist and nationalist backgrounds and those who have served in the Crown forces, has the all-important cross-community legitimacy. Trust is so important.
Capturing that breadth and establishing that trust in the newly proposed and much smaller advisory group will be difficult. I therefore ask the Government to clarify how the new advisory group will interact with the existing forum. Will the Commissioner for Victims and Survivors have a formal role in the advisory group? Otherwise, how will the voices of veterans and former security personnel, who are both victims and key stakeholders, be heard?
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
Does my hon. Friend agree that veterans who served in Northern Ireland and were then pursued by the IRA to Germany and attacked there deserve more reassurance than the words that duplication will not occur unless “the duplication is essential”?
Mr Kohler
I absolutely agree. We must go further and do more for veterans. The Bill does not go far enough at this stage.
My party has always opposed the legacy Act, but we are clear that its replacement must address the legitimate concerns of veterans. As one can see from the joint statement issued last night by the veterans commissioners of the devolved nations, that is not currently the case. They have expressed concerns, which are shared on the Lib Dem Benches, that the Bill does not provide sufficient safeguards for veterans, nor does it provide sufficient safeguards against lawfare, historical narrative revision or disparities between how ex-security personnel and others will be treated.
That is why my party has submitted a reasoned amendment, and will support the Conservative reasoned amendment, to deny Second Reading of the Bill until the fundamental issue of sufficient protection for veterans is addressed, along with enhanced parliamentary oversight, safeguarding of the independence of appointments, clarification on the role of the victims and survivors advisory group, and measures to ensure that no Government can use ministerial discretion to shut down the search for the truth. I realise that that will disappoint the Secretary of State, but I reiterate what I said at the beginning of my speech. My party commends him for all his hard work in seeking to move on from the Tories’ failed legacy Act. Its successor, however, must command genuine confidence across all communities while ensuring our veterans’ peace of mind. I pledge on behalf of my party to do all we can to help him to achieve that goal.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
In December last year the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, which I chair, launched an inquiry into the Government’s emerging plans. Since then, we have received nearly 80 pieces of written evidence; held eight evidence sessions with representatives of victims and survivors, veterans, retired police officers and human rights groups; and heard twice from the Secretary of State—and I thank him for that. Importantly, we have visited Northern Ireland to hear at first hand from the people directly affected by the troubles. We met victims and survivors from all communities and none, hearing their concerns, their requests and, most movingly, their stories.
Because of the timing of the announcement of first the joint framework and then the Bill, we have been working apace to gather new evidence on the Government’s plans and have yet to consider and agree a report following our inquiry, but I hope we can do so shortly, and before the Bill returns to the Floor of the House for its Committee stage. The points that I shall make in my speech are based on the evidence that my Select Committee has taken, but any conclusions I draw or recommendations I make about the Government’s proposals are my own.
One question that we consistently asked those to whom we spoke was, “Have the Government consulted you on their plans or proposals?” The answer from many was that they had felt listened to, but not heard. I know the Secretary of State’s response has always been to say, gently, “They will not know whether we have listened to them until they see our proposals,” but previous consultations—for example, the one on Stormont House—were much more comprehensive than this one. It now seems from many of the provisions in both the framework and the Bill that Ministers have indeed been listening, and I thank the Secretary of State for that. The fact remains, however, that if these proposals are to gain the confidence of as many communities as possible, including veterans, the Government will need to listen more, bring them along and enable them to take ownership of what is being put forward, and confidence will be key.
The Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery has been unable to garner the kind of trust and authority across the communities that would enable it to carry out its work effectively. We have seen evidence of that, but it is no fault of the chief commissioner, Sir Declan Morgan, or of any other senior commissioner or commission officer. We took evidence from ICRIR representatives in May and met them privately, and we became very aware of the professionalism, integrity and decency with which the commission has approached its work. Unfortunately, however, its roots in the legacy Act hampered it from the beginning. Some people thought that its investigations were too light-touch, while others thought that it was not doing, or able to do, enough to address potential conflicts of interest between investigators and their investigations. We heard that its investigations were rigorous and could lead to prosecutions, and that it was introducing its own robust conflict of interest policy, but we know how it is when trust is lacking: root-and-branch reform seems inevitable.
Many Committee members, including me, have been greatly moved by listening to the families we have met. I would personally urge the Secretary of State to ensure that the decision on the sensitivities and prejudice of documents held will be the decision of the Legacy Commission, and not that of the agencies who currently hold that information and need to pass it on.
In respect of case referrals, stakeholders have submitted supplementary evidence to us on many of the Government’s proposals. For example, the Government’s plan to widen the range of people and organisations who can refer a case to the new Legacy Commission seems sensible, but there are potential changes that could be made to the definition of “close family member” which would make it more inclusive and reflective of the reality of modern family life, and of the time that it has taken for some families to gain an investigation. As we know, trauma, and the search for truth, can be passed down the generations.
I have to skip a large part of my speech, but one of the things that I must address is resourcing. The ICRIR has pointed out the increase in demand for its services—something that will only continue under the new commission. Given that it has greater responsibilities, including taking on coronial cases through its enhanced inquisitorial mechanism, its funding will need to be under continuous review. It is to be noted that the resourcing of organisations such as the Police Service of Northern Ireland and others, which have new demands on their records, will also need to be considered.
I will draw my comments to a close. There is much to be commended in the Bill, but there is also much that still needs to be worked on. I look forward to bringing the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee’s inquiry to a close.
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
This is a terrible Bill. Its central failing is that it will lead to the persecution of patriotic, innocent British soldiers whose only sin is defending our democracy with heroism and skill. What it will do is recreate a circumstance in which soldiers are treated unfairly by the law.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) referred to the case of Soldier B and the judge’s dismissal of it as a “ludicrous” challenge funded by legal aid. I have known Soldier B for 30 years; I count him as a friend. He is tough and clever yet, even for him, being dragged through the courts for four years and more, on what is effectively preparation for a murder charge, would have been unbelievably stressful. The point my hon. Friend made is that the process is the punishment: four years of stress and wear and tear.
In Operation Banner, our soldiers assiduously obeyed the yellow card rules, but in Northern Ireland the courts have sometimes interpreted those rules as requiring our soldiers to take almost suicidal risks. We are dragging men in their 70s and 80s through coroners courts in Belfast, and judging them by a standard that makes no sense in a military context. To illustrate this, let me share with the House a single case that highlights what can happen to soldiers under these circumstances.
On 16 March 1978, in the middle of the night, two SAS soldiers were manning a covert observation post. They saw two men in combat clothing moving toward them. One of our soldiers, David Jones, stood up and challenged the men. The IRA gunman immediately shot him down in a burst of gunfire. That story would have been at the back of the mind of every soldier who subsequently served in Northern Ireland. They made their decisions in the face of the risk of immediate death. It is a measure of their professionalism that hundreds of terrorists were arrested alive under the circumstances, given that the soldiers could have been killed.
Today’s debate is actually about morality. It is about whether this House chooses justice over political convenience, truth over revisionism, and loyalty over the cynical rewriting of history. The Government claim that today’s problems arise from legislation passed by the previous Government, which allegedly created an amnesty for terrorists. Really? What are the facts?
Labour, under Blair, effectively gave a de facto amnesty—maybe it is challengeable in law—to at least 650 terrorists, who had carried out more than 3,000 killings. Early release schemes, on-the-run letters and the royal prerogative of mercy collectively created a vast secret system of de facto immunity. It was secret because the Government knew that people would not accept it.
David Davis
No. I am sorry, but I do not have time.
People knew that the system would not be accepted, which is why Gerry Adams asked for an “invisible system” for dealing with on-the-runs. Why are they on the run? They are on the run because they are criminals, and this was a secret system to deal with it.
In contrast, 300,000 of our soldiers defended democracy in Northern Ireland. They defended law and order, democracy and the innocent citizens of Northern Ireland, whom we often forget in this. They acted as the direct opposite of the IRA, the gangster organisation that terrorised all communities in Northern Ireland. By the way, I mean “all communities”; remember that the IRA killed a very large number of Catholics to terrorise that community. Yet today those who upheld the law face relentless legal pursuit, while those who broke the law received leniency, letters and legal shelter.
Let us not forget that the IRA are also protected by the fact that witnesses, or would-be witnesses, against them know that they risk murder if they turn up. I was in Omagh a few weeks ago, and I met a policeman who was shot—six times, I think—only a couple of years ago by the Real IRA, or the New IRA or whatever label they have today. Instead of attacking those who served, we should honour them, their service and their patriotism. We should not treat them worse than the killers they defeated. This House must say, “Enough. Enough moral inversion, and enough rewarding of terror, while hounding those who defended the public.”
We are told that the Bill is necessary because Northern Ireland will not support alternatives, but when real leaders must choose between consensus and justice, they choose justice. This Bill must not rest on appeasement. The world watches while Britain chooses today. Its allies watch with concern, and its enemies with enthusiasm, as they plan future decades of lawfare against our best soldiers. If we do not speak up to protect both our current service personnel and our veterans, the innocent will suffer in future, and we will find ourselves unable to defend our nation.
Claire Hanna (Belfast South and Mid Down) (SDLP)
Time is short, but I hope that we can consider why, as well as how, pain is to be addressed in Northern Ireland. The Social Democratic and Labour party approaches legacy from a basis that considers the rule of law, equality before the law, and the impact on reconciliation. We recognise that this is not a sterile debate, taking place only in this Chamber or in Committee Rooms, and it is not a knockabout for a headline or a tweet; it is a daily reality for many thousands of families. While the issue of legacy remains unresolved, it is like a fog around us in Northern Ireland, shaping the tone of our politics, and affecting how communities interact with one another, our policing, and the ability of Government to deliver. This Bill is not perfect—legislation rarely is—but we cannot miss the opportunity to deal with legacy. This is not about an obsession with the past. Getting this right is about an obsession with a non-violent and reconciled future.
It is positive that we are discussing a bilateral agreement between the Irish Government and the Government in London. This is a much-needed departure from the unilateralism pursued by the last Government. Despite clear warnings, they pressed ahead with a deeply flawed legacy Act, which was not only struck down by the courts, but rejected by every single party in the north or south of Ireland, and by more or less every single victim or survivor who spoke on the record. They exploited the fiction that we had to draw a line under the past because nothing else was working, while fighting and stalling the processes that were in place. The Conservative party’s approach to legacy diminished the rule of law, disregarded bilateral communities and, worse, wasted the time, the years and the energy of so many blameless victims and survivors.
The joint framework allows both Governments to begin meeting their responsibilities for dealing with the past. We acknowledge the journey and the effort of the Secretary of State and his officials. Although we will seek by amendment to make the final legislation robust enough to withstand less well-intentioned political oversight, I understand that people are working closely on this across the Irish sea, and that Dublin’s legislation will be published swiftly once this Bill has made its way through the House, so that its architecture is compatible with the arrangements we have at the end of the legislative process here. It is right that these things be delivered in parallel, and right that it is a partnership. When people make lurid claims about what the Irish Government have or have not done, but cry foul at any attempt to address it, I can view that only as cynicism.
The SDLP does not pick and choose which victims we support. We do not pick and choose who we demand accountability from. Every death was a tragedy, and every murder was wrong. Publicly and privately, we will push Dublin, as we will push everyone else, on its obligations and its omissions from this framework, and on the Omagh inquiry. We will not tolerate or dignify the distortions and the revisionism of those, including many on the Opposition side of this House, who attempt to draw an equivalence, from London, between the Government of the Irish Republic and the murder machine of paramilitaries, or the systematic involvement of paramilitaries.
From the early days of the conflict, victims have borne the most—including lacklustre investigations and the release of prisoners—and asked the least, which we accept was a hard pill to swallow. To go far outwith the Good Friday agreement, they have had that compounded by an uneven transition for paramilitaries, on-the-run letters, decades of cynical memorialisation, and the immunity scheme that was in place under the previous Government.
Unlike others, the SDLP does not accept that violence was either inevitable or justified. Regardless of context, for military commanders and IRA commanders, violence was a choice. Planting bombs in busy town centres was a choice. Arming paramilitaries was a choice. Opening fire on innocent civil rights marchers was a choice. Brushing all those crimes under the carpet, as the previous Government attempted to do, was also a choice.
The deaths of far too many innocent people were treated as collateral. Decisions were made that some lives were worth less, having been expended for a goal that could never have been achieved that way. That has never been properly acknowledged. The IRA has never needed a legal process to admit that truth, and it made that futile and brutal choice many times. Loyalist paramilitaries have never acknowledged that their war was with innocent Catholics, and that their victims were selected purely on the basis of the family or faith that they were born into. They do not need legacy legislation to acknowledge that point. Likewise, the running of state agents by security forces was not a “necessary evil”; it was reckless and morally corrosive, and it should shame those who conducted it, and those trying to pretend it did not happen.
Uncomfortable as it may be for many, including in this House, we must address disclosure in order to understand how non-state actors also operated with impunity. For many, directing terrorism had very little to do with political ideals and more to do with power, control and dominance over the communities they claimed to defend.
Legacy processes need to shore up confidence in the rule of law. How this House legislates on legacy will have an effect on confidence in policing. There is no perfect way to address our troubled past. We have to be honest that there is not a pathway to justice, or even truth, for every family, but we have to deliver on promises made to so many over the years.
As for those who suffered loss, I hear daily their dignity, fortitude and the wisdom that can emerge from pain. We should hear and heed those voices, and we should proceed with the Bill. I will finish with the words of a fine Ulster poet, John Hewitt:
“Bear in mind these dead:
I can find no plainer words.”
He asked us not to differentiate between people, depending on how they died, but to offer truth and justice for all of them.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Belfast South and Mid Down (Claire Hanna). We do work with each other on these issues, although we do not always agree.
It is fair to say that our history is sorrowful. It is pitiful and painful, and grounded on a corruption of justice. While we listen to the politics and the back and forth between Labour and Conservative in this Chamber, we have to go back to 1998 to find that corruption of justice: the release of prisoners, the litany of failures, and the lamentable approach to those who terrorised our communities across society in Northern Ireland. The on-the-run scheme was not the same as letters of comfort; it was a royal prerogative of mercy, and a de facto amnesty to paramilitaries. Only two weeks ago, a Minister from the Northern Ireland Office met 25 victims, one of whom, a member of our party, was shot in 1981 in Aughnacloy by a member of the Provisional IRA, a champion within the Sinn Féin movement until he fell out with them. He sought sanctuary in Switzerland and Sweden. Only when he became an opponent of the peace process was he ever amenable to justice. He stood as a dissident representative in the 2007 election, and was arrested at the count. He was convicted for 20 years for the attempted murder of one of my colleagues. That was a de facto amnesty for as long as he was brought into the political process.
The innocent victims of Northern Ireland have heard the Government promise to repeal and replace, yet that is not what they are seeing. They have heard a promise to protect veterans; that is a mirage. There is no specific protection for veterans in this piece of legislation—none. Last week, when the Minister for Veterans was asked on the radio four times whether she could rule out a member of the IRA being on the victims advisory forum, she could not. That the Secretary of State has not taken the opportunity to say that he would accept an amendment to ban paramilitaries from that advisory board is, I think, a shame, but shame runs throughout the legacy of our past, and Governments’ approach to it.
Does the Bill work for innocent victims? I have to tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that innocent victims are sick, sore and tired of people from across this Chamber—maybe even those on these Benches—pretending to speak for them. Yes, it is true that some innocent victims want truth and to know what happened, but others want justice. They have not received it.
Does the Bill contain protections for veterans? No. Does the word “veteran” feature in this legislation at all? No, it does not. Victims and veterans are sick of the gaslighting and psychological torture of having their own beliefs, understanding and memory challenged and questioned to the point that they think they have got something wrong.
What about paramilitaries? Paramilitaries were invited to Lambeth Palace to create the amnesty scheme that the Conservatives brought through. They will be satisfied enough that their concerns have been listened to by this Labour Government.
I have raised with the Secretary of State time and again his lamentable failure to support the commissioner for investigations, solely because he has a history in the RUC. What is the answer to that? The answer is to create an equal position to sit alongside him. We have a human rights commissioner in Northern Ireland. Even though the High Court has attested the independence of the commissioner for investigations and the ICRIR, the Secretary of State has decided at the behest of the Irish to create an equal position, for fear of contamination. That is outrageous. It is not legally sustainable or legally required, and it cuts to the heart of the professionalism and integrity of not only that individual, but all who served in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, 302 of whom were murdered by paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.
We hear about protections for veterans, but what about those who served in the PSNI, or the RUC before them? What about those who served and were deployed alongside members of the armed forces? Where is their support, Secretary of State? It is not in this legislation. Whenever the Northern Ireland Retired Police Officers Association had to go to court, who paid its bills? It did. Retired police officers had to raise tens of thousands of pounds to challenge the Police Ombudsman, who was rewriting the past and asserted “collusive behaviours”—a legal phraseology that does not exist. Those retired police officers have had to defend their honour by themselves, because no Government of any hue have stood by their side and defended them. They defended us, Secretary of State, and we should defend them.
The Secretary of State has sullied himself and this Parliament by the engagement with the Irish Republic. I have it on good authority that the Irish Republic has cautioned against amendments to the legislation. The Irish Government construed a memorandum of understanding on the Omagh inquiry to mean that they would assist only in answering the question of what the UK authorities could have done to prevent that atrocity; they will not say what they could have done, yet for decades they harboured terrorists, refused extradition and supported and financed terrorism in Northern Ireland. Has the Secretary of State put them under any pressure? No, he has not. What legal obligation is there, if the Bill passes, to see that they adhere to the European convention on human rights? None.
Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP)
Fifty years ago this month, Columba McVeigh was taken away by the IRA. He was murdered and his body was disappeared. His family are still searching for his remains. Two years later, the same happened to Captain Robert Nairac. Before that, there was Jean McConville, who we know about—a widowed mother of 10, disappeared by the IRA. Eventually, many years later, her family were reunited with her remains.
The people who carried out those tragic murders—those despicable war crimes—would, if the Conservative party had its way, be free from any concern and from prosecution. Majella O’Hare was 12 years old when she was shot by a British soldier on her way to chapel in Armagh. The same goes for Majella. Patsy Gillespie was chained to a van by an IRA unit and made to drive the van with a bomb into an army base on the Buncrana Road in Derry. Patsy was killed along with five other soldiers, and the people who murdered them would be free from prosecution if it were up to the Members on the Opposition Benches.
I have to say that as I sat with the families of Bloody Sunday in a court last month and looked at their devastated faces after 53 years of searching for justice, I expected better from some of our leaders and politicians. I did not expect tweets with the Parachute Regiment insignia being put out by some senior Members of this House and I did not expect fulsome support for Soldier F from others. Let me just put this on the record, because it is important. It seems to me that lots of people who talk about Bloody Sunday never actually bothered to read the Saville inquiry—an inquiry that was, of course, set up by a British Government, led by a British judge and supported by subsequent British Prime Ministers.
Soldier F, by his own admission, killed five people on Bloody Sunday. He killed Michael Kelly and William McKinney. He shot James Wray in the back and while Wray was lying face down on the floor in Glenfada Park, Soldier G came over and finished him off, standing on top of him and shooting him in the back. Soldier F then shot Paddy Doherty, who was crying out that he did not want to die alone, so Bernard McGuigan crawled to him waving a white handkerchief. What did Soldier F do to Bernard McGuigan?
Colum Eastwood
I am going to finish this. What did Soldier F do to Bernard McGuigan? He shot him in the head, killing him instantly. He then tried to kill an Italian journalist who was looking through a window in the Rossville flats. Soldier F shot six bullets into that window and by a miracle Fulvio Grimaldi survived. Soldier F then went on to pervert the course of justice by lying through his teeth, claiming that four of the people he shot, who were subsequently proven to be innocent civilians, were engaged in riotous behaviour. He went to Fort George army base, where the people who were arrested that day were being held. He assaulted several civilians, including a Catholic priest, Terence O’Keeffe. He then stood a 16-year-old boy, Denis McLaughlin, up against a gas blow heater until he fainted and collapsed. What did he do then? He kicked the young fella to his feet and asked him whether he wanted a drink. When the young man answered that he did, he spat in his mouth.
A few months later, on 7 September 1972, Soldier F went to the Shankill Road—we do not hear that from Unionist politicians, by the way—and admitted shooting a Protestant man called Robert Johnston. He lied again, saying that Robert was a gunman. He was not, and the coroner’s court made that absolutely clear. Robert Johnston was totally innocent as well. I have never once heard a Unionist politician, or anybody in this House, stand up for Robert Johnston and the other man killed on that day.
Jim Allister
Is the hon. Member saying to this House that the evidence of the person just described, Soldier G, who he has described as a liar and a perjurer, should have been used to convict Soldier F? Does the hon. Member not accept the verdict of our court? He appeals for justice. Our courts have given a verdict on Soldier F. Does he accept it?
Colum Eastwood
There was one reason that I and the Bloody Sunday families accepted the verdict. It was because the point was made absolutely clear: between 1970 and 1974, the British Government, the British Army, the Royal Military Police and the RUC were engaged in a cover-up of mass proportions, when any single member of the British Army who was arrested was questioned without legal representation and not under caution. That meant that any of those cases were doomed before we even got started.
What I am laying out in this House today—and the hon. and learned Member might not like it—is not whether or not there was a conviction in the court; I am laying out the truth, not as I see it but as Soldier F admitted it, and as was found by an international inquiry of truth that was set up by the Labour Government and accepted by them as well. It was also accepted by Prime Minister Cameron, who said that what happened on that day was “unjustified and unjustifiable.” Then, we see the British Government and the MOD paying at least £4.3 million to defend somebody whose actions they knew were unjustified and unjustifiable. That is the truth. Those are the facts. He got far more legal representation than anybody would under legal aid, and if anybody wants to check those figures out, they are available for all to see.
What has happened in this debate is that people seem unable to come to the simple fact that every single murder was wrong, whether it was committed by the IRA or by the British Government, and that not one single person should be free from prosecution. They should not be allowed impunity. As for those people who stand in this House and talk about how great the British Army was and how much they care about the British Army, if that is your position, why then are you accepting and supporting people who committed mass murder?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. How many times do I have to remind colleagues about the use of “you” and “your”? There is not much time left.
Colum Eastwood
Why are those Members supporting people who, by their own admission, murdered innocent civilians—civilians who should be seen by anybody in this House as citizens of the United Kingdom? Everybody can see the hypocrisy that has been on display in this place many times. I know that many people in this House served in Northern Ireland. Well, there are lots of people at home watching this who live in Northern Ireland and they are sick, sore and tired of this. If this legislation has any chance of giving people some truth and justice, it should be allowed to proceed. We of course have issues with the Bill. We have issues around the national security parts of it and around sensitive information, and we will table amendments in that regard in the process, but we have to give this a chance. We have to give our victims a chance, and all this—
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)
I welcome the speech that the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) has just given, and the reason I welcome it is that he recognised correctly, fully and truthfully that almost all those who were victims in those terrible years of the troubles were UK citizens. They deserve the same recognition, respect and protection as any other citizen of the United Kingdom. One of the foundational reasons that I am a Unionist is that I believe that we are all equal on these islands—or rather, on that part of these islands.
I understand where we are, but we can look back a lot at history. We can look back a lot at what has got us to the position we are in, but if I may, I want to drag the Government’s eyes forward. The reality is that what we are doing here, in reopening and ending our own version of the South African truth and reconciliation committee—with all the problems, failures, lacunas and gaps that that necessarily has—is ending the opportunity to move on, with all the pain that that brings. We are reopening wounds that, sadly, we all know will never close.
I can look at the agreements that were made in the 1990s. I can speak about the deals that Tony Blair did, and like everybody here, I can be deeply critical about the injustices that he allowed, but I cannot then welcome the peace that he brought. I cannot welcome the peace if I am critical of the process that he and others needed to make it happen, so I am very cautious about those who would go back and criticise and call out. I understand the pain of so many, but if we want peace we have to move forward, and that is where this Bill is really difficult. It does not just affect the peace of these islands, important though that is; it also affects the peace of Europe and the wider world, because it is telling people across these islands that their service when they sign up will not be for five or 10 years, or whatever it says on the recruitment contract, but for as long as our enemies and those who seek to do us harm wish to bring prosecutions against us. I wrote about this for Policy Exchange in 2013 and again in 2015, in two papers: “The Fog of Law” and “Clearing the Fog of Law”.
The fundamental point is that we think this is about us. We in this Chamber have the idea that, somehow or other, the law, the justice system and what we shape and decide here is all about us, but I am afraid it is not. You do not need to take my word for it. Read the Mitrokhin archive. Read what the KGB was doing using instrumentalising. There were many honourable people in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, but there were also some who were willing to co-operate with the KGB. Members should read what the KGB and its successor organisations have been trying to do around the world, using the law as a way of continuing actions against British forces and a way of disarming our forces before they get into conflict.
I have a lot of respect for the Minister—he and I have always got on very well, and I admire his dedication—but the tragedy is that, for all the well-meaning aspirations of this Government, and although he, the judges and inquiries have a responsibility to the past, the system that was set up had inquiries and an ability to find justice and the truth. Yes, it made a compromise that many of us did not like, and yes, it gave conditional immunity that many of us found pretty abhorrent, but it also gave the possibility of moving forward. It sent a message to our enemies that we would simply not tolerate our soldiers being dragged through the courts ad infinitum, because all that does is demonstrate weakness.
Let us look at the numbers. This country has a population of roughly 65 million people, and we have security forces numbering maybe 350,000. The equations and challenges are pretty clear. We also have enemies mustering at our gate, as we know very well. Our friends in countries such as Denmark and Sweden are reintroducing conscription, because they realise the threat from the east. Countries such as Poland are spending much more on defence than we do, because they know that Russia is a real threat. We will simply not be in position to stand with them and defend ourselves and our values if we are not willing to stand behind those who risked everything to serve our country.
I have fought on the frontline and know what the heat, dust, confusion and fear can be like. There is a difference between that and having to explain oneself in a courtroom 20 years later, when all we have is gossip and rumour—because nobody else was there, nobody else was telling the truth, nobody else witnessed the reality of the difficult decisions that were taken. All we are doing in holding lance corporals, corporals and commanders all the way through the process is abdicating our responsibility for choosing to send them.
Michael Wheeler (Worsley and Eccles) (Lab)
I will keep my remarks brief, because many valued voices are yet to be heard in this debate. I welcome the Bill. Northern Ireland has a special place in my heart. It gave me my mum and treasured memories of time with family, and it will always feel part of me, but it also left the younger version of me with many questions, such as why kerbstones were painted red, white and blue in some places, and why the police had guns and their cars looked like tanks.
As I said after the Secretary of State’s statement last December,
“Nothing can be allowed to jeopardise the progress that has been made in Northern Ireland.”—[Official Report, 4 December 2024; Vol. 758, c. 425.]
I have seen that progress at first hand. The streets of Belfast are a fundamentally different place compared not just with the stories my mum tells of her youth, but with what I remember from mine. However, progress is not finished and peace should never be taken for granted.
We must make sure that we get this right, so I welcome the measures in the Bill to build a clear, robust and fair system with which justice and closure can be sought. Creating a reformed Legacy Commission with strengthened governance, giving the Legacy Commission the powers that it needs so that answers can be provided to families— including those of servicemen and women—and taking a new approach to inquests and coronial cases will all help to provide answers that are sought and needed by grieving families.
However, we must also ensure that the system itself is not used as a weapon. I genuinely believe that, as a package, the Bill’s six measures to protect veterans should provide significant reassurance to those who served. There can be no equivalence drawn in this or any other process between those who served in our armed and security forces to protect life and promote security and stability, and terrorists, whether loyalist or republican.
The thing that was too often forgotten during the troubles were the ordinary people—those who found themselves caught in the middle and who, on too many occasions, lost their lives because of it. We must not forget them now. I thank those who served to protect people —our veterans, who found themselves in communities not too dissimilar from the ones they grew up in, having to do an immensely difficult job. I also thank those who saw that peace was the way forward. As we debate this Bill, it is incumbent on us all to remember where we have been and just how fragile progress can be. Let us get this right and provide justice for grieving families and protections for those who served.
Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
I want to thank all the military servicemen and women who served on Operation Banner. It was not just the military. On every visit to a police station in Northern Ireland, I saw the long lists of officers who were lost. I pay tribute to members and family members of the RUC and to our security services, agents and staff. I also pay tribute to parliamentary colleagues past and present who served in Operation Banner.
I condemn utterly the mindless and needless violence of the IRA, who were, in the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois),
“one of the most ruthless and vicious terrorist organisations the world has ever seen.”—[Official Report, 14 July 2025; Vol. 771, c. 46WH.]
I also pay tribute to innocent victims of the troubles. The list of atrocities is long, and the IRA principally is responsible for the vast majority of them, along with loyalist paramilitary groups. Neighbours, sons, daughters, husbands—thousands of families were impacted in this smallest part of the United Kingdom.
Given that broader legislation on legacy has been so long awaited, it is important to emphasise the regulations I brought in as Secretary of State on behalf of the last Conservative Government on victims’ payments, which were the first stage of the legacy process. Many people have applied successfully for those payments, but I urge the Secretary of State to promote them to military and other victims and veterans, because I understand that many more people could apply for them. I also urge him to consider what could be put in place for the bereaved, using some of the principles that we adopted to exclude anybody who was injured by their own hand.
I would like to make a number of observations. I pay tribute to those on the shadow Front Bench for representing and standing up for our soldiers and for articulating the clear dangers of lawfare and the rewriting of history. Perhaps our party and this House should have listened earlier to my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) when his inquiry presented the option of a statute of limitations, but that would have had to be done as part of a much bigger reconciliation process.
We need to be so careful, when debating the issue of amnesties, to recognise that these were often British citizens killed by the very limited number of armed forces who behaved badly. It was an amazing achievement for David Cameron to have his speech shown in the Museum of Bloody Sunday in Derry. He acknowledged through his tone the wrongs that were committed. They were limited, but they were committed, and we have to admit that that happened.
I urge the Secretary of State to look at further options during the passage of the Bill for strengthening protections for veterans. First, the noble Lord Caine has suggested amending the Criminal Law Act (Northern Ireland) 1967 in order to deal with cases where a soldier thought they were acting in legitimate self-defence. Secondly, there are significantly larger volumes of legal aid paid out in Northern Ireland. Can that be looked at? The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) has raised the roving mandate of many inquests. Can that be looked at, to focus those inquests that are coming back under this Bill?
On the commitments from Ireland, I worked very closely and positively with the Irish Government to restore Stormont in 2020 and in 2024, but I remain sceptical as to how far Ireland will go, or will be able to go, in the provision of information to families. Will the Irish Government really be able to open everything up on Omagh? We have to be frank that, given the political headwinds they face, there is limited incentive for them to do that. It would be useful to understand what commitments have been made. We also need to be honest about our security services; there are going to be limits to what they can release—we have to be honest with families about that.
There are various statutory commitments in the Bill, but none on funding. The Omagh inquiry will cost about £15 million, and Finucane about £20 million. There is a risk that day-to-day policing in Northern Ireland loses out in the absence of that funding. On memorialisation and reconciliation, the clauses from the previous legislation remain. Again, who will pay for this, and how will the impossible task of getting consent on these matters be achieved?
I know that many families in Northern Ireland and beyond still want answers, and will hope that they can get them through this Bill. The lack of closure for so many leaves the next generation taking on the baton of grief and grievance. The issue for them is that time has not healed matters, nor has it lessened their pain. I hope that they can be front of mind as the Bill is debated here and in the other place in the weeks and months ahead. I think of the many individuals and families, some of whom are in the Public Gallery today, and I hope, in what is probably going to be the last piece of legacy legislation, that we can all bear those families and individuals in mind.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Speaking limits have dropped to five minutes because too many Members want to contribute. I am doing my best to get everybody in.
Liam Conlon (Beckenham and Penge) (Lab)
May I start by thanking the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Sir Julian Smith) for his thoughtful contribution?
Ever since the Northern Ireland legacy Bill was introduced by the previous Government in 2019, thousands of innocent victims’ families have waited to see this day. Of the many reckless things the Conservatives did to our relationship with Northern Ireland in their 14 years in government, I struggle to think of a more egregious example than that legislation. It was a direct attack on the Good Friday agreement, it undermined accountability and the rule of law, and it has caused significant pain to thousands of victims’ families. Indeed, in the bringing forward of that Bill, there was no consultation with any victims’ groups or families. The right hon. Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat) referenced the South African truth and reconciliation commission, but a key difference is that that commission put families’ and victims’ voices at its centre.
For people across Northern Ireland, the legacy of the troubles is not a chapter in history, but something carried in every family and community to the present day. I know this from my own family. I am a relative of Father Hugh Mullan, one of 11 innocent victims of the Ballymurphy massacre, which took place in 1971—one of the worst atrocities of the troubles. Hugh was a Catholic priest, and was trying to help another victim and offer the last rites when he was shot and killed unlawfully by a member of the Parachute Regiment. He was shot first in the abdomen, and then again in the back as he lay on the ground.
What is often missed in discussions of troubles-related cases is that what followed often compounded families’ grief. Hugh was labelled as a gunrunner, and there were attempts to smear him that could not have been further from the truth, but it would take 50 years for the words “entirely innocent” to appear on public record in a ruling by Mrs Justice Keegan.
I have had the pleasure of working with victims’ groups right across Northern Ireland, on a cross-community basis, and I want to remark on the words of Sandra Peake, the chief executive officer of the Wave Trauma Centre, a fantastic cross-community charity. Sandra said:
“Whatever the previous Government’s intention the result would have been that terrorists who carried out the most egregious crimes imaginable would be able to walk free if they told their story to ‘the best of their knowledge and belief’. They could say that they stabbed John Molloy, an 18 year old, in a frenzied attack, leaving him to bleed to death yards from his home because he was a Catholic. And the state would say, “Thank you and we’ll say no more about it”. A witness saw them laughing and dancing down the road after they murdered John. Thanks to the Legacy Act, they would still be laughing and dancing. What John’s parents, Linda and Pat, were being told”—
by the previous Government—
“was that they should grieve in private while the evil perpetrators could celebrate in public. And this in the name of ‘reconciliation’.”
I have met many victims’ families, and they are some of the best people I have met. In the face of unimaginable trauma, they have led campaigns for justice with immense courage and dignity. They are motivated not by revenge or retribution, but by their love for their relatives and their determination to secure truth and justice. The legacy Act introduced by the last Government denied them all those things, and did so without consulting them.
I will finish with the words of Michael O’Hare, brother to 12-year old Majella, who was shot by a solider in south Armagh on her way to church one morning in 1976. I am pleased to see Michael in the Gallery today. He has said:
“This is an important day for families like ours, who thought we’d seen the door closed forever on these cases. Majella was just an innocent little girl who didn’t deserve to be gunned down when walking along the road with her friends. We deserve truth and accountability. It’s a huge relief that that is now a possibility again, even if we’ve had to wait half a century. It’s never too late to do the right thing”.
Today is about doing the right thing. It is a step forward, and I thank the Secretary of State for all his work, as well as every victims’ group that has been part of bringing forward this Bill.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
“For your tomorrow, we gave our today”, would have been the phrase that many in this House stood for in honour, sombre, last Remembrance Sunday, as we stood across this country, remembering those who served and those who sacrificed. When I stood at those memorials in South Antrim, at Ballyclare and Antrim and Crumlin, and I saw wreaths laid for the members of the UDR, the RUC and the home battalions, it brought home why, when we talk about veterans in this place, we must also reflect and respect those veterans from Northern Ireland who did not return to home or to barracks in England, Scotland or Wales, but who every night returned to their own homes, having defended their neighbours, their loved ones, their families and workmates.
With regards to the victims have been mentioned, I note that the Secretary of State listed a number of atrocities but he did not mention Teebane, when 14 construction workers who were returning home from Omagh were blown up because the IRA considered them targets. They were working on a military base, and therefore the IRA described them as collaborating with forces of occupation. Our veterans and innocent victims are still waiting for their tomorrow, and they suffer, reflect, and carry the scars and pains of the 30-year terrorism campaign that was delivered on the doors and workplaces of their neighbours.
What is challenging about this, then? The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Sir Julian Smith), mentioned that the trust and involvement of the Irish Government in this process is particularly challenging and galling. The Belfast agreement has been mentioned a number of times. I do look with honour and respect at what my party delivered in bringing forward that peace process, but it was delivered in three strands: a Northern Ireland only basis, a north-south basis and an east-west basis. I have asked the Secretary of State this question before and I will do so again now: where does legacy sit within those three strands?
It seems now that the Secretary of State is abdicating, and that he is working in parallel with the Irish Government to bring this forward. He stood on 19 September beside the Tánaiste, Simon Harris, who told the media afterwards that there would be no specific protections for veterans—and, as we have seen, there are no specific protections for veterans in the Bill. The example that has been used once again is that veterans will not have to go to Northern Ireland to give evidence. Tell that to a Northern Ireland veteran! What protection—what special coverage—are this Government actually giving those men and women who served over there?
Yesterday, after the British-Irish intergovernmental conference, the Irish Government insisted that the legislation must remain “true” to the framework that had been agreed. So where are the amendments that will come from this place, and from the elected representatives of the United Kingdom? We will look for those amendments that are necessary to the Bill—I look for support across the House—and we will look for the definition of an innocent victim; we will have the opportunity to clarify that those responsible for the planning or implementation of an unlawful conflict or related incident are not included. Crimes that trigger an investigation must include sexual crimes as well, as we should not underestimate the use and deployment of sexual crime by terrorists and terrorist organisations to influence and control the population of Northern Ireland.
As has been raised by the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), what powers with the second director of investigations have, and why? Those powers will be in the gift and patronage of this Secretary of State, and they will include the power to appoint a constable. If that second director of investigations is from outside the United Kingdom, not only will they have access to all the information and detailed records that our military and police services hold, but they will be able to appoint someone with the powers of a constable.
There is no special reference to a veteran being on the victims and survivors advisory group. Where is the place for the Northern Ireland veterans commissioner or the commissioner for victims and survivors in regards to who may be appointed—
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)
I rise to welcome the Bill, particularly its reversal of aspects of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 and its effort to restore human rights compliance and public confidence. It resolves court-identified incompatibilities and makes changes to legacy cases. Alongside the remedial order, it removes immunity from prosecution, restores civil actions for troubles-related conduct, and reinstates some inquests. Other matters will be handled through the legacy commission’s inquisitorial proceedings, enabling family participation and appropriate handling of sensitive information. These measures acknowledge that previous approaches caused deep harm and were, in many respects, unlawful.
However, as with the Public Office (Accountability) Bill and the Government’s engagement with the Hillsborough families, it is vital that this legislation gains the confidence of those affected in the north of Ireland. Amnesty International notes progress but also remaining concerns. Section 45 of the legacy Act, which limits police ombudsman investigations, is only partly addressed. Will the Minister say how incompatibilities with the ECHR, highlighted by the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal, will be resolved?
The Bill also retains the national security veto, giving the Secretary of State sole authority over sensitive disclosures. That risks undermining compliance and public trust, especially where state wrongdoing may be implicated. The family of Sean Brown, who was abducted and murdered in 1997, have long sought an independent public inquiry, and the Taoiseach called for such an inquiry this year. The PSNI has apologised for failings in the original investigation. Will the Secretary of State confirm whether the Government will commit to a fully independent inquiry into Mr Brown’s death, and that the proposed veto powers will not prevent it?
Given the legacy of mistrust, why do disclosure decisions remain solely in the Secretary of State’s authority? Will the Government consider an independent mechanism to balance national security with public confidence in legacy commission investigations? Although the Bill narrows the definition of sensitive information and introduces a public interest test, only the commission can appeal disclosure refusals, and only judicial review principles—not merits review—apply. Families’ rights to truth under articles 2 and 3 of the ECHR therefore remain vulnerable. Outstanding cases, such as that of Sean Brown, highlight the need for full, independent investigations. Courts have confirmed that an article 2 inquiry is required, yet none has been convened.
Concerns also remain about universal protections. Veterans appear singled out, potentially undermining fairness. Will the Secretary of State clarify how the Bill will ensure that protections apply equally, and that no group is seen as prioritised over victims and families? Additionally, the Bill states that human rights are to be “respected”, rather than imposing a binding obligation. Clearer language would strengthen accountability and reassure the public that all bodies must comply fully with the ECHR. Will the Government make that explicit? Finally, independence in appointments, particularly of judicial panel members, is essential. The Secretary of State’s broad appointment and resignation powers risk perceptions of political influence. Strong safeguards are needed to maintain trust.
In conclusion, although the Bill and the remedial order mark progress, significant issues with disclosure, independence, inquiries and universal protections remain. I urge the Minister to clarify how the Bill will rebuild trust and ensure fairness, transparency, and full human rights compliance for victims and families.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
We rely on British soldiers to keep our country safe—they put their lives on the line to defend our country, putting themselves in harm’s way to do so. However, a shadow hangs over our armed forces today, which is this Bill. As a member of the Petitions Committee, back in July I had the privilege of opening the debate on the petition to protect Northern Ireland veterans from prosecution. It was inspirational to see so many veterans come to Parliament for that debate. Again, here today in Parliament Square and in the Gallery, we see veterans gathered in opposition to this dreadful piece of legislation.
By the time the petition closed, it had over 200,000 signatures. I had the honour of meeting the creator of the petition, Ian Liles, who spent 36 years in the Army, including 13 in Northern Ireland. It was his palpable anger at this Bill that caused him to start the petition. The decision of this Labour Government to repeal the legacy Act is one that will shame our country for generations to come. No matter what the Secretary of State has said, this Bill means one thing: veterans face being dragged through the courts in politically motivated witch hunts. In fact, the Prime Minister’s own Northern Ireland veterans tsar has said that this is “immoral”, that it is “two-tier justice”, and that it will lead to “vexatious lawfare” against former soldiers. I was struck by the comments of Lieutenant General Nicholas Pope, who was forced to correct the Secretary of State for claiming that he supported the Bill.
This Bill sets a dangerous historical precedent, too. Are we really saying that if the Government today sent our troops to Ukraine—or to any other country, for that matter—they could be held to account in years to come for simply following instructions given to them by the Government of the day? If that is the case, why would anyone choose to serve our country again? Decades on, people sit and judge events in retrospect with little new evidence, and come to conclusions that are entirely at odds with the legal investigations carried out at the time.
Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)
Bognor Regis and Littlehampton is a coastal constituency with a strong forces tradition. Many of my constituents served in Northern Ireland and are now terrified of being pulled into a process that continues with no end. Does my hon. Friend agree that we owe those veterans a process that is fair, proportionate and final?
John Lamont
My hon. Friend makes an excellent pint. It is the fear—the prospect of being dragged through that process—that is causing so much anxiety. I suspect that is why so many veterans are so strongly opposed to this Bill.
We should also be clear about the difference between the actions of soldiers and those of terrorists. When terrorists get up in the morning, they go out with murderous intent—to use violence to attack our democracy and our nation. Soldiers do not; they put themselves in harm’s way to keep people safe and protect our nation. The difference is the intent. Soldiers serving our country, whether in Northern Ireland or in any other conflict, are forced to make instant, life-or-death decisions. They are not lawyers sat behind a desk, able to gather a team and spend days deciding whether or not to act. The legacy Act was by no means perfect, but it is better than the disgraceful spectacle of veterans being dragged through the courts.
There are nearly 2 million veterans across our country, and the sad truth is that many feel their service is no longer respected. Veterans are only demanding protection for following orders from high command, and from vexatious, politically charged lawsuits. Our armed forces are made up of extraordinary men and women who keep us safe—who go on difficult missions in dangerous and challenging places. We must defend those who defended us, which is why I oppose this Bill so strongly.
Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)
Kilsyth war memorial bears the names of the men of the town who lost their life in foreign wars—men whose service we recognise and remember every year on VE Day, VJ Day and Remembrance Sunday. On one face of that memorial sits a single, solitary name—a name set apart. The difference between that name and the others is stark. This son of Kilsyth also lost his life in the service of his country, but in his case he was killed by the Provisional IRA. In a town where his family still live and where his school friends are marking their significant birthdays, his name on that memorial is a reminder that his life, and the ultimate sacrifice that he made, will not be forgotten.
Just 2 miles down the road live another family. They, too, lost a loved one—a cousin, killed in an ambush by loyalist paramilitaries in the ’90s. I have known about the military deaths for a long time. They were one of the first things that I found out about as I became a candidate. I discovered the other one when we met families as part of a Select Committee visit to Belfast. One of the family members we met said, “I know your area. I spent summers there. My cousin lives in Kirkintilloch.” It reminded me of exactly how strong the links are between my part of the world and Ireland.
With a name like mine, I should recognise that there is a strong connection, but we are completely intertwined. It means that we know those families who lost loved ones during the troubles. We know the lack of answers that they have had, and the grief that still endures and is still raw. In the Select Committee inquiry, it did not matter who we spoke to among victims, survivors and families, because the message was the same. They told us about their loved ones and the brutal ways in which their lives had been taken, and they told us again and again that they wanted legislation that respected them, treated them with dignity and took them seriously. They wanted answers, and the previous Government’s legacy Act did not deliver that. It rode roughshod over the wishes of families, victims and survivors. It made promises to the armed forces that it could never deliver, and the mechanism that it created, despite the intentions of all the people working within it, inspired little confidence that families would be treated with the dignity and seriousness that they deserved.
I welcome this Bill, because it puts families at its heart. It recognises that the victims and survivors are the people this legislation must serve. It recognises that members of the security forces are also victims and survivors. It builds into the process the need to reflect and to stay engaged with those families. Across the board, those experiences have not necessarily been good. Where there have been inquests, they have been nothing more than tick-box exercises. They spoke to us, and we heard of anger, frustration and despair. It was the first time we had heard those stories, but it was not the first time that they had told them, because they have been saying it for decades upon decades in the hope of change. I thank every single one of them for sharing those stories with us.
The other part of this legislation that commends it is the fact that it recognises that if Scotland is a village, Northern Ireland is an even smaller one, and everybody is interrelated. The Bill builds on the best aspects of Operation Kenova, which is one of the big strengths in making it work. Like any piece of legislation, the Bill is not perfect, but it is a necessary and long-overdue step in the right direction. For the sake of those victims, survivors and families, we cannot afford to get it wrong.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
I rise to support the Opposition Front Bench in their concerns about the present legislation. Three facts stand out. First, the Bill does not protect veterans from criminal cases, even repeated ones. It essentially means that they are likely to be dragged through the criminal process multiple times if accused of wrongdoing or even asked to give evidence. Secondly, Labour’s protections for veterans can barely be called protections, and the Irish Government have denied that they exist at all. It remains unclear how they will work in practice to protect veterans, and the Irish Deputy Prime Minister Simon Harris has said that no additional protections will be given to veterans, so there is a conflict between the two parties to the agreement.
Thirdly, it remains unclear whether the protections for veterans in the new legacy deal will protect paramilitaries and terrorists alike. Interestingly, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) asked the Secretary of State that question at the Dispatch Box, and he never answered it. I would be grateful if at some point he, or the Minister when he gets up, would say whether the protections extend to both sides.
The main point that I want to make, having served in Northern Ireland, is how quickly people forget what a peculiar and terrible event it was—so peculiar to have British troops on the ground in the United Kingdom with British citizens all around them, having to keep the peace in a part of this United Kingdom. It seemed almost outrageous, but that was what we were called to do. We had strict rules of engagement, and those were very tough to follow at times because of the nature of the threat and what could happen around any corner. You never knew when you went to a house whether someone would be sniping or shooting at you, and that played on the senses and on the alertness of those soldiers. Sure, mistakes will have been made, but that was the very nature of the background in which that happened.
Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
The right hon. Member makes an important distinction about the manner in which we deployed our soldiers. What he has described is a policing action, and there are very different requirements for delivering scrutiny. Is he not incredulous that other Members of his party are conflating that with the concern that we would put those requirements on future veterans, who would be fighting a conflict where we hope they would be acting forwards in a way that is entirely different from what he described?
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I will not follow the hon. Member down that road, because I have limited time and there is something I want to reflect on, but the reality is that many people and veterans believe that this will be a problem for future recruits.
I was, in actual fact, not in favour of the legislation passed by the previous Government because I felt that equating this by giving rights to both sides to avoid any prosecutions would not necessarily work. I was, however, persuaded in the final analysis by one particular case. The hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) mentioned Robert Nairac. Robert Nairac was a very good friend of mine. I came to the conclusion that there was no way on earth that we would ever find out what actually happened to this brave soldier who served in Northern Ireland. We have had bits and pieces to relay the fact that he was almost certainly tortured and that he was executed, but we never get to know. His parents died not knowing and his family still wonder what happened to him. Was he ever buried? Is it true that he was cut up? That somehow spread, and nobody wants to own up to it.
It struck me that for as long as there was a likelihood that somebody would be prosecuted for it, we would never know or get closure. I was persuaded on those grounds that it was time to shift from the way we were behaving—the way we were dragging soldiers through inquiries and into the courts. As Soldier F even now tells us, it is unlikely that we will achieve what everyone here keeps talking about as justice. What we will achieve is a permanent state of anxiety and nobody getting justice in the course of it. It struck me that the only thing we could do was to get to the root of the problems, have those cases explained and get those who were involved in them to tell the families what happened and why. Therefore, they would at least have closure through having knowledge and understanding of why these things took place.
I wish we knew where Robert Nairac lies, if he lies anywhere at all. I wish his family knew. Many other soldiers and civilians are in those circumstances too. The terrorism and brutality of the IRA was appalling, yet we are still arguing about it even today.
Let me take us back about a month to Norman Tebbit’s funeral. I remember when he watched the person who set the bomb and blew up the Grand in Brighton walk free. I remember him saying to me afterwards, “It was the worst moment in my life—I went through all of this and I had injuries. This man went free because we had to get peace in Northern Ireland, but my wife will never be free, because she is immobilised for the rest of her life, and I have to live with that with her. We are both trapped in what happened in those seconds in the bombing.” For his sake and for everything else, he recognised finally, as horrible as it was, that there was a necessary compromise to be made.
Let me simply say that the attacks on the previous legislation forget that it was about trying to get truth and reconciliation, and about learning from other countries such as South Africa. As difficult and problematic as this issue is, there are major faults in this legislation, and I hope that the Secretary of State will respect the fact that amendments will be made and that he will accept many of them.
David Smith (North Northumberland) (Lab)
Just over 20 years ago, in my red Vauxhall Corsa, I rounded the bend at the bottom of the Woodstock Road in Belfast and drove straight into a pregnant pause in the middle of a riot. To my left was a baying mob of young east Belfast men, and to my right was a baying mob of young men from the Short Strand. They were being kept apart by a British Army unit gathered around a group of armoured Land Rovers.
As I buzzed my window down, I heard a crunch as my tires passed over the bricks and debris. The worry must have been written across my face. The pause in that moment was pregnant in more ways than one—above all because of my heavily pregnant wife sitting next to me in the passenger seat. She was managing her contractions with breathing exercises as I told the nearest soldier of our need to get to the hospital on the other side of town and, crucially, on the other side of the road.
In that brief moment of relative calm, the soldier made a split-second decision and waved us through; I did not need further invitation. Before long, we were safe in the maternity wing of the Royal Victoria hospital in Belfast. Later that day, our first child—our daughter—was born, and we have called her our Belle of Belfast city ever since. I will always be thankful for that soldier’s decision, but even more thankful that he and his colleagues were there that day to keep us safe in the first place.
I had moved to Belfast four years earlier to begin my first proper job, running the Presbyterian Church in Ireland’s first ever youth peace and reconciliation programme. It was a new job, in a new city, in what seemed like a new Northern Ireland, just three years after the Good Friday agreement. It was a hopeful time; there was an appetite from the vast majority of the population to enter a new and peaceful era for that wee country.
There was also a realisation that the horrors of the troubles had to be processed and dealt with by the individuals directly impacted, but also by Northern Irish society as a whole. Yet here we are, 20 years on from that moment, still talking about making a serious start on dealing with the legacy of the troubles.
I can say with confidence that the legacy Act did not do that; it did not help with that legacy. For example, it meant that 200 military families were left in limbo, unable to pursue the truth of what happened to their loved ones. They were families like that of Mo Norton, whose brother Terence Griffin was killed in the M62 bus bombing in 1974. She said:
“That morning, everything changed. Twelve lives were lost, including children. Our family was shattered. There was no warning, no chance to say goodbye. Just silence, and then years of unanswered questions. I need to know that Terence’s death has been fully investigated, I don’t think it has been properly investigated in the past.”
Honourable soldiers follow the law and are glad to do so. That is what made my grandpa a good soldier, and it is what gives the British armed forces their outstanding reputation.
As strange as it may sound, I am pleased that we are debating the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill. Today represents the possibility of a huge step forward. I believe in the bonds of these islands that we share—that is why I am a Unionist—but our relationship with the Republic of Ireland matters deeply. The joint framework of the Irish and UK Governments states:
“The Governments recognise that legacy must be addressed across these islands as a whole”.
I welcome that, but the challenge is that we need to hold on to reconciliation. Reconciliation is mentioned only once in the Bill, but we must hold on to the principle. Reconciliation is obviously hard.
No one in Northern Ireland came out of the troubles completely untouched, and the pain can twist down the generations. Truth alone is not enough for a community to reconcile. There must be trust and a resetting of our relationships, and that does not happen without acknowledgement, without memorialisation and even, in some cases, without repentance. We need community spaces, moments and symbols that do that. We know that no one can make anyone else reconcile, and a Government certainly cannot. At the same time, however, Governments have the resources, the convening power and the cross-cutting responsibilities to empower and enable those moments, spaces and symbols that can foster social reconciliation. We saw that at the time of the late Queen’s visit to Dublin castle.
I welcome that commitment, but we need more detail, and we need it more quickly. We need commitments from the other parties to this conflict, about whom we have not talked enough today—specifically the Provisional IRA, the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Ulster Defence Association, and all other militant and terrorist groups. They need to make those commitments, and acknowledge what they did.
I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for this welcome legislation, which seeks truth. I simply urge him to think creatively and ambitiously about how the Government can now help to turn truth into genuine reconciliation and hope for Northern Ireland’s future.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I am imposing an immediate four-minute time limit.
Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)
I have the honour of being, in 107 years of the Royal Air Force police, the first of its veterans to be elected to this House.
Our armed forces are revered worldwide because they train for and execute one thing to a higher standard than anyone else, namely the moral component—discipline, and the will to fight. Without those two principles, an effective fighting force descends into what we see from the Russian military in Ukraine: the extrajudicial killing of civilians; soldiers motivated not by an objective, but by fear of their own colleagues and commanders; and the routine humiliation, torture and murder of their colleagues.
We must hold our armed forces to a higher standard than our adversaries, because they are better than those adversaries. They must be expected to act within the law. When they act outside the law but in good faith, they must be defended, in recognition of the unique pressures under which they operate. If there were no consequences for breaking the law while in uniform, no longer would we pledge to protect our own troops from the retribution of their own commanders, from illegal orders or poor leadership, whether in Northern Ireland or Afghanistan. No longer would we stand by our statement before the world, in Nuremberg 80 years ago, that “just following orders” did not excuse war crimes.
Private Bryan Soden from Tewkesbury was only 20 years old when he lost his life, on his third deployment to Northern Ireland. Like so many others, he was murdered in an ambush by cowardly paramilitaries. Those who bravely served in Northern Ireland did so under the constant threat of an enemy, often disguised as a civilian, lurking and awaiting an opportunity to kill them. Our Northern Ireland veterans should be in no doubt that this country will continue to distinguish their noble service from the deceitful and inhumane paramilitary terrorism that they stood and fought against. To do that, we cannot allow the IRA to be the barometer. We cannot resolve to hold our troops to the same standard to which they hold their terrorists. To do so would not only legitimise terrorism, but sell out those who conducted themselves with honour.
Those Conservative Members who, last week, hijacked a debate about remembrance to score political points about this Bill neglected to recognise that we are here only because their Northern Ireland troubles Bill was a hash, and satisfied none of the parties to whom it applied. Some of those who spoke in that debate referred to a letter printed in The Times the day before Armistice Day, written by eight retired generals and one retired air chief marshal under whom I taught the law of armed conflict to RAF recruits. The signatories asserted that the Northern Ireland Bill “tears up” our contract with our personnel, and that
“Today every…member of the British Armed Forces must consider not only the enemy in front but the lawyer behind.”
The letter paints an emotive image, but it is misleading. I served for 23 years, and from the very beginning, and every year thereafter, I was reminded that I had to act within the law, and that if I acted outside the law but in good faith, I would be protected by the law.
Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)
In the months in which I was the Northern Ireland spokesperson for my party, I engaged with lots of veterans’ groups. Their members told me that they were very keen for this legislation to recognise that they went to Northern Ireland, as service personnel, to restore the rule of law. They recognise that they should be subject to the possibility of prosecution, but prosecution should never turn into persecution. How does my hon. Friend reconcile those points with the issues that he is raising?
Cameron Thomas
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point, and he is absolutely right. We went to Northern Ireland to secure peace against terrorists, and the law should always recognise the difference between the actions of our soldiers and those of the terrorists they stood against. I always knew that I had to act within the law, but that if I broke the law in good faith, I would be protected by that law. Those who signed the letter may think that the Bill undermines that contract, but they have declined to clearly identify what part of the Bill does that, and I cannot find it. If this wider debate is about supporting our veterans and our armed forces, Members will find an ally in me, but if what they really seek to do is absolve personnel of responsibility for alleged war crimes, including those against United Kingdom citizens, then let them say so aloud.
Although I recognise the shortcomings of the legislation that preceded the Bill, the worst that I can say about this Bill is that the Government do not have the support of the Veterans Commissioners. Can the Minister clarify which, if any, veterans’ groups have approved the Bill? Furthermore, by opting to go with convention, rather than taking this Bill to a full Public Bill Committee, the Government have declined an opportunity for full, line-by-line parliamentary oversight and cross-party collaboration. Fiat justitia.
Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)
I come to today’s debate, as many Members on both sides of the House do, as someone who was proud to serve my country and who has the utmost respect for those Members who served in Northern Ireland on Op Banner. For me, this debate is complex, but at its heart are two simple questions: how do we respond to trauma, and how do we uphold accountability? The wounds of the troubles are still raw. I saw that earlier this year, when I visited Northern Ireland and went to the WAVE trauma centre. I met people who are still experiencing trauma, and I met victims of the troubles whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time—people who lost parents, people who lost limbs, and people whose lives were irreversibly changed by violence in which they took no part. I met Alex Bunting, a taxi driver who was going about his day when a sudden explosion tore his vehicle apart and severed his left leg in 1991. The question of who was responsible for the attack was never solved, but it was assumed to be an IRA operation that struck the wrong target.
I also met Kathleen Gillespie, who was held hostage by the IRA with her children while her husband Patsy was chained to a cab and forced to drive a lorry at an Army checkpoint; he and five young soldiers were killed. Patsy was used by the IRA as a human bomb. Kathleen was angry with the last Government, because she felt that his barbaric death was treated like it never happened under their legacy Act.
Alex deserves answers, Kathleen deserves answers, and both deserve accountability. So do many others, not only in Belfast but here in Britain. Families in the west midlands are still seeking answers after the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974, which took 21 young, innocent lives. Half a century on, the families’ trauma remains, and they still wait for justice. That is why accountability matters—accountability for the terrorists, including the IRA, who carried out the overwhelming majority of killings, but also accountability for our armed forces when standards were not upheld.
However, the Conservatives’ legacy Act of 2023 undermined every route for accountability. Most gravely, it created a system of conditional immunity for members of the IRA—effectively a blanket amnesty for anyone who was willing to co-operate with the commission. That is not justice; it places terrorists and those who served our country on the same moral footing. Families were rightly appalled. Audrey, whose brother Private Winston Donnell was murdered by the IRA in 1971, said:
“We always had a very slim hope of getting justice, but…this amnesty has let us and other families down. Our Government has let us down badly.”
Victims of IRA terrorism, and victims of state wrongdoing, deserve the opportunity for accountability. No veteran should be dragged repeatedly through processes dealing with the same matter. That is why the new protections in this Bill are so important. They mark a genuine improvement, and put veterans’ welfare first. They are important, sensible and overdue protections for our veterans, who overwhelmingly served with honour and distinction. This legislation seeks to fix the grave failings of the Conservatives’ discredited legacy Act of 2023. It helps victims to pursue justice, it restores the chance of accountability for terrorist crimes, and it provides stronger, fairer protections for veterans than anything in the previous Government’s approach.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
At the outset, let me restate unequivocally that we DUP Members will always stand with the innocent victims and survivors of terrorism in Northern Ireland. We will stand with the families whose loved ones were cut down by a ruthless and bloody terrorist campaign. Their pain has not diminished, and neither will our determination to defend truth, justice and moral clarity.
We continue to hear attempts to justify or sanitise and romanticise terrorism. We hear repeatedly from Sinn Féin’s leadership, the self-proclaimed First Minister for all and Mary Lou McDonald, that there was somehow no alternative to the IRA’s barbaric campaign of violence, and that it was justified. Justified? That is an affront to every innocent family whose loved one was murdered. There was always an alternative to murder; there was always an alternative to placing bombs under cars; and there was always an alternative to shooting innocent men, women and children.
I want to take the House back to two significant events in 1987: the IRA bombing of the service of remembrance at the cenotaph in Enniskillen, killing 12 people and injuring at least 60 more; and the Special Air Service’s engagement of heavily armed terrorists in Loughgall in my constituency. Which one of these incidents do Members think was granted a public inquiry? It was not the murder of innocents and the injuring of many more. Instead an inquiry was granted into the heavily armed terror gang, which was rightly engaged with and eliminated by the security forces, who saved countless lives in the process. Such is the subversion of the legacy process in Northern Ireland that the murder of innocents at Enniskillen has never had a public inquiry.
In recent times, the Secretary of State visited Loughgall and heard directly from innocent victims of the IRA’s East Tyrone brigade, one of the most brutal, ruthless killing wings of the IRA. He spoke with two men whose families endured unimaginable suffering at the hands of some of the IRA’s most notorious killers, and their testimonies were powerful and deeply moving. The East Tyrone brigade were not freedom fighters, but a heavily armed terror unit. Having already killed hundreds of innocent people, they mounted a killing operation at Loughgall, intending to obliterate any RUC officer in that station. They never paused in their murderous intent. They did not stop to give any officer an opportunity to walk away. Terrorism must never be sanitised or justified. Those who defended the innocent must never be sacrificed to appease those who glorify violence.
Sammy Wilson
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Secretary of State’s promises to the House mean that the Bill would enable some of those people and their supporters to be included on the victims advisory group? Indeed, if the Secretary of State consulted the Justice Minister in Northern Ireland, the leader of the Alliance party, she would say that they should be included, because they are just as much innocent victims as the people whom they killed.
Carla Lockhart
Absolutely. That was a point well made.
This Bill speaks of inquests, and we firmly believe that every family deserves a full and fair investigation, but Loughgall—really? Not only has that event been before the European Court of Human Rights, where the UK was found to be justified, but there is to be a second inquest. How does that make innocent victims feel? There must be no more vexatious pursuit of the security forces, and this Bill does not protect them. Only 10% of troubles-related deaths were caused by the security forces, and almost all of those occurred in engagements with terrorists, yet the narrative we hear is deliberately inverted. There is no comparison—none—between terrorists and those who stood as a human shield in their path. The SAS soldiers who served in Loughgall deserve this Government’s full support.
The Government have allowed the Irish Government an entirely disproportionate role in shaping legacy, while innocent victims in Northern Ireland feel sidelined. Let us be very clear: the Irish state has its own legacy—a dark, uncomfortable legacy—that it has yet to confront with honesty or transparency. That same state’s own tribunal, the Smithwick tribunal, found collusion between members of the Garda Síochána and the IRA on the murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan. Those two senior Royal Ulster Constabulary officers were ambushed and executed after information was passed by the Irish police to terrorists. It was the same with Ian Sproule, the 23-year-old from Castlederg. These are not isolated incidents. Across border areas, families have credible concerns about the Irish state’s failures—failures to arrest, to extradite, and to share intelligence, and failures that allowed terrorists to flee across the border and live openly.
We will stand with every innocent family whose loved one was murdered. We will stand with the RUC, with the Ulster Defence Regiment, with our veterans, and with the SAS. Terrorism was wrong. It was never justified, and it cannot be sanitised.
Graeme Downie (Dunfermline and Dollar) (Lab)
Madam Deputy Speaker, I want to take you back to a Saturday in March 1993. I was getting ready to leave the house to get on a little blue Sprinter bus that stopped outside. It would take me into town. I was meeting friends there for a couple of hours. I had probably told my Mum that I needed to buy a Mother’s Day card, or something like that. The next day, I planned to walk my Border Collie, Gem, and maybe play some games on my computer. I would normally have been playing football on the Sunday, but we were shortly moving house and city, so I had stopped playing.
Just as I was about to leave the house, my mum told me I was not going. I was 11 years old and utterly indignant; the rage was ready to go. An emergency news bulletin was on the TV—rare then, but almost unheard of now—and the newsreader said that a bomb had exploded in the town centre. I was not going anywhere. Later news bulletins said that the IRA had carried out a bombing; they had also detonated a bomb at an industrial site in the town a few weeks before. There was no social media, and not really much more information, or even rumours. The news that night indicated deaths and multiple casualties. The town centre was closed off.
The next day felt strange, but not overly so. I had grown up on an RAF base, so I was very used to the threat of IRA bombings. I was used to checking the car, and I was aware of the kind of language being used on the news. The next day, I went out, as I had planned to walk Gem in the park—a huge park with football fields. I saw someone—I think it was Gary, who I used to play football with—and asked him why the team was not playing that day. He said the game was cancelled because one of the boys in our team had been critically injured in the bomb attack and was in hospital. That unnamed boy was in fact my friend, Tim Parry, and he was in intensive care, having suffered life-threatening injuries on Saturday 20 March, the day before Mother’s Day. I grabbed Gem’s lead and ran home, flushed—not crying; not even sad. I was an 11-year-old boy who just did not know how to respond. I was totally overwhelmed and did not know what to think. I crashed through the front door. While I was out, my mum had a phone call from a friend, telling her what had happened. I did not feel anything; I was numb. I do not remember anything of my reaction or anyone else’s.
With the hindsight of 32 years, I realise that the news five days later, on 25 March, was inevitable. Tim died after his life support machine was turned off. Another young boy, three-year-old Jonathan Ball, had died at the scene of the bombing. I missed Tim’s funeral—something I regret to this day. I was back with family in Scotland.
I do not know what happened in Warrington in 1993, other than that someone I was friends with and played football with every week had been killed. Since that day in Warrington, I have tried to understand. At university, I studied the politics of violence. I completed my dissertation on the politics of paramilitaries. I worked in Northern Ireland, where I had to meet and shake the hands of some of the people from the IRA who were ultimately responsible for the deaths of both Tim Parry and Jonathan Ball.
Prior to giving this speech, I messaged Colin Parry, Tim’s dad, whom I remember as being one of many parents shouting support from the sidelines during football matches. I wanted him to know that I still think about that day, and I still want answers. I do not seek revenge, and I do not think the Parry family ever expect to get justice, but I do want answers, and so do hundreds of others who have lost family, friends and loved ones as a result of horrific violence in Northern Ireland. I hope that the Bill can deliver the information and the truth that those people deserve—those innocent victims who, like Colin and Wendy Parry, still live with the pain and injustice of what they have endured for so many decades. I believe that everything should be tried. If this legislation is an attempt to help even one person, then it should be considered more than a worthwhile effort.
Sarah Pochin (Runcorn and Helsby) (Reform)
I would like to acknowledge all the brave veterans here today and to thank them for their service to this country.
I grew up during the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland in a deeply patriotic household with a father who served in the British Army. I remember watching the news when the IRA blew up Lord Mountbatten in 1979 and the effect it had on my father, and again when the IRA blew up Airey Neave at the gates of Westminster, also in 1979. I remember watching the horrific footage of the 11 soldiers and seven horses blown up in Hyde Park in 1982. I remember watching the news when the IRA tried to blow up Mrs Thatcher in 1984 at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, killing five innocent people. I remember watching the news when the IRA bombed the Baltic Exchange in the City of London in 1992, killing three and injuring 91, with a Semtex bomb—the biggest bomb to be detonated on mainland Britain since world war two. I remember watching the news when the IRA bombed central Manchester in 1996, wreaking havoc and injuring 200 innocent civilians. I remember watching many more events, but I was only watching the news on the television. Like so many of us voting on the Bill today, I have no experience of the horrors on the ground that our brave veterans faced in this war against terrorism.
Like so many of our veterans, my father did not speak of his tours in Northern Ireland. He did not speak of what he did, what he saw, or the risks he took. It was simply his job and his duty. My father is no longer with us, but I know he is watching me make this speech and speak on behalf of our brave veterans—many of whom are watching these proceedings today—about the injustice of their facing prosecution for simply following orders. These brave men served their Queen, their country and their regiments without question. They risked their lives to protect us, and now, in their retirement years, they are facing prosecution from this Labour Government and their shameful Northern Ireland Troubles Bill.
The Good Friday agreement was undoubtedly a historic achievement, but I remember watching the television with my parents when the Queen shook hands with Martin McGuinness and finding that so hard to watch. Watching the prosecutions of our veterans, while IRA terrorists were given comfort letters and immunity from prosecution, has been equally hard to stomach. The existence of the public coroners’ court in this legislation to appease republicans is nothing short of the Government enabling show trials to demonise our veterans. All applications should be heard by the Legacy Commission and by the Legacy Commission alone.
This legislation is wrong and unfair. Moreover, it will dissuade young men and women from considering a career in the armed forces at a time when we are already struggling to recruit. We have benefited from years of relative peace in this country, but now, more than ever, the Government need to be prepared for hostilities and to defend this country and its citizens. In a recent joint letter to the Prime Minister, nine four-star generals said that, with this legislation, British soldiers must worry not only about
“the enemy in front but the lawyer behind.”
How powerful are those words?
Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
This is an important and necessary Bill. It is needed to repair the legally and morally flawed legacy Act passed by the previous Government, which created confusion in an already complex and sensitive area of law, history and military doctrine, and made impossible promises offering a route to immunity for terrorists who killed British citizens on British soil. What is worse is that those who created that mess now seek to mislead our veterans by portraying this Bill as some form of injustice. It is despicable.
As a veteran, I thank all those who served during Operation Banner and I understand the genuine concern in the veteran community that these issues have reopened. I hope that we hear some humility from those on the Conservative Benches who have caused this situation. This Government have had no option but to clean up the consequences of the previous Government’s legacy Act, which is difficult and sensitive work but necessary if we are to address veterans’ concerns properly and restore credibility. That view is shared by the Veterans Commissioners for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, who have recognised their constructive engagement with the Ministers. I welcome that spirit of honesty and collaboration.
In that same vein, I am proud to represent the position of the Royal British Legion as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the armed forces community. The RBL has said:
“The Government’s commitment to introducing safeguards for veterans is necessary. The legislation must protect veterans from repeated investigations, while ensuring bereaved Armed Forces families can continue to pursue answers to their longstanding questions.”
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. The hon. Gentleman knows better than to use the word “you” in those circumstances.
Mr Bailey
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Those two principles—being protected from repeated investigation and giving families proper answers—must sit at the heart of the Bill. We know the previous Government’s Act shut down investigations into the deaths of our armed forces personnel and denied answers to hundreds of families. Further, its conditional immunity scheme was ruled unlawful by the Northern Ireland High Court, leaving us with the need for a new and credible approach.
In that spirit, the Royal British Legion has proposed several improvements. First, the provision of giving evidence remotely, anonymously and with welfare protections could be strengthened with clear guidance on how decisions will be made. Secondly, it should not be left to veterans to explain the context of the events that took place in the troubles. Rather, a senior member of the Ministry of Defence should be a representative to provide factual context and describe the dangerous situation in which our veterans found themselves. Thirdly, the Bill rightly recognises the impact of repeated investigation, and it is important to set out clear criteria for the Legacy Commission so that duplication happens rarely and only when justified. Finally, the victims and survivors advisory group rightly includes references to armed forces victims. However, the Bill should state explicitly that veterans or the families of those we lost will have guaranteed representation.
I thank the Ministers for their engagement so far. Will the Secretary of State confirm that he will continue to actively engage with the Royal British Legion ahead of the Committee stage? This legislation is not just about history; it is about truth, justice and reconciliation across these islands, and it is about ensuring that our armed—
Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)
I rise to oppose the Bill in the strongest possible terms. The Bill has been weighed in the balance of justice and found gravely wanting. It fails the test of fairness, it fails the test of common sense and it fails the test of our duty to protect innocent victims and our veterans.
No one should underestimate the pain, the grief and the enduring trauma that the evil of terrorism has left in its wake. Some 3,500 people were murdered and countless others were maimed, physically and psychologically, condemned to lifelong suffering. It is the duty of everyone in this House to address that—not casually, not evasively, but seriously, honestly and above all with moral clarity.
Jim Shannon
On accountability, I think we all want justice for those victims who have never had justice. I think of the four Ulster Defence Regiment men of Ballydugan, for instance: there was no justice for them and nobody was ever made accountable. My cousin Kenneth Smyth was murdered by the IRA and they fled across the border. No one was ever made accountable. Does the hon. Member feel that the justice that my family and all the other families want cannot be delivered through the Bill?
Alex Easton
The hon. Member is perfectly right; the Bill will not give justice to innocent victims. Moral clarity is grievously lacking in the Bill. Far from delivering justice, the legislation seeks in effect to rewrite history. We are shamefully witnessing those who stood between the innocent and the most evil terrorism western Europe has ever known being hounded to their graves. There are no letters of comfort for them. There is no opaque, invisible process quietly smoothing their path. Instead, rather than naming and confronting terrorism, the Bill constructs a grotesque false equivalence between those who wore the uniform of the Crown and those who sought to bomb and murder them into submission.
Those who upheld the rule of law are being treated as morally indistinguishable from those who waged war against it. This is an affront to justice, to truth and to the memory of the victims. Those who stood between us and terror deserve better than to be hounded in the autumn of their lives by legislation that blurs right and wrong, truth and falsehood. This Bill fails that moral test. It fails our veterans, it fails the innocent and it fails the cause of genuine reconciliation. Justice demands that history never forgets those who chose the path of murderous terrorism and those who stood in their path and defeated them. This House has a duty not to pass legislation simply to make us feel better about the past, or for reasons of political expediency, but to pass legislation that is fair, honest and just.
I am also deeply concerned about the legacy procedures operating outside the framework even of the ICRIR, such as public inquiries into nationalist and republican cases such as Pat Finucane, when victims of the IRA get no such inquiries. Operation Denton, which operates without any statutory framework or safeguards at all, has reportedly been travelling to Dublin and disclosing UK intelligence material to campaign groups, as reported in the media last month.
Specifically on the Bill, I too have serious concerns about clause 5. The requirement to have policing experience in Northern Ireland could mean experience of being part of an external investigation team such as Kenova, rather than having served in the RUC or the PSNI. It is a back-door way of ushering out former members of the RUC and PSNI officers, again to placate those who would rewrite history. The Bill also provides for the chief executive to be part of the oversight board. How can somebody charged with discharging operational functions simultaneously have oversight of the discharge of those functions?
Finally, is the proposal to have an advisory group to which the Secretary of State shall be required to have due regard not simply a way of again loading up such an advisory group with nationalist legacy activist groups? Can the Secretary of State give an assurance that, for example, such advisory groups will be required to give an undertaking and commitment to the definition of an innocent victim? Or are we going to be left with a panel, some of whose participants believe that, for example, the Shankill bomber is as much a victim as those who were murdered? That is just not right. Can the Secretary of State assure the House that no terrorists will sit on the legacy board? That assurance is not in the Bill, and he needs to clarify that. I want it in the Bill.
Will the Irish Government give up their secrets? I very much doubt it. Let us draw a clear moral line between those who upheld the law and those who violated it. Let us protect veterans from endless vexatious complaints. Let us be honest with real victims about what can genuinely be achieved. Let us preserve the historical record so that further generations know the truth about what happened. This is not just another piece of legislation. In our desire to make progress, we must not betray the very people who—
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
The thing that seems to bind us all together is the search for the truth. I just hope that, through this process, we might be able to agree about how we can achieve that. One of my earliest Adjournment debates, way back in 1999, was on the murder of Patrick Finucane. Only weeks before that, I had been on a platform with Rosemary Nelson as part of the human rights campaign. Weeks after was murdered by a loyalist bomb under her car, so we are all desperate to find the truth, because hopefully that might bring some closure.
I desperately want this Bill to work, and I want to ask a number of questions about how I believe some of the issues should be addressed. The first is about ECHR compliance. Clause 26 deals with that. It basically says that a statement will be published giving guidance to which investigations will have to have regard about standards and how certain elements of the investigation have to comply with certain rules of behaviour. That narrows it towards the ECHR, but there is no express provision on that. I just do not understand why there is no express provision requiring Legacy Commission inquiries to meet ECHR standards.
Clause 11 is the same. It says that
“human rights should be respected”,
rather than complied with. Why is there a change in the wording of the joint framework, which was specifically about compliance, not respect?
Let us be clear: the national security veto gives the Secretary of State the ability to redact reports to families on security grounds, and as a result there is a fear about potential concealment. The measure refers to the relevant Secretary of State—the Home Secretary, the Secretary of State for Defence or the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland—but some of these people will be responsible for MI5 and military intelligence, which might be the subject of an investigation. There is a clear conflict of interest there. Why not assign security decisions to a judicial panel member rather than leaving them in the hands of a Secretary of State?
There are immense powers in the hands of the Secretary of State to appoint the chair, the commissioners, the director of investigations, the chief executive officer and the judicial panel. The Secretary of State has a duty to take advice from a relevant panel of persons—the names are to be subsequently published. It is not clear who those advisers will be, what their status will be or even what their experience will be. In addition, under the Stormont House agreement, the Justice Minister makes appointments on the basis of a binding recommendation from an appointments panel of statutory office holders. Why have we departed from that approach in this piece of legislation?
There has been reference to the internment clauses: clauses 89 and 90. I remind the House that a number of members of the Provisional IRA were interned, but it was not just suspected Provisionals who were imprisoned at that time. There were more general political opponents of Unionism, too. There were members of civil rights organisations and trade unionists. I believe that they deserve justice as much as anybody else.
I hope that, as we reach the next stage, there will be a cross-party element to the Bill’s improvement so that we can secure the confidence of all as we go forward. If we do not, it will remain a matter of rancour for the future, and I do not believe that we would be serving our constituents or anybody else properly in that respect.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
The Defence Committee recently visited Canberra in Australia. For Members who do not know the geography of the place, the old Parliament building looks down a row of trees and across a lake to the national war memorial. When the new Parliament building was built in the 1980s, it was pushed back so that it had exactly the same view. The implication was that the decisions made in that Parliament ended up down at the war memorial—it was a sense of focus, and I hope that we can have that focus today. The curator of the national war memorial said that it is quite the thing to find—with no cameras and no fuss—the Prime Minister and members of the Cabinet on their hands and knees scrubbing the tomb of the unknown Australian soldier.
I did four tours of Northern Ireland. My first was in 1992. I served three and half years there, trying to bring peace to that place. In the first week of my first tour, I was manning a checkpoint just by the Divis flats. My road man called me over because a Hilux van had driven in. He called me over and said to the driver, “Say to the platoon commander what you’ve just said to me.” I looked into the driver’s eyes and he said, “I’ve got a bomb in the back of this van.” I knew immediately that he was lying. I had no experience there, but I knew he was lying because I had been trained. As my grandmother used to say, an ounce of experience is worth a ton of enthusiasm.
I know that there is no one in the Cabinet with any experience in government. I know that there is no one in the Cabinet with any experience in the military. If only we had some people with experience who could send the message to the Cabinet that what they are doing is wrong. Maybe it could be the 210,000 people who filled in a petition in record time and got a Westminster Hall debate. Many of the veterans who were there then are here today. I thank them for the presence, and have enjoyed meeting them again in Parliament Square today. Maybe it could be the 2,512 veterans in my Spelthorne constituency who have written to tell me that the Government are making a mistake. Maybe it could be the nine four-star generals who have written an open letter to the Government to tell them that they are making a mistake. I have tried to get my head around why the Government so glibly are ignoring them. What if nine former chief constables or nine former senior bishops wrote to the Government and said, “You really need to think again”? I find it bewildering that the Government think they know better than those nine four-star officers who wrote saying that this Bill does not offer sufficient, proper protection to those who were doing their duty in good faith.
The problem is—and the Secretary of State knows this—that this piece of legislation is part of the proxy war that answers the question, “Who won?” It is a shot being fired, and our veterans, I am afraid, are being used as chess pieces in that disgraceful proxy battle in order to relitigate and answer the question, “Who won?” When we last spoke about this in Westminster Hall, I begged the Secretary of State to listen to the advice of the previous Veterans Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns). I can only assume from this Bill that he has not done so, and I will be voting against it tonight.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
We have, unfortunately, run out of time for Back-Bench contributions. I call the shadow Minister.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
Thank you, ma’am.
This has been a lively and, at times, impassioned debate, and rightly so, when we remember what is at stake. Some 300,000 British soldiers served in Northern Ireland on Operation Banner between 1969 and 2007. They were sent there by this House to uphold the rule of law during a decades-long sectarian conflict, often playing piggy in the middle between two warring sets of armed paramilitaries. Thank you for your brave service.
One week on from Armistice Day, we should also remember that over 700 of those soldiers were murdered by both republican and so-called loyalist terrorists, and thousands more suffered life-changing injuries at the hands of the same terrorists who were responsible for some 90% of all fatalities during the troubles, most of them against innocent civilians, whether Catholic or Protestant.
Many of those who deployed on Op Banner were recruited at a young age from tough northern towns in what we would today call red wall constituencies, from Bury to Bolton and Blackburn to Burnley, which are currently mostly represented by Labour MPs. Ministers reassure them that their commitment to our veterans is “unshakeable”, and yet, as the veterans have highlighted, in this 107-page Bill, with its 98 clauses and six schedules, the word “veteran” does not appear once. Moreover, the so-called six protections for veterans—which General Sir Peter Wall, a former head of the British Army, called a “meaningless insult” to them—also apply in the most part to paramilitaries, a fact that Ministers are now simply too embarrassed to admit.
For context, for years Sinn Féin and its old comrades’ association, the IRA, have sought to use lawfare via a conveyor belt of coronial inquests and civil prosecutions to pursue our veterans through the courts. This is not just an attempt to punish those soldiers who bravely opposed them—much of it, ironically, taxpayer-funded. More broadly, it is part of a politically inspired campaign to rewrite history in the terrorists’ favour. It was this process that our 2023 legacy Act effectively ended, hence why republicans are so desperate to repeal it. The veterans can clearly see this, and they are genuinely mystified—and, indeed, extremely frustrated—that Ministers cannot.
Moreover, the veterans are rightfully furious that Ministers are seeking to persuade their Back Benchers to support this benighted legislation by telling them they are doing it at the behest of service widows to “go after the IRA”. I do not know a single Op Banner veteran who actually believes that assertion. Indeed, the Northern Ireland Veterans Movement has condemned it—in its words, not mine—as “completely untrue”.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
The truth is, the Secretary of State has said there is no equivalence between those who fought us and those who defended us, but his Bill says the very opposite. Every investigation has a view to criminal prosecution. Everyone pursued will feel hounded, because they will be hounded.
Mr Francois
On Sunday, I read the Bill again carefully, and parts 3, 4 and 5, in very clear terms, are the conveyor belt that I was speaking about. However, for those who still believe Ministers’ claims, here are the reasons that they are simply untenable.
First, unlike our veterans, who were never given letters of comfort by the Blair Government, hundreds of paramilitaries were. Before anyone says, “Ah, but those letters have no legal validity”, tell that to the families of the four soldiers killed in 1982, alongside seven horses, by the alleged Hyde Park bomber John Downey, whose subsequent murder trial at the Old Bailey in 2014 collapsed when he produced his letter in court and the judge promptly abandoned proceedings. Indeed, that is how the existence of those hitherto secret letters—written at the insistence of Gerry Adams—even came to light.
Secondly, unlike with the British state, there is no IRA records office to conveniently trawl through in order to seek files and dossiers to help bring multiple cases to court. Such notes as the IRA ever kept were burnt or shredded long ago for obvious reasons.
Thirdly, after the recent acquittal of Soldier F, where Judge Lynch KC, in a two-hour judgment, said the evidence from 53 years ago was “well short” of the standard required for a successful prosecution, the Northern Ireland Secretary himself admitted in the House on 3 November that it is “vanishingly difficult” to obtain convictions all these years on. Even he knows that it is not credible, yet for the veterans it is the process itself—the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, often for years and without remorse—that is the punishment as much as the eventual outcome.
Fourthly, and crucially, under the post Good Friday agreement Northern Ireland (Sentencing) Act 1998, which this Bill does nothing to repeal, even if an alleged IRA paramilitary could be arrested, charged and successfully prosecuted many years on, even if their likely letter of comfort was discarded, and even if they were somehow eventually convicted, the most they could serve, even for murder of one of those soldiers, would be two years—and that is before they are given early release.
Lastly, and most powerfully of all, the wives themselves have decried it. Helen Kelly, the wife of 2 Para soldier Ned Kelly, brutally injured by a bomb on Op Banner in 1994—four years before the Good Friday agreement—said this yesterday about the Government’s plans:
“If Labour think I will be given closure, that’s a load of rubbish! This is opening up old wounds and setting anxiety off in families for whom this has never ended. Labour can’t hide behind us military wives saying we will get closure, because we won’t. It needs to remain in the past—stopping the tit-for-tat. We are the forgotten ones, still living out that nightmare.”
What about the operational effects on recruitment and retention in today’s Army? Our armed forces already have more people leaving than joining, and this revival of lawfare will make that worse. Bluntly, fewer people will sign up and more will leave, especially among our special forces, which is a gift to our enemies and a worry to our friends. Indeed, General Lord Dannatt, another former Chief of the General Staff, said recently:
“If potential recruits to our Armed Forces do not believe that their Government will stand by them, when performing their duties in a lawful manner, then why risk joining at all?”.
Just last week, in an unprecedented move in my 24 years in this House, nine very senior officers, including three previous heads of the British Army, Generals Carleton-Smith, Sanders and Wall, wrote an open letter to The Times heavily criticising the Government’s proposals and this associated Bill, which they powerfully described as a
“direct threat to national security”.
If time permitted, I could read out literally dozens of quotes, from more generals, commanding officers and a former regimental sergeant major of the SAS, down to junior non-commissioned officers—all of them criticising Labour’s proposals and their adverse effect on our armed forces, whether past, present or future. And yet still, the Northern Ireland Secretary knows better than all of them and he ploughs on regardless.
When our elderly veterans, some of them in their 80s, some in failing health, and some who are literally Chelsea pensioners, for goodness’ sake, end up in court again, perhaps as early as next year, who do they think the public will believe? That is why even prominent Labour figures are now breaking ranks to tell the Government to change course. Lord West, a former Labour security Minister, has publicly cautioned Ministers over Labour’s proposals. Lord Glasman, founder and chairman of Blue Labour, recently said of Labour’s legacy plan:
“We must reverse it as soon as possible”.
The Royal British Legion has expressed its concerns about the Bill and its effects on veterans, as have Help for Heroes and the three veterans commissioners. This is a virtually friendless Bill.
In conclusion, no other country on earth would treat its own brave veterans in this way—none. This is a truly wretched Bill, supported by Sinn Féin but opposed not just by Members on the Opposition Benches but by thousands of veterans and their highly experienced former commanders, who really do know better. I say to all those veterans tonight that, if we get the chance, we will do whatever it takes to rescind Labour’s Bill and stand by them, just as we sought to do with our original legacy Act of 2023.
Even the public oppose Labour’s pernicious plans, and a parliamentary petition entitled “Protect Northern Ireland Veterans from Prosecution”—it has been referred to—has amassed over a fifth of a million signatures, and led to a heated debate in Westminster Hall. The sketch writer Quentin Letts said that he had never seen Westminster Hall so packed before, and neither had I.
Division lists last forever, and certainly until the next general election. I genuinely caution Labour Back Benchers not to be seduced by the blandishment of the Whips—I should know; I used to be one—into blithely following their Ministers, who I believe are acting akin to Lenin’s wise fools and helping to revive Sinn Féin’s vile campaign of lawfare against the British Army.
When all is said and done, it is a straightforward choice this evening, and a matter not of microdetail but of principle. It is the No Lobby to stand with our veterans, and with Private Tommy Atkins, without whose brave service there would never have been any Good Friday peace agreement in the first place. Or it is the Aye Lobby, for two-tier justice and lawfare for years, largely at taxpayers’ expense, and against our own troops who had the courage to deploy to Northern Ireland and oppose the terrorists in the first place. To put it another way, when the Division bells ring in a few minutes, and for the avoidance of doubt, we stand four-square with our veterans. Who now will stand with us?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Matthew Patrick)
It is a real pleasure to close this Second Reading debate for the Government, and I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed. I wish to declare an interest. Members should be aware of my declaration in the “List of Ministers’ Interests”, where I have flagged that two family members work for the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery.
Today’s debate has been powerful to listen to, and many right hon. and hon. Members have raised important points and asked important questions. In the time available, I will try to address as many of those points as I can, and I will write to Members on any specific points that I am unable to address in time.
I will start my remarks with enormous thanks to the veterans who served us in Operation Banner, serving in intolerable conditions, and standing in harm’s way to protect life, as other Members have powerfully described. Quite simply, our armed forces are the best of us. I wish to thank those who served in the police—a job of enormous difficulty that brave men and women set out to do with distinction. We owe a particular duty of care to those who served our nation, and there will never be equivalence between our armed forces and police service, and the terrorists who set out to cause death and destruction.
As the Secretary of State has set out, this Bill is about helping people to get answers. I cannot begin to understand the pain of not knowing what happened to a loved one who was killed or disappeared. I can only imagine that the need for an answer, to know what really happened, never fades.
Matthew Patrick
I will not take interventions, as I am very short of time.
The right hon. Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat) said that this legislation will be “reopening wounds”, but I believe they never closed. I have sat with families who simply want to know what happened to their loved one. More than 3,500 people were killed during the troubles. The Good Friday agreement recognised that it was essential to address and acknowledge the suffering of victims and survivors, and it is our collective duty to deliver on that remaining Good Friday agreement commitment. If through this process, those relatives can be supported to get answers, then we will have met that duty. There are many things that the last Labour Government achieved of which I am proud. As the hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin) noted, the Good Friday agreement rightly sits among their very finest achievements.
I recently had a conversation with a veteran in my constituency who told me how important it is to deal in facts, so let us set some of those out. It is a long-standing principle in this country that decisions to prosecute are independent. Judicial independence has served our country very well for over 300 years. That is why when people read about recent cases, such as the trial of Soldier F, it is not relevant that the decision to prosecute was taken while the Conservative Government were in power, because the decision was independent. Equally, it is not relevant that soldier F was acquitted under a Labour Government, because that decision too is independent.
Since 2012 there have been 25 prosecutions relating to the troubles. Of those, the majority were for republican terrorists. There are nine live prosecutions relating to the troubles, and one ongoing prosecution relates to the conduct of the British Army. Again, the decision to prosecute was taken under the Conservative Government —under, not by, because they are rightly independent decisions.
I urge the House to reject the reasoned amendment. Among other things, the amendment suggests that removing conditional immunity will lead to veterans being dragged before the courts. That is not true. The Conservatives’ failed immunity scheme, which would also have applied to IRA terrorists, was never commenced. All it did was offer a false promise that could never be delivered. Because this amendment is based on such a fundamental misunderstanding about the Bill and the way in which our prosecution system works, I urge the House to reject it.
Veterans were raised by a number of hon. Members. The Government’s commitment to honour Operation Banner veterans is unshakeable. We must not forget that over 1,000 armed forces families lost loved ones during the troubles, and that over 200 investigations into the deaths of armed forces personnel and veterans were shut down by the last Government’s failed legacy Act. In search for answers, those families, as much as any families, deserve a fair, proportionate and transparent system. They would not want for the terrorists who took the lives of brave soldiers to have any form of immunity.
Members talked about our protections. I reiterate that our Bill puts in place strong and important protections that were not included in the failed Tory legacy Act. I thank the Minister for the Armed Forces, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), who is himself a veteran of Northern Ireland, for his close work and attention to put in place these important protections. We have published our fact sheet that details where the protections sit throughout the Bill, so I will not rehearse them all now, given the time I have available.
The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) asked how we can continue with the remedial order. The Government abandoned their appeal and therefore have the ability to continue with the order. For those, including the right hon. Member for Tonbridge, who talked about morale, I am proud of the protections in the Bill. I am also proud more broadly that this Government have given an important pay rise to our armed forces, and I believe that morale was harmed by the actions of the last Government.
Matthew Patrick
I apologise, but I will not as I am short of time.
The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar raised the idea of immunity. As I have said in response to the reasoned amendment, we should remember that no veteran ever received immunity—it was undeliverable and a false promise. The conditional immunity championed by the Conservatives would have meant that someone who murdered a UK citizen on UK soil would have walked away scot-free, and that is what they are calling for us to return to.
The right hon. Member for Tonbridge was right when he said that their offer of immunity was pretty abhorrent. As my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham and Penge (Liam Conlon) set out so powerfully, the immunity offer was an insult to the families of those killed and, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster) indicated, an insult to veterans too.
On the issue of on-the-run letters, they did not grant immunity—[Interruption.] The case of John Downie was cited as proof. He is currently subject to live criminal proceedings for the murder of two soldiers in 1972, which is clear proof that those letters grant no immunity.
I am grateful to the hon. Members who drew our attention to the voices of victims and survivors. It is important that those families are at the heart of the legislation, and they are. We must ensure that we increase confidence in the new Legacy Commission and enable more families to come forward, which is why we are significantly reforming the commission through this legislation. The Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), asked about the definition of family members. We believe that the definition set out in clause 93 is right and proportionate.
Clause 8 of the Bill sets up a victims and survivors advisory group, which is designed to ensure that the voices of victims and survivors are heard. The question of who will be appointed to that group was raised by many colleagues, including the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) and the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler). It is absolutely vital that this group can command confidence, and this Government will therefore not appoint to it anyone who has previously been involved in paramilitary activity. That is a clear commitment made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State from this Dispatch Box.
A number of hon. Members from across the House have raised issues relating to prosecutions. Let me be really clear on this important point: as I have set out, decisions to prosecute are independent. Our judiciary is independent. I disagree with those Members who claim that prosecutions are vexatious or political.
Matthew Patrick
I do not have time.
I now turn to the issue of inquests, which has been raised by hon. Members. As the Government have long committed to, clause 84 makes it clear that a small number of inquests that have been halted by the legacy Act will be able to proceed. Inquests that had not commenced hearings before the legacy Act will be subject to an assessment by the Solicitor General, based on statutory criteria, to determine whether they will be most effectively progressed in the Legacy Commission or in the coronial system. This position reflects the significant role that a reformed Legacy Commission can play in achieving outcomes for families, particularly given its far greater capacity to handle sensitive information when compared with an inquest.
Matthew Patrick
As I have stated, I have a very short amount of time, and I want to address as many of the points that have been made as I am able.
A number of Members, including the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar and the right hon. Member for Belfast East, raised the commitments made by the Irish Government and the role that they will play. The clear commitment of the Irish Government to provide the fullest possible co-operation with the Legacy Commission will help provide many more families with an opportunity to obtain information they have long sought. This partnership represents two Governments coming together, each making sovereign commitments and promising to carry them out in their own jurisdictions. I believe that the Irish Government will honour the promises they have made—the agreement has been signed in good faith, and we are each committed to do what we promised to do independently in our Parliaments.
In the interests of time, I will conclude my remarks. I am grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to this debate—a debate that I know we will continue as the Bill progresses. As we do, I know that we will hold at the forefront of our minds who this is all for: for victims and their families right across the United Kingdom; for all those who bravely served us in intolerable conditions; and for Northern Ireland and its future. I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Is it absolutely relevant right now?
Sir Julian Lewis
Yes, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can you tell me how, within the rules of order, I can draw attention to the way in which the junior Minister, in summing up and purportedly taking part in the debate that has just ended, refused to take any interventions for lack of time, yet finished his speech with two minutes left? Can you say anything that might encourage a Government with an unhealthily large majority to enter into the spirit of real debate? [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I will decide whether it is a point of order. I do not need interventions from the Front Bench.
Sir Julian Lewis, you are a Member of astounding experience, and you know better than most that that is most definitely not a point of order. It is up to the Member speaking whether they wish to accept or decline an intervention, and the Minister declined yours most positively.
Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over)
Monday 27th April 2026
(6 days, 12 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Northern Ireland Troubles Bill 2024-26 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Notices of Amendments as at 24 April 2026 - large print - (24 Apr 2026)
21:50 - The House divided: - Ayes: 279 / Noes: 176 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I remind the House that this is a procedural motion about whether the Bill ought to be carried over to the next Session of Parliament. While I will allow some leeway on scope, I gently encourage Members to focus their remarks on the issue of carry-over.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn)
I beg to move,
That if, at the conclusion of this Session of Parliament, proceedings on the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill have not been completed, they shall be resumed in the next Session.
This motion will enable the House to progress the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, which is essential to remedy the failure of the previous Government’s Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. I am grateful for the careful scrutiny of the Bill by both the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights. If dealing with legacy was easy, this aim of the Good Friday agreement would have been resolved a long time ago. It is not easy; it is very difficult, not least because there are many different and opposing views. We have a responsibility to do this for those affected by the troubles, including the many people who lost loved ones and are still searching for answers. I believe there is recognition across the House that we need to address the legacy of the troubles, because, after so many attempts, this is our last chance.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for the way in which he has carried out his work on the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill with such sensitivity to all parties. However, I would also like him to explain and give more detail on the responsibility to the victims and survivors of the troubles, as well as the special duty of care to our veterans.
Hilary Benn
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who chairs the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee with such distinction, and I will come directly to addressing the two questions she has just asked.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I represent a very large number of veterans. What are they to make of the remarks made by the Attorney General, who has suggested to his human rights lawyer friends that they have done more for the sum total of human happiness than the brave, highly decorated men and women of our armed forces, many of whom I have the honour and privilege to represent?
Hilary Benn
I would simply say that I think the whole House acknowledges the brave service of our veterans in many, many difficult circumstances, and that is one reason that this carry-over motion is necessary.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Hilary Benn
I ask the hon. Gentleman to bear with me.
Whatever its intentions, the legacy Act did not work. Its central provision—immunity—had no backing in Northern Ireland, has been found by our domestic courts to be incompatible with our international legal obligations and was never commenced by the previous Government. Immunity has been rejected by victims and families. Immunity is not supported by the three veterans commissioners, who have said that they do not call for immunity from the law, but fairness under it.
Hilary Benn
I hope that our armed forces personnel will listen to what I am about to say and see both the protections that are currently in the Bill and the commitment the Government have made to bring forward further such protections. Indeed, the Bill will put in place a means of dealing with legacy that is legally compliant and will hopefully, in time, command broad public support in Northern Ireland and across the United Kingdom. It will also result in the unprecedented sharing of records by the Irish authorities with the new Legacy Commission as a result of the framework agreement reached with the Irish Government.
Since its introduction in October 2025, the troubles Bill has been welcomed by a significant number of victims’ families and representative groups. Many recognise that while it cannot be the perfect Bill for them, it balances many of the different interests and provides a basis on which families’ cases can be taken forward sensitively and lawfully.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I spoke to the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland before the debate started to check in on what he was putting forward. There is some indication that protections will be put forward that Ministers hope will support the armed forces, but there are no similar protections whatsoever being offered to personnel of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and other branches of service in Northern Ireland. Some 319 RUC members gave their lives during the troubles, while thousands were injured; they deserve the same protection and help. Can the Secretary of State indicate what protections will be offered to the RUC personnel who gave so much for us, for their freedom and liberty?
Hilary Benn
The protections that are contained in the Bill currently will apply to RUC personnel and others who served the state, and the hon. Gentleman will see the further amendments that we will bring forward.
I would point out that every Member of the House has just received a letter from Joe McVey, the Commissioner for Victims and Survivors for Northern Ireland, urging us to vote for this motion tonight and making the argument that
“beyond every clause and every amendment there are people whose lives have been shaped by loss”.
One important part of the Bill is the consideration it gives to those who served the state so bravely in the form of protections for veterans and police officers to ensure that they are treated fairly and with dignity and respect. In recent months, as I set out in my written ministerial statement last week, my ministerial colleagues and I have been consulting widely on the legislation. We have been very grateful for the time that veterans groups have spent with us, explaining how they think our legacy processes need to be improved. That is why we are putting in place new protections: no repeated investigations; an end to cold calling; requiring consideration to be given to the age and welfare of veterans; and enabling any veteran asked to give evidence to do so remotely and anonymously.
In Committee, I will be bringing forward a substantial package of amendments to further strengthen those safeguards, including clearly differentiating between the lawful actions of soldiers and police and the unlawful actions of paramilitary terrorists, and to put in place arrangements to oversee how those protections operate in practice. Without the Bill, all those new protections—which were not in the legacy Act—would not be there for veterans while the commission continues its work, including investigations. That would be a complete abdication of our responsibilities to families and veterans, who would face continuing uncertainty. Is that really what those who have expressed concerns about the Bill want to see happen?
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
For several months now, including when the Secretary of State has appeared before the Select Committee, he has in all good faith promised these amendments. Does he understand that his case this evening would be assisted if the House were to see those amendments? The motion effectively asks us to sign a blank cheque on a promissory note when we have no idea what it might contain.
Hilary Benn
The best way to ensure that the hon. Gentleman and the whole House see the amendments is to pass the carry-over motion tonight.
Mr Paul Foster (South Ribble) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State be absolutely clear that if the Bill is not passed, veterans will have no protection whatsoever moving forward?
Hilary Benn
That is self-evidently the case, because the protections that I just read out, which the Government have put in this legislation, would not exist. That is a powerful argument why the Bill should carry over.
Hilary Benn
I hope the hon. and learned Gentleman will forgive me; many Members want to speak.
I will turn briefly to some of the arguments that will be made against carrying over the Bill, because I think it is important that we conduct this debate on a shared understanding of the facts.
First, on prosecutions, in the last 28 years just one soldier of the 250,000 who served in Operation Banner has been convicted of a troubles-related offence. During all that time there have continued to be inquests and cases investigated. The truth is that the chances of prosecutions are rapidly diminishing. Secondly, I remind the House that the basis on which any decision about a prosecution is made rests, as it always has done, with independent prosecutors. No one who has done their duty lawfully has anything to fear. Thirdly, on the claim that paramilitaries—in particular the IRA—were given amnesty by the on-the-run letters, they were not. At the moment, there are eight troubles cases in which suspected paramilitaries have been charged with murder or attempted murder, including of soldiers and members of the RUC.
Let us not forget that, when in government, the Conservative party wanted to give immunity to terrorists. That is what the legislation said. Members and colleagues will be aware that there are many unsolved killings of British service personnel, whose families deserve answers, including of those in a number of the most deadly IRA attacks, such as Guildford, Warrenpoint and the M62 coach bombing. The Opposition’s argument against the motion rests on their wish to return to immunity, which never existed and is wrong in principle.
Several hon. Members rose—
Hilary Benn
I will conclude my remarks, because many Members want to contribute.
I am acutely aware of the stress that many have described in going through legacy processes, which is precisely why we will put the strongest possible safeguards in the Bill. If this motion is carried, the Bill will be brought back to the House early in the new Session for a Committee of the whole House, where I will welcome the scrutiny of all Members to ensure that we get this right. This Bill is about creating a legacy process in which all involved can have confidence. I hope that we can work together constructively and with the care that the families of all those who were killed or seriously injured deserve, to ensure that this legislation and the further amendments that we will make are given careful consideration in Committee.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)
At the outset, I pay tribute to the veterans who came to Parliament Square today, the veterans who have sent messages of support and are watching at home, and the veterans who are with us in the Gallery. I also pay tribute to the shadow Defence team, who have done so much to hold this Government to account for the mistake that they are making.
Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
Will the hon. Member give way?
Alex Burghart
No.
We are now entering the season finale of the tragedy that is this Government’s Northern Ireland Troubles Bill. It has been a long season. Despite taking office in July 2024, with a manifesto commitment to repeal and replace the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, they have taken 15 months to bring this Bill to the House. Despite a Second Reading in November, nearly six months ago, the legislation has gone nowhere. Despite bringing forward their remedial order to strike down parts of the legacy Act in January, the Government have since failed to bring it before the Lords, because they know that the Lords do not support it. The troubles Bill is stuck in a legislative purgatory,
“Doomed for a certain term to walk the night”
till its “foul crimes” are “burnt…away.” The reason for that is an open secret in Westminster. The truth is that the Bill is trapped between the Northern Ireland Office, the Ministry of Defence and No.10, with the Prime Minister and his team unable and unwilling to make a decision about what the outcome will be. We have read this script before.
For its part, the Northern Ireland Office is simply carrying out the orders of the Prime Minister when he came to power—the instruction in the Labour manifesto—and the orders of Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, about whom, it must be said, some extremely serious allegations have been made in recent days: not least that he may have drafted or approved documents alleging serious crimes by soldiers without reasonably credible evidence, and that he continued pushing settlements after being told that his clients were lying.
The Ministry of Defence is all too aware of the open hostility held towards this legislation by members of the armed forces, present and past. It is all too aware of the dangers the Bill presents to morale, retention and perhaps even recruitment, but its Ministers are not always prepared to say what needs to be said in order to get their way.
Mr Bailey
I thank the Minister for giving way. We are having this debate because in hindsight the military forces deployed in Northern Ireland were not provided with adequate protection. If the hon. Gentleman genuinely cared about veterans and the protection of members of the forces in future, he would have submitted amendments to the Armed Forces Bill to prevent a recurrence. Can he make us aware of any such amendments?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. I gently remind Members that interventions should be short and to the point.
Alex Burghart
I strongly encourage the hon. Gentleman to take time to read the Armed Forces Bill amendment paper. The two gentlemen sitting either side of me, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), have tabled very many amendments. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to go out this evening and to try to find one veterans organisation that supports what his party is trying to do with this Bill.
Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP)
The hon. Gentleman is the shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland so he should know the lie of the land there. He has talked a lot about veterans. Has he read the letter from Sandra Peake, the director of the WAVE trauma centre? She is an unimpeachable character, who has stood up on behalf of all kinds of victims. She is imploring us to put the Bill through tonight so that we can properly scrutinise it. Has he read that letter? Is he going to mention victims at all in his speech?
Alex Burghart
I have read that letter. I have great respect for the WAVE trust; I did some work with it when I first came to the House. I respectfully disagree with what is in that letter, for reasons that I will set out in due course.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that any Government Member, including Ministers, who wants to be taken seriously by armed forces personnel needs to condemn the remarks of Lord Hermer and the disgraceful disparaging of our armed forces?
Alex Burghart
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and there will be ample opportunity for them to do so tonight.
Tonight the Government and Labour Back Benchers have a choice, and the choice is simple: to reject this controversial and unloved legislation, which promises much but would do no good.
Alex Burghart
We will get to immunity in a moment, but the Labour party needs to look down within its soul and its history before it says such things.
The Bill will reopen the door to vexatious litigation. It will drag old soldiers through the courts and subject split-second decisions taken under high stress decades ago to the post hoc algorithm of a legal framework that did not exist at that time. The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) said that military forces were not given adequate protection at the time—what has happened subsequently is that the legal framework has changed beneath their feet and held them accountable in a way that could never have been intended at that time.
Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)
Is the shadow Secretary of State more surprised that the promised amendments leaked to the papers at the weekend are missing from the debate or that the Armed Forces Minister is missing from the Chamber and will not be here to vote for this disgraceful carry-over motion, because he knows that it should not be voted for?
Alex Burghart
I am sad to say that I am not surprised by either of those things. I am not surprised that the Government are living on vague promises to table amendments—despite having had six months to do so. I am sorry to say that I am not surprised that certain Government Front-Bench Members have chosen to absent themselves while expecting Labour Back Benchers to turn up and go through the Lobby without them.
Jim Allister
The Member refers to the absence of publication of any amendments by the Secretary of State—promised, but not delivered. Might that be because this Secretary of State, who has embarrassingly shown himself to be wholly beholden to the Dublin Government, has not yet got their approval for those amendments? Might that be the truth of the matter?
Alex Burghart
I fear that the hon. and learned Gentleman is right. This morning, we saw that Sinn Féin have spoken out in opposition to the very idea of amendments, so we wonder how it will be possible for the Secretary of State to table amendments without the agreement of Dublin, without the agreement of Sinn Féin, and without the whole framework he has built collapsing beneath him.
The Bill promises victims the earth. It raises their hopes, but I am afraid that in practice it will offer nothing in the way of conclusion or finality. That is because although there will be court cases, inquests, trials, reviews and challenges, as the Secretary of State himself has said, the prospect of conviction now is vanishingly small. The number of answers that victims will get will be minimal. All the while, veterans will be hauled before the courts, investigated for years and subjected to all the pain and ignominy that that will bring. The process has become the punishment. That is why none of the amendments that the Government are speculating to the press about tabling will do anything to solve the problem before us.
The Opposition have long argued that a different approach is necessary: one that draws a line under the conflict, draws a line under the legal conflict that has subsequently followed and builds a new system that builds on the strengths of the peace process as it was defined in 1998. In 1998 it was understood that there could be immunity in return for information; it underpins the legislation brought forward to support the peace process. That is why we have legislation on the destruction of weapons; it enables forensic information to be destroyed. It is why we have legislation that enables people to come forward and reveal where bodies are buried without fear of prosecution; that is immunity. It is why we had letters of comfort and royal pardons of mercy. It was understood that immunity would be an essential part of the peace process, for everyone who was not a veteran.
Tonia Antoniazzi
I thank the shadow Secretary of State for giving way. However, this faux outrage was never—[Interruption.] My Committee has done some excellent work on this very sensitive matter, and when we were in Westminster Hall there was no faux outrage. These people did not turn up to speak up for the veterans they speak of now. The Secretary of State is doing an excellent job—so is my Committee—and I find it very wrong that these matters are being presented in this way on the Floor of the House. We need a carry-over motion. We need to be in a better place, where there will be amendments.
Alex Burghart
I genuinely respect the hon. Lady and the work that her Committee does, and she will remember that I was at that Westminster Hall debate. I must respectfully say that my outrage is not faux; I feel this very deeply. I have spent a lot of time talking to the people who are affected by this.
When the peace process was going through, when Labour was in power, it had no problem at all with creating immunity, and in 2005—as the Secretary of State will remember, because he was in the Cabinet at the time—Peter Hain, the then Secretary of State, brought forward a Bill that would have given immunity to terrorists, and terrorists alone. It was removed only when, under pressure from the Conservative party, the Government agreed to introduce immunity for veterans and Sinn Féin pulled its support, so the Government pulled the Bill.
Immunity is one of the things on which the peace process was founded, yet now in government, the Labour party has forgotten all about this and said it cannot possibly apply to anyone again. The Labour party has said that it cannot support immunity, and yet it used to. Similarly, the Government have said that they cannot support our legislation on the grounds that there was no support for it in Northern Ireland, but I am afraid that by that criterion this legislation has also failed, because where is the support for it in Northern Ireland? It is not there among Northern Ireland Members, and it is not on the streets of Belfast. This is an unloved Bill. There are lots of people who appreciate that this is the wrong way of going about things.
Jim Shannon
One thing that really concerns me is that this carry-over motion has been pressed by the Irish Government. That absolutely boggles my mind. The double standard is entirely shocking. The Irish Government need to be held to account for their role in protecting IRA murderers across the border. We think of all those ones who were murdered: Kenneth Smyth, my cousin; Daniel McCormick, his comrade; Lexie Cummings, and Stuart Montgomery. They were just four, but there were many, many more. Whenever there were murders, the murderers raced across the border. Does the hon. Gentleman share my anger on behalf of my constituents and my family, who want to know why the Irish Government have more say in this than the victims of Northern Ireland, my family and others?
Alex Burghart
My hon. Friend always speaks incredibly powerfully on this point.
The Government have also argued that our Bill was found to be incompatible with human rights legislation, but that is only partly true. The truth is that the Government failed to challenge the findings in the courts, and those findings themselves were highly questionable. There are high-level, highly credible legal arguments that show that the legacy Act may well have not been incompatible, precisely because the same logic around immunity had been used in 1998. So unless we are prepared to say that the legislation passed during the peace process is itself potentially incompatible with human rights law, the argument on the legacy Act falls. This is what is being considered in the case of Dillon before the Supreme Court now. The Government cannot argue that that legislation was incompatible with human rights, because they failed to see the process to its conclusion.
All of that has been made clearer and clearer over the lifetime of this law’s delay. In the time that it has taken the Bill only to get through its Second Reading, we have seen, starkly and painfully, regular real-life examples of the problems it will perpetuate. I will give a few small examples. In February, this House debated the terrible ruling in the Clonoe case. This was the case from February 1992, when four men—known terrorists armed with semi-automatic weapons and a Dushka machine gun capable of firing 600 rounds a minute at a range of 1,100 yards—attacked a Royal Ulster Constabulary police station and were in transit to commit further crimes. They were confronted by members of the armed forces, who killed them. Those terrorists called themselves an army, carried weapons of war, sought to kill and operated entirely outside the bounds of any law, yet we were asked to believe that the use of lethal force against them was not justified. I am afraid that that case is now being challenged, and the men involved are being subject to unjust and unfair scrutiny of decisions they made in a split second, decades ago. Nothing in the amendments that the Secretary of State has discussed with the press will do anything about that.
In November, we debated the findings in the case against Soldier F from Bloody Sunday. He was found not guilty after the longest and most intricate inquiry in British legal history. Indeed, Judge Patrick Lynch told Belfast Crown Court that the evidence even then fell “well short” of the standard required. He said:
“A 53-year-old statement cannot be cross-examined, nor can I assess the demeanour of a sheet of A4 paper”.
The House must see again that it is becoming vanishingly difficult to get convictions, because the 1998 agreement was 27 years ago and the ceasefire began 31 years ago. Nothing in the Secretary of State’s proposed amendments or in this Bill will do anything to right that situation.
Several times the case of Soldier B, a former SAS officer, has been raised in the Commons. In October, the case was thrown out by a court in Belfast, where the judge described it as “ludicrous” and said it should never have come to his court—but not before the man in question had been investigated for four years. A further challenge was then mounted despite the judge having said it was “ludicrous”, and only recently has the veteran in question been freed from the weight of that.
I am afraid that if the Government’s Bill goes ahead, we will see a return to this repeat investigation of innocent men who will be dragged through the courts, and then at the end the legal cavalcade will move on, leaving them bearing the emotional burden of being investigated for having done nothing wrong. Nothing that has been speculated about in the press this weekend will do anything to right that wrong.
Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)
My hon. Friend is articulating it perfectly. Does he agree that the principle of innocent until proven guilty is no comfort at all for these people who are subjected to years of gruelling inquiry just to establish what we already know: they are innocent?
Alex Burghart
My hon. Friend is quite right. The process has become the punishment. The process is being used to continue the conflict by other means.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
Would the hon. Member accept that when the process exonerates the soldiers and the veterans at the end, the whole point of the process and taking them to the court in the first place is to give the daily headlines in the paper to allow Sinn Féin and the IRA to rewrite the history of the troubles?
Alex Burghart
I must agree with the right hon. Gentleman that this is clearly what vexatious litigation looks like. This is vexatious litigation moved against men who did nothing wrong but are now confronted with a legal framework that creates endless potential for challenge against them.
Colum Eastwood
Has the shadow Secretary of State read the Saville report? He referenced the Saville inquiry not that long ago. Has he read what it says about Soldier F, about how many people he killed that day—unarmed, innocent people marching for civil rights shot down in cold blood by Soldier F, by his own admission? Has he read that?
Alex Burghart
I have read the Saville inquiry, and the hon. Member will have just heard me say that even after one of the longest, most expensive and detailed public inquiries in British legal history, it was impossible to get a conviction. Yet we are asking victims in Northern Ireland to believe that there will be some magical moment where suddenly it would be possible to get convictions in other cases. That, the House must understand, is for the birds; it will not happen. Victims will have their hopes raised and dashed in front of this legislation.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
Does the hon. Member agree that if ever there was a demonstration of the two-tier process in terms of legacy, we have it as a result of the Saville report? The same Saville report that was used to pursue Soldier F contained an assertion that Martin McGuinness probably had a submachine gun on the same day. He was never questioned, never mind pursued or taken to court—not once.
Alex Burghart
The hon. Gentleman raises a significant issue about the terrible events of Bloody Sunday, but I will not attempt to relitigate the whole of the Saville inquiry this evening—I understand the remarks that both the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) have made.
Similarly, over the past few months, very senior veterans, senior generals and former members of the special forces have come out decisively against the Bill. On Armistice Day, in an unprecedented intervention, nine four-star generals wrote to warn that highly trained members of the special forces are already leaving the service. In January, seven SAS commanders wrote of the acute dangers of how
“a peacetime human rights framework”
now wields
“an effective veto over efforts to close the past.”
Last month, Generals Wall and Parker wrote that
“those who…did their duty in circumstances not of their making…are left exposed, without the shield of context or accountability that should rightfully belong to the state”.
This month, we read public reports that members of the special forces are quitting because they sense that the lawyers of the future will come after them.
I implore the House, on moral, practical and political grounds, not to support the Bill. I know that Labour Members will not wish to take it from me—and they do not have to—but they should take it from generals and special forces veterans who have dedicated so much of their lives to protecting their country and do not want to see their comrades-in-arms persecuted or their country weakened and put at risk. As politicians, I draw the attention of Labour Members to the fact that the Bill is not beloved by their constituents. They are being sent through the Lobbies tonight by people who may well change their position tomorrow.
The failings of the Bill, should it be passed, will be quickly seen but long felt. The House has the power to stop it tonight. If we do not, and the Government persist, the next Conservative Administration will repeal it and once again draw a line under the troubles.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. The House will be aware that Mr Speaker has granted a limited waiver in this case to allow limited reference to active legal proceedings relating to historic troubles-related deaths. I remind Members that references to those cases should be limited to the context and the events that led to those cases, but should not refer to the details of the cases or to the names of those involved in them.
I will start by imposing a four-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches, as I will be calling the Secretary of State no later than 9.46 pm.
Mr Bayo Alaba (Southend East and Rochford) (Lab)
This debate is deeply personal for me, because, in addition to being the Member for Southend East and Rochford, I am a proud former paratrooper.
For me and countless others with military backgrounds like my own, the legacy of the troubles is not a distant memory but something that our community continues to carry the weight of. Back in November, I brought members of the Parachute Regimental Association, together with officials from the Northern Ireland Office and the Ministry of Defence. I had one simple aim: to ensure that veterans had a voice and their concerns about the Bill were heard clearly and directly. I thank those officials for their attendance and engagement.
Let me be clear: the legislation passed by the Conservative Government must be updated. This is not myth or fallacy; indeed, even some Conservative Members have acknowledged that the current legislation is inadequate. It troubles me when colleagues from this House head over to Parliament Square, as they did this afternoon, not to engage with former colleagues or members of their local military associations, but to “virtue signal”, as my teenage daughter would put it. Our duty as parliamentarians is to lead, make difficult decisions and speak with honesty and sincerity. It is not to spew negative and dangerous rhetoric, as some across this Chamber seem intent on doing. They parade around with lapel badges larger than some solar panels and bearing the slogan, “Proud of my country, ashamed of this government.” That does not help or resolve this issue, and it is certainly not why the public voted us into this special place. It is dangerous and unproductive noise.
However, I must be equally clear that, as it stands, the Bill leaves many questions unanswered and needs additional work. We cannot afford to rush it. Although justice must be delivered, we must also take the time to ensure that the legislation delivers the protections that our veterans need and deserve. Those who served in Northern Ireland followed orders and put their lives on the line to defend our country, and they cannot be an afterthought in this process. So I say to the Government that we should take the time to get this right, to continue our engagement, to listen to those who serve and the families who lost loved ones, and to ensure that before the Bill moves to its next stage veterans can have full confidence that it will deliver what is intended without creating serious unintended consequences that cannot be later undone.
In conclusion, I say that, to every member of our armed forces community who has served and those who continue to serve, we owe a debt that cannot be repaid. And to those watching from the Gallery today, I say thank you: thank you for standing up for the memory of those we have lost and for standing together to protect those who are yet to serve.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Liberal Democrats spokesperson.
Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)
The Liberal Democrats are committed to ensuring all those who served to uphold the rule of law during Operation Banner are treated with dignity and afforded proper legal protection. As a Member of a parliamentary party whose percentage of veterans is well into double figures, I assure the House that their experience informs my party’s approach and strengthens our determination to assist the Secretary of State in getting this right.
Before I address the substance of this motion, however, I would like briefly to correct something I said to the hon. Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) when we last debated this hugely consequential matter. In response to his intervention during the debate on the Government’s remedial order, I said that the percentage of veterans in my parliamentary party is greater than in his. During my research for today’s speech, however, I discovered that, while we are close, that is not the case. In my defence, what with the ever-dwindling number of Conservative MPs it is hard to keep track of the denominator in that equation, but I none the less apologise to the hon. Member and this House for my error.
This debate provides an opportunity to judge whether the troubles Bill is fit for purpose, commands confidence and does justice to those it seeks to serve. On all three counts it gives me no pleasure to conclude it currently falls far short.
As I hope the Secretary of State recognises, the Liberal Democrats have engaged with the troubles Bill constructively from the outset. Although we voted with the Conservatives on their reasoned amendment to kill the Bill, we broke with them to abstain on Second Reading to signify that, while we are deeply unsatisfied with many of the provisions, protections and omissions in the troubles Bill, we remain opposed to the blanket immunity confirmed by the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, somewhat delphically described as “conditional” immunity by the Conservatives even though the only condition is the admission of guilt.
As a party that believes in the rule of law and fulfilling our international obligations under the European convention on human rights, we also supported the Government’s subsequent remedial order, which simply removed two provisions where the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal issued declarations of incompatibility with the Human Rights Act 1998, one of which has never even been brought into force. Sadly, the Conservative party sought to weaponise that vote by creating a false dichotomy between veterans and victims, cynically pitching one against the other, seemingly oblivious to the fact that those two categories are far from mutually exclusive.
Cases like that of Private Tony Harrison, murdered by the IRA in 1991, bring this into sharp focus. His family has spent years seeking truth and accountability, only for legislation granting blanket immunity to terrorists to strip away hope that those responsible would ever be properly investigated, charged or convicted. Or there is Patsy Gillespie, who worked in an Army base and in 1990 was strapped into a van by the IRA while his wife and children were held at gunpoint—a hero whose last act was to shout a warning that saved the lives of many before he and five members of the King’s Regiment died as the bomb went off.
The Conservatives, who claim to have always had our veterans’ backs, had little to say when their own legislation barred investigations into the maiming and murder of hundreds of state actors such as these. There is a stark irony here: a party that claims to stand by veterans introduced a system that precluded justice for the families of those very veterans, which is why every veterans organisation with which I am working is opposed to these callous attempts to use the very real plight of our veterans in a nakedly political assault on the Human Rights Act.
The Liberal Democrats remain adamant that supporting the remedial order was the right thing to do. It was a narrow technical measure to remove two unlawful provisions granting blanket immunity to paramilitaries and veterans alike. We consistently opposed these measures in the last Parliament as contrary to the rule of law and drawing an inappropriate moral equivalence between terrorists and servants of the state. More importantly, all the veterans’ organisations with whom I am working oppose those provisions, as do every political party and community in Northern Ireland.
However, voting in favour of the remedial order does not require us to do likewise regarding the Bill before us, because despite many months of patient negotiation between the NIO, veterans’ groups and commissioners, Opposition parties and the MOD, the Bill remains deeply flawed. The central issue is the lack of sufficient protections for veterans and failing to address the very real danger that the process becomes the punishment.
The Secretary of State heralds his six safeguards, but even he has now acknowledged that they do not go far enough. As currently drafted, there is no clear statutory threshold for repeat investigations without genuinely new evidence, no firm presumption in favour of remote participation, and limited clarity around how welfare, proportionality and the cumulative impact of past investigations will be applied in practice. Under the current Bill, veterans will continue to face uncertainty around repeat investigations, the threshold for reopening cases and the circumstances in which they may be required to engage again with investigatory processes.
I acknowledge that the Secretary of State has made clear his intention to bring forward amendments, but we currently have no idea how extensive those will be. There is still no confirmed date for the Committee stage, which has been repeatedly delayed and is still planned to be a Committee of the whole House, therefore precluding the detailed line-by-line scrutiny that could usefully take place outside the Chamber. In that context, it is difficult to justify carrying the Bill over without greater clarity.
Our position is not about opposing progress, but about ensuring that the legislation we pass is robust and capable of delivering a process that people, in particular veterans and victims, can trust. The carry-over motion risks extending uncertainty without resolving the underlying problem. It is important that my party makes clear that the current Bill is far from adequate. For these reasons, we will oppose the motion.
Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP)
The first thing to say is that there was an alternative. There has been a lot of debate recently about whether or not there was an alternative to murder and mayhem: there was an alternative and that is represented by the party of which I am a member. The only honest way to deal with this particular issue is to make it clear that no matter whether the culprit or perpetrator was wearing a uniform or not, the murder of anybody was wrong. That violence brought us no closer to the aims that I hold very dear; it took democratic struggle to get us to the point of peace and opportunity for real change.
I was at an event on Friday in my constituency for the 45th anniversary of the death of a boy called Paul Whitters, who was 15 years old when he was shot in the head by a police officer and died. It was a very moving event. His family were there and his mother had come home from Glasgow—she had had to leave, of course, after all that heartache and pain. There were 186 children killed in our troubles: 80 of them were killed by republicans, 50 by loyalists and 49 by the British Army or the RUC. When we talk about this issue, I want people to think about those children. All I ever hear from certain quarters of this House is about veterans and organisations that are lobbying, and about votes and Back Benchers and all that stuff, but I want people to think about those children.
Julie Livingstone was 14 years old when she was shot in the head and killed in Lenadoon, a month after Paul. Stephen McConomy, whose family I know very well—they are decent, hard-working people—was 11 years old when he was shot and killed by a soldier in 1982. The people who went to try and comfort Stephen and see if he was okay were told that they would be shot as well. The soldier who carried out that murder—and that is what it was—was interviewed for one hour by the RUC. Six months after that, the RUC and the British Army came to Stephen McConomy’s house, and Bishop Daly said at the time that they were in the house longer than the time they took to interview the soldier who killed Stephen. Again, he was 11 years old.
Alan Jack was five months old and in his pram when the IRA set off a bomb in Strabane that killed him. I just want people to think about this. This is not some political game. Those of us who live there do not always agree, as Members might know, but we take this very seriously. This is about trying to give the people who have been left out of this process some truth and some justice if possible. We all know how difficult justice will be, but why are they not entitled to the same access to justice as any of us would expect today? If Members are against trying to sort out this problem, they should ask themselves, “Why not?”
Do not tell me to draw a line under the past. The people who want to move on the most are the victims who have been left behind in our society. They cannot just draw a line under the past when the truth is not out there about what happened to their loved one and the justice that they deserve has not been achieved. The bottom line is that if we are serious about bringing our communities together and reconciling them, whatever our constitutional views, we have to do it on the basis of truth and honesty. We should stop using our victims as political footballs.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
I appreciate the opportunity to take part in this debate on the carry-over motion. We are here this evening as a direct consequence of the failure of this Government to honour their commitment to repeal and replace the legacy Act, to deliver on a manifesto commitment through a two-year Session of Parliament, and to bring with them the victims from Northern Ireland and veterans right throughout the United Kingdom.
This is not a failure of our making. The Secretary of State talks about and laments the fact that the Tories lost the support of all parties in Northern Ireland, but I see little support for the process that the people of Northern Ireland and veterans right across the United Kingdom have had to endure over the last two years. Time after time after time, we heard the Secretary of State talk of safeguards for veterans. Time after time after time, we heard him and the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who is sat beside him, indicate that those safeguards would protect veterans in the United Kingdom, yet here we have it—the Secretary of State has had to open up. He has had to tell us, as the Prime Minister confirmed to me, that he is going to bring forward further amendments to do what he said was already done. He has lost the confidence of veterans and victims.
We have talked about and asked the Secretary of State about equivalence. How can there be equivalence between somebody who donned a uniform, did service and made sacrifices legally and lawfully in this country and others who donned a balaclava, took an oath of allegiance to evil and sought to destroy our nation and all those in it? Can there be equivalence? No. Yet today, the Secretary of State says that he will bring forward amendments, and we are asked to support a carry-over motion on a process that has lost the confidence of the people it is meant to bring with it. That is a shame.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
My right hon. Friend is making a very powerful point. Despite the promised raft of amendments, this Bill does not and will never protect those who put on uniform and stood between good and evil—the bloodthirsty terrorists. When the East Tyrone killing machine of the IRA was taken out at Loughgall, it saved countless lives, and it was the same at Coagh. People have had enough of the hounding of those who served, and they have had enough of this Government bending the knee to Dublin. It is time that we stand up for our veterans, not throw them to the wolves.
Gavin Robinson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Secretary of State dismisses the allegation that this is all about Dublin, but what was the clarion call over the last week? There was a British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference this week, and he knows that he is under pressure from Dublin to show progress, but what have we got from them? Nothing more than hollow words.
The Dublin Government said that they committed to information retrieval. How many requests have they accepted from the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery? None. They have given no answers to any victims in Northern Ireland. The Irish Government have more secrets locked away in their drawers than lectures that they choose to give to this House. They still have an interstate case against this country. They promise lots; they deliver nothing.
Tonight, we are asked to support a carry-over motion. The amendment paper for this Bill, containing 49 pages of amendments from myself, my hon. Friends and hon. Members throughout this House. Although the Secretary of State was confident about this Bill, he now indicates that he is going to bring forward a substantial number of amendments. He would be better off scrapping the Bill and bringing back a Bill that can command the confidence of victims and veterans.
I listened to the powerful contribution of the Chair of the Northern Ireland Committee, the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), who is no longer in her place. She will remember that one of the most startling experiences we had as a Committee was talking to victims who asked us this question: “Is the Secretary of State going to agree to early release for dissident republican prisoners?” On 21 May last year, he said to me that
“there are no such plans”—[Official Report, 21 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 1011.]
yet that engagement continues. Worse, the Northern Ireland Office has now appointed a lady called Fleur Ravensbergen, who is engaging with the New IRA, who attacked Dunmurry police station just yesterday. Through their interlocutors and the International Red Cross, they are asking the Secretary of State to offer them early release. I say: shame!
Gavin Robinson
I will not.
When we talk of amnesty, I think of Martin Quinn, the brother of Glenn Quinn, and of Mrs Quinn, his mother —an 82-year-old woman who lost her son in January 2020. He was beaten to death by a loyalist paramilitary; he was terminally ill, and he was killed in his own home. An 82-year-old mother is sitting at home today with death threats from loyalists because of Colin Simms and the murder he committed in Carrickfergus. He does not have the support of his community or his comrades. If the Secretary of State can achieve anything tonight, it should be to inform Mrs Quinn that neither Colin Simms nor anyone like him will receive any sort of immunity or early release, for the sake of justice that is yet to be delivered.
Alex Baker (Aldershot) (Lab)
For my community, the home of the British Army, this debate goes to the heart of our history and who we are. In Aldershot, we remember 22 February 1972, when the IRA detonated a bomb targeting the headquarters of the British Army’s 16th Parachute Brigade. It was one of the first attacks by the IRA on mainland Britain, and took the lives of seven innocent victims: Father Gerard Weston, Thelma Bosley, Margaret Grant, Joan Lunn, Jill Mansfield, Sheri Munton and John Hasler. We remember them every year at the memorial that stands in their honour. We also honour the members of our armed forces who served in Operation Banner to keep the peace over many decades; I pay tribute to them for their service, including those watching over our debate tonight from the Gallery. I thank the Aldershot Parachute Regimental Association, the Royal British Legion, and the many individual veterans who I have been engaging with over many months.
I want the voices of our veterans to be heard in this debate. Too many families, including hundreds of armed forces families, lost loved ones in the troubles and are still looking for answers. Too many of our veterans have been left completely without legal protections because of the previous Government’s legislation, which was rejected by the courts. Ultimately, we are here today because of the previous Government’s decision to grant conditional immunity to terrorists like those who murdered British soldiers and civilians in my community. I believe that that decision was wrong, and that these issues need to be addressed. I voted for the Bill on Second Reading so that Parliament could debate how we fix these problems, and I am grateful to both the Ministry of Defence and Northern Ireland Ministers for the discussions they have had with me ever since the legislation was introduced.
However, I want to be clear with my Government that the veterans I have been speaking to over many months still need to be convinced by this legislation. They need further reassurances, and until we see the full package of amendments, I am reserving judgment. We must get this right. No veteran who served with honour, following orders in the most difficult, fast-moving circumstances, should be left fearing repeat investigations, and there should be no equivalence between those who served to protect lives and the terrorists who were only focused on taking lives. I wrote to the Secretary of State in January asking for more to be done on those points, and I am encouraged that the Government are now committed to strengthening protections for our veterans. Right now, our veterans have been left with no protections whatsoever—that needs to change. They need to be protected by law. I hope that much more can be done in the next Session before we reach Third Reading, so that we can give every veteran clarity and confidence.
Let me conclude with a reflection about what we owe our veterans who served in Northern Ireland and beyond. Last year, I travelled 8,000 miles to pay my respects to those from my community who fought in the Falkland Islands. The Falklands are British and remain British thanks to their service. The islanders told me that they owe a debt of gratitude to my community that can never be repaid. We owe a debt to all those who serve our country, now and forever, and I will always have their back.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. I call David Davis, after whom there will be a three-minute time limit.
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and, given what I am going to say, to the fact that I was a trustee of the SAS Regimental Association for two decades up until a few years ago.
This Bill was sold to the House and the country on the premise that it would deliver human rights and the rule of law. As the House knows, I pay great attention to human rights and the rule of law—so much so that I defeated my own Government in court on exactly that issue—but what we have here is neither human rights nor justice. It is a perversion of rights and a travesty of justice.
The Government clearly have made promises to Sinn Féin, to IRA families and to would-be rewriters of history, including the Irish Government, putting those ahead of the interests of our soldiers. The recent revelation that the Attorney General, Lord Hermer, pursued cases against our soldiers, despite knowing that the allegations might be false, is indicative, I am afraid, of the attitude of this Government to the rights of our soldiers, as was the Secretary of State’s response to my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison). The attitude is one of undermining our soldiers at home while they fight abroad, and the same will happen under this Bill.
We have already had a rehearsal or a preview of what is to come. This month’s Court of Appeal judgment in the case of Soldier B in the Coagh firefight is a perfect illustration. The shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), read out some of the judge’s comments in that case; I will take things a little further. What happened in the Coagh firefight was that the IRA plotted to murder an Ulster Defence Regiment soldier. In the process of doing that, they were hit by an SAS patrol. The IRA terrorists all died, and an inquest found that the SAS actions were all entirely lawful. So what happened? One of the IRA members’ family used taxpayers’ money—legal aid—to force a judicial review. The judge threw that out, stating:
“In this challenge, this Court is being asked to slow the passage of time down, to analyse events in freeze-frame… It is ludicrous to suggest that this court should analyse the events of the day in question in that manner”.
He went on to say:
“I cannot conclude this judgment without expressing my surprise that legal aid funding was made available to mount such a challenge”.
Lincoln Jopp
My right hon. Friend is incredibly well informed on this subject. In his research, has he found any justification for public money being used in that way?
David Davis
No, but it is simply the rule that in Northern Ireland, it is easier to get legal aid for these issues. I can see that there was a reason for that in the past, but it has, in effect, perverted the course of justice in a case where soldiers did nothing more than their duty. That is what is going to happen under this Bill, too, because the case went on to appeal. If anything, the judge struck down that appeal in even more robust terms than the previous judge. A brave, patriotic, honourable soldier was dragged through three courts over several years, in gratuitous actions that were funded by the taxpayer.
I say “brave”, “honourable” and “patriotic”; these are not casual words. I have known Soldier B for 30 years. As well as being a brave soldier, he is a firm believer in the rule of law. He does not believe that there should be exemptions. He believes that there should be proper rule of law, which is not provided by the Bill. Indeed, given his history and his views, I would say that he has a better claim to have defended justice in our country than anyone in the House, and certainly than those on the Government Front Bench. What happened in that case is just a rehearsal for what will come if the Bill goes through. If it is passed, hundreds more—and I mean hundreds—will follow.
This Bill puts the interests of the Irish Government, Sinn Féin and IRA apologists above those of our veterans, and would put rewriting history ahead of providing proper justice. It is unpatriotic, disingenuous and dishonourable. It satisfies no one. It solves nothing. Everything it touches, it makes worse. I note that the Minister for the Armed Forces is not here for the vote, and I entirely understand why: he wants to avoid association with this disgraceful legislation. If he cannot vote for it, neither should we. We should reject this disgraceful Bill out of hand.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call Andy McDonald, who has a three-minute speaking time limit.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)
The Bill must be carried over. We need to replace the unlawful 2023 Act, and we must get this right. This is a test of whether the House is serious about addressing legacy in Northern Ireland. The Good Friday agreement commits us to reconciliation based on self-determination, consent and rights. That must work for victims, veterans and civilians alike, and command confidence because it is rooted in human rights and the rule of law. The previous Act was found to be incompatible with the UK’s obligations under the European convention on human rights, particularly the duty to properly investigate serious crimes. That is why the Government were right to bring forward a remedial order and introduce legislation to replace it. There is no justification for sweeping immunity measures that risk undermining both justice and reconciliation. Victims, including those who served in our armed forces, deserve more than slogans; they deserve answers, truth, and processes that they can trust.
We should listen carefully to Bernard Duhaime, the UN special rapporteur, who met the Secretary of State and briefed Members last week. He recognised that the September 2025 joint framework with the Irish Government provides a genuine multilateral foundation for a comprehensive legacy mechanism, but he also issued clear warnings: that the governance of any legacy commission must preclude interference by those whose conduct may be under investigation; that a reparations mechanism should be considered, to give victims an accessible route to remedy; and that claims of disproportionate targeting of veterans are simply not supported by the evidence. Protecting individuals from poor-quality investigations is one thing; shielding anyone from accountability where evidence exists is quite another, and the Bill must not permit that outcome. When the Secretary of State speaks of safeguarding Operation Banner veterans, he must take care not to alienate the families who are still seeking justice in cases involving the actions of British forces.
So I say again that opposing the carry-over motion would be irresponsible, and would undermine the pursuit of justice and reconciliation. However, confidence also depends on our getting the legislation right, and excessive delay or poorly judged amendments risk undermining that confidence too. We look forward to constructive engagement in the weeks and months ahead, because getting this wrong would be not just a legislative failure, but a moral one.
Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)
The motion may be dressed up as a matter of procedural convenience, but it is no such thing. It goes to the very heart of how this Parliament chooses to deal with the legacy of conflict, with the rights of victims and survivors, and with our fidelity to both our own constitutional traditions and our binding international obligations. The Bill, in its present form, fails the test. It does not command the confidence of victims. It does not command the confidence of the wider community in Northern Ireland, or indeed of our own brave veterans. To agree to its carry-over would therefore be more than a tidying-up exercise. It would be a conscious, deliberate decision by the House to prolong the life of a measure that is at best deeply contested, and at worst fundamentally misconceived.
We should be honest with ourselves: the Bill as drafted is not the solution that victims deserve, and it is not the solution that veterans deserve either. The Secretary of State has mentioned that amendments will be tabled to give better protection for veterans, but we do not even know what they are, so how can we pass tonight’s motion?
Dr Murrison
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the person who is likely to draft those amendments is the Advocate General for Northern Ireland, who is one and the same Lord Hermer? What confidence does the hon. Gentleman think the armed forces community can have that this Bill will be any better?
Alex Easton
I thank the right hon. Member for his comments, and I totally agree. There will not be a lot of support for this Bill among the armed forces.
These are not abstract or academic concerns; they go to the essence of what it means to live under the rule of law. The Bill fails to grapple in any credible way with the status of the so-called on-the-run letters of comfort, and with the plain injustice that flows from the position in which those who fled justice were handed such letters while veterans of Operation Banner have been handed only letters of continued investigation and the threat of prosecution. That is morally wrong, and this Bill does nothing to rectify it. In that context, the carry-over motion assumes genuine constitutional significance.
Carry-over is an exceptional procedure; it is not a routine device to be used to spare a struggling Bill from the consequences of its lack of support. The Government are not merely asking us to keep an administrative option open; they are asking us to confer an extended lease of life on a legislative scheme that has failed to win the confidence of those whose confidence is indispensable. The proposals must include real safeguards for veterans—men and women who are entitled to see concrete protections on the face of the statute, rather than being fobbed off with warm words and vague assurances of future safeguards. Those proposals must ensure that the oversight mechanisms, and any victim and survivor panels, are constituted in a way that does not invite those who murdered and maimed to sit in judgment or presume to adjudicate the human rights of the innocent. That would be an affront to natural justice and basic decency. The proposals must also exclude political parties that support terrorism—past, present or future.
To vote for a carry-over tonight is not to remain neutral or to keep all options open; it is to keep on political life support a scheme that many veterans, victims and survivors feel is being imposed on them. Many veterans regard the scheme with deep and understandable scepticism, and many people across Northern Ireland do not support it. Accordingly, I am unable to support the motion for carry-over, and I urge this House to do the right thing and reject it.
Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)
As a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I thank the Secretary of State for appearing in front of our Committee on two occasions—he has truly embraced scrutiny. The JCHR is currently carrying out legislative scrutiny of the Bill, and the remarks I offer tonight are informed by the evidence that we have received, although we are still working through that process.
As we all recognise, there is no more complex and sensitive a legacy than that of the troubles, which is why it is so tragic that the previous Government’s legacy Act failed so greatly. It failed because it could not command cross-community support, because it was rejected as unlawful by the British courts and, of course, because it introduced immunity, including for terrorists—a point made most strongly tonight by the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart). We owe it to the victims of the troubles to do better, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Alex Baker) pointed out, that includes the families of service personnel and the police.
On veterans and those who served, I note that genuine concerns have been raised. As the MP for Sandhurst, I know how important this issue is for all those who put on a uniform and bravely put themselves forward to defend our country. I thank the Secretary of State for listening to those concerns and for committing to bring forth amendments. Although all Members of this House will scrutinise those amendments closely when they are brought forward, I am grateful for that commitment. It is important that we carry over the Bill, so that all Members can scrutinise it.
This Bill is our opportunity to finally begin to address the legacy of the troubles. I feel very strongly that all of us must take that duty seriously and carry it out with all due seriousness.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
In the limited time I have, I say to the Secretary of State that this Bill was bad, and it is now a mess. He comes in front of the House to ask for a carry-over when he knows that carry-over motions are only ever to be used for Bills that are pretty well set, but have run out of time to progress. Such motions are not for highly contentious legislation that is about to be changed, possibly beyond recognition from what has gone before. He is now apparently addressing many of the issues, but we are not allowed to know, because they are a secret until next time, when we will come back to carry on with a massively changed Bill. It is bad procedure, and it is bad government. I say to the right hon. Gentleman, for whom I have a lot of time—he knows that—that this is just a bad route to take.
The problem that the Government have had from the beginning is that they have been tied up with trying to satisfy Sinn Féin and the hand of Ireland. I worry desperately about the arrangements. As the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) said, where are the promises on delivery from Ireland? For all these years, there has been all the stuff that they know about who did what, when they did it and how it was done. All that has been kept behind closed doors for so long, and the Irish Government could have dealt with it earlier. Instead, there are people who do not want this to be open and we are now singing to their tune. That is what really bothers me.
We are now being asked to take a pitch in the dark. Having denied all the way through the Bill’s passage that veterans would be pursued vexatiously through the courts and having said that there were controls in place, the Government have apparently finally realised that that was not the case. All of a sudden, the position has changed.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
On the question of the failure of the Government of the Republic, the reality is that they have an outstanding interstate case against us.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
It is astonishing. My right hon. Friend is exactly right. I served early on in Northern Ireland, and I lost a very good friend—I apologise for repeating his name—in Robert Nairac. We have never got to the bottom of what happened to him.
I thought that the speech from the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) was incredibly interesting. It is very difficult to pursue truth, which is why I supported the previous legislation. That was not because I thought it was a great Bill, but because I wanted some truth to come out. I do not think the vexatious pursuit of veterans will ever produce the truth that he rightly seeks. There is a better way, and it is not this Bill.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I will, but briefly, because I do not get any extra time.
Colum Eastwood
I am grateful to the right hon. Member. I understand his point, and a point was made earlier about the commission for the retrieval of remains. Basically, IRA members who were involved in the disappearance of people were given immunity within the confines of giving information. The bottom line is that it did not work. Jean McConville was found by a passer-by. Columba McVeigh has still not been found and others have not been found. The IRA did not give the information, even once it was given immunity. Immunity does not work, and it has been proven not to work.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
We will not altogether agree about this issue. We can debate what actually happened, but we will never know, because the Government refused to pursue this matter through the courts. South Africa was a good example of how it could be done. I went out to advise in South Africa at the time, and I genuinely believe that the truth and reconciliation committee got to the bottom of quite a lot of what happened in South Africa and allowed some mending of fences. We will no doubt debate that issue further. I have high respect for the hon. Gentleman, and I understand his position.
In conclusion, we are being asked to vote blind on a Bill that we knew was damaged before. All our protestations about the vexatious pursuit of veterans were denied, as were all the issues that the right hon. Member for Belfast East has raised throughout the whole of this debate. The legislation was rather arrogantly pushed through, and the Government said, “No, you don’t know what you’re talking about. The legislation is perfectly okay.” At the last moment, when they have failed to get the Bill through, they have produced this idea that somehow there are amazing new amendments that will protect veterans going forward. Why should veterans, who have been vexatiously pursued endlessly for no particular reason, other than because they were veterans who served in Northern Ireland, now say, “Oh, that’s okay; it’d be a good idea to see what comes next time around, because they were so honest this time around.”? The Government have failed to be honest about this from start to finish.
The Armed Forces Minister is not here for a reason—because he knows very well that he does not want to be sitting on the Front Bench when the Bill gets voted through to the future. [Interruption.] I say to all colleagues, it is time to call time on this piece of bad legislation and kick it into the gutter.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
A teacher in my constituency wrote to me today with concerns about the Bill, pointing out that some MPs will be voting tonight who were born after the Good Friday/Belfast agreement. We need to let that settle for just a moment. The Secretary of State is right to say that this is our last opportunity to get legacy issues right.
The fundamental reality is that life during the troubles exposed ordinary people to fear and danger that few outside Northern Ireland could ever comprehend. Those who lived and worked through that period—in particular those charged with protecting the young people in our communities—lived under constant threat and uncertainty. That burden deserves recognition and respect. I think we all agree about that in this House. Those years placed extraordinary pressures on everybody involved. It would be profoundly wrong of this House to disregard the risks faced by members of the armed forces, the police, the emergency services and civilians during that time, including the teacher who wrote to me today to say how difficult the situation was.
I was reminded at my St George’s day parish quiz on Saturday night at church that the RUC is one of only three organisations that collectively received the George Cross. May I take this opportunity to commend Councillor Tommy Judge, who has been the member for Sharston in my constituency for 25 years? He was on the 1974 M62 bus. He sat in a different seat that day, when 12 of his colleagues died and 38 were injured—there but for the grace of God. I thank him for his service in our armed forces, and I thank him for his municipal service in Manchester for the past quarter of a century.
This is our last chance for those who remember. The purpose of the Bill, as I see it, is not to deny the experience of those who served the state in good faith. On the contrary, it reflects a recognition that for decades the legacy of the past has not been addressed properly or lawfully. Families from all communities have been left without answers, and confidence in existing processes has gone. The shadow Secretary of State said “post hoc”. “Post hoc ergo propter hoc” is how the phrase continues—correlation does not equate to causation.
I am acutely conscious of the human dimension of this, having grown up as a Mancunian Irish Catholic and seen the bombs through the ’70, ’80s and ’90s, and, because we had the wrong accents, having seen how our family was treated. But there was no equivalence with those suffered in Northern Ireland. That is why this legislation matters and why Parliament must approach it with seriousness and respect for all those lives shaped by the troubles.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Reform)
The Bill is a betrayal of our veterans. It is a betrayal of the men who put on a British uniform and served their country, risking their lives to protect people of all communities in Northern Ireland during the period of the troubles—men like David Griffin, who I had the privilege to meet: an 84-year-old Royal Marine veteran who lives out his life at Royal Hospital Chelsea. He is a man who, half a lifetime ago in 1972, in a split-second decision when he was ambushed by terrorists, made a call. That call should not haunt him in the last years of his life. He should not have to wake up every morning worried that a letter will drop through his letterbox telling him that he is going to be prosecuted.
Old men like David Griffin have been hounded for far too long. That is the reason why—belated, yes, but belatedly it did happen—the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 provided a degree of immunity to those brave men. This Bill rips that up. It will be open season for men like David Griffin. Men like David Griffin deserve better than this Bill.
Men who are serving this country now do so as well, because this is not just about the past—it is about the present and future, too. What signal does the Bill send to those who sign up to serve our country? That half a lifetime from now, new laws may come in, and they will be hounded through the courts, living out the last days of their lives worried about a knock on the door or a letter through the post? No. That is wrong. That is not the country that I want to live in.
When I hold this Bill up to the light, I see all over it the fingerprints of Lord Hermer—a man who frankly hates this country. Let us be honest with ourselves. I never thought I would see the day that Gerry Adams’s lawyer was sitting around the Cabinet table of the United Kingdom, in the very room that the IRA tried to blow up when I was a child.
The men who serve our country deserve better than this Bill, better than Lord Hermer and better than this Government. I will be voting against the Bill. I hope it dies tonight.
Hilary Benn
I will do my best to respond to as many of the points that have been raised in the debate as possible. I listened very carefully to the speech from the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), but I am sorry to say that he did not address the central problem, which is that the previous Government’s legislation failed and needs to be replaced. He also appeared to suggest that he knows that victims and survivors will find out nothing from the very process that that legislation put in place, which I am keeping in the form of the legacy commission—[Interruption.] Well, that is what he said. Was the hon. Gentleman arguing that judicial review should be removed from legacy cases? Is that his argument? If that is his argument, it would not have been available to challenge the Clonoe inquest—a challenge that the Government are supporting.
The hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) shares the Government’s opposition to immunity. I must confess that I was disappointed by his party’s stance on the Bill, because if there is no Bill, we cannot get it right.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southend East and Rochford (Mr Alaba)—himself a distinguished veteran—made a powerful appeal for reason in order to try to get this right.
The hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) was listened to in absolute silence, rightly, as he described a number of the children who were killed during the troubles. That silence was in marked contrast to some of what we heard earlier.
Notwithstanding what the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) said in most of his speech, I welcome the fact that at the end he made it clear that he is opposed to giving terrorists immunity, and that his party, which he leads, has always been clear that it did not support the immunity provisions in the previous Government’s legacy Act, which is indeed this Government’s policy.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)
The Secretary of State suggested in his speech that no comfort letters were ever issued by Tony Blair, but a court case collapsed specifically because of one of them, so could he clarify that? More specifically, the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) said that a member of staff hired by the Northern Ireland Office is having meetings about the early release of IRA dissidents. That worries the House intensely. Will the Secretary of State confirm that no such requests have been made by the Northern Ireland Office, or, if any such requests have been made, that they have been immediately denied very clearly, both in writing and verbally?
Hilary Benn
It is a matter of public record that there has been no early release of any prisoners at all, and there have been no negotiations. I have said it in the House before, and I will say it again: there have been no negotiations with dissident terrorists at all. I did not say that no letters of comfort were issued; what I said to the House was that the letters of comfort did not grant immunity from prosecution. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) refers from a seated position to Mr Downey. As the right hon. Gentleman will be aware, it is a matter of public record that he is currently facing prosecution for the murder of two individuals.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Alex Baker) gave us a moving reminder of those whose lives have been lost. My hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) called for seriousness and respect in this debate. I say to the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) that he is wrong. This Bill does not rip up immunity.
Hilary Benn
It is no good him shaking his head. The provision was never commenced by the last Government, and it has been found to be incompatible with our legal obligations. In conclusion, we need to deal with this, and I have heard lots of arguments as to why—