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David Mundell (in the Chair)
Before we begin the debate, I wish to make a statement about the House’s rule relating to matters sub judice. As the House will know, there are ongoing criminal cases involving the prosecution of British veterans who served in Northern Ireland during the troubles. And, while there are as yet no criminal cases arising from the Clonoe inquest, the Government have initiated a judicial review of the inquest’s findings.
Mr Speaker has today granted a waiver to allow limited reference to active legal proceedings relating to historical troubles-related deaths. References to these cases should be limited to the context, and to the events that led to the cases, but not to the detail of the cases themselves, nor the names of those involved in them. Members should, as always, be mindful of the fact that these are properly matters for the courts, and not for this House, and take special care to avoid saying anything that might interfere with the course of justice.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered e-petition 725716 relating to the prosecution of Northern Ireland veterans.
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Mundell. As a member of the Petitions Committee, I am pleased to fulfil my duty in opening today’s debate and presenting this petition, which has been signed by more than 170,000 people.
I thank the petition’s creator, Ian Liles, who joins us in the Public Gallery today. Ian spent 36 years in the Army, including 13 years in Northern Ireland. I know that Members will thank him, and all the veterans in the Gallery and those watching across the country, for their service.
The petition states:
“We think that the Government should not make any changes to legislation that would allow Northern Ireland Veterans to be prosecuted for doing their duty in combating terrorism as part of ‘Operation Banner’.”
The role that British soldiers play in keeping our country safe cannot be overstated. They put their lives on the line to defend our country, and they put themselves in harm’s way to do so. But there is a shadow that hangs over our armed forces today—a political and legal attack that is targeting veterans of Northern Ireland who served under Operation Banner.
In recent weeks, I have had the privilege of speaking to organisations and campaigners across communities in Northern Ireland. I have also heard from many of my constituents in the Scottish Borders who feel passionately about the need to protect our veterans from prosecution. I thank hon. and right hon. Members across this House for their advice and guidance in preparing for today’s debate. I pay tribute to the tireless campaigning of my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis), who raised this issue at Prime Minister’s questions last week, as well as the Minister for Veterans in the last Government, Johnny Mercer, for his work to protect and defend Northern Ireland veterans during his time around the Cabinet table.
This Labour Government have taken the decision to repeal the Northern Ireland (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. I believe that decision will shame our country for decades to come. Operation Banner took place between 1969 and 2007. It was a name given to the operations by British forces in Northern Ireland to stop IRA attacks, spanning Labour and Conservative Governments and seven Prime Ministers. The previous Conservative Government introduced the legacy Act, which was designed to end the shameful spectacle of British veterans being dragged through the courts for actions taken decades ago, when they were simply following the orders of the Government of the day.
Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)
Military personnel have a term for passing the buck: sloping shoulders. Is the hon. Gentleman concerned that, with the measures we are discussing, the state risks sloping shoulders on to personnel who swore an oath of allegiance?
John Lamont
The hon. Member makes an excellent point, which I will consider more fully later.
In 1998, as the then Prime Minister Tony Blair approached the end of his negotiations on the Good Friday agreement, one final demand was made. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness said that they could not go ahead with the deal—they were fearful of community pushback and wanted to give terrorists amnesty from prosecution. So a deal was done. On-the-run letters were given to suspected IRA terrorists, telling them that they were no longer wanted. The letters gave protection to terrorists, but nothing was offered to the soldiers who served in Northern Ireland.
The years that followed saw historical cases, which were investigated at the time, being re-examined. Veterans were dragged to court on politically motivated charges—a witch hunt—and that is why we needed the legacy Act. The Secretary of State and this Labour Government now want to repeal the protection afforded to soldiers as a result of that legislation. We are told that will be achieved by removing parts of the legacy Act via a remedial order, and that the Government will later introduce new primary legislation.
The Prime Minister’s Northern Ireland veterans tsar has said that this immoral “two-tier justice” will lead to “vexatious lawfare” against former soldiers. It sets a dangerous historical precedent. Are we now saying that if the Government send our troops into conflict, soldiers could be held to account in years to come for following the instructions given to them by this Government? If that is the case, why would anybody choose to serve our country? That is the reality facing many of our Northern Ireland veterans today. During my preparations for this debate, I spoke to one group who said that, should the legacy Act be revoked, the number of veterans prosecuted would be only in the low single figures, but that is still too many. It fails to recognise the worry and anxiety that it will cause our veterans, many of whom are in old age, and their families.
Let me be clear: if soldiers went out with murderous intent, they should be held to account. The rule of law should apply to those soldiers as it applies to the rest of us. However, the petition creator told me that he knows of no soldier who went out deliberately to murder. It is also important to remember that, when someone was killed during the troubles, it was investigated—sometimes three times, by the Director of Public Prosecutions, the police and the coroner’s court.
Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, and I am grateful to him. Last week, I met a number of veterans of the Northern Ireland troubles in my constituency, and they made the exact point that he is making: they never went out to kill; they went out to defend British citizens. Is it not particularly outrageous that the proposal suggests some sort of equivalence between the killers and those who were appointed to protect? As he says, it will impose a terrible chilling effect on recruitment to our services.
John Lamont
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. There is no equivalence between a terrorist—somebody who sets out in the morning with murderous intent—and a soldier who is defending democracy and our country. Sadly, we seem to be creating some sort of equivalence, which should not be allowed to happen.
Dennis Hutchings was a former member of the Life Guards Regiment. He was a terminally ill, 80-year-old veteran who was dragged to Northern Ireland during the pandemic in 2021. He died of covid just three days into his court case. Dennis was hounded for several years—told he was cleared, and then not—and then forced to fly to Belfast to stand trial. There was no new compelling evidence, and it was simply not in the public interest. It was a barbaric way to treat an elderly man who had served our country. His lawyer said that the case contributed to his death, and that it was likely that he would not have died at that point if he had not been forced to go to Northern Ireland to stand trial for an incident that occurred in 1974.
It is all too easy for us to sit here, look at the evidence and try to justify why a trial is in the public interest, but doing so fails to recognise the instant, life-or-death decisions that these soldiers in Northern Ireland had to take every single day. It is a rewriting of history. Decades on, people sit and judge events in retrospect, with little new evidence, and come to conclusions entirely at odds with the legal investigations at the time. The Government cannot and must not lose sight of their moral responsibility and commitment to our veterans, and to the armed forces covenant.
Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)
Can the hon. Member confirm that the unlawful nature of the legacy Act meant that investigations into the deaths of more than 200 Operation Banner soldiers were shut down, against the wishes of soldiers’ families?
John Lamont
The hon. Member makes an important point about the supposed unlawful nature of the Act. I do not accept that it is unlawful. Yes, the court said that, but it is up to this Government to appeal. The question is why they dropped that appeal. There is a winnable case to be made, on behalf of the British nation, to uphold the legacy Act and defend our veterans. By not doing so, the Government are letting down our veterans.
The Government must not lose sight of their moral responsibility and commitment to our veterans, and to the armed forces covenant. That responsibility is just as important for veterans who served decades ago in Northern Ireland as it is for former and current service personnel who served in more recent conflicts.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
When Jack Straw introduced the Bill that became the Human Rights Act 1998, he made it clear from the Dispatch Box, in terms, that Parliament was not under any obligation, in any way, to introduce a remedial order after a declaration of incompatibility by a court. There is no need to win another court case. Parliament is supreme. The Act stands.
John Lamont
My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and he highlights the grave concerns that many of us have about how human rights legislation is being applied in ways that were not intended, and that undermine and attack the sovereignty of this place.
Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)
Most who served in Northern Ireland did so with absolute honour, including many of my former colleagues. It is precisely because of that record that they deserve a system based on truth, not a blanket immunity that casts a shadow over everyone’s service. Does the hon. Member therefore agree that equal application of the rule of law is in the interests of both veterans and serving personnel?
John Lamont
The rule of law absolutely needs to be applied equally, which is why I said earlier that those soldiers who are found to have set out with the wrong intention should be held to account, but there is no equivalence between the actions of a terrorist and the actions of British soldiers acting to defend democracy and all the communities in Northern Ireland.
I will now talk about what soldiers serving in Northern Ireland did to ensure that they were doing everything required. Soldiers serving in Northern Ireland followed the yellow card—the rules of engagement for when they could open fire—which was approved at Cabinet level. They were given orders by the Government of the day, and they followed those orders.
The Government have said that they want to repeal sections of the Northern Ireland legacy Act, and that decision will have two major ramifications. First, it will remove key parts of the legacy Act designed to protect Operation Banner veterans from endless pursuit in the courts. That raises deep concern and anger for those who signed the petition, for many across the House and for organisations such as the Royal British Legion, which has expressed its concern about the impact on veterans.
Secondly, it will permit Gerry Adams and former terrorists to sue the Government, and effectively British taxpayers, for potentially hundreds of millions of pounds. Should the remedial order be endorsed by Parliament, it could result in a six-figure payout to Mr Adams, simply because his interim custody order was considered not by the Secretary of State but by a junior Minister. That is simply outrageous.
We have seen many examples of two-tier justice since the Labour Government came to power, but that may be the worst of all. Are the Government really contemplating creating a system to drag Northern Ireland veterans through the courts, while potentially paying millions to terrorists? How do those on the Government Benches expect to go back to their constituencies and explain why they have just voted for the prosecution of veterans while allowing terrorists to sue the taxpayer? They know that is not right.
We should also be clear about the differences between the actions of soldiers and terrorists. When terrorists get up in the morning, they go out with murderous intent: to use violence to attack our democracy. Soldiers do not: they put themselves in harm’s way to keep people safe and to protect our nation. The difference is the intent. Soldiers serving our country are not lawyers sat behind a desk, able to gather a team and spend days deciding whether to act or not. They do their job in high-pressure, dangerous environments, and must take instant decisions to protect themselves. It is what we train them to do.
The legacy Act is by no means perfect, but it is better than the disgraceful spectacle of veterans being dragged through the courts. Doing so is not sustainable legally or morally. The alternative is constant legal battles, civil claims that go on indefinitely and the erosion of public trust in both justice and Government. Veterans who served in Northern Ireland have been through thorough, intense and extensive scrutiny already. What the Government plan to do to the legacy Act undermines the peace process that our veterans fought so hard to achieve.
Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)
I join the hon. Member in paying tribute to our armed forces. He has made some very good points, but does he not accept that the Act that he is defending, and that the Government are committed to repealing, has been opposed by all major political parties in Northern Ireland? Is it not important, when paying tribute to and protecting our armed forces, that the solution has the consent of the people and politicians of Northern Ireland?
John Lamont
I accept that in Northern Ireland the political reaction to the legacy Act is mixed, but it was the decision of this Parliament to enact the Act. The reaction of veterans groups, many of whom are in the room with us today, has been almost universal in its condemnation of the Government’s decision to try to repeal key parts of that Act. I am in no doubt whose side I am on: I am standing with the veterans who fought so hard to achieve peace and defend our country.
Today’s debate is hugely important. I am pleased to see the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland here to listen to the concerns of the petitioner, and those of myself and I am sure many other colleagues. But we need answers from the Secretary of State, not least on when the remedial order will be debated and voted on. What other primary legislation do the Government intend to bring forward, and what is the timescale for doing so? Lastly, will the Government commit to ensuring that soldiers who were subject to reviews at the time will not be subject to further risk of prosecution under the new legislation?
There are nearly 2 million veterans across our country. The sad truth is that many feel that their service is no longer respected. The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have spoken about the need to support our armed forces. If that is the case, it is a completely hypocritical decision to allow prosecutions even to be contemplated.
Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree it is time that the hand-picked Attorney General, Lord Hermer, from whom the Prime Minister is taking legal advice on repealing the Act, should be sacked, taking his unpatriotic views with him? We all need to stand by our veterans.
John Lamont
As ever, my right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. She is absolutely right that we should be with our veterans 100%, which is what I am hopefully doing during this speech.
Veterans are only demanding protection for following orders from high command and from vexatious, politically charged lawsuits. The Government’s position is destroying morale in the armed forces and is deeply unjust to veterans. The Government of the day, whatever Government that may be, must have the backs of our soldiers. They are extraordinary men and women who keep us safe and who go on difficult missions in dangerous and challenging places. They must be backed from cradle to grave. They protected our society, our freedom and justice in Northern Ireland. Surely, we owe them their own freedom in return.
Several hon. Members rose—
David Mundell (in the Chair)
I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
On a point of order, Mr Mundell. Before the debate, I spoke to you, the Speaker’s Office and the shadow Minister. Many of us here would love to participate in the other debate in the main Chamber, but we cannot because we cannot be in two debates at one time—some people have tried that; I have tried in the past, and it does not work. If possible, we would like for MPs from Northern Ireland to be able to make at least an intervention, and maybe ask a question in the other debate. I seek some guidance from you, Mr Mundell—I hate to put you on the spot, and I apologise for doing so—because there are not just MPs from Northern Ireland here, but others who served, who probably wish to do the same.
David Mundell (in the Chair)
Thank you for that point of order, and for highlighting the conflict between this debate and the matter to be considered in the House later. I have considerable discretion in who is called and when they are called, and I will seek to exercise that in the most effective way possible.
Louise Jones (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I begin by acknowledging the outstanding service of the many British service personnel who worked so hard on an incredibly difficult operation to protect the communities of Northern Ireland. We should be in no doubt that they upheld British military ethics to the highest standard and rigorously trained, with operations carefully planned and professionally carried out. As a veteran, I was honoured to serve with other veterans of that conflict, albeit at a later time. We must never forget the 722 veterans who paid the ultimate price and did not return. We must never forget their sacrifice, or that of those who were injured. We must remember them and honour their service with pride.
The Northern Ireland legacy Act is a prime example of how to get legislation very wrong. In 2014, as part of the Stormont House agreement, the UK and Irish Governments agreed a way forward to deal with legacy investigations, which had broad support from—crucially—victims and political parties. Instead, in 2020, the Conservative Government decided to push on, by themselves, in a completely different direction, and introduced legislation that made false promises to veterans that could not be kept, introducing chaos to the system, and which has immediately failed in the courts.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Louise Jones
I will make some progress and then come back to the right hon. Gentleman. It was a law that was forced through to try to curry favour in a desperate attempt to save the dying Administration of Boris Johnson. Among all the complicated arguments around how best to properly deal with the impact of the troubles, there is one huge, incontrovertible fact, which was ignored in the previous speech, and which no amount of clever talk or posturing can obscure: the legacy Act, as it stands, gives immunity to terrorists. That is abhorrent.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
You sent them letters of comfort.
Louise Jones
To address that point, the head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland said that the letters that the right hon. Gentleman refers to grant no immunity. The only thing that grants immunity to former members of the IRA is the Northern Ireland legacy Act as it stands. That is a simple fact. If we want to protect veterans—I know that everybody in this room wants to—we must remember those who were murdered in cold blood by terrorists. Those terrorists now sleep soundly in their beds, free from the threat of prosecution—the threat of justice—precisely because of the Northern Ireland legacy Act. They were given that by a British Government. A British Government have given terrorists who have murdered British personnel complete immunity.
There was an article in The Guardian today about the family of Tony Harrison, a British para who was murdered in east Belfast. He was shot while at home with his fiancée. He was not on military operations—there was no firefight. He was shot in the back in his own home. He was just 21 years old. Under the Northern Ireland legacy Act as it stands, there is no route for his murderers to be held to account. No wonder his family have now launched a legal challenge to the Act, because they refuse to have Tony be denied justice. We must never forget, but always remember, the 200 personnel whose families are being denied justice because of this Act and how it stands. That is fundamental to why the legacy Act must be repealed and replaced.
Jesse Norman
The hon. Lady has made an eloquent case for how defective the legislation was. Why did the Government not oppose sections 46 and 47 when they were in opposition? Does she think that they were wrong not to oppose them? She evidently thinks that the legislation was faulty, so why did her own party support it?
Louise Jones
I think that is a bit of a moot question when we are debating repealing the Act. The right hon. Gentleman is asking me if we opposed it in Parliament before I got elected—I am stood right here making the case to repeal parts of the Act and replace it. [Interruption.]
David Mundell (in the Chair)
Order. This is not an ongoing conversation. Ms Jones, please continue.
Louise Jones
I say to anybody who signed the petition or is here today because they fear the raking over of every firefight, weapon discharge or contact from 50 years ago: that fear is false. I say again: it is complete scaremongering spread by people who are at best naive—perhaps they do not know the details of the legislation or are ill informed on the content.
Stuart Anderson (South Shropshire) (Con)
I have just been outside with a load of veterans who, like me, served on Op Banner. Is the hon. Lady saying that they are naive and misunderstand this?
Louise Jones
I have said—the hon. Gentleman can read back—that scaremongering has been spread by people who should know better. They know fully the details of the legislation and the context of Northern Ireland and have gone out to these veterans and said, “There’s going to be lots of malicious lawfare against you if this Act is repealed”, when everybody here knows that is not the case at all. They are pushing a cynical political agenda.
I and my colleagues who are veterans are vehemently opposed to spurious prosecution, to dragging people through the courts where there is absolutely no case to answer and to malicious lawfare. I cannot repeat that enough. I do not want to see a single veteran who has not committed a crime in any sense being hounded. Op Banner was an incredibly complex campaign. I find abhorrent the idea that any veteran should be at risk of malicious lawfare simply for doing their job on a very difficult operation. I call on the Secretary of State to explain how we will protect any veteran who is accused of any wrongdoing in Northern Ireland.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
Surely the hon. Lady has come to the crux of the point, which is that no Minister has so far been able to give us that reassurance. She sincerely states her desire not to see veterans subject to lawfare, but they have not had that reassurance. Whatever the inadequacies of the current legislation, it provides protections, and we have no reassurance that they will not be removed.
Louise Jones
All I have heard is a very strong defence of the Act as it currently stands. I more than welcome a discussion about how we can move forward and repair what several Members have already said are the inadequacies in the current Act. That is the key point: there are inadequacies in the current Act.
Louise Jones
I will make a little progress, and then I will.
The hard truth to acknowledge here, as others already have and others no doubt will, is that a very small number of military colleagues did commit a crime. None the less, it is a central belief of mine that it does not matter who you are or what you do, you should be held accountable without fear or favour if you commit a crime. That is a hard truth. I know that every single veteran here would say that any person who has been a member of the military and committed a crime should be held to account.
Louise Jones
I will give way to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour), if she would like to jump in.
Rachel Gilmour
This is a deeply sensitive debate. Two of my brothers served as officers in Northern Ireland, and the memory of Operation Banner has been raised time and again by many of my constituents. The truth is that many of the soldiers in Northern Ireland were young lads from working-class communities sent by their Government and deployed to areas not dissimilar to those they had grown up in. They found themselves operating in some of the most stressful scenarios imaginable.
I had a meeting with the Minister for Veterans an hour ago; does the hon. Lady with me and with him that we must focus on the orders that were given higher up the chain of command rather than pursuing non-commissioned veterans in their old age? Does she also agree that there is a desperate need for reform to ensure that avenues to justice for bereaved families are reopened and that all armed forces personnel are treated with dignity and understanding of the complexities of their experiences?
David Mundell (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Lady made important points, but interventions must be short.
Louise Jones
I agree with the hon. Lady. I am a former officer, and one thing that was really drummed into us at Sandhurst is the responsibility we have for those who serve under us. It is often the lot of those of lower ranks to make the most difficult of decisions, and the responsibility is on officers to make sure that when soldiers go into a difficult situation, they have the training and the cover that they need. It is right that officers be held to account for any role that they play, and it is definitely something that I will be keeping a close eye on.
I say, as a proud veteran of the British Army, that we do ourselves a huge disservice if we do not hold ourselves to the highest standards and ensure accountability when or if a comrade has failed those tests.
Sir Julian Lewis
I am thankful to the hon. Lady for her service. She has not yet mentioned the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998, which precludes anybody who has been found guilty, even of murder, from serving more than two years in jail, whether they are a veteran or whether they are a terrorist. Does she accept that a degree of equality and of compromise have crept in, and will she bear that in mind when she talks about accountability for terrible crimes?
Louise Jones
I thank the right hon. Member for making that point. It is important to note that only one soldier has been convicted in the past 13 years. I do not have time to go into the details of that case, but I urge him and anybody present to look into them. Whether or not a prosecution was in the public interest there, I note that he served only a suspended sentence.
The legacy Act has been found to be unlawful. It gives immunity to terrorists. No more needs to be said: it gives immunity to terrorists, and it denies justice to the families of the 200 service personnel who were murdered by terrorists during the troubles. It is not supported in its current form by victims, it is not supported by any Northern Irish party and many veterans are troubled by it. It must go and be replaced. Again, I call on the Minister to outline how we can protect veterans from malicious lawfare in relation to any conflict.
Louise Jones
No, I really must finish.
I end by remembering all the victims of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Far too many innocent lives were lost and families changed forever. The peace process and the Good Friday agreement stand testament to the immense courage shown every day by communities in Northern Ireland—communities who every day choose peace. We have a huge duty here in Westminster to work with those communities, not against them, and I hope all Members present will reflect on that important undertaking.
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
Today, we speak on behalf of our veterans and the 176,000 members of the public who have so far signed the petition to give veterans protection against the vexatious legal pursuit of our brave heroes. Last week, when I raised this in the House, the Prime Minister dismissed it as “political point scoring.” He is wrong; it is a matter of justice, a matter of ensuring that those who risked their lives to protect our citizens during the troubles know that the state stands behind them.
The Veterans Commissioners for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales—not naive people—issued a joint statement last week in which they said:
“Inconsistent application of justice—particularly where it revisits incidents already thoroughly investigated—serves only to retraumatise veterans and undermine public confidence.”
I agree with that statement entirely. It is exactly consistent with the views of every veteran I have spoken to, and I have spoken to a rather large number of them since February, when I first raised this matter.
Getting this right is not just a matter of historical justice. The legal witch hunt will not end in Northern Ireland; it will cast a shadow over every future conflict that our armed forces engage in and undermine their abilities to defend us. I am a strong advocate of human rights. I think I am the only person in the House to have defeated Governments from both sides, both in the House and in court, on matters of human rights. I take those rights extremely seriously, but this issue is driven more by politics and its exigencies than by human rights.
Take the inquiry process, which both my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) and the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Jones) referred to. The Secretary of State will tell us later, but I imagine that by reinstating the inquiry process, the Government believe they are addressing the implied article 2 right to investigate purportedly unlawful killings. I imagine that is what they are trying to do. Indeed, The Guardian this morning, as we have heard, referred again to the Secretary of State claiming that the Government are protecting the right to investigate 202 murders of British Army soldiers. Really?
I wonder whether that claim comes with an undertaking to take witness statements from the 200 terrorists who committed those murders—who, incidentally, I say to the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire, were given pardons by Tony Blair as part of a peace process that began some 40 years ago. I think 423 were released from prison with pardons, and approximately 200 so-called “on-the-runs” received comfort letters. That is not this Act—that is then, yet it continues to exist now.
The Veterans Commissioners continued:
“There can be no moral equivalence between those who served in uniform to uphold peace and the rule of law, and those who sought to destroy it through acts of terrorism.”
Again, I could not agree more. The largest group of people killed during the troubles, by a vast margin, were murdered by paramilitaries, to use the current euphemism for terrorists. They were killed by terrorists. Every single one of those 2,000 people killed was an unlawful killing, to use the phrasing of the coroners courts these days. We do not need a court to establish that. How many of those IRA murders will be subject to inquiry? On the current listing—we have 33 listed—just two such cases, out of 2,000. That is because the major driver for these inquiries is the IRA-Sinn Féin effort to hide their own barbaric acts behind a freedom-fighting façade, trying to rewrite history with themselves as the heroes and the British state as the villains. That is why battles such as Coagh, Clonoe and, very likely soon, Loughgall feature so large in the demands for inquiries and the prosecution of long-retired, innocent British soldiers. All three of those actions were humiliating defeats for the IRA.
Let me be clear: all of the IRA members who died in those exchanges—so-called “victims” in this context—were actively in the process of committing atrocities. They were trying to murder innocent people. At Coagh, they planned to murder an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment officer. At Clonoe, they attacked the Coalisland police station using an armour-piercing machine gun in an attempt to murder the officers inside. At Loughgall, they drove a bomb-laden digger to blow up a police station and were armed and ready to murder any survivors. All were armed, dangerous and intent on murder. Many of them had killed before, making them a fatal risk to our soldiers—a risk our soldiers had to cope with in split-second decisions. Those are the people we will put on trial if we allow them to lose their protection that we ought to be giving our veterans today.
Look at the individuals involved, starting with Coagh where the inquest heard about Michael Ryan. Ryan was probably responsible for many murders; I can cite two. He shot two UDR officers—one in front of little children at a crossing, the other in front of the officer’s 13-year-old son. That is the sort of people we are dealing with.
As for the IRA’s greatest defeat, Loughgall, the weapons recovered at the scene had been used in over 40 previous murders—there is no doubt about that. Of the IRA members there, McKearney and Arthurs were both involved in the Ballygawley police station attack, which killed a further two policemen. James Lynagh—nicknamed “The Executioner” by the Royal Ulster Constabulary—was believed to have been involved in more than 30 killings, including the cold-blooded assassination of the 80-year-old Sir Norman Stronge, who was largely blind and deaf, as well as his son in front of him.
As for Patrick Kelly, who was the leader of that attack, he led the self-styled East Tyrone brigade, which is believed to have killed around 250 people before Loughgall. By the way, he also took part in the second attempt to assassinate brave UDR officer Glen Espie, who is sitting behind me in the Gallery. He fought off the assassins on two occasions—he was shot twice and fought off IRA assassins twice. If they had not been stopped, there is no doubt that all of these killers would have continued their psychopathic campaign of murder.
The IRA’s campaign of violence was indiscriminate and extended far beyond the island of Ireland. I say to the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire that the number was not 722 if you include the police officers and UDR officers. If you include them, 1,073 servants of the British state were killed in the course of defending innocent civilians from those murderers. The IRA is trying to equate the British Government’s actions with that psychopathic behaviour, but of course nothing could be further from the truth.
There is ample evidence of the Army taking enormous risks to arrest rather than take the often safer option of killing the terrorists. Consider the arrest—not the killing—of the South Armagh sniper. He killed seven people, but he was arrested and not killed. Consider the arrest—not the killing—of the killers of Captain Westmacott. They were arrested—not killed—by the rest of his patrol. Even today’s Daily Mail mentioned the rescue of Bernadette McAliskey. There was an attempt to kill her by the Ulster Defence Association. British soldiers rescued her even though she was effectively a political arm of the Irish National Liberation Army.
The clearest demonstration of our real strategy is that, while 1,073 British forces, soldiers and policemen were killed by republican terrorists up until 1994, 145 paramilitaries were killed and 428 were taken prisoner. That means that around three or four were taken prisoner for every one killed. Seven British soldiers or policemen died for every IRA person who was killed. That tells us the strategy and it tells us what the IRA is trying to reverse.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend marvel at the remarkable restraint shown by British soldiers, no matter where these officers or personnel were from across the UK, in dealing with this and never once stepping over the mark in regard to these cases?
David Davis
Absolutely—the phrase I would use is “heroic restraint”. Under those circumstances, restraint means putting their own lives and the lives of their comrades on the line. That is what was going on there, that was the decision that was being taken, and that is what is being challenged today. My right hon. Friend is right about that, and that restraint was institutional. It was not simply heroic soldiers, although of course it was that as well. The yellow card system demanded restraint and issued warnings of proportionality.
Every time a British soldier killed a paramilitary, it was subject to rigorous judicial scrutiny, and when that process failed we ensured the matter was properly investigated. Remember the Saville inquiry, which cost £200 million, took 12 years and consisted of 5,000 pages. What other country in the world would review its own behaviour in that way? I am not going to actually give all the answers, but Members should consider in their own mind whether some of our allies might not have gone quite so far to give everybody justice.
Our soldiers were held to the highest standards of law, yet our Government are rewarding that by effectively threatening them in their retirement. Remember: we have been talking about human rights. That is not a proper reflection of their human rights. They are human beings too, and they have human rights. We should remind ourselves that human rights are founded in natural justice. They do not spring out of the air; they are founded in natural justice. In this process, there is no natural justice for our brave veterans nor, frankly, for the real innocent victims of the troubles. The process gives neither.
The Government are understandably struggling to find a solution, and the Secretary of State knows that I have some sympathy for his position. Let me tell him the criterion for success, because it is very simple. The Government must completely remove the threat of prosecution from our brave veterans who have served their country well and who have already been through the judicial review of every action they took. If the Government repeal the legacy Act without a robust replacement—that is the key point—we hand the narrative back to those who seek to rewrite history. I accept that mistakes were sometimes made, and where they were, those responsible must be held to account. That has been done. But we must not allow politically motivated lawfare to dismantle the very capabilities that make our armed forces precise, lawful, effective and among the best in the world.
David Davis
No, I will not.
What young person today would sign up to serve, knowing that their reward could be a courtroom in retirement? It was through our soldiers’ measured actions that the IRA’s barbaric campaign of terror was confronted and diminished. The number of people killed by the IRA fell by 94% between the periods 1970 to 1974 and 1994 to 1998. That outcome matters. Our soldiers’ intervention prevented countless more deaths. I have now called on the Government six times to end this campaign of a retrospective parody of justice, but I have so far received no meaningful answer. I hope we get one today.
We talk a lot about human rights. In my related Adjournment debate, I read a poem that I first heard at a regimental Remembrance Day service, and I will read it again today because it is extraordinarily relevant:
“It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the peace camp organiser, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.
It is the soldier, not the politician…who has given these freedoms.”
Those who freely talk about human rights would do well to remember that our rights, our law, our democracy and our nation were protected by the very veterans who are at risk today. Let us all make one promise: that no British soldier will ever again be abandoned by the very nation they have so bravely protected.
David Mundell (in the Chair)
Order. We do not have clapping in the House of Commons, so please restrain yourselves. I have allowed substantial contributions to enable the debate to get under way, but we will now have to move to contributions of around five minutes.
Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell.
Like many other Members present, I was proud to have served my country. In my case, it was with the Royal Marines in 2006, when I deployed to Afghanistan shortly after basic training. I was a very young and green marine, and it was quite unexpected to go into a hostile and unknown environment. I see many colleagues in the Gallery who may have done something similar several years earlier.
In preparation, we did all that we would normally expect to do as a young marine or soldier: we practised troop attacks, battle casualty evacuations, mine clearances and everything else we might do on the battlefield. But we also spent a long time studying the law of armed conflict and the rules of engagement. I know that the people we were fighting against in Afghanistan—the Taliban—had no qualms about the rules of engagement or the law of armed conflict. Back in the generation before me, my colleagues were fighting an enemy—the IRA and others—that had no qualms about the rules of engagement or the law of armed conflict. It must have been terrifying to go into that situation. But I am proud to say that, as with my generation, there were many hundreds and thousands of people who served on Op Banner with distinction, bravery and real integrity.
Under the legacy Act introduced by the last Government, groups such as the IRA, the UVF and the other terrorist paramilitaries we have heard about have been given immunity. I do not believe it is acceptable that people who have committed crimes and been involved in the killing of thousands of civilians and veterans on our side of the table should be given such immunity. It is unacceptable, and we cannot let such an unlawful and unacceptable Act stand.
My granddad is from Belfast, and when I was in the city earlier this year, I was honoured to meet survivors of the troubles at the Wave trauma centre. We met people who had been targeted or caught up as collateral damage in republican terror attacks—victims whose only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They deserve the right to seek justice and the opportunity to receive answers. One of them was Máiría Cahill, who was the target of years of sexual abuse at the hands of the IRA. This is what she said about the Conservatives’ legacy Act:
“This bill is, quite simply, disgraceful. The Government say they take sexual violence seriously. Yet they are prepared to grant amnesty to those accused of conflict related sexual offences…in NI or England. It is an affront to victims, to justice and is gross hypocrisy.”
Of course, she is completely right.
The legacy Act has given immunity to those who targeted servicemen and women. Families of the Hyde Park and Regent’s Park bombings, where 11 British soldiers were killed by the IRA, were unhappy. One family member said:
“People deserve justice, and their hurt will never heal until that happens.”
The challenge is that the legacy Act has created a moral equivalence, on which I agree with the right hon. Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis). Those who have committed crimes—the terrorists—are given the same immunities as those who bravely served in our armed forces.
As well as failing the test of victims, the legacy Act has failed the legal test. The Belfast High Court found the legacy Act unlawful. After a challenge from Martina Dillon, whose husband was killed in 1997, the Court found the immunity offered to members of the Loyalist Volunteer Force to be in breach of her human rights. Of course it was in breach of her human rights. She deserves to get the justice and the answers that she pursues.
The Conservatives’ legacy Act has allowed blanket amnesty to terrorists and the perpetrators of offences including murder and torture. The terrorists responsible for 90% of troubles-related deaths have been given a free pass. This is a travesty of justice. The Government have no choice but to amend the Act.
Alex Ballinger
We will hear later from the Secretary of State about some of the protections afforded to veterans, but it is also important to note that in the last 13 years only one veteran has been prosecuted and, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Jones), he received a suspended sentence. So the chance of any veterans who served in Northern Ireland being pulled over the coals again and being sent to prison is vanishingly small, and we need to be realistic about that. We need to be honest with those who signed the petition.
David Davis
The hon. Gentleman says the chance is vanishingly small, yet the Clonoe inquest found there were four unlawful killings, which implies that four cases will go to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Alex Ballinger
I would like to hear more from the Secretary of State about the protections that veterans will be given, one of which, I understand, is that no veteran will be asked to travel to Northern Ireland; rather, they can give evidence remotely, which is important. There does need to be more on protections, but—[Interruption.] Let me finish. It is not acceptable that we have an Act that has been rejected by victims and the families of veterans and found to be unlawful, as well as being unacceptable to many members of the parties in Northern Ireland.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I want to make one thing very clear: the vexatious pursuit of veterans is the key here. Some never finally made it into court, but they were pursued; some died before they got to court. It is not a good comparison to say that only one was actually found guilty, when so many have been pursued vexatiously from start to finish. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman understands how it feels to be pursued—to have to go to Northern Ireland, to have to come back, to be arrested by the police and then taken away. That is what was wrong with the legislation that existed previously.
Alex Ballinger
The right hon. Gentleman is right. The nub of the matter is that we must ensure that veterans have the right protections and that they are not taken through additional tests, but we have to change the legislation, because it was unlawful. We have no choice. It has let down victims. The new legislation that we are putting in place will involve deep co-operation with the Ministry of Defence—I note that the Minister for Veterans and People is here—to ensure that every protection that is available, within the law, will be provided to veterans. I am sure some of that will be outlined in the Secretary of State’s response.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
Thank you for your chairmanship, Mr Mundell, and for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. I give thanks to the armed forces of our country: those who came and served with us in Northern Ireland—people from Culloden coming to Coleraine, from Folkestone to Fermanagh, from Birmingham to Belfast and from London to Londonderry. They joined with us in defence of peace and in defence of the values of our nation.
A number of figures have already been shared this afternoon. Some 1,441 armed forces personnel died in Northern Ireland during Operation Banner—not 722, not 1,043, but 1,441. They did so in support of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, GC, of whose members 302 were murdered by terrorists in Northern Ireland. It is right, and we will hear it in this debate, that every party in Northern Ireland opposed the legacy Act, but I remind Members that they did so for incredibly different reasons. I do not share Sinn Féin’s opposition, because I do not defend the IRA; I do not defend those who decided to destroy, or attempt to destroy, our part of this United Kingdom.
My colleagues and I spend time in this House asking for our UK Government to protect those who protected us, so when I hear naive platitudes about the legacy Act simply offering an amnesty to soldiers, I have to say this: it was the Labour Government who released 435 prisoners from Maze prison following the Belfast agreement. They included Patrick Magee, who was responsible for blowing up the hotel in Brighton, killing a Member of our House, Sir Anthony Berry, and injuring Norman Tebbit and his wife. A week after Norman Tebbit’s death, can we not reflect that heinous men such as Patrick Magee should not be released from prison? There were others: Sean Kelly, an IRA bomber—a brave man who believed in republican ideals who walked into a fish and chip shop on a Saturday and blew up nine innocent people, and families, on the Shankill road—was released by the Labour Government.
After that, republicans did not stop in their pursuit. They asked the Labour Government to encourage their comrades to come home. People who had been engaged in terrorism and evaded justice for years, who hid in the Irish Republic, were not extradited, because the Irish Republic said they could not get a fair trial in this United Kingdom. Or individuals fled to the United States, like Gabriel Megahey, who was the IRA officer commanding in the United States of America during the ’80s and ’90s. He was imprisoned by the FBI for trying to purchase surface-to-air missiles to support the IRA in destroying our country. Didn’t he get a grubby deal with President Clinton, and has he not been allowed to stay in the United States, until President Trump deports him?
It was a Labour Government who introduced the Northern Ireland (Offences) Bill in 2003, and who asked Parliament to agree a process to allow on-the-runs to come back to this United Kingdom to retire with dignity. Thank God they had the resolve to withdraw that pernicious piece of legislation, but what did they then do? They engaged in a process of signing on-the-runs letters. People will say that they were not an amnesty, but tell that to the families of the four members of the Household Cavalry who were murdered in the Hyde Park bomb, to the seven horses that were put down as a result of the Hyde Park bomb, or to the 50 others who were injured in the Hyde Park bomb, because when John Downey was taken to the High Court in London, he produced his letter—a secret scheme by the Labour Government to allow him to walk out of court with no justice for his victims. That is not all: 365 royal prerogatives of mercy, from both Conservative and Labour Governments, were offered in Northern Ireland to give amnesty to terrorists.
Yet, throughout all that time of prison releases, on-the-runs, the 2003 Northern Ireland (Offences) Bill and royal prerogatives of mercy, how many were given to those who defended the rule of law and order? None. So let us be very clear about the danger of going down a line of allowing inquests to recommence.
The Clonoe inquest is a classic example of how a judge goes beyond the terms of his brief. An inquest is to determine who died, where they died, when they died and how they died, but not why. A coroner’s court is not there to determine whether there is criminal liability, yet that is exactly what the judge did—a judge who, in his judgment, made no reference to the context, to who was killed that day or to the terrorist campaign of the East Tyrone Brigade, which was the bloodiest of them all. Yet the very same coroner could do so when he did the Coagh inquest a number of months before.
Why do people pursue these inquests, which the Secretary of State seems keen to recommence? Because those lawyers who do wish to rewrite history in Northern Ireland are laying the foundations for prosecutions. The reason why closing down those inquests was important was that it stopped this pernicious ability to put the building blocks in place to see our veterans in court. Yet the Secretary of State met with Mairead Kelly, the sister of Patrick Kelly—the officer commanding the East Tyrone Brigade of the IRA—on 24 March this year. Darragh Mackin, a solicitor from Phoenix Law, put out a statement immediately after, salivating at having got a commitment from our Secretary of State for Northern Ireland that inquests would recommence.
Their sights are on Loughgall; their sights are on building a pernicious and never-ending pursuit against those who served in Northern Ireland. Our responsibility, as parliamentarians from across this United Kingdom, is to say, “No. We will not assist your quest to rewrite the history of the past, nor will we assist in the IRA’s pursuit to try and attain some level of honour towards their retirement.” They tried to destroy this country through war, and they failed. Let us not create the conditions for them to try to destroy the reputation of this country through peace.
Fred Thomas (Plymouth Moor View) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) on introducing this important debate. I pay tribute to the strength of argument and strength of feeling that we have heard from hon. Members so far.
I would like to put on record that no one in this Chamber wants to assist the IRA in any way to clean their record. I hope that this debate can be held with both sides of the House in firm agreement that no one here wants to do that. That is not what this is about; this is about one piece of legislation. It is not about an old piece of legislation, or some instrument that brought about the so far quite consistent peace that we have had in the UK for a generation; it is about something very new, passed about a year and a half ago. We have heard Opposition Members—many of whom served many years in this place without that piece of legislation, and without asking for or campaigning for it—say that they passionately support it. Since it came in a year and a half ago, some people are very much for it.
There are problems on both sides with this legislation, and I would like to hear balance in this argument. On one side, we have the absolute desire to prosecute, go after and bring justice against IRA terrorists for what they have done. They should absolutely not be walking free. There are victims’ families in this country—British people—who cannot see justice because of this Act.
On the other side of the argument, in the interests of balance, we need to protect our veterans. We have to do that. I have a personal interest in this issue because I represent Plymouth Moor View, where 500 people signed the petition. People do not need to organise a veterans’ coffee morning to meet a veteran in Plymouth; they can just go out of the house and have a chat with a neighbour. I served in the Royal Marines, where most of the men who trained me would do so by saying, “This is how we did it in Northern Ireland.” That memory lives very long.
Lincoln Jopp
The hon. Member is giving a powerful speech. Will he put on record whether he thinks that any of the 500 veterans who he has met are naive?
Fred Thomas
To clarify, I said there are 500 veterans in Plymouth Moor View who signed the petition, so I am not sure that I can answer the hon. Member because I did not meet with them recently to talk about this issue. I do not think that anyone is suggesting that veterans themselves are naive.
Fred Thomas
I have just taken an intervention, so I will not.
Context is king. We have had peace for a generation. Hon. Members have passionately laid out the wrongs, ills and evils of the IRA, going through operational detail, which I appreciate. No one is suggesting that any of those things were justified—that is not the argument that anyone is making—but we are discussing a piece of legislation that, in order to buy the protection of veterans, allows for the protection of terrorists. We are saying, “I don’t think that’s correct.” We need to be able to go after those terrorists. There is a bigger context, isn’t there?
Fred Thomas
Not quite yet. The bigger context is that the world is extremely insecure at the moment. We all hope and pray that this country never has to go to war again. Personally, I think we might have to in the foreseeable future. We hope that does not happen, but when and if it does we need the moral, legal and total legitimacy to go in with extreme force and do what needs to be done. If we pass laws, as we did a year and a half ago, that nibble away at our international reputation for having a lawful and professional military, we are going to struggle in years to come. That is the bigger context that we need to keep in mind.
Stuart Anderson
The Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021, for which I sat on the Bill Committee, covered that. I also sat on the Bill Committee that considered the Northern Ireland legacy Act, and I saw the months of trying to agree something that we could get through the House to protect veterans. We mentioned naivety; people might be doing things for the right reason, but if we adjust and change that Act, our veterans will face prosecution. I defy anybody who thinks otherwise.
Fred Thomas
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his service on those Bill Committees. I do not agree with what he said, but that is the nature of this debate, and I am willing to have it.
To close, it has been alluded to that we are yet to see from the Government what the safeguards will be for veterans. I will say this openly: I need to see those. We all need to see those. I ask Opposition Members, and all hon. Members of the House, to bear in mind the big bits of context that I hope I have introduced: peace for a generation, a very threatening world picture, and the need for moral legitimacy.
Stuart Anderson (South Shropshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank all the residents of South Shropshire who signed the petition or came to see me, and all the veterans who have come down today. My dad was one of the first SAS troops to serve in Northern Ireland in the ’70s, and I served 18 months during the troubles on Op Banner, so I have first-hand experience of that. How do I share some of that experience to set out the reality of what it is like to be a soldier on operations?
I was a teenager when I deployed on my first tour to Belfast. I had little understanding of the big political situation, but I knew everything I needed to do, what I could and could not do, and all the rules of engagement, and everybody on the tour followed those. Our pre-deployment training, which the hon. Member for Plymouth Moor View (Fred Thomas) mentioned, was extensive. For months we covered every possible scenario that we could face when in Northern Ireland on operations. I was a rifleman with the 2nd Battalion the Royal Green Jackets. They were tough soldiers, but professional and knew what they could and could not do.
Let us throw a little context on what it can be like on operations in Northern Ireland. Let us imagine patrolling what could be a normal housing estate in the UK—some areas would be more rundown than others, but the structure is the same. When we walk past somebody, we do not know if that person is going to buy something from a shop, pick up their children, or plan to kill us. We do not know what their intentions are. When a car speeds around the corner, as we see every day on our streets, we do not know if that person is late to pick something up, going to an event, a joyrider, or somebody driving past to kill me and my colleagues in a drive-by shooting. We do not know that, but these things happen all the time. We never really knew anybody’s intention.
In 1996, in the middle of my tour, there was a decision not to allow a march to go through Drumcree, and what was a semi-stable environment turned within a matter of hours into complete carnage, with rioting and people being burned out of houses up and down the whole area. All of a sudden, law and order—the whole rule of law—had completely broken down. In about four days, I believe some 750 RUC were injured, of whom four were shot on patrol with us in one night. So whatever people thought it was like, when discussing this many years later people have to add the extreme pressure, the mental pressure, that we faced as we looked under the vehicle every single day to see whether it was a car bomb.
When we were in the riots and somebody goes to throw a brick or a stone, we have a split second to react: is that a grenade? Is it an improvised weapon? Every one of those is designed to cause harm and some are designed to kill. We have a split second to decide whether to open fire—or do me and my colleagues get killed? We do not know. There is pressure. We might have been out for many hours with very little sleep, but we knew what we had to do.
Many soldiers who served in Northern Ireland spend every day remembering their colleagues who did not return, trying to forget what they saw and what they witnessed, and are woken at night by screams. That has not left many people. We asked them to do the most extreme things in the most difficult conditions.
I was proud when the previous Government—too late, in my mind at least—introduced the legacy Act. I sat on the Bill Committee. The Act meant protection for our veterans, which is what I had campaigned for. I had spoken about that many times before, and I had seen new colleagues who were facing prosecution, or the threat of prosecution, for their time. I believe the whole veteran community at the moment sees the repealing of the legislation as a body blow. I do not think the Government realise the anger that the community will feel.
Mr Angus MacDonald (Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire) (LD)
My son is a serving soldier, and he tells me that many are leaving the forces because of this issue. We are tens of thousands below our recruitment level. Does the hon. Member think he is right and that this is damaging our ability to defend our country?
Stuart Anderson
I thank the hon. Member’s son for his service. Mine joins in two months at the age of 16. I hope that 30 years down the line, when he has defended his country as the hon. Member’s son has, they do not go through this, because morale is at rock bottom. There is no naivety among veterans.
Louise Jones
The hon. Member is welcome to check Hansard after the debate, but I was referring specifically to people—we all know they exist—who are scaremongering without knowing the details of the Bill and naively making up things that are not based on evidence. At no point did I say that any veteran is naive, and I know that he has too much respect for our procedures and for colleagues to keep repeating that when it is not true.
Stuart Anderson
I think that all the veterans in this room believe that the Government’s current route is wrong—are they misguided, or are they naive? If we go down the route of changing the law in this way, I can guarantee that our veterans will face prosecution for the service that they gave their country for many years.
David Davis
Our veterans do not need to read the Bill; they just need to look at the outcome of the Clonoe inquiry—four potential manslaughter prosecutions.
Stuart Anderson
As I said, we asked our veterans to defend us and to do the hardest things while others slept soundly in their beds at night. I hope that we never face more conflicts in the future, but I believe we will, and we must have a moral compass that means we protect those who protect us. I demand that the Government set out that the route they are taking will ensure that no prosecution of our veterans happens. The Secretary of State has even heard from Members of his own party that they are not reassured about that. We need to see that no veterans are thrown to the wolves, and we need to protect those who have served their country with the utmost pride.
Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
It is a privilege to speak in today’s debate and to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank those who signed the petition that has brought us here today.
The petitioners are absolutely clear: the Government must do nothing that would allow Northern Ireland veterans to be prosecuted for doing their duty—those are the critical three words—in combating terrorism as part of Operation Banner. On that sentiment, I stand resolutely with them. It is a simple and powerful demand that should be respected, understood and agreed to. It is not just a legal matter; it is about justice, trust in public service and the promises we make to those who risk their lives in the name of our country.
I understand that, as my hon. and gallant Friends have said—it is a privilege to serve in this place with them—the legislation passed by the Conservatives has been found unlawful, and that it is not supported by any political party in Northern Ireland, for the various reasons that the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) highlighted. I understand that it gave an amnesty to terrorists—murderers of British soldiers. However, any legislation replacing it must uphold one central commitment: we will protect our veterans. I have met constituents in Hartlepool who served in Northern Ireland with distinction, professionalism and bravery. Last month I met one constituent who served with honour, carrying out his duties at great risk to himself. Not only does he have to live with the scars of the past, like almost every veteran of any conflict, but he told me that he now lives every day with the thought that one knock on the door could mean being dragged into a vexatious legal nightmare. We cannot allow that to happen.
These people are not looking for special treatment. They are asking only for fairness—fairness in the recognition that they served under the command of the state; fairness in the understanding that investigations too numerous to count have already been carried out, many of them at the time when the events occurred; and fairness in not being treated as political scapegoats decades after the events in question. The legacy of the conflict should not be ignored, but we cannot have a system in which those who served the state under its orders face endless scrutiny for the rest of their lives.
The current framework fails everyone, and it also fails the future, because it undermines the possibility of truth and reconciliation by giving neither side confidence that the process is fair or final. The Conservative Government claimed that their legislation would draw a line under the past, but it was a hollow claim. It has done the opposite. It has stirred up more anger, reopened more wounds and brought more uncertainty to people who have already given enough. I urge the Government to think very carefully about the next steps they take if they want to restore the faith of the veteran community in this country.
We routinely ask our armed forces to do extraordinary things in impossible circumstances. We must not abandon them decades later for doing what they were asked to do. If we are serious about supporting veterans, it cannot just be words; it must be action. The Government must deliver for those who served. The veterans of Operation Banner deserve nothing less.
Brian Mathew (Melksham and Devizes) (LD)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I thank the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for introducing this important debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee.
Like many in this place, I have skin in this game. In my case, members of my family were brought up in Northern Ireland. I remember my first trip there as a small boy and seeing for the first time armed police on the streets, something we now hardly stop to think about. I remember many years later, my father, a veteran himself, talking about the Good Friday agreement. He said that, since the IRA had put down its guns and its bombs, Sinn Féin should be free to participate in politics, just as any political party is free to do—a dividend for peace. My father passed away in 1995 and my mother in 1998, just a few months before the dreadful Omagh bombing, and I remember thinking at the time, “Thank God she did not have to witness that in the beloved town of her birth.”
Truth and reconciliation is important. Its implementation in South Africa was a great thing, but it needs trust and it needs full disclosure to be true to itself. Going forward, the Government are seeking to repeal the legacy Act. Good reasons have been put forward for it to go. It could be argued that it has interrupted the process of truth and reconciliation, which still leaves more than a thousand families in limbo, including those of our veterans and their families.
If the Government are to do away with the legacy Act, they need to leave something better in its place—something that is perhaps akin to the truth and reconciliation process in South Africa and that families from all sides and none in the troubles can rely on for closure, with protection for our veterans.
Mr Paul Foster (South Ribble) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Mundell, for allowing me to contribute to today’s petition debate; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I will not take any interventions, and I will be as short as I can to allow as many Members as possible to speak.
I start by reminding everyone once again that I am a proud retired Royal Engineer. Although I did not serve in Op Banner, many colleagues and friends did. The Op Banner veterans did their duty in exceptionally challenging circumstances, and I commend them all—each and every one of them. I would also point out to colleagues that, despite not serving in Op Banner, I was in Quebec barracks in Osnabrück in Germany when it was attacked by the IRA in June 1996. I get it, I really do.
What is of the utmost importance is that we deal in facts, and facts alone. Fact one: the previous Conservative Government pushed through the legacy Act in 2023. The Act created one route for dealing with the past, through the creation of the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery. It received almost unanimous condemnation from victims groups and the political parties in Northern Ireland, for differing reasons, as has been said.
Fact two: the previous Conservative Government publicly stated at the time, despite numerous challenges, that the Act would be fully compliant with the European convention on human rights, the Windsor framework and the Good Friday agreement, and they knew that that most certainly was not the case. In February ’24, the Northern Ireland High Court found that the Act was in fact incompatible with the European convention on human rights, specifically articles 2, 3 and 6, and it was therefore deemed unlawful. It also found that it was incompatible with article 2 of the Windsor framework, and that it should therefore be disapplied. If the previous Government knew that this was the case, they should never have proceeded in pushing the legacy Act through Parliament. It was a deliberate and wholly irresponsible course of action.
Mr Foster
No, I am making progress.
Fact three: in January 2024, the Irish Government launched an inter-state application against the United Kingdom before the European Court of Human Rights, on the basis of the legacy Act violating articles 2, 3, 6, 13 and 14 of the convention. This case against the United Kingdom Government is still live.
These are indisputable facts. If an Act of Parliament is found to be unlawful, the Government must act. However, the repealing of the legacy Act is not a simple exercise—we all understand that—and any changes introduced must offer the protections that our veterans, victims and impacted families all deserve. My deep concern is that, with any new legislation, we must ensure a wholly comprehensive approach to dealing with the past in Northern Ireland that recognises the unique position our Op Banner veterans find themselves in. They deserve our continued and unwavering support.
I am also profoundly concerned at the continued politicisation of our veterans, and at the misinformation being continually spouted by Conservative Members of Parliament, who should know better. This is an issue that Members of all political persuasions should be working on together, not using to seek political gain with inaccurate and misleading statements.
The unlawful legacy Act made false and undeliverable promises to our veterans about immunity, and—I say again—it has been repeatedly ruled unlawful. It generated false expectations, legal uncertainty, and delays for victims, survivors and veterans alike. It was opposed by many, including armed forces families who lost relatives serving in Northern Ireland. It gives immunity to terrorists who murdered British soldiers. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Defence Secretary and the Minister for Veterans are working tirelessly to put in place protections for our veterans, and to ensure that legacy mechanisms are fair, lawful and proportionate.
The Minister for Veterans has met hundreds of veterans and veteran organisations since taking office, including the Royal British Legion and representatives from all major military associations with Northern Ireland service experience, listening to their concerns and incorporating their feedback into the new approach. These are not new arguments, and we have had alternative solutions before, which have just not worked.
This is a hugely complex and emotive issue. All Members of Parliament should be working as one to bring about a lawful solution, supporting Ministers and veterans alike, not spreading a fake narrative. Our veterans will continue to receive the full support of this Government, and any new legislation must be carefully considered. I give my word that it will be.
Several hon. Members rose—
David Mundell (in the Chair)
The Chair will change during the next contribution. If not everyone is able to be called to speak, it is my responsibility and not Ms Lewell’s, because I chose to allow more substantial contributions for the benefit of the debate.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
I am grateful for your tolerance, Mr Mundell. I start by saying to the hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster), and one or two others on the Government Benches, that to accuse people like myself who served in Northern Ireland of supporting the legacy Act and then demeaning ourselves by apparently attacking others is utter nonsense. We are after one purpose and one purpose only: to find a way to protect veterans who have been pursued through the courts in a vexatious manner and had their lives destroyed in their latter years. That was the sole purpose of my support for the legacy Act. Even though I had my doubts about it, I supported it for that reason. There was nothing else on the table to provide support for those veterans, so I really take it ill, and the hon. Member for South Ribble demeans himself by attacking people on that personal basis.
[Emma Lewell in the Chair]
This is an issue about inconsistency, and it covers all previous Governments. The problem is that we were originally involved in the law of armed conflict, which settled these issues, and we have had a collision with the Human Rights Act 1998, which has changed everything. The real point is that there is no moral equivalence between people who set out to kill, maim and destroy in a democracy, which happened in Northern Ireland, as the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) laid out, and the British servicemen who were ordered to go to Northern Ireland. They went out of their duty to protect the citizens of Northern Ireland against a violent and destructive insurrection.
I have to tell anybody with the idea that there is some kind of equivalence here—that if we cannot proceed against IRA terrorists we have taken them out of the equation—to go back and find out about when we pursued IRA terrorists through the court. There is no evidence. There were no records kept. They know that very well. If anyone thinks they will get 400 witness statements from people who know they are protected by the lack of evidence, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) said, they must be living in a different world from the one that I am living in.
The reality is that the only people who will be prosecuted, unless this Government do something to end that process, will be the veterans. Even if they are not prosecuted and eventually found guilty, the persecution and the chasing of people who served their country ruins their lives and makes them worry for the rest of their lives.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
That point cannot be overstated, because many Northern Ireland veterans already suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health problems. I speak as a vice-president of the mental health charity Combat Stress. The very idea that there are people who are nowhere near a prosecution or potential prosecution but are now haunted by not only the trauma of their service but the possibility that they will be dragged to a court and exposed in some way, with their families saying, “Daddy, did you really do something wrong?”—it cannot be overstated how utterly brutal this is. It is a deliberate campaign by those who are trying to bring these prosecutions.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I agree with my hon. Friend: that is what is really hanging over us. If nothing is done and the existing Act is repealed, we are left with the single problem we started with: how do we protect veterans from the vexatious persecution that has been going on? I have lots of respect for many Government Members, particularly the Veterans Minister. He knows very well that that is their interest. I say to them simply that they cannot repeal the Act without replacing it with protection for the veterans who served their country.
I served in Northern Ireland. I did not ask to go to Northern Ireland. I went out with my regiment, the Scots Guards, and we served, I think, pretty well in Northern Ireland, but we did not want to be there—to be spat at by people in the United Kingdom and wonder, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) said, what was coming around the corner next. We put up with all that in the United Kingdom. It is a unique experience—it is not like going abroad to fight a war. Being on the streets of the United Kingdom, carrying a rifle and trying to protect those who are also under attack from those who would will their destruction is something very peculiar, yet my soldiers and many others acted with the most phenomenal restraint. Provocation was there all the time, but they acted with the utmost restraint. I know of no other country whose soldiers would have ever done that, no matter what their background was. I am immensely proud to have been one of them. We should stop demeaning each other about politics in this. This is about protection, and we should be talking about that.
I lost a very good friend in Northern Ireland. It is pretty awful, really, when I think back to what actually happened. Robert Nairac was kidnapped. He was tortured for a long time. We know not what happened to his body, although we may guess. He was executed after having escaped—that much we do know. No one from the IRA who committed that atrocity will ever, I suspect, be held to account in any court of law. That is the injustice of this process. His parents died never knowing where his body was, and his family today still do not know. Talk about injustice—that is injustice.
Alex Ballinger
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his service. I agree that that is a gross injustice. Would he support a new investigation into his friend’s death, if new evidence were to emerge, and does he appreciate that the existing legacy Act would prevent that, which is one of the reasons it needs to be repealed?
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I was attacking equivalence. The reality is that if we get rid of the legacy Act right now, we will go back to a one-sided process where veterans will be pursued but nobody in the IRA will come in front of the courts. Many of them have these ridiculous letters of comfort given to them, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) said. That equivalence is a distraction. I want to see those people prosecuted, but are we going to get witness statements from people who have run to and hidden in other countries? I doubt it very much.
Sir Julian Lewis
The only likelihood of ever finding out what happened to Captain Nairac’s body would be if somebody came forward to the truth and reconciliation body, which is part of the legacy Act, in return for immunity, and told people where it was. There will be no other way of finding out.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I was going to come to that point. My right hon. Friend guessed what was on my mind—not that it was that deep for him to get to it. That was the whole reason why, in the end, even though we had our doubts, we supported the legacy Act: because we thought that, on balance, there was at least the likelihood of getting to the bottom of many unexposed cases, and of the deaths and violence that took place, knowing full well that those from the IRA will never be prosecuted for it and we will never know otherwise.
The Government cannot proceed unless they are able categorically to clarify that legislation will protect veterans from the vexatious pursuit that has been so much in their minds and worries throughout this period. If we cannot give them that—if the Government cannot legislate for that—then there is no purpose in getting rid of the existing Act. That has to be the point. The Government may not like it, but they must face this reality: there cannot be pursuit of veterans if previous inquiries, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington said, have cleared them of whatever the charge was before. This repeat process that has been taking place, on absolutely no evidence whatever, is what has caused all the worry for our veterans.
If we care about our veterans, we should not rush to change the existing legislation until we can confirm protection for these brave men and women who served their country so loyally, on behalf of civilians in Northern Ireland. If we cannot find a solution, it is ours and the Government’s duty not to tamper with what exists, for fear of destroying the one protection we have given those veterans.
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I rise to represent my constituency, which is home to the 22nd SAS Regiment, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment and the 18th Signal Regiment. I am sure the House will wish to join me in recognising the professionalism and dedication of the men and women who make up those regiments, who are such an integral and highly respected part of the Herefordshire community. That is reflected by more than 1,000 of my constituents signing the petition, which is second only to the number of signatories in the neighbouring Hereford and South Herefordshire constituency.
Northern Ireland legacy matters are, of course, incredibly sensitive, as we have seen today. It is vital that legacy processes are based on a fair, balanced and comprehensive approach, and that those processes are implemented with the necessary rigour, independence and, crucially, consultation with all the affected communities, including armed forces veterans. For all the communities affected by the troubles, legacy processes should provide as much certainty and expediency as possible. It is hugely regrettable that the unworkable Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 did not deliver that, not least because of its failure to comply with the UK’s obligations under the ECHR. It is important to recognise that the result of that has been enormous uncertainty, stress and loss of trust felt across all communities affected by the troubles, and it is vital to now apply the necessary rigour to avoid further mistakes.
During the past months, I have had the privilege of meeting many serving and veteran members of the armed forces—including UK special forces and those who served in Northern Ireland during Operation Banner—to listen to their views and concerns about the Government’s proposals to repeal and replace the legacy Act. I have heard how strongly my constituents believe in accountability and the rule of law, and the pride that they have always taken in conducting themselves with the utmost professionalism. It has also come across loud and clear just how many have lost trust in the handling of legacy processes. My constituents have said:
“Veterans feel badly let down by successive governments; many are still caught up in legacy processes, facing additional years of uncertainty and stress after decades of the same…veterans have lost trust in attempts to achieve reconciliation; the anger, frustration and embitterment at their treatment will need to be addressed if they are to be persuaded to take part in future reviews and investigations.”
That is all deeply regrettable.
After I wrote to both the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Secretary of State for Defence to outline my constituents’ concerns several months ago, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland responded, commending the bravery of the Northern Ireland veterans who did so much to keep people safe during the troubles, recognising the extreme circumstances under which they were operating. He also stated that with the passage of time, the likelihood of further prosecutions is increasingly unlikely. He gave an assurance that
“there will be no rewriting of history”
and that he will engage fully with the veteran community as the Government move forward with their plans to repeal and replace the legacy Act. I welcome that commitment to engagement.
The Government have announced that they will bring forward primary legislation “when parliamentary time allows”, but for the communities left in limbo by the legacy Act and the subsequent legal challenges, that is a vague commitment with no clear timeframe, which does not reflect the anxiety and uncertainty currently felt. Will the Government therefore provide greater clarity about the timetable of plans and commit to bringing forward primary legislation in this Parliament?
Ending the uncertainty and finding a workable resolution to legacy issues is imperative. It is therefore critical that the Government get this right. Can the Secretary of State respond to the concerns that have been raised about the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery, especially in relation to independence, powers and accountability? Given the Secretary of State’s assurance that he will engage fully with communities, will he commit to visiting North Herefordshire to meet my constituents and hear their concerns directly?
I would like to end on this point: throughout my meetings with constituents and veterans over the past few months, they emphasised the meticulous planning, preparation and professionalism that goes into armed forces operations. Can the Secretary of State reassure my constituents that the same level of rigour will be applied by the Government as they move forward in repealing and replacing the legacy legislation?
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
It is very good to see you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. As a member of the shadow Cabinet, I am speaking with the permission of Mr Speaker and the Clerk, because this is a matter of the utmost importance to my constituents. On the petition map, Herefordshire is a dark brown colour, showing that the two Herefordshire constituencies have the highest proportion of constituents who have signed the petition—and mine has the highest of all.
That is because so many of my constituents—1,159—are veterans of special forces and other regiments, and I speak on their behalf. These are men—many of them now in their 70s—who have had their lives blighted. It is a nonsense to suggest somehow that there is political scaremongering here; these men have sat in front of me, and with all the astonishing bravery, vigour and fortitude they have shown, they have flinched in the face of the legal challenge, and the vexation and worry it has caused them, their families and their communities. We must recognise that.
I also speak on behalf of Anthony Daly, a great friend of mine who died at the age of 23 in the Hyde Park bombing, on the soil of England, because of the IRA. Let it never be forgotten that the IRA is not just any other terrorist organisation. It was the most professional terrorist organisation in the world at the time. It trained and supplied other organisations of a similar kind around the world. It was therefore astonishing for this country to send young men and some women into that cauldron to defend all the rights that we take for granted today. They were men who acted under orders and in a chain of command—on the Queen’s business—and who cannot now respond, in many of my constituents’ cases, to the terrible injustice that is being wrought at the moment, which is itself already proving, even among this group, dangerous and deleterious to morale.
There is something fundamentally dishonest about the Government’s position, which is that they have not bothered to explain the basis of the legal reasoning that is used. I invite the Secretary of State to clarify that basis in this Chamber today, and if he cannot, I want him to write to me so that we can share, in public, the basis of the legal reasoning.
Sections 46 and 47 were not controversial when they were passed. They were passed with the support of the then Opposition, who are now the Government. It is therefore absurd to hear colleagues from across the Chamber suggest that they somehow always disagreed with them, or that they have now suddenly discovered some Whips’ interest.
Will the Secretary of State give us all the answer to the following questions? Why did the Government abandon the appeal? How exactly is the legislation in sections 46 and 47 incompatible with the convention rights? Did the Government give thought to allowing that supposed incompatibility to continue, given that they are under no legal obligation to cure it? Why did they not simply allow the pattern of the normal course of law to proceed and let the Supreme Court make that decision? Above all, why did they not decide on their own solution before they decided to create all this uncertainty by abandoning the appeal?
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I commend the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for setting the scene on behalf of the Petitions Committee.
We have all spoken about this subject repeatedly, but let me be very clear that I will not tire of speaking up for our veterans about these entirely vexatious prosecutions. I declare an interest as somebody who served in the Ulster Defence Regiment for three years as a part-time soldier in an anti-terrorism role, and served for 11 and a half years as a member of the Royal Artillery—that was obviously a cold war role. The fact was that to be a soldier in Northern Ireland, whether in the Ulster Defence Regiment or any other regiment, was to be under threat.
I want to take up the comment of the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk about the yellow card. As 18, 19 or 20-year-olds, we read out our yellow card every night before we left. Not one of the soldiers I served alongside, or any I knew, ever disregarded that yellow card. The role that a soldier had to play was quite clear.
We all know why these cases exist. To say that they are seeking justice does not paint the whole picture. The cases are pressed by republicans in an attempt to whitewash the history into a Hollywood version that paints them as freedom fighters oppressed by an evil regime. Well, they were not. The blood of those who were murdered at chip shops, burned alive with a napalm-like substance when out for a meal in a restaurant or mowed down with machine guns when attending their church—the blood of these innocent victims cries out against all attempts to change that appearance from pure evil to justifiable. These atrocities and crimes can never, ever be justified. There is no Hollywood lens that could make the Omagh bombing—there will be a debate about that in the main Chamber shortly—seem like it was in pursuit of a noble cause. It was not, and it never could have been.
The reason why these soldiers were stationed in Northern Ireland was to deal with the very real and lethal threat from paramilitaries of all beliefs—loyalist and republican alike. It was under that threat that the soldiers operated. I was just saying this to one of the girls in the office last week. In March 1971, three off-duty Scottish soldiers were lured from a bar by an IRA operative and murdered along the road on the way to a party. They were not on duty; they were off duty, but the IRA saw them as targets.
When our British Army personnel were on duty, they were checking cars at road checkpoints to find razors hidden in car seats with the express purpose of injuring them. They were ambushed on the roads, shot at and killed or maimed. The circumstances in which they operated were not those of war as it had been known—it was guerrilla warfare, and these men were on constant high alert. Indeed, their mental health continues to pay the price today for that high state of alert.
The reason why I highlight that is twofold. First, the high state of alert in a situation that is highly charged and in which men know that their life is on the line at any second means that a split-second decision that they took 40 or 50 years ago may be difficult for them to remember and justify now. To expect these men to come to court to give an account on the detail of cases is simply untenable, especially as they were previously investigated and told that there was no case to answer, so you can understand, Ms Lewell, why we ask the question, “Why do it again?” Secondly, there is the harm from men trying to put themselves back in these positions. In terms of their mental stability, it is incredibly difficult and, indeed, can be damaging. To ask them to go back there is simply traumatising those who did nothing but follow an order.
Were we to be discussing cases in which soldiers or personnel went off on their own cognisance and carried out an attack, by all means hold them accountable and let them mount their defence, but that is not what we are questioning here. Today, we are asking 80-year-old men how they carried out the order 50 years ago, what they saw when they carried it out and why they did that. This is simply not fair or just.
The Army reviewed decisions taken at the time and brought people to justice for miscarriages of justice. The Government cannot come into a civil court 50 years later and retraumatise these men for doing what their officers required of them when there is no case to answer. That is why I believe these vexatious claims must stop. There can be no true justice from them when these men were acting under orders, and we cannot send this message to serving personnel today.
Sammy Wilson
Will my hon. Friend accept that people being dragged to court, sometimes for the second or third time, is not about justice or accountability, but about harassment and an attempt to find ways of rewriting history, and that is why this is so wrong?
Jim Shannon
Yes, that was pithy—well done. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is the rewriting of history and an injustice done to soldiers who served. There are many in this room who served; indeed, the Minister for Veterans and People is an honourable and gallant Member.
I will conclude with these words, because I am conscious that others want to speak and I am certainly not going to take any more than my five minutes. These men served in circumstances that I can well remember, because I served alongside them. Many in this Chamber may not be able to imagine what that all meant. They laid it on the line to protect us, and we have, I believe, a duty to protect them from the reimaging that Sinn Féin-IRA seek to carry out to justify their evil events. We can never believe that this was a fight for freedom. This was a fight against a faceless, brutal, murderous enemy that haunts service personnel to this day.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank the 170,000 people who signed the petition, particularly those from my Spelthorne constituency.
I served four tours in Northern Ireland and dedicated three and a half years of my life to trying to bring peace to that place. My first tour was in Belfast in 1992. It was a guinea a minute—a young Captain Jopp and a young Lieutenant Ben Wallace were on the same tour. The IRA at the time was fully aware of our rules of engagement —the so-called yellow card that has been referred to today. In fact, the IRA designed a whole weapons system around it. It was called the coffee jar bomb. It was a coffee jar, funnily enough—usually Nescafé, although other coffees are available. The IRA would take a small piece of scaffolding and put it in the coffee jar alongside a detonator, a small amount of Semtex and what was affectionately known as “shipyard confetti”. The coffee jar also held a switch from a fridge so that when the jar was thrown and broke on the ground, the bomb went off and the bits went everywhere. We knew that these bombs were incredibly lethal because, a year before, one had been thrown at a dog handler called Darren, who had been feeding his dog. He had watched as his left leg flew 20 metres away, his other leg a smouldering wreck. We knew they were very dangerous.
When we were training to deal with these bombs, we went to a cine range. We would be there with a sub-cal, looking at a movie screen that showed a street scene. The film would stop and we would see a threat. We were trained, when we went to Northern Ireland, to identify the presence of the abnormal or the absence of the normal in order to set the context. We would see a perceived threat, the threat would build up and we would be invited to fire the round. A little yellow dot would go on to the screen, and our instructor would say, “Congratulations—you have successfully carried out the rules of engagement”.
However, the coffee jar bomb presented a massive dilemma. Could we shoot someone simply for having a coffee jar in their hand or being in the process of throwing one? It was purely designed to put soldiers, like me and the 24,000 others who served there, under incredible pressure. I remember one moment with a real dilemma in the cine film. I said, “Can I fire now?” The instructor said, “This is a very tough moment, but it is a moment to remind yourself, Sir, that it is sometimes better to be tried by 12 men than carried by six.”
Pretty chilling—particularly when two of our guardsmen on that tour subsequently had to make a judgment in a shooting situation. One of them believed they had seen a coffee jar in a plastic bag. It turns out that they did not get tried by 12 men; they were tried by one. They were convicted and given life imprisonment. That is the point: all the cases that we have come here to talk about went through a rigorous judicial process at the time. It is horrific double jeopardy, and in some cases treble jeopardy, to put our veterans through that process again.
The Veterans Minister knows this well, but there are three components to fighting power: the moral, the physical and the conceptual. It is a very well-known model; Napoleon said,
“the moral is to the physical as three is to one.”
We undermine the moral component of fighting power at our peril. I was recently appalled to see a GIF that a veteran sent me on my phone. It was a picture of the Prime Minister very recently addressing a number of troops. The subtitle underneath said: “We want you to go to Ukraine to do things which we are going to prosecute you for in 30 years’ time.”
We undermine the moral component at our peril.
To understand the context in which these mendacious and vexatious prosecutions will be pursued, I remind the Secretary of State of the moment when Stormont was recalled because someone had put a vase of flowers in the lobby, and the whole Assembly had to be recalled to debate the colour of the flowers. Why? Because after the Good Friday agreement, everything becomes a proxy answer to the question: who won? The Good Friday agreement was, by necessity, a compromise—it was a peace agreement. However, ever since, everyone has been trying to relitigate the question of who won. It is essential that we do not allow our veterans and their prosecution to become pawns in that proxy game.
I will leave it at that. I think the Veterans Minister and the Secretary of State are having a lively debate behind the scenes, but I invite the Secretary of State to listen very carefully to the Veterans Minister, who has the ear of veterans. I think I know where the Veterans Minister is coming from, and I expect the Government to do the right thing.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
I thank the Petitions Committee for allowing this debate, as well as the 176,000 petitioners.
The right hon. Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) finished with a poem. Thinking about today’s debate and how to set the scene for other hon. Members in this place, I thought I would start with a poem:
“As poppy petals gently fall,
Remember us who gave our all,
Not in the mud of foreign lands,
Not buried in the desert sands.
In Ulster field and farm and town,
Fermanagh’s lanes and drumlin’d Down,
We died that violent death should cease,
And Ulstermen should live in peace.
We did not serve because we hate,
Nor bitterness our hearts dictate,
But we were they who must aspire,
To quench the flame of terror’s fire.
As buglers sound and pipers play
The proud Battalions march away.
Now may the weary violence cease,
And let our country live in peace.”
That poem will be remembered by many sitting behind me, because it is “The UDR Soldier”, by Major John Potter. However, it could reflect all those who served in Northern Ireland, no matter what cap badge they wore, as has been mentioned by many in this debate.
As we speak of those brave servicemen from across this United Kingdom who came to Northern Ireland to protect democracy and our citizens—the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) spoke of the honour and the thanks we owe to them—we must never forget that special corps of veterans who served in Northern Ireland: namely, those members of the Ulster Defence Regiment, the home battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment, and the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Some servicemen who proudly served did not return home, but many others returned to their barracks and homes across the country after their tour of duty. But members of the UDR, and the men and women of the RUC and home battalions, went home every night and day to their own homes and workplaces. As hon. Members have rightly said, they never knew who might be around the corner or what the drive-by backfire of a car might have meant. So many of those proud servicemen fell victim to workmates who passed along information about their service and the duty they had carried out.
When it comes to that defence and protection—regardless of the Government in power, whether red, blue or any other colour; and the point scoring has been a disservice to the veterans who are listening and to all who served—there is now a duty to get this right, and to ensure that those who served are not dragged through the courts.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
On that point, would the hon. Gentleman agree that what we must avoid at all costs is equating those who went out meticulously planning—over days, weeks or even months—to take innocent life with the split-second decisions, as he alluded to, made by the forces of law and order, which may have resulted in death? We must avoid that equation across society at all costs in the future.
Robin Swann
I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point, because there can be no equivalence between someone who went out with murder and mayhem in mind and those who put on a uniform to stand in front of society, showing that they were there to defend law and order and protect, not take, innocent life.
The concern for those who served in Northern Ireland and across the UK, as has been mentioned, is that the knock at the door, the entry into the yard or the car coming up the lane in the past, which may have meant someone was coming to end their lives, now has been replaced by the fear that someone is coming to summon them to court because of an action they may or may not have done 50 years ago. I think that was the point the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was making.
I am conscious of time and could say so much more but, in conclusion, much has been said about what can be done to this piece of legislation and how it can be replaced. I am sure that the Secretary of State, in his closing remarks as in many other debates, will make much of the contribution of the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery. The lawfare against that body has already commenced. Already, today, the chief commissioner to the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission is on the front page of one of the Irish newspapers denigrating, and calling into question the positions of, Sir Declan Morgan, the chief commissioner of ICRIR and Peter Sheridan, its commissioner for investigations. There is already a movement to have those commissioners dismissed to undermine ICRIR. In the past, I have heard the Secretary of State say that ICRIR will be the answer and the solution to all legacy problems in Northern Ireland. Will he make a commitment today that, no matter what solution comes forward from the Government, he will not let the lawfare from republicanism and those organisations, displace what should be legally and rightfully done to support our veterans? I leave the Secretary of State with that line of Major John Potter’s poem:
“Remember us who gave our all,”
and do not see them unnecessarily prosecuted.
Sarah Pochin (Runcorn and Helsby) (Reform)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell, an honour to speak on this important and emotive issue, and an honour to speak to this petition, which means so much to me and my constituents.
The treatment of our brave Northern Ireland veterans by this Government, and by previous Governments, is a national disgrace. I speak from the heart, as someone whose father served in Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles. He was prepared to die to protect every single one of us in this Chamber, either directly or indirectly. We should not be having this debate about honour and patriotism being rewarded with betrayal by our Government. The IRA wants to rewrite history. It is shameful that the British Government are allowing hundreds of our special forces veterans to be investigated over incidents that occurred decades ago to appease the Irish Government.
Sarah Pochin
Not yet. Those courageous men should be enjoying their hard-earned retirement, not facing prosecution for defending the British people from IRA terrorists. Those same British people value these soldiers, and are outraged at the unfair and unjust action of this Government. Why would a British Government of any political leaning include this commitment in their manifesto? Those brave soldiers were doing nothing more than carrying out orders from the Government of the day, as they are trained to do, without fear or question. These soldiers are fiercely loyal to their regiment, their Government and their monarch. Many were awarded bravery medals signed off by our late monarch Queen Elizabeth II, yet this Government are looking to renege on that.
These soldiers faced extreme danger on our behalf. They were fearless on our behalf. They would have sacrificed their lives for us, and hundreds did. Many of the so-called IRA victims killed were murderers and terrorists. How on earth can anyone stand up to defend those people over our special forces? Yet, this Government reward our bravest service personnel by bringing these prosecutions, by threatening legal action, by putting them through the stress of a trial—
Sarah Pochin
Not yet. The Government reward them by ruining their lives when they deserve nothing but our respect, support and gratitude. These prosecutions should not be allowed to happen. Why would we not defend those who defended us—those who put their lives on the line for us? I will defend them, and my party will stand up for them. I will not stand by and remain silent. I will speak for them. I am humbled by what they did for us, and I know that the British people feel the same.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I share the dismay shown by the hon. and gallant Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Jones) and others, when decrying the fact that the legacy legislation gave—I use her own words—“immunity to terrorists”. What nobody has yet spelled out is why it gave immunity to terrorists. There is a simple answer to that: it could not give immunity to our armed forces without giving immunity to terrorists as well.
Unless hon. and right hon. Members can come up with some brand new alternative—one that defeated the scrutiny and the inventiveness of successive Governments in trying to grapple with that problem—the question they have to ask themselves is, if the price of giving immunity to our veterans is that we have to give theoretical immunity to terrorists, most of whom have had practical immunity from prosecution for many years, and hardly any of whom are ever likely to be prosecuted, is that price worth paying? We cannot have it both ways.
Something that was rightly said earlier in the debate is that people should be trying to work across party lines to come to a solution on this, and I think that I can honestly claim to have been trying to do that for rather a long time. In 2017, the Defence Committee, which I was then chairing, published a report entitled “Investigations into Fatalities in Northern Ireland involving British Military Personnel”—HC 1064, if anyone is interested. The purpose of that report was to examine in great detail what the legal options were to enable the Government of the day to protect our veterans.
That report was published in April 2017 but, prior to that, on 7 March, we had a hearing—of which I have made the Secretary of State and the Veterans Minister aware—in which no fewer than four top professors of law took part, with a variety of views, preferences and personal attitudes towards what had happened in Northern Ireland and so forth. We were not asking them whether they approved of amnesties; we were asking them what was and was not legally possible. What they told us was this, and I am quite disappointed that no one has uttered these words, as far as I can tell, in the entire debate: it is possible to bring in a statute of limitation, and the requirement by law that something being investigated need not lead to somebody being prosecuted. Professor Philippe Sands, someone not unknown to the Government, stated in that hearing:
“The obligation to investigate is not an obligation to prosecute. It is not an obligation to take any particular steps. It is simply an obligation to find out the facts of what has happened, and ascertain.”
What was made clear in that discussion with the four professors of law was that if a Government were not to find themselves guilty of behaving with impunity, a statute of limitation had to apply to everyone. That is where people get upset, because the people who support our armed forces do not want it to apply to the terrorists, and the people from the republican movement do not want it to apply to our armed forces. But the fact is that if we are to protect anyone from prosecution in these circumstances, we have to protect everyone. Someone who just focuses on the group of which they disapprove being protected is ducking the hard choice that we have to face.
Someone mentioned trying to follow the model of Nelson Mandela. That is a very good point, and it is precisely what the legislation was intended to do. We satisfied ourselves that a truth recovery process, coupled with a statute of limitation—in other words, immunity—for people who gave their evidence to the truth recovery process, similar to what Mandela did in South Africa, was a way in which this problem could be laid to rest. When the Government say that they plan to give our soldiers every support, it sounds to me that they accept the fact that cases are going to be brought, and they are going to try and support the soldiers. But the punishment is the process. It is true that probably hardly anyone will end up going through the process to the end.
Let me insert something else that I referred to in an earlier intervention: people on both sides of the debate say we must not equate this and that, and I certainly do not equate soldiers with terrorists morally, but in applying the law, the law has to be equal for everybody. In fact, that has already been recognised in the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998, which limits the time that anybody can serve in jail, even for the most heinous murders, to two years. That is the only time someone can serve in jail. There may be people who have had relatives murdered who will derive great satisfaction from the fact that, after all this time, the murderer will go to jail for such a short period. But the reality is that the punishment does not fit the crime, and at first some of us thought that this was just a free pass for the IRA. I will not name the Minister concerned, but I and someone from the Labour Benches with a strong service background, who is now a Minister, went to meet the Sinn Féin MPs in Parliament—because they do have a presence here, even though they do not come to the Chamber. They said that they believed that the two-year limit applied to the soldiers as well as to their own allies. We looked into it and checked it with Ministers, and that was found to be correct. The fact is that we are already compromising. We are already treating both groups the same.
David Smith (North Northumberland) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Member give way?
David Smith
I have to declare, having set up another peacemaking programme in Northern Ireland myself and done a master’s degree in reconciliation studies, that the legacy Act was very much not a South African-style truth and reconciliation commission. The right hon. Member is talking about the equating of terrorists on one hand and our armed forces on the other; I simply ask, what would he say to victims on how they could pursue justice under the legacy Act as was?
Sir Julian Lewis
When we are talking about victims of terrorists, I would ask, first of all, how likely is it that terrorists who have not been prosecuted all these years are going to be prosecuted in the future? Secondly, how do people think the victims felt in South Africa when a line was drawn for the sake of enabling the society to move forward?
What the legacy Act did was the least worst option. As we have heard, the reality is that there is no obligation to act on the finding of incompatibility with the ECHR. The Joint Committee on Human Rights published a report entitled “Proposal for a Draft Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 (Remedial) Order 2024”, which states in paragraph 20:
“It is a discretionary remedy, meaning the courts do not have to issue such a declaration”—
of incompatibility with the ECHR—
“when they find a provision to be incompatible with Convention rights. A declaration of incompatibility has no legal effect and does not affect the ongoing validity of the incompatible legislation. It is merely a tool by which the courts can draw attention to an incompatibility; it is then for the Government and Parliament to decide what action, if any, to take.”
Indeed, section 4 of the Human Rights Act 1998 states that a declaration of incompatibility
“does not affect the validity, continuing operation or enforcement of the provision in respect of which it is given; and…is not binding on the parties to the proceedings in which it is made.”
I accept that there are other legal problems, but the impression that I get from the Secretary of State, whom I have known for many years and much admire, is that he has set his face against this route of a statute of limitation, coupled with a truth recovery process, and is not really listening. That is why we are not fighting to keep in place the one thing that could give protection to our Northern Ireland military veterans.
Several hon. Members rose—
Emma Lewell (in the Chair)
If the next speaker keeps their contribution to four to five minutes, we might be able to get in two more Back Benchers before I call the Front Benchers for their contributions. I call Jim Allister.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
Thank you, Ms Lewell. I note the selective stricture following a speech that exceeded twice the limit that was allegedly set, but I will do my best.
May I begin, as a Member from a Northern Ireland constituency, by placing on record the heartfelt thanks of the people of Northern Ireland for the service of our military within Northern Ireland during our darkest days—those who stood between us and the horrendous terrorist threat that we faced? I associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann) and include the gallant local security services of the UDR and the RIR in that. All of us in this House who daily exercise freedoms need to be mindful that when those freedoms were under the most horrendous terrorist attack, it was our security forces who stood between us and their destruction. For the many who paid the ultimate sacrifice, we want to remember their service and sacrifice today.
The route to the prosecution of our security services is now through the inquest process. It is the inquest process that is poisoning the well of justice in Northern Ireland. Remember this: an inquest, as has been said, is supposed to be about who died, where they died and how they died. Our Government have allowed inquests in Northern Ireland to become unfettered in their overreach, as illustrated most dramatically in the Clonoe inquest, where every outcome was explored to the point where the judge presiding over that inquest reached wholly prejudicial findings, which then resulted in him saying, “I am now referring this to the PPS.”
Let us remember this: inquests operate on the balance of probabilities. That is how we reach a verdict in an inquest, whereas in a criminal prosecution we reach a verdict by proving beyond all reasonable doubt. Yet four SAS soldiers, according to the presiding judge, were meant to step forward and say to nine approaching fully armed IRA men, with a huge machine gun on the back of their lorry, “Hands up, please surrender”. According to the coroner, that is what they were supposed to do, even though those IRA men had just shot up a police station, returned celebrating their actions by firing over the house of a deceased terrorist who had been one of their own, and then arrived at a car park. In the most outrageous overreach, the coroner said that they were ambushed by the SAS, and the soldiers should have said “Hands up, please surrender”, with no regard to the fact that when facing nine fully armed terrorists, a split-second decision has to be made.
In England, that could not have happened, because under the inquest rules there, when a coroner reaches the view that there may have been some unlawful activity, he must stop the inquest and refer the matter to the prosecution service. That is the right way to go, because it is for the PPS, not the coroner, to look at the matter and decide the approach. The Secretary of State needs to bring into effect in Northern Ireland the same rules that govern inquests in England, so that if there is an allegation of illegality—or it occurs to the coroner there might be—he stops the inquests and sends it to the PPS, rather than giving an outlandish ruling that creates the public perception that there is huge criminality. That is the lawful and proper way to go.
I must say I regret the fact that when I wrote to the Secretary of State pointing that out a few weeks ago, I got a limp response that really it is a matter for the Justice Department in Northern Ireland. No—this Government are said to be tackling legacy issues, and if they are to do so, they need to tackle inquests and cut off the root that is now producing the potential prosecution of some of the bravest of our citizens.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank the more than 175,000 people who signed this e-petition, of whom 403 are my Huntingdon constituents. I would like to start by paying particular tribute to the military personnel who served in Northern Ireland on Operation Banner between August 1969 and July 2007 in what was the longest continuous operational deployment of our armed forces, and in which 722 service people lost their lives as a result of terrorist action, and 1,441 in total.
Over the last decade, we have seen myriad bodies established to investigate injuries and deaths during the troubles. In this time, many have raised concerns about the reliability and credibility of evidence and witness statements—some from over 50 years ago—and reopened some investigations that had long since concluded and had a line drawn beneath them. I am a veteran myself of Iraq and Afghanistan. It is 15 years since I served in Afghanistan, and I would hate to think that someone could now quiz me on where I was stood on a particular day, who I was stood next to, and which direction I was facing, and for those answers to perhaps dictate my freedom, and how my family and those around me would be impacted. To ask people to remember what they were doing over 50 years ago is absolutely ludicrous.
This Government have said that the last Government’s legislation was flawed, that it failed, and that they will amend it in a way that
“honours our duty towards…veterans”.—[Official Report, 30 June 2025; Vol. 770, c. 10.]
Amid so much anxiety being felt by veterans of Northern Ireland and their families, I would like to hear clarity from the Secretary of State in his wind-up on how the Government will honour their duty towards veterans in their actions and exactly what they plan to do on taking the IRA to task on this. The words from Back Benchers on the Government side have very much indicated that the aim of this legislation is to prosecute the IRA going forward, and I would like to hear from the Secretary of State what his plans are to make that process occur.
Although I am a veteran myself, I never served on Operation Banner. My own service overlapped with the tail end of our operations in Northern Ireland, but the lessons learned and the skills won across nearly four decades characterised so much of my training. Those were skills that we applied to counter-insurgency operations in Iraq: fives and 20s, rummages, public order et al. Without such hard-won knowledge, my own experience on operations might have been very difficult, and my generation of soldiers, and now veterans, owe a debt of gratitude to those who served on Operation Banner.
Growing up in the ’80s, the sight on the news of British soldiers patrolling in a place that looks so familiar, but felt so distant, was a stalwart—a visual cue for a conflict I did not then understand. It was a time when the word “terrorist” simply meant the IRA and only the IRA. In the wake of Iraq and then Afghanistan, it is difficult to fully comprehend how dangerous the operations in Northern Ireland truly were. We lost 178 service personnel over a decade on Operation Telic, including the invasion of Iraq and subsequent warfighting operations. We lost 170 service personnel on Operation Banner in 1972 alone.
We must stand behind those who have served this nation and fought against terrorism. The Government must stand behind our armed forces post service to ensure protection, safety and support for all veterans. It is therefore a grave concern that the Government did not support the legacy and reconciliation Act, which would have shut down 38 legacy inquests.
If the Government go the way that many feel they will, they may get their legacy legislation catastrophically wrong. We could see those cases and more reopen with, to quote my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis),
“at least 50 innocent retired veterans will be exposed to legal persecution for crimes they did not commit.”—[Official Report, 9 July 2025; Vol. 770, c. 944.]
We simply cannot let that happen. Constituents who served in Northern Ireland have contacted me to express their dismay at what they feel is this Government’s attitude towards them and those they served alongside.
Veterans in my constituency and the country at large are at a loss to think that historical, often baseless, cases might be opened, reopened and vexatiously pursued. That is causing unfathomable worries for many, some now at the end of their days. Where are the reassurances that the Government’s future legislation will protect rather than persecute veterans? Not only will that have an impact on veterans, but I am concerned about the impact on future retention and recruitment of our armed forces if people feel the orders they give, or their actions, will be subject to public investigation in perpetuity. Members from both sides of the Chamber who have served may well be brought within the scope of that.
I urge the Government to bring clarity to the minds of those who served in Operation Banner. I urge the Government not to betray those who fought for this country, and to commend, rather than condemn, their courageous restraint. I urge them to go about this matter in the right way and stand with our veterans, rather than playing into the hands of those who wish to rewrite history, settle scores and drag our veterans through the mire.
Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank right hon. and hon. Members for their contribution to this important debate, and the 175,000 petitioners who have brought this issue into the public domain.
I join others in paying tribute to our extraordinary armed forces personnel who have fought and defended our freedoms. I think today about my grandfather. Although he was too early to serve in Northern Ireland, he knew precisely what was meant by fighting against terrorism: he was placed in Mandatory Palestine shortly after the second world war, dodging the bombs and bullets of the Lehi and the Haganah and narrowly avoiding being blown up in the King David hotel.
I open with a statement that should be entirely self-evident: families bereaved by the troubles deserve clear, credible answers and access to justice. This is not about ideology or party politics; it is about the foundational principles of decency, dignity and the right to truth, something that many victims’ families in Northern Ireland and beyond have waited decades for.
The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 sadly fell short of that aim and those principles. By shutting down investigations and offering conditional immunity, it extinguished the remaining legal pathways for families across Northern Ireland’s political spectrum. It told victims that time had run out on reconciliation, a key tenet of which is legal accountability. Tellingly, every major Northern Ireland political party, as well as victims’ groups and others, opposed the legislation—albeit, at times, for vastly different reasons.
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to place on record my thanks to the veterans and servicepeople in my Taunton and Wellington constituency, including 40 Commando, and to the 412 people who signed the petition. I am a man who is willing to believe that we should approach this issue on a cross-party basis and try to seek a solution that protects our veterans across party lines. Is it not the challenge for the Government to convince veterans that their interests will be looked after before announcing the repeal of the legacy Act?
Dr Pinkerton
My hon. Friend puts his finger on the issue of trust, and the lack of trust in multiple constituencies that have an interest in this question, which applies to communities in Northern Ireland as much as it does to veterans. I hope that what this Government do in pursuing a repeal and replace approach will be, at the very least, an attempt to try to rebuild trust in this process.
Despite the opposition, the legacy Act passed, leaving families in limbo, irrespective of their religious or cultural identity. Although the Liberal Democrats recognise the legal necessity to repeal and replace the Act, I have serious doubt about the Government’s commitment to meaningful consultation with those who they should be listening to most closely. On visits to Northern Ireland with the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, I have spoken to survivors and families from across Northern Ireland communities. Victims made it clear to me that they do not seek prosecutions; what they want is honest, truthful information about how and why their loved ones died.
If the Government are serious about making progress, they must act swiftly to restore faith in the investigatory process, which has been diminished by the creation of the ICRIR as a product of the legacy Act. The Liberal Democrats support the creation of a new independent, ECHR-compliant information retrieval body, to be established in consultation with victims and survivors. That would include meaningful participation from next of kin, as proposed by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. Such a body should have statutory powers to compel disclosure, backed by robust oversight. Victims must have access to records, with exemptions limited to tightly defined national security grounds.
If such a body worked properly, it could deliver long-awaited answers, support societal reconciliation and offer some reassurance to British veterans, by establishing the truth without the perceived necessity to pursue a prosecutorial pathway. However, that will only be possible with genuine cross-border co-operation between the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the UK Government, the Northern Ireland Executive and, importantly, the Irish Government, who have been remarkably reluctant to participate in such processes up to now. All stakeholders must contribute to a clear and credible record of the past.
Let me now directly address the concerns about and from British armed forces veterans. If the rule of law is to mean anything in this country, its application must be fair and equal for everyone across all parts of the United Kingdom. The UK armed forces proudly operate within the law, and that culture is instilled from day one of training for officers and soldiers alike. We do no honour to their service by weakening or suspending the legal standards under which they serve. Supporting our forces means applying the law fairly, not shielding wrongdoing or applying unequal scrutiny.
Many paramilitary actions were never formally recorded and now depend on memory. By contrast, British forces left extensive records, making them more visible and sometimes more vulnerable to investigation. That imbalance has created the perception of unfairness and injustice. Between 1998 and 2022, six members of the UK armed forces were charged with troubles-related offences out of more than 250,000 personnel who served during Operation Banner. That is 0.003% of the serving population.
Stuart Anderson
It is not just about the final prosecution, but about what people have had to go through over all these years. Will the hon. Member say how many people have actually had the knock at the door, or the call, or had to give evidence? That is the issue that is really hurting people?
Emma Lewell (in the Chair)
I call Al Pinkerton, who I assume is coming to the end of his contribution.
Dr Pinkerton
I was not, but I will endeavour to do so, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, because he puts his finger on the point that it is not just about the numbers—I had been going to make that point myself—but the actual experience of those veterans.
In conclusion, I absolutely recognise the deep anxiety felt by many veterans. That concern—that fear—must not and should not be diminished or dismissed; but nor should it be unjustifiably stoked for political ends. If the Government are serious about restoring confidence, they must listen to victims, veterans and legal experts.
In the last few days before the Government announce what I think will be new legislation, may I put a couple of questions to the Secretary of State? First, what steps is he taking to ensure that any new legacy framework is compliant with the ECHR? Secondly, following this turbulent hiatus, how will he ensure that our armed forces veterans are protected from the most vexatious of legal actions, and that the investigation does not become the punishment?
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell, as we debate this critical petition, which has over 176,000 signatures, some 6,000 of which were added today. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont), who introduced the debate so ably. It is a privilege to have in the Public Gallery some 30 veterans who served their country bravely in Northern Ireland, including five from the Royal Hospital Chelsea. For obvious reasons, these veterans have a very strong interest in our proceedings today. I say to them, and to all those who served alongside them, “Thank you for your service.”
For context, some 300,000 British soldiers served in what became known as Operation Banner, the British Army’s mission to uphold the rule of law in Northern Ireland. Of those, well over 700 were murdered, and thousands more suffered life-changing injuries, at the hands of both republican and so-called loyalist terrorists. If we include the UDR and the RUC GC, as the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), the leader of the DUP, rightly said, the total comes to more than 1,400 dead.
The previous Conservative Government introduced the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 to try to assist the community in Northern Ireland to move on from the difficult history of the troubles and to provide protection for many of those veterans from an endless cycle of investigation and reinvestigation, often inspired by Sinn Féin. The Labour party’s election manifesto stated their intention to repeal that Act in favour of new legislation, although no such legislation has been forthcoming, even in draft form. Labour has even sought to claim that the legacy Act somehow protected alleged IRA terrorists from prosecution, when it was the Blair Government that famously handed hundreds of such men letters of comfort so that they could not be prosecuted anyway—and, even if they were, they would only get a maximum of two years, even for murder, as brilliantly pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis).
Pending new legislation, the Government have produced a so-called remedial order under the auspices of the Human Rights Act 1998. By this method, they seek to remove some provisions of the legacy Act that, they state, have been found in the lower courts to be incompatible with the 1998 Act—even though the incoming Government could have appealed to the UK Supreme Court but, seemingly deliberately, did not.
The net effect of that remedial order is twofold. First, it would allow the conveyor belt of coronial inquests in Northern Ireland to resume, a number of which have led to verdicts against the soldiers—at Clonoe, for instance—
Mr Francois
No.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) brilliantly highlighted Clonoe in his very moving speech. The remedial order would also remove the clauses in the legacy Act that currently prevent Gerry Adams and several hundred of his associates from attempting to sue the British Government, and thus the taxpayer, for compensation.
At Prime Minister’s questions on 15 January, the Prime Minister faithfully made this promise:
“We are working on a draft remedial order and replacement legislation, and we will look at every conceivable way to prevent these types of cases from claiming damages—it is important that I say that on the record.—[Official Report, 15 January 2025; Vol. 760, c. 324.]
Nevertheless, the remedial order, pushed through the Joint Committee on Human Rights barely a month later with Labour and, I am sad to say, Liberal votes, remained unchanged, and still does.
These proposals have evoked considerable concern, not least from the Royal British Legion, which stated in its briefing note:
“The Royal British Legion calls for the Government to urgently provide clarity and their intent regarding the process of legacy prosecution. We believe that the anxiety and uncertainty created by the current situation is unfair and is having a substantial negative impact on veterans and their families.”
I cannot speak for the Royal British Legion—but, having met the organisation recently, were the Government to proceed with this ill-advised course so obviously injurious to veterans, I cannot foresee the legion standing idly by. Moreover, the three Veterans Commissioners for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, who are neither ill-informed nor naive, recently issued a powerful joint statement that
“we stand united in our firm support of the motion to be debated in Westminster on 14 July…we are deeply concerned by the prospect of retrospective legal action being taken against veterans who were carrying out their lawful duties, often under immense pressure and threat.”
Incidentally, the Government have been dragging their feet for months on their absolute promise to create an English Veterans Commissioner, and we now know why. Indeed, we now understand that the British Government and their counterparts in the Irish Republic have been negotiating some form of sordid backstairs deal, part of which, we fear, will lead to further attempted prosecutions of veterans while assisting Gerry Adams in return.
This form of Government-sanctioned lawfare is self-evidently a case of two-tier justice at its worst, and that is why we on the Opposition Benches are utterly against it. Will the Secretary of State therefore provide absolute clarity on whether the Government still intend to proceed with a remedial order, which would likely result in a high-stakes vote this autumn, or whether they now intend to go straight to primary legislation instead? Our veterans, who unlike the provisionals never received letters of comfort from the Blair Government, and many of whom now effectively have a sword of Damocles hanging over them yet again, deserve a straight answer from the Secretary of State this afternoon.
In addition to the powerful moral argument against this misguided policy, as made by many of my hon. Friends and others today, there is also its potential adverse effect on recruitment and retention.
Emma Lewell (in the Chair)
Order. The shadow Minister has made it clear that he is not going to give way.
Mr Francois
Who would wish to serve a Government who may ask them to risk their life fighting for the state, only to be prosecuted in a courtroom half a century later? As General Lord Dannatt, a highly respected former Chief of the General Staff, put it so well:
“Why would any sensible young person think of putting on the Queen’s uniform if they thought they could be tapped on the shoulder years after an operation and questioned over false allegations?”
The Secretary of State will already be aware from his colleagues in the MOD, some of whom have a distinguished special forces background, that this process is having an adverse effect on morale in the special forces community, and in the Army more widely. It would be an act of sheer folly, and aid to our enemies, to continue with this act of military self-harm so that, put bluntly, even fewer people will join the Army and even more will leave. This is therefore not just morally but operationally mad, and a gift to our adversaries to boot.
Alex Ballinger
The right hon. Member talks about recruitment. Does he recognise that 14 years of Conservative government wrecked our armed forces, and that what the Labour Government are doing to invest in our armed forces and in their housing has led to an increase in recruitment, because new people recognise how important that is?
Mr Francois
I will answer the hon. Gentleman on recruitment. If it had not been for the brave men sitting in the Public Gallery, there would be no Good Friday agreement. Thank God they joined up and had the courage to serve.
I say to the Secretary of State, in all candour, that what he is doing is wrong. Many of the soldiers who served bravely in Northern Ireland were recruited from so-called red wall seats, from Blackburn to Bury and from Bolton to Burnley, and they served in proud regiments in Northern Ireland to uphold the rule of law. Surely the Secretary of State will not try to dragoon Labour MPs through the Division Lobby to throw veterans to the wolves while doing Gerry Adams a favour. The events of the past fortnight show that Labour Back Benchers can no longer be taken for granted—and surely not on this. How could they possibly go back to their constituencies and look local veterans and their descendants in the eye after voting for such a pernicious proposal?
Perhaps I can conclude with a poem. It is by Rudyard Kipling, and is called “Tommy”, about the ordinary British soldier and the ingratitude of his country after he had fought for it in war. Perhaps the Secretary of State will recognise the final stanza:
“For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool—you bet that Tommy sees!”
Secretary of State, these brave men fought against the IRA, one of the most ruthless and vicious terrorist organisations the world has ever seen. They did their duty to their country. They defended us. Do not aid and abet their former mortal enemy. Let these brave men live out their lives in peace.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I am grateful to the organisers of the petition, to the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for his opening remarks, and to all Members who have spoken. In the very short time I have, I will try to answer as many points as possible. I want to say at the outset that I recognise the very real fears that many veterans have, especially those who have been called to give evidence a number of times. I have heard that in my meetings with veterans, and the Government take those concerns very seriously.
A number of things are clear from the debate. The first—I join the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), in this—is that we are united in our appreciation of the extraordinary service of our brave armed forces, police, security services and others, who served with distinction in the most difficult circumstances, described chillingly by the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp), to keep the people of Northern Ireland safe during the troubles. We will forever be in their debt, and in the debt of all the veterans in the Public Gallery and the Members in the Chamber who have served in our armed forces.
We all agree that there can be no rewriting of history. I agree with the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) that there is no equivalence between soldiers and terrorists. I say to him, however, that the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains—he mentioned Robert Nairac—was created not by the legacy Act, but by a treaty reached between the United Kingdom and the Irish Government in 1999. It has recovered the remains of a number of those taken, murdered and buried by the IRA, but sadly not yet the remains of Robert Nairac. I also say this: we cannot have any more false promises or undeliverable pledges—pledges that our courts have found to be unlawful. That is why we will fix the mess we inherited from the previous Government, whatever their intentions were, and we will protect our veterans as we do so.
On inquests, I understand why the Clonoe inquest has caused such consternation and, frankly, incredulity. It was an operation in which an armed IRA gang who had just tried to kill members of the RUC were confronted by British soldiers. The Government are clear that the findings did not reflect the context in which the incident took place, and that is why we have the backs of the veterans involved, by seeking a judicial review to try to protect them. The MOD is also funding the veterans to bring their own JR.
Not all Northern Ireland inquests end like that, however. Other inquests have found that the use of lethal force by our military was justified, including two inquest verdicts delivered last year. The truth is that our legal system is independent. Why is it independent? Because we all believe in the rule of law. If I heard the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk correctly, he talked about politically motivated charges. I presume he is talking about criminal charges. I point out in all gentleness that if he is claiming that there are politically motivated charges, he is saying that the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland is politically motivated. I utterly reject that, and I hope all Members will too.
Jesse Norman
The Secretary of State described the situation in law as illegal, but he never pressed the question of the appeal to the Supreme Court, which would have decided the question of whether it was in fact illegal. Was that decision taken on the basis of law, and if so, what were the grounds for it?
Hilary Benn
I did not say it was illegal; I said it was unlawful. I shall come directly to the right hon. Gentleman’s point. Look at the facts: of the 250,000 veterans who served so bravely in Operation Banner, as we heard, the number who have been prosecuted for offences has been very small. The Centre for Military Justice records that only one soldier has been convicted since the Good Friday agreement. The House might want to reflect on that, because for almost all of those 27 years, immunity was not on the statute book—the legacy Act was not passed. [Interruption.]
Hilary Benn
If the right hon. Gentleman will bear with me, we have also heard it said that terrorists are not being prosecuted and have somehow been given immunity. I want to challenge that, both because the only thing that gave terrorists immunity was the legacy Act, and because during the troubles an estimated 25,000 to 35,000 republicans and loyalists were tried and convicted, many of them serving sentences for murder and bombings. Indeed, there have been five convictions for terrorist-related offences connected to the troubles since 2012.
The so-called “on-the-run” letters had no legal force and did not give anyone any immunity. On interim custody orders, I made it clear in a written answer a couple of weeks ago that we will bring forward legislation to deal with that. By the way, I say to the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford that the remedial order does not bring back inquests—he was incorrect when he suggested that.
The fact that the legacy Act enabled terrorists to be given immunity was, as we have heard, one of the principal reasons why so many people in Northern Ireland were strongly opposed to it. We need to have in mind the people of Northern Ireland when we discuss these matters. Across all the political parties, among many victims and survivors—and I have met many of them myself—and Northern Ireland veteran groups, some of which I met last year, there is not just one view on this.
I know that there are some—and we have heard the argument in this debate—who say there should be absolute immunity for anyone who served in Operation Banner. I would simply say to them that, as a country, we either believe in the rule of law—[Interruption.] Well, that there should be no prosecutions. We either believe in the rule of law, or we do not. That was a point forcefully made by my hon. Friends the Members for North East Derbyshire (Louise Jones) and for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger).
As the former Conservative Defence Secretary Ben Wallace put it,
“the British Army is not above the law, and nor should it be. That is the difference between us and the terrorist.”—[Official Report, 18 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 678.]
In a joint statement last Friday, the Veterans Commissioners for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales said that they do not call for immunity from the law but “for fairness under it”. I could not agree with them more.
Because immunity was struck down by the domestic courts even before the Government were elected—and we came into office committed to repealing the Act—any incoming Administration would have had to fix it. It is wrong for anyone to suggest anything different. [Interruption.] The answer is because we do not agree with it.
Emma Lewell (in the Chair)
Order. Members will refrain from shouting out and having dialogue with the Secretary of State. Please intervene in the normal manner.
Hilary Benn
Legacy is hard. This is the unfinished business of the Good Friday agreement.
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Hilary Benn
I am afraid that because of the time I am not able to.
That is why, as well as listening carefully to veterans, which we are doing, we also need to listen to the many families who lost loved ones, including the families of British service personnel who served so bravely.
More than 200 families of UK military personnel are still searching for answers about the murder of their loved ones 30, 40 or 50 years ago. The Police Service of Northern Ireland confirmed on 30 April 2024 that it had 202 live investigations into troubles-related killings of members of our armed forces, and a further 33 into the killings of veterans. The following day, on 1 May, each and every one of those investigations was forced to close by the legacy Act.
Hilary Benn
I am not going to give way.
The other challenge that all of us have to face is the lack of confidence in the Act on the part of communities in Northern Ireland, and in the commission it created, which we will seek to reform so that it is more capable of commanding confidence for those who are searching for answers. We owe it to all those families; the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) reminded us to remember them and their search for answers. We owe it to them and to all communities to get this right, including trying to reach an agreement with the Irish Government. Doing nothing is not credible.