Northern Ireland Troubles Bill

Debate between Jim Shannon and Alex Burghart

Committee of the whole House & 3rd reading
Tuesday 20th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

I start by paying tribute to those who spoke yesterday on the first day of Committee. There were excellent contributions from both sides of the Committee and from all sides of the debate. A number of the issues discussed are not strictly within scope of the new clauses and amendments today, but I will return to them on Third Reading because they are essential to the broader discussion that we are having. I just wanted to say that there were some powerful speeches that resonated across the divides.

In that spirit, I want to begin with what the Opposition welcome. Government new clause 51 effectively ends the debate on the highly controversial on-the-run letters, the so-called letters of comfort. These were letters issued by the Government to republican suspects, primarily those affiliated to the IRA. They arose because, while the 1998 agreement’s early release scheme covered convicted paramilitary prisoners, it did not cover those who had never been charged, who had been charged but had escaped, or who had escaped after conviction.

Sinn Féin argued that this was anomalous and that resolving the status of such individuals, many of whom were seen as important to republican support for the peace process, was necessary. Where Sinn Féin identified concerned individuals, the Government then assessed whether they were wanted, and if they were not, a letter of reassurance was issued. It has long been argued that such letters did not offer immunity to prosecution. However, as the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) has pointed out, that was not so, because in 2014, John Downey, an IRA man accused of perpetrating the 1982 Hyde Park bombing, produced his letter at the Old Bailey and the trial collapsed. While it was said that Mr Downey’s letter had been issued in error, there is no doubt that that letter prevented him from being put on trial for that crime. Whatever confidence there was in the scheme then completely collapsed, and despite the considerable work of Lady Justice Hallett, doubts have lingered. The Government are right to put this issue beyond all doubt by amending the Bill.

Similarly, we welcome Government amendment 251, which obliges the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament a statement about the actions taken by His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom and the Government of Ireland in pursuance of the joint framework. This is a replacement to amendment 46, tabled in my name, which did much the same thing. The importance of this measure is that the Government will have to give an assessment of the progress that the Republic has made in laying its own legislation before ours can come into force.

I ask the Secretary of State to confirm from the Dispatch Box that this statement will explicitly cover, as I think is set out in the framework, the investigation by the Garda of all unresolved troubles-related incidents within its jurisdiction. It is important that any statement that he gives to the House when both pieces of legislation are complete covers that specific issue, which was an important element of the framework.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman is speaking about troubles-related crimes. On the question of those who have escaped across the border, I have had opportunity to mention Gerry McMonagle. He was taken to court for the murder of Hugh “Lexie” Cummings in 1982. The summons that was made for him was unfortunately not absolutely correct, and in the time it took to correct it at the Omagh court, that gentleman escaped across the border. He has risen to be a significant member of Sinn Féin. He has been the mayor of Donegal county council. The fact of the matter is that he murdered Lexie Cummings in 1982. Is it not time for that gentleman to be taken to court? Should this not be one of the cases on which the Republic of Ireland works with the Government here, to ensure that that man is jailed?

[Alex Burghart]

My hon. Friend raises an important case, and I am glad that he has had an opportunity to put it on record.

Yesterday, the Secretary of State said that the Irish Government had committed to working

“in lockstep with us so that our legislation and their legislation will come into force on the same day.”—[Official Report, 19 October 2026; Vol. 791, c. 798.]

I hope the Secretary of State will confirm that, this being the case, he will not commence this legislation until the Irish legislation is ready to be commenced.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Burghart]

I am happy to clarify my remarks for the hon. Gentleman. I am certainly not saying that at all. I am explaining why the inquisitorial process has suffered such a loss of confidence. It is because of the way in which certain inquests have been conducted and the way they have behaved. I am not talking at cross-purposes with the hon. Gentleman.

In the case of Clonoe, we are dealing with the fact that a van-load of men shot up a police station with a fully automatic machine gun and were confronted by the security forces. In the case of Loughgall, an IRA unit attacked a Royal Ulster Constabulary base and were shot. Those security forces, who kept our country safe in those moments, were asked to do extremely difficult things. They no longer trust the inquisitorial process, because they can see where it leads. It leads to lawfare—to years of court processes in which, even when the judges say, “This is a farce,” or, “This is ludicrous,” they are powerless to prevent the legal aid cavalcade from going on and on.

Amendment 113, which appears in my name, and the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington would essentially do the same thing that the hon. and gallant Member for Birmingham Selly Oak was seeking yesterday: they say, “Enough of the multi-track approach; let us put all the inquests into the legacy commission.” Let us dispense with the twin-track approach, which the hon. and gallant Member argued against yesterday. Of course, the twin-track approach is really a three-track approach, because inquiries are still being granted. As we argued at the time, the Government should have asked ICRIR to deal with, for example, the Finucane inquiry rather than set up a new public inquiry. Then, because of civil cases, we will have a four-track approach. For all the reasons mentioned here, I very much hope that the Government will at the very least accept that, where we are dealing with military action against known terrorists, the inquests ought to be dealt with by the legacy commission.

[Jim Shannon]

I am very mindful, as we often are in Northern Ireland, of the experiences we have with many people. I think of the murder of the four UDR men at Ballydugan. The person who did that was Colum Marks. When Colum Marks was later in the process of setting up a mortar bomb to attack the RUC in Downpatrick, he was shot. He deserved to have that capital punishment in Downpatrick. The family should never try to engineer an inquiry for someone who was quite clearly the head of the IRA in the area. When he died, the IRA campaign stopped. That tells you all about it. He is burning in hell today—couldn’t happen to a nicer person.

Police Service of Northern Ireland Training College

Debate between Jim Shannon and Alex Burghart

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Alex Burghart]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. I will turn to it in a moment.

[Jim Shannon]

When the Conservatives were in power, they committed to a review of the moneys going to Northern Ireland under the Barnett formula, but nothing happened. When the Labour party came into power, a similar commitment was made. The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, on which my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) and the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann) sit, recommended that the Barnett formula should be reviewed. Given all the commitments made by the previous Government and this Government, and as the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee is pushing for change, does the shadow Minister think that the Barnett formula needs to be reviewed and changed, to find the extra moneys to fund the police training college?

[Alex Burghart]

As ever, the hon. Gentleman makes an extremely astute observation. I suggest that we perhaps try to find the time to have a full Westminster Hall debate on the Barnett consequentials and formula with particular regard to Northern Ireland, as there are a great many technicalities that we could go into.

Returning to the point made by the hon. Member for North Down, I simply mean something along the following lines: if the Treasury was minded to honour its 1998 obligation to provide a new training college, it would only be fair to require, in return, a very solemn undertaking by the Northern Ireland Executive that, within a short and fixed term, we would make up the current deficit of 1,000 officers.

I think it would be quite wrong if a new facility were built at considerable cost—a necessary investment, in my opinion—but we were still here another 10 years down the line, with the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, and people across the United Kingdom, saying, “Why are the numbers in PSNI much lower than they should be?” If the Treasury chooses to enter into such negotiations, as I very much hope it will, there will need to be some reciprocal element from the Executive to ensure that any new facility is used to its maximum extent for the benefit of people not only in Northern Ireland but across the United Kingdom.

Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over)

Debate between Jim Shannon and Alex Burghart

Carry-over motion
Monday 27th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart]

I genuinely respect the hon. Lady and the work that her Committee does, and she will remember that I was at that Westminster Hall debate. I must respectfully say that my outrage is not faux; I feel this very deeply. I have spent a lot of time talking to the people who are affected by this.

When the peace process was going through, when Labour was in power, it had no problem at all with creating immunity, and in 2005—as the Secretary of State will remember, because he was in the Cabinet at the time—Peter Hain, the then Secretary of State, brought forward a Bill that would have given immunity to terrorists, and terrorists alone. It was removed only when, under pressure from the Conservative party, the Government agreed to introduce immunity for veterans and Sinn Féin pulled its support, so the Government pulled the Bill.

Immunity is one of the things on which the peace process was founded, yet now in government, the Labour party has forgotten all about this and said it cannot possibly apply to anyone again. The Labour party has said that it cannot support immunity, and yet it used to. Similarly, the Government have said that they cannot support our legislation on the grounds that there was no support for it in Northern Ireland, but I am afraid that by that criterion this legislation has also failed, because where is the support for it in Northern Ireland? It is not there among Northern Ireland Members, and it is not on the streets of Belfast. This is an unloved Bill. There are lots of people who appreciate that this is the wrong way of going about things.

[Jim Shannon]

One thing that really concerns me is that this carry-over motion has been pressed by the Irish Government. That absolutely boggles my mind. The double standard is entirely shocking. The Irish Government need to be held to account for their role in protecting IRA murderers across the border. We think of all those ones who were murdered: Kenneth Smyth, my cousin; Daniel McCormick, his comrade; Lexie Cummings, and Stuart Montgomery. They were just four, but there were many, many more. Whenever there were murders, the murderers raced across the border. Does the hon. Gentleman share my anger on behalf of my constituents and my family, who want to know why the Irish Government have more say in this than the victims of Northern Ireland, my family and others?

[Alex Burghart]

My hon. Friend always speaks incredibly powerfully on this point.

The Government have also argued that our Bill was found to be incompatible with human rights legislation, but that is only partly true. The truth is that the Government failed to challenge the findings in the courts, and those findings themselves were highly questionable. There are high-level, highly credible legal arguments that show that the legacy Act may well have not been incompatible, precisely because the same logic around immunity had been used in 1998. So unless we are prepared to say that the legislation passed during the peace process is itself potentially incompatible with human rights law, the argument on the legacy Act falls. This is what is being considered in the case of Dillon before the Supreme Court now. The Government cannot argue that that legislation was incompatible with human rights, because they failed to see the process to its conclusion.

All of that has been made clearer and clearer over the lifetime of this law’s delay. In the time that it has taken the Bill only to get through its Second Reading, we have seen, starkly and painfully, regular real-life examples of the problems it will perpetuate. I will give a few small examples. In February, this House debated the terrible ruling in the Clonoe case. This was the case from February 1992, when four men—known terrorists armed with semi-automatic weapons and a Dushka machine gun capable of firing 600 rounds a minute at a range of 1,100 yards—attacked a Royal Ulster Constabulary police station and were in transit to commit further crimes. They were confronted by members of the armed forces, who killed them. Those terrorists called themselves an army, carried weapons of war, sought to kill and operated entirely outside the bounds of any law, yet we were asked to believe that the use of lethal force against them was not justified. I am afraid that that case is now being challenged, and the men involved are being subject to unjust and unfair scrutiny of decisions they made in a split second, decades ago. Nothing in the amendments that the Secretary of State has discussed with the press will do anything about that.

In November, we debated the findings in the case against Soldier F from Bloody Sunday. He was found not guilty after the longest and most intricate inquiry in British legal history. Indeed, Judge Patrick Lynch told Belfast Crown Court that the evidence even then fell “well short” of the standard required. He said:

“A 53-year-old statement cannot be cross-examined, nor can I assess the demeanour of a sheet of A4 paper”.

The House must see again that it is becoming vanishingly difficult to get convictions, because the 1998 agreement was 27 years ago and the ceasefire began 31 years ago. Nothing in the Secretary of State’s proposed amendments or in this Bill will do anything to right that situation.

Several times the case of Soldier B, a former SAS officer, has been raised in the Commons. In October, the case was thrown out by a court in Belfast, where the judge described it as “ludicrous” and said it should never have come to his court—but not before the man in question had been investigated for four years. A further challenge was then mounted despite the judge having said it was “ludicrous”, and only recently has the veteran in question been freed from the weight of that.

I am afraid that if the Government’s Bill goes ahead, we will see a return to this repeat investigation of innocent men who will be dragged through the courts, and then at the end the legal cavalcade will move on, leaving them bearing the emotional burden of being investigated for having done nothing wrong. Nothing that has been speculated about in the press this weekend will do anything to right that wrong.

Lord Mandelson

Debate between Jim Shannon and Alex Burghart

Wednesday 4th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart]

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point—one that is central to our considerations and to which I will return.

I have mentioned the conduct of Peter Mandelson while he was a member of the last Labour Government, and the Prime Minister’s judgment in appointing him, but I will also touch on Peter Mandelson’s conduct while he was our ambassador in Washington.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the shadow Minister and the Conservative party for bringing forward this matter for consideration. What we are listening to and what is happening is absolutely incredible. May I suggest that the five years during which Mandelson was EU trade commissioner should be part of the investigation as well? A full investigation should include every t that was crossed and every i that was dotted by Peter Mandelson. That is what this House and this nation want.

[Alex Burghart]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. The more we pull on this thread, the more we seem to find. All Peter Mandelson’s dealings, as a politician and as a businessman, should now be laid out for the House and the country to consider.

Northern Ireland Troubles: Legacy and Reconciliation

Debate between Jim Shannon and Alex Burghart

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart]

I would have been very open to that idea, but I believe that the previous Administration did not feel that there was the opportunity to proceed in that way. If we are thinking about the future, I think what the hon. Lady proposes is a perfectly sensible idea.

[Jim Shannon]

The reason we do not trust the Irish Government on legacy issues is clear. It was a murder haven for years. Many people who committed murders, some of which we might hear about later, escaped across the border. How are we going to rebuild bridges without honesty about state collusion that included IRA terrorists and the Irish Government? Quite clearly, their hands are dirty. When it comes to the legislation, I want to see the same accountability for the Republic of Ireland Government, their Ministers and the Garda Síochána officers. My constituents have never had justice. I want to see justice for them.

[Alex Burghart]

rose—