Northern Ireland Troubles Bill

Alex Ballinger Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 18th November 2025 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:

“this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill because, by removing the conditional immunity scheme introduced by the last Government in the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, and reintroducing inquests and restoring civil claims for Troubles-related incidents halted by that Act, the Bill will lead to veterans once again being dragged before the courts facing potential prosecution for incidents that happened decades ago, while former paramilitaries are largely untouched; because the Government’s published list of so-called protections for veterans remains unclear and not fulfilled by this Bill; because the Government has not confirmed which of these protections will also apply to former paramilitaries; because the Bill does not prevent former paramilitaries holding key roles associated with the Legacy Commission; and because the Bill risks undermining the morale of, as well as both recruitment to and retention within, the armed forces at a time of significantly heightened international tensions and threats to the national security of the UK.”

I would like to start by paying tribute to those brave souls who served in Operation Banner—the longest and, surely, one of the most difficult operations that our military forces ever undertook. I know that some of them are in the Gallery today, and some of them are sitting behind me. I would like to thank them with my whole heart for the service they gave and extend that same thanks to the brave men and women of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The generations who have come after cannot fully understand what they went through, what they saw and what they did for peace.

The last Government chose to draw a line under the litigation of the troubles, and today that line is being erased. Our legacy Act was a response to the emerging legal reality—no less true than it was three years ago—that the legal system was ceasing to provide meaningful answers to victims, while dragging veterans through the courts in clearly vexatious cases. The process itself had become a means of punishment, and time is reducing the chances of convictions.

We created a new means of providing victims and their families with information—one that offered the opportunity to claim conditional immunity in return for information retrieval. That process is now up and running, and thanks to the excellent work of Sir Declan Morgan, to whom I pay tribute, I understand the ICRIR is currently considering about 250 cases and is taking on more every month. Confidence is growing; it is working. But the Bill before us today strips out the conditional immunity introduced by the legacy Act and reopens the door to vexatious litigation against veterans, while leaving it very unlikely that terrorists will be prosecuted. The Secretary of State himself has confirmed that there have been only five terrorist convictions in the past 13 years, and as time passes, the chance of successful prosecutions will reduce further and further.

In the past year alone, we have debated the manifest failings of the current system in this House: the terrible decision in the Clonoe inquest; the 1991 incident in court in Belfast last month, where a special forces soldier was acquitted by a judge, who said the case was “ludicrous”, but not before the man in question had been investigated for four years; and, of course, the case of soldier F, where no conviction was possible, despite one of the longest inquiries in British political history.

The legislation before us today will perpetuate disappointment for victims and despair for veterans. The Government are claiming that they have no choice but to legislate. They are making that claim for three reasons. The first is that they object to conditional immunity. The second is their belief that the legacy Act is incompatible with the European convention on human rights, and the third is the fact that the legacy Act lacked cross-party support.

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Member recognise that the immunity that was promised never came into action because the British courts rejected it? Does he accept that we are not taking away immunity, because it was never possible in the first place?

[Alex Burghart]

It was never given a chance because this Government dropped their appeal—something I will return to shortly.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)]

This is a terrible Bill. Its central failing is that it will lead to the persecution of patriotic, innocent British soldiers whose only sin is defending our democracy with heroism and skill. What it will do is recreate a circumstance in which soldiers are treated unfairly by the law.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) referred to the case of Soldier B and the judge’s dismissal of it as a “ludicrous” challenge funded by legal aid. I have known Soldier B for 30 years; I count him as a friend. He is tough and clever yet, even for him, being dragged through the courts for four years and more, on what is effectively preparation for a murder charge, would have been unbelievably stressful. The point my hon. Friend made is that the process is the punishment: four years of stress and wear and tear.

In Operation Banner, our soldiers assiduously obeyed the yellow card rules, but in Northern Ireland the courts have sometimes interpreted those rules as requiring our soldiers to take almost suicidal risks. We are dragging men in their 70s and 80s through coroners courts in Belfast, and judging them by a standard that makes no sense in a military context. To illustrate this, let me share with the House a single case that highlights what can happen to soldiers under these circumstances.

On 16 March 1978, in the middle of the night, two SAS soldiers were manning a covert observation post. They saw two men in combat clothing moving toward them. One of our soldiers, David Jones, stood up and challenged the men. The IRA gunman immediately shot him down in a burst of gunfire. That story would have been at the back of the mind of every soldier who subsequently served in Northern Ireland. They made their decisions in the face of the risk of immediate death. It is a measure of their professionalism that hundreds of terrorists were arrested alive under the circumstances, given that the soldiers could have been killed.

Today’s debate is actually about morality. It is about whether this House chooses justice over political convenience, truth over revisionism, and loyalty over the cynical rewriting of history. The Government claim that today’s problems arise from legislation passed by the previous Government, which allegedly created an amnesty for terrorists. Really? What are the facts?

Labour, under Blair, effectively gave a de facto amnesty—maybe it is challengeable in law—to at least 650 terrorists, who had carried out more than 3,000 killings. Early release schemes, on-the-run letters and the royal prerogative of mercy collectively created a vast secret system of de facto immunity. It was secret because the Government knew that people would not accept it.

[Alex Ballinger]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[David Davis]

No. I am sorry, but I do not have time.

People knew that the system would not be accepted, which is why Gerry Adams asked for an “invisible system” for dealing with on-the-runs. Why are they on the run? They are on the run because they are criminals, and this was a secret system to deal with it.

In contrast, 300,000 of our soldiers defended democracy in Northern Ireland. They defended law and order, democracy and the innocent citizens of Northern Ireland, whom we often forget in this. They acted as the direct opposite of the IRA, the gangster organisation that terrorised all communities in Northern Ireland. By the way, I mean “all communities”; remember that the IRA killed a very large number of Catholics to terrorise that community. Yet today those who upheld the law face relentless legal pursuit, while those who broke the law received leniency, letters and legal shelter.

Let us not forget that the IRA are also protected by the fact that witnesses, or would-be witnesses, against them know that they risk murder if they turn up. I was in Omagh a few weeks ago, and I met a policeman who was shot—six times, I think—only a couple of years ago by the Real IRA, or the New IRA or whatever label they have today. Instead of attacking those who served, we should honour them, their service and their patriotism. We should not treat them worse than the killers they defeated. This House must say, “Enough. Enough moral inversion, and enough rewarding of terror, while hounding those who defended the public.”

We are told that the Bill is necessary because Northern Ireland will not support alternatives, but when real leaders must choose between consensus and justice, they choose justice. This Bill must not rest on appeasement. The world watches while Britain chooses today. Its allies watch with concern, and its enemies with enthusiasm, as they plan future decades of lawfare against our best soldiers. If we do not speak up to protect both our current service personnel and our veterans, the innocent will suffer in future, and we will find ourselves unable to defend our nation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

I come to today’s debate, as many Members on both sides of the House do, as someone who was proud to serve my country and who has the utmost respect for those Members who served in Northern Ireland on Op Banner. For me, this debate is complex, but at its heart are two simple questions: how do we respond to trauma, and how do we uphold accountability? The wounds of the troubles are still raw. I saw that earlier this year, when I visited Northern Ireland and went to the WAVE trauma centre. I met people who are still experiencing trauma, and I met victims of the troubles whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time—people who lost parents, people who lost limbs, and people whose lives were irreversibly changed by violence in which they took no part. I met Alex Bunting, a taxi driver who was going about his day when a sudden explosion tore his vehicle apart and severed his left leg in 1991. The question of who was responsible for the attack was never solved, but it was assumed to be an IRA operation that struck the wrong target.

I also met Kathleen Gillespie, who was held hostage by the IRA with her children while her husband Patsy was chained to a cab and forced to drive a lorry at an Army checkpoint; he and five young soldiers were killed. Patsy was used by the IRA as a human bomb. Kathleen was angry with the last Government, because she felt that his barbaric death was treated like it never happened under their legacy Act.

Alex deserves answers, Kathleen deserves answers, and both deserve accountability. So do many others, not only in Belfast but here in Britain. Families in the west midlands are still seeking answers after the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974, which took 21 young, innocent lives. Half a century on, the families’ trauma remains, and they still wait for justice. That is why accountability matters—accountability for the terrorists, including the IRA, who carried out the overwhelming majority of killings, but also accountability for our armed forces when standards were not upheld.

However, the Conservatives’ legacy Act of 2023 undermined every route for accountability. Most gravely, it created a system of conditional immunity for members of the IRA—effectively a blanket amnesty for anyone who was willing to co-operate with the commission. That is not justice; it places terrorists and those who served our country on the same moral footing. Families were rightly appalled. Audrey, whose brother Private Winston Donnell was murdered by the IRA in 1971, said:

“We always had a very slim hope of getting justice, but…this amnesty has let us and other families down. Our Government has let us down badly.”

Victims of IRA terrorism, and victims of state wrongdoing, deserve the opportunity for accountability. No veteran should be dragged repeatedly through processes dealing with the same matter. That is why the new protections in this Bill are so important. They mark a genuine improvement, and put veterans’ welfare first. They are important, sensible and overdue protections for our veterans, who overwhelmingly served with honour and distinction. This legislation seeks to fix the grave failings of the Conservatives’ discredited legacy Act of 2023. It helps victims to pursue justice, it restores the chance of accountability for terrorist crimes, and it provides stronger, fairer protections for veterans than anything in the previous Government’s approach.

Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over Extension)

Alex Ballinger Excerpts

Carry-over motion
Tuesday 13th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

I will be supporting the carry-over motion today. I would also like to pay tribute to the victims from the WAVE Trauma Centre, who, alongside many of us, have shared their powerful stories with parliamentarians in the last two days.

Nearly 30 years on from the Good Friday agreement, these men and women are still seeking truth and justice for the awful crimes inflicted upon them. With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will share a couple of the stories that they shared with me. The first is the story of Jennifer Gillespie. Jennifer was just 12 years old when masked Provisional IRA men broke into her house, took her and her mother hostage, and forced her father, Patsy, to drive into an Army checkpoint as a human bomb. Patsy, who was a civilian cook in the local barracks, was chained to the driving seat of a van packed with 1,000 lb of explosives, followed by kidnappers in a separate car, while his family was held at gunpoint. He was forced to drive into the checkpoint. As he approached, Patsy shouted a desperate warning to the troops guarding the checkpoint, but the IRA detonated the van, killing Patsy and five soldiers from the King’s Regiment. That was just one of three co-ordinated proxy bomb attacks that evening. Jennifer and her mother, Kathleen, are still seeking justice so many years after that horrible attack.

I also met Mo Norton, whose brother, Bombardier Terence Griffin, was one of 12 killed in the M62 bombings. A Provisional IRA bomb was stowed in their coach luggage locker, and exploded as the young soldiers and their families were returning to Catterick after their weekend leave. Nine soldiers and three civilians were killed, including two children, aged just five and two. Mo is still devastated after all these years, and she and her family in Wigan are still seeking answers.

I never served in Northern Ireland myself, but I have served alongside many soldiers and Marines who have. They spoke of the constant threat of snipers and bombs, of not knowing who among the local population might be trying to kill them or when they would strike. They took on strict rules of engagement, serving in the United Kingdom among British citizens to protect them. They fought paramilitaries that were unencumbered by those same rules, as the cowardly attacks I described earlier show.

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to these veterans, but victims and veterans are not two separate groups. Two hundred and sixty-four members of our armed forces were murdered by terrorists. They had their unresolved cases terminated by the 2023 legacy Act. We owe these families a chance at justice. The last Conservative Government attempted in good faith to draw a line under the troubles, but their offer of conditional immunity was unacceptable to bereaved families, and the courts found it unlawful. The legacy Act must be replaced, and today’s motion allows for that work to continue. The families have waited for decades. I urge the House to pass the carry-over motion and allow the Bill to proceed.

Northern Ireland Troubles Bill

Alex Ballinger Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Monday 19th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

I do not expect the Secretary of State to comment on special forces, but I do suggest that he look at special forces specifically, which is what I was talking about earlier. If he wants to heap laurels on me, as a former Minister for defence people, since these things take a very long time, I am perfectly happy to take some of the credit. I am grateful to him for that, but I do not think that it was the intent of his remarks.

My question to him was about clause 4(2). He satisfied me in relation to the directors of investigations, but it is the commissioners about whom I am concerned. I think that, unwittingly, he may have conflated the two, and I should be grateful if he could clarify that for me at some point.

Government amendment 259 and new clause 34 concern, respectively, commissioners and members of the victims and survivors advisory group. There is a mandate that commissioners cannot have been convicted of an offence “anywhere in the world”. That needs a bit of further thought, because in some parts of our benighted world today, people are convicted by jurisdictions for which I do not think we would have a great deal of respect. When I was a Minister in the Foreign Office, I dealt with Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was convicted and imprisoned falsely—but convicted nevertheless—in such a jurisdiction. I feel that we may need to revise the wording, either here or in the other place, to be clear about the Government’s intent. Neither is there any mention of the rehabilitation of offenders. New clause 34 does at least place a limit of three months on a custodial sentence for members of the advisory group, but I think that this part of the Bill needs a bit of redrafting so that it makes more sense.

Government amendment 162 touches on the provision of information via a remote link, which is a positive, but it also provides a get-out for inquisitors in the form of an impracticability test. What I am not sure about, and what I seek clarification on, is what circumstances would make it “impracticable” for a person to provide information through live audio or video links.

Comments have been made about the part that the Irish Government play in all this through the framework agreement. There is a lingering suspicion that Dublin has had an undue influence on the Bill, and we have heard—particularly in relation to Omagh—why that should be. I entirely accept the Secretary of State’s assertion that the Irish Government have not been involved in the drafting of the Bill, and, indeed, had not seen the amendments before their publication, which is reassuring. However, it would be useful to know when the Secretary of State expects the Irish Government to implement, through their legislative channels, the reciprocal arrangements that are necessary to provide some chance of recovering information that may be sequestered in the Republic. As the hon. and gallant Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) has pointed out, that repository is likely to be vast. Up to this point it has been untapped, and until it is tapped, questions will be asked about the candour of Dublin in trying to provide answers to many of the problems about which we have heard today.

The hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) was right to say that this is all about victims. It is also about veterans, many of whom I have the honour and privilege to represent. There must be a way through this that will satisfy both parties, even through the prism of so many years. There is a wall of misery associated with the troubles, and it is our job to do what we can to remedy that, difficult and imperfect though the process may be. I appreciate the Secretary of State’s endeavours—he approaches this matter in good faith, as did his predecessor —but I fear that what we have at the moment simply will not do.

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for the constructive way in which he has approached the Bill since he was appointed. He has built on the good work of his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn), who is no longer in the Chamber but who gave a powerful speech about why the Bill is so important for victims as well as others who are affected. I think that it should reassure veterans that the process of repeated investigations is coming to an end, and it should give survivors and the families of victims—many of whom are soldiers and police officers themselves—a stronger route to finding answers, and a route to justice for crimes committed during the troubles.

I want to speak about the new protections for veterans, and about why I think they address the real concerns of those who were worried about repeated investigations. I also intend to mention concerns that victims groups have raised with me about their privacy and the anonymity of the process.

Let me deal first with the additional protections for veterans. I know how difficult it was to serve in Northern Ireland. The hon. Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) spoke powerfully about the difficulties that those veterans faced. I did not serve there myself, but I worked alongside many soldiers and Marines who had, and some of them told me that it was more difficult to serve in Northern Ireland than in Afghanistan because of the complexities of the environment in which they were operating. We should accept that, and we should thank the veterans, including those who were in the Gallery earlier, for the service that they gave. I think it right for the new legacy commission to consider that.

I strongly welcome new clause 32, which requires the commission or any inquest to take into account the context in which soldiers are operating. It is now made explicit that training, experience and perceived threats, among other factors, must be considered by the commission in any inquests. I also welcome the statement in the new clause that the investigators

“must not regard lawful action taken in the course of duty as equivalent to action taken for terrorist purposes.”

Many people have made that point, and it is important for it to be in the legislation.

However, the biggest concern that I have heard about from veterans in Halesowen and veterans groups across the country, as well as many Members, is about repeated investigations. Under the existing legislation, soldiers have been worried about being asked to come back time and again to go over evidence that they have already given. Government amendment 192 directly addresses that by requiring the director of investigations to consider what information can be obtained from public authorities before unnecessarily duplicating work. That adds to the Bill’s existing protections against the duplication of previous investigative work.

When I discussed the veterans’ concern explicitly with senior members of ICRIR last week, they told me that many of these cases have been investigated in the past. There have been many inquests and other cases in which veterans have been accused of crimes, that more than enough evidence is already available in public bodies. They did not believe that the case of any veteran under investigation would be taken forward by the legacy commission under this new legislation, and I think that veterans should take reassurance from what has been said by the people who are involved in conducting these investigations.

At the same time, there have been improvements in evidence collection—for example, through DNA or technical evidence—since the 1970s and 1980s, when many of these crimes were committed. We know that ICRIR is examining the links between different types of evidence, looking at, for example, the campaign of bombings in England during the 1970s: the M62 bombing, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood), and the Guildford pub bombings and others. The commission thinks that there are connections that may lead to further investigations that might give answers to some of the victims. We should bear in mind that many of those victims are family members of servicemen who were killed in England.

ICRIR felt that, on occasion, veterans who were witnesses to those crimes might be asked to give evidence to the commission to add value to the new evidence that is coming forward. I think veterans would appreciate that, because they would be giving evidence that might give answers to the family members of their colleagues who were killed by terrorists. That is something that the commission is doing correctly. Indeed, it is protecting veterans while at the same time getting answers for victims.

There are other welcome amendments and new clauses. Government amendment 162 allows witnesses to give remote evidence, meaning that they would not have to travel to Northern Ireland, while Government new clause 45 and Government amendment 240 ensure that veterans will not be approached by the commission directly, so there will be there are no cold calls. I know that that was a big concern.

Although there are many improvements to the protections for veterans, some veterans’ groups have said publicly in the last few days that they still do not feel that the Bill goes far enough in providing those protections. The protections give a lot of support against repeated investigations, but there needs to be a backstop to ensure that they are working properly. That is why I am really pleased that new clause 53 requires, within two years, an independent review of whether the protections will give veterans the safeguards that they need against repeated investigations.