Criminal Law (Northern Ireland)

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 5th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

The simplest short answer is yes, it is absolutely the case that the provisions we are discussing have and will apply across communities. There is no doubt about that.

If the House will allow me to continue with my opening remarks, I will try to answer everything else during the course of the debate. The Government wish to end the non-jury trial system because it is exceptional, and we wish to do so as soon as the circumstances allow. Although many attempts to visit violence and intimidation and undermine the criminal justice process have been disrupted, the security situation today remains much the same as it was in 2015, when the House last considered these measures. The threat from terrorism in Northern Ireland is assessed as severe. This year alone, there have been four national security attacks in Northern Ireland, including the wounding of a police officer who was serving the community. It would be remiss of the Government to dispose of the provisions now, given that threat and its potential impact on the delivery of criminal justice for all communities in Northern Ireland. It would be a weak argument to suggest that we should move on from the provisions because we have had them for a long time.

In the past two years, attacks by dissident republicans and loyalist paramilitaries have put countless innocent lives in danger. Members may be aware of the incident on the Crumlin Road in Belfast in January, when two police officers who were serving their community came under attack from dissident republicans, leaving one officer badly injured. The forecourt of a busy filling station was sprayed with automatic gunfire, demonstrating the utter disregard these groups show for human life and the harm that they pose to ordinary members of the public. Sadly, this despicable attack was not an isolated incident: there were four confirmed national security attacks in 2016 and there have been four so far this year. That underlines the persistence of the threat that we face.

The presence of dissident republicans and paramilitaries in Northern Ireland means that violence and intimidation remain concerns for the wider community. Figures released by the Police Service of Northern Ireland show an increased number of security-related deaths over the past three years, as well as an increasing trend in the number of paramilitary-style assaults since 2012-13. Threats towards the police and public bodies also demonstrate the continued attempts at the intimidation of individuals and communities in Northern Ireland. In 2016-17, there were 137 arrests and 19 charges related to terrorism. I pay tribute to the work of the PSNI and its partners, because it is having an impact on the threat, but the security situation remains serious.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

May I speak from personal experience? In some court cases there is huge intimidation of witnesses from the public gallery, which it is very difficult to control. I have to say, I was frightened.

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[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

First, I welcome the announcement that the Minister has made today. It is important we have every opportunity in Northern Ireland to address issues in whatever way we can, and one of the things in our armoury is non-jury trials.

Right hon., hon., and hon. and gallant Members have referred to some of the activities in Northern Ireland over the last period. The rise in paramilitary and criminal activity in my constituency has caused me great concern as its Member of Parliament. I have had meetings with the PSNI, and I intend to have another meeting just next week with local councillors to address the issue. That paramilitary and criminal activity includes making drugs available to all levels of society almost with impunity, which scares and worries me, and we need to address that issue. We also have paramilitary activity in relation to protection rackets, trafficking and prostitution. These people have their fingers in every pie they can, and they do everything they can to be involved in money creation. We have to address those issues, and we have to deal with the godfathers—those who are behind these things, pulling the strings. We therefore need this legislation, which enables us, in cases where it is appropriate, to take on those people and to put them in prison, which is where they should be.

We are looking forward to the holiday break and to our tremendous and glorious 12 July celebration, when everything good culturally and historically will be on show. I invite all right hon. and hon. Members to come to Northern Ireland to experience some of those wonderful things. I know that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), has had the opportunity to come over many times to see them at first hand. He has also been along to some of the association dinners we have had, and those have been good occasions.

[Bob Stewart]

He would have been, wouldn’t he?

[Jim Shannon]

If there is a free dinner, there is an occasion to be there—[Interruption.] Well, it was a non-alcoholic event, but there you are. It is always good to have the interest of Members of the House. The fact that Members are participating in the debate, or that they are just in the Chamber, indicates that there is a real interest in Northern Ireland, and we appreciate that.

We have to take on and respond effectively to paramilitary activity and the clear dissident activities—the bomb attacks and the murder attempts—there have been in the Province. It is worth reminding ourselves of some of the statistics and of how they compare with the situation in 2015. We have had five security-related deaths—two more than in 2015. We have had 29 bombings, as other hon. Members have mentioned. We have had 61 shooting incidents—25 more than in 2015. We have had 66 paramilitary assaults—14 more than in 2015. There is clearly a need to address the rising tide in paramilitary activity through this legislation.

As the Minister said, the rate of non-jury trial usage in Northern Ireland is only 2%. However, it is critical that we have non-jury trials in our armoury and the ability to use them when necessary to catch those involved in criminal activity and put them in jail, which is where they belong.

It is therefore welcome that the Minister and our Government, led by the Prime Minister and her Cabinet—let us be quite clear about this—support this legislation, and that they are fully committed to ensuring that criminal activities across Northern Ireland are severely dealt with. If non-jury trials are a method of achieving that, let us use them, irrespective of what the issue may be. We can all then ensure that criminal activities across the whole of Northern Ireland decrease and that we have normality—we all look towards normality.

We live in a different Northern Ireland today than we did many years ago, but there are still some steps to take. Along with the Minister, the shadow Minister and other Members who have spoken, my colleagues and I are particularly interested to see the Northern Ireland Assembly back on the road again and democracy in place. However, with great respect, that can happen only if other parties accept the reality of the situation and enter into talks that can deliver the long-term visionary peace that we all want—a peace that is acceptable to the Unionist population, which we clearly support.

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[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

May I just say, Madam Deputy Speaker, how that Chair becomes you? I welcome you to it and I welcome the Minister to her new position. I hope that will get me called more often.

I was the Army incident commander at Ballykelly when, as many people know, the Ballykelly bomb was detonated just after 11 pm on 6 December 1982. The bomb was placed by the Irish National Liberation Army and took the lives of 17 young people, including several girls—four, I think—and 11 soldiers, six of them from my company. One of them was Lance Corporal Clinton Collins, who I had just finished playing squash with two hours before. He had been promoted to lance corporal that day.

Four years later, I was the lead Army witness in the trial of, I think, five bombers at Belfast Crown court. There was no jury, but if there had been they would have been grossly intimidated by what happened in that court. Throughout the evidence I gave, I was barracked from the public gallery with words like, “You’re a dead man,” and, “You’ve had it.” Of course, it was incredibly unsettling and the court procedures did not seem able to do much about it. After my evidence—not because of it, I am sure—the accused changed their plea from not guilty to guilty. They went down for what was meant to be life, but which turned out to be only a few years.

For my part, I was placed on a published terrorist death list. Indeed, a few years later, a terrorist team came to my house in Brussels, where I was serving as a lieutenant colonel in NATO, got out of their car and spoke to my 13-year-old son, who was playing in the front garden. They intended to kill me. They asked my son whether his daddy was home. His daddy was home but my son, perhaps alerted by the appearance and possibly the accents of the three men, said, “No, my daddy’s not home. My daddy works three miles away in NATO headquarters and he’s not here.” The men got back into their car and left. They killed two other servicemen on the German border later.

Those men were trying to take vengeance on me for giving evidence in a court. I dread to think how much intimidation there would have been for people on a jury in that case. I dread to think how much intimidation would continue to this day in trials such as that one and others we have heard about in the Chamber this afternoon.

Let me be absolutely clear. None of us—no one in this place—wants to have trials without a jury, but right now, Northern Ireland requires non-jury trials, and every single Member of the House should back that.