Ballymurphy Inquest Findings

Debate between Clive Efford and Brandon Lewis

Thursday 13th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

As I said, there were big, bold, difficult and complex steps taken that led to the Good Friday agreement—decisions that were difficult for people at the time, but they have delivered peace and prosperity over the last few decades. Northern Ireland has predominantly moved away from violence. We need to make sure that we continue to respect the principles that led to the Good Friday agreement and continue to look at how we develop that to ensure that Northern Ireland can continue to prosper.

Within that, it is absolutely right that we want to make sure that families are able to get to the truth and the information without not just the delay, but the pain and difficulty that families are having at the moment. Obviously, the Ballymurphy families have been through a completely unacceptable experience over the last 50 years, but there are also other families out there, other unsolved murders, and other injuries that have been caused, where nobody has yet got to the bottom of what happened. It is important that we find a way forward that ensures that those families and victims who want that information can get it in a timely fashion. There is a real risk, if we do not do this in a way that works, that we will have people passing away without ever knowing the truth. That is not acceptable and we have a duty to deliver for them and for the future of Northern Ireland.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab) [V]]

Given the gravity of this report, I think that the Prime Minister should be at the Dispatch Box making this statement. In five separate incidents, over the weekend of Operation Demetrius, 10 people, who posed no threat and bore no arms, were shot dead. That must raise questions about the preparation for Operation Demetrius—what was said to those soldiers about the yellow card that each of them should have been carrying. What can the Government do, and particularly the MOD, to shed light on what was said and done in preparation for Operation Demetrius?

[Brandon Lewis]

As the hon. Gentleman said, and as others have rightly said and I have said, the families should never have had to wait 50 long years to hear Justice Keegan’s findings this week. Obviously, I convey my thanks to her for the work that she and the team have done. I can promise, as I said earlier, that that will be followed by action to prevent others who have lost loved ones—from all communities, including the armed forces—from going through the same continual, lengthy and traumatic experience to get to the heart of the truth of what happened.

It is an awkward truth for us all that the prospect of prosecutions resulting from criminal investigations is vanishingly small, but we have seen that a sense of justice can be provided through truth, acknowledgment and information. We want to deal with the past in a way that not only helps society in Northern Ireland to be able to look forward rather than back, but also gets to the truth, and therefore accountability and an understanding of what has happened in a whole range of cases—Ballymurphy and others—that are still unsolved.