Northern Ireland Troubles Bill

Debate between Colum Eastwood and Al Carns

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

[Al Carns]

That is encouraging to know, but although these are deaths from the same conflict being considered decades later, we are deliberately providing two different routes for dealing with them. For more than 12 months I have recommended that we create a single centralised body to deal with the troubles-related issues. I know that there are some who would be uncomfortable with that, particularly those who represent families who have waited a very long time for an inquest, and I understand why that is. I am not suggesting for a moment that those families should lose the work that has already been done; the evidence gathered should go with the case. Nor am I seeking to prevent prosecutions. If the commission finds evidence that someone committed a criminal offence, whether that person wore a uniform or belonged to a terrorist organisation, that evidence should go to the prosecuting authorities. I am trying to get us to one process in which we can have some confidence.

There is a reason why I feel strongly about this. We need to be very careful about the history that we are creating through the legacy process, and also to think about why it is impossible to balance truth and reconciliation with justice. The state kept a great many records during the troubles; of course it did. Operations were recorded and reports were written, and the people involved can often be identified. There is an enormous amount of material about what the British state did and did not do. The IRA and other terrorist groups did not keep operational records. There is no equivalent archive sitting somewhere with records of who gave an order, who carried it out, and what happened afterwards.

[Colum Eastwood]

I am not sure that we know that the IRA did not keep records, but that is an aside. What we do know very well, given all that we have seen over the last number of years and the reports that have been done, is that the IRA and other terrorist organisations were riddled from top to bottom with informers reporting directly to the British state. Those files exist, and they could tell us a whole lot about what the IRA and other organisations were up to.

[Al Carns]

I thank the hon. Member for the intervention, but when the records exposed threaten either national security or individual security, we must take that into account.

Yesterday, I think we all agreed that families deserve justice and answers, and indeed that many want closure, but with the majority of the murders during the troubles and conducted by terrorist organisations remaining unsolved, there just is not the evidence to get to the truth or to justice. I would like to ask: how is the Bill going to change that? Let us think about that. How is this Bill going to change the amount of evidence, and where is the new evidence to come from? I think we need to be honest with the families: do we genuinely believe that ex-IRA or Unionist terrorists are going to come and give information to this process? If by coming forward to offer information to provide answers that would at the same time self-incriminate the witness or individual providing the information, how many will participate?

I hear people talk about Ireland and about new biometric and forensic evidence-gathering capabilities, but there just is not the evidence to get to the truth. The reality—I could be wrong, and if I am proven wrong, I will hold my hand up—is that very few terrorists, if any, will come forward. The quest for the truth will rely on slivers of new evidence—and I mean slivers, although that does not mean we should not investigate them—that are found or indeed that arise from Ireland opening and giving the UK access to its extensive archives. Do we believe Ireland will do that? It would be politically very difficult and legally painful, and indeed it would lead to questioning the reputation and moral compass of successive Irish Governments.

We need to be honest with families: this Bill will not magically produce new evidence, and that creates a very real problem when, 30 or 40 years later, we try to establish the truth through legal proceedings. Material available to investigators is inevitably much richer on one side than it is on the other. If we put the cases through different processes as well, we will make the problem even worse. I have described this before as creating a hierarchy of truth. I do not mean that as a slogan, but something quite specific. What can be investigated most easily becomes what gets investigated most thoroughly, and what gets investigated most thoroughly produces the most findings. After enough years have passed, those findings start to become the history of the conflict. I do not believe anybody in this Chamber intends that to happen—I genuinely do not think that is the case—but intention is not really the point. We need to look at where the system we are building eventually takes us.

The Bill is trying to prevent repeat investigations, and I welcome the work to do so. I will, however, give a small example. Soldier B from Coagh has not been charged, but has had eight years of legal process, and three court cases have ruled that his actions were justified and there was appropriate use of force, yet the family have received legal aid to take the case again to the Supreme Court. Soldier B is unlikely ever to be charged, but he has undergone eight years of legal uncertainty and will endure many more. This is not about prosecutions; this is about the process being wielded as the punishment.

I come at this as a Labour MP. The Good Friday agreement asked an enormous number of people to do very difficult things. There were decisions made as part of that settlement that many people found very hard to accept, and still do. Prisoners walked out of jail, and people who had been enemies were expected to sit in government together. Blair and Mo Mowlam understood that there was no settlement available that could somehow settle every account from the previous 30 years, but they were trying to stop another generation having to live the same argument.

I worry that we are in danger of doing the opposite with legacy. In 10 or 15 years’ time, the Northern Ireland people’s understanding of what happened will come in large part from what is being established now. If over those years one part of the conflict has been examined again and again, because that is where records and people are available, while much of the activity of terrorist organisations remains beyond reach, we should not be surprised if people begin to draw conclusions from that. That would be a poor legacy for a Labour Government to leave them.

None of this diminishes what families have been through. There are people—hundreds of people—who have spent decades trying to find out what happened to someone they loved. They are entitled to pursue the truth, and I would never vote for a system designed to deny it to them. However, I also know veterans who have lived for years with the possibility that somebody will reopen an event that has already been examined, sometimes more than once—in many cases more than once. Many of those people are now very old men, and we cannot keep pretending that endless process is the same thing as justice.

The Government have chosen to strengthen the legacy commission, and I think that is the right thing to do. If we believe the commission can do this work, let it do the work. We should give it these outstanding cases and the material already collected and let the families take part, and if it finds evidence that belongs before a court, that is where it should go. Even the Joint Committee on Human Rights has questioned the justification for having two approaches to these revived inquests. I think that is a fair question, and I have yet to hear a convincing answer, other than that it will stress-test the framework agreement with the Irish.

Northern Ireland Troubles Bill

Debate between Colum Eastwood and Al Carns

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

[Al Carns]

I thank the hon. Member for his contribution, and for his consistent analysis, scrutiny and support of all things Northern Ireland.

As my new clause is not going forward, we will continue —unfortunately, in my mind—with a twin-track approach. We will have the legacy commission on one hand, which in some cases is underfunded, and inquests on the other hand. We will waste a huge amount of money through that process, because I genuinely believe that that illusionary justice is very unlikely to come about. We will allow the process to drift on, potentially for up to 15 years. Think about what that means to someone who is 80, 75 or 70 years old—15 years of not knowing, of having to be worried about whether they will be called back or have to provide evidence in some way, shape or form about an incident 30 or 40 years ago. Sometimes, I cannot even remember what I did yesterday. We will keep our brave veterans, who I think have served valiantly, waiting in limbo.

Importantly, a lot of this activity is based on several factors, the first of which is the willingness of Ireland to support us. I completely support the Secretary of State’s move to hold Ireland to account for what it has said it will do, but let us see whether that happens. The second factor is the costs, which are astronomical. At minimum, an inquest costs £20 million. There are tens of inquests to go, and even if they go into the legacy commission, we are still talking about £5 million per inquest. That is significant. Then we have politics to think about. As this process progresses, it will consider Sinn Féin’s activity—either in Northern Ireland or in the Republic of Ireland—and how that affects both the legislation and the agreements Sinn Féin have made recently. On top of all of that, if new evidence—new biometrics, the smoking gun—is found, people will only go to prison for two years, so what is the point?

As for information recovery, there is no new information unless it comes from Ireland.

[Colum Eastwood]

This is nonsense.

[Al Carns]

It is highly unlikely that there will be new evidence. We can say, “This is nonsense”, but the reality is that it is not going to happen. It has not happened for the last 10 years; it is unlikely to happen now, except in one or two cases.

--- Later in debate ---

[Colum Eastwood]

I respect the hon. Member’s opinion on this, but does he accept that over the last week and a half, there have been two former paramilitaries in court on the basis of things that happened long ago? It is not the case that these cases are not being brought forward. The hon. Member’s biggest complaint is that too many cases are being brought forward; now, he is saying that there is no chance of new evidence. I do not really understand this argument.

[Al Carns]

The likelihood of having a huge amount of new evidence that justifies the amount of money spent, and the pain and anguish that all these people are going to be put through, just does not weigh up. There needs to be one single delivery process; instead, we have a twin-track approach that is going to cost a huge amount of money, and the victims sat underneath cannot decide which way to go. It is completely contradictory. I agree that if there is new evidence, by all means bring it forward —of course we should do that. That is in line with the rule of law, but it has to be balanced with the greater aim, which is truth and reconciliation.

From my perspective—this is perhaps equally important —we will also allow those in Northern Ireland who were defeated in a military campaign to now engage in a political one—one that uses every operation to rewrite history, paint the state as the aggressor, and convince the good people of Northern Ireland that reunification is the answer to all of their problems. For a 15-year-old in Northern Ireland now, if they have to put up with five, 10 or 15 years of this going through the courts consistently, it will paint the state in a negative light. Morally and ethically, this approach does not support our veterans as it should, and strategically, it deals the best possible hand to our adversaries.