Remembrance Day: Armed Forces

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Reform)]

It has been a great pleasure to listen to the very powerful tributes paid by Members to their constituents and their constituencies. Nobody can boast as much about the British Army as the Member for East Wiltshire, which is me, because I represent the super-garrison of Tidworth, Bulford and Larkhill. I claim the largest number of serving men and women and their families of any constituency in the country, and I am enormously proud to represent them, as I was to stand with many of them at the Tidworth memorial on Sunday.

However, morale among our veterans is not high. The Minister for the Armed Forces made a very powerful statement earlier when he talked about the intensity of the memories held by service people who remember fatal conflict, and about the trauma they retain. I hope that he also recognises how many serving and former service personnel bear the terrible and ineradicable memory of another event, which is the knock on the door from the military police. So many will have to endure that memory forever because of decisions made by successive Governments. As the Minister will know, there are stories of former special forces servicemen being arrested in front of their family at dawn, handcuffed and put in the back of a police van. These very unfortunate events have happened because Governments have allowed the courts to apply a wide interpretation of the European convention on human rights that goes far beyond the measures that have traditionally bound our military in armed conflict, such as the Geneva convention, the Armed Forces Acts, and British military law.

The previous Government made, I think, a very noble effort, particularly in the case of Northern Ireland, to curtail the persecution and prosecution of our troops through the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. Essentially, it recognised that, because of the decisions that followed the Good Friday agreement, it was impossible to achieve justice for the victims of republican terrorism, so an attempt was made through that Act to achieve some balance. I think more could have been done, but it was better than the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, which is being brought before the House next week.

The merry-go-round of prosecutions is starting again. Members have powerfully made the case that this is not just about the injustice being perpetrated against our forces; it is about the defence of our country. This Bill will harm the defence of the United Kingdom, because it will directly disincentivise young people from joining up and serving in our armed forces. I implore the Minister, as a brave veteran himself, to put his former comrades ahead of the European convention on human rights, and I hope that he will consider it his duty not to support the Bill next week.