Oral Answers to Questions
Douglas McAllister Excerpts(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
We have put a record amount of money into dealing with potholes. The hon. Member needs to ask his council, which is run by his party, why it is not using that money.
Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)
Mr Speaker
Order. Mr Flynn, you don’t need to cover your mouth—I can still hear you. Your voice is louder than mine!
Douglas McAllister
It is also a source of great pride that the torch has now been passed to our Government. By removing the two-child benefit cap, we will lift more children out of poverty in a single Parliament than ever before—2,260 children in West Dunbartonshire and 95,000 children in Scotland. Does the Prime Minister agree that this demonstrates true Labour values in action across Scotland and the UK?
The Prime Minister
In Labour, we know the damage that growing up in poverty does to the life chances of children. The Tories put hundreds of thousands of children into poverty, and they will live with that for the rest of their lives. We are undoing their damage. Our decision will benefit almost 100,000 children in Scotland as we deliver the largest reduction in child poverty in any single Parliament.
Northern Ireland Veterans: Prosecution
Douglas McAllister Excerpts(7 months, 2 weeks ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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John Lamont
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. There is no equivalence between a terrorist—somebody who sets out in the morning with murderous intent—and a soldier who is defending democracy and our country. Sadly, we seem to be creating some sort of equivalence, which should not be allowed to happen.
Dennis Hutchings was a former member of the Life Guards Regiment. He was a terminally ill, 80-year-old veteran who was dragged to Northern Ireland during the pandemic in 2021. He died of covid just three days into his court case. Dennis was hounded for several years—told he was cleared, and then not—and then forced to fly to Belfast to stand trial. There was no new compelling evidence, and it was simply not in the public interest. It was a barbaric way to treat an elderly man who had served our country. His lawyer said that the case contributed to his death, and that it was likely that he would not have died at that point if he had not been forced to go to Northern Ireland to stand trial for an incident that occurred in 1974.
It is all too easy for us to sit here, look at the evidence and try to justify why a trial is in the public interest, but doing so fails to recognise the instant, life-or-death decisions that these soldiers in Northern Ireland had to take every single day. It is a rewriting of history. Decades on, people sit and judge events in retrospect, with little new evidence, and come to conclusions entirely at odds with the legal investigations at the time. The Government cannot and must not lose sight of their moral responsibility and commitment to our veterans, and to the armed forces covenant.
Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)
Can the hon. Member confirm that the unlawful nature of the legacy Act meant that investigations into the deaths of more than 200 Operation Banner soldiers were shut down, against the wishes of soldiers’ families?