Fatalities in Northern Ireland and British Military Personnel

Gavin Robinson Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I follow three Members whose contributions were different in many respects. They are all engaged in this issue and have considered it thoughtfully throughout the Select Committee inquiries. It is a privilege for me serve on the Defence Committee and to be a part of the inquiry.

While I was listening to our esteemed Chair, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis)—I mean that respectfully—I was thinking of Otto von Bismarck’s quote about legislation being a bit like sausages: no one needs to see how they are made. The right hon. Gentleman and I have had many private conversations about this report. He knows very clearly that my party colleagues and I are not supportive of an amnesty and that many victims in Northern Ireland—whether they are victims of republicanism, nationalism, Unionists, loyalist paramilitaries or of state forces—collectively do not believe in an amnesty, nor are they interested in having the hope or the pursuit of justice snuffed out. That is the environment in which it is important to consider this report.

This morning I was listening to BBC Radio Ulster, which had a contribution from Northern Ireland victims about Holocaust Memorial Day. One victim, Alan McBride, lost his wife on the Shankill Road when she went to her local fish and chip shop to get an evening meal and was blown up by the IRA. He spoke about a day of reflection in Northern Ireland, which is 21 June. I did not know this, but he shared the reason that 21 June was selected: victims across the Province had sought to find one single day in the calendar on which there has not been a troubles-related death, but they could not. They could not find a single day when someone had not died as a consequence of the troubles. They focused on 21 June because of the solstice representing a change in culture and weather, and the hope and aspiration of warmth and sunshine.

Our history is harrowing. Anyone who has been personally or directly affected by it is left with the scars and the emotion of the troubles of Northern Ireland. The report is about who “guards the guardians”, to use the phrase from a previous Defence Committee report. It is about how we look after those who protected society in Northern Ireland, not those who persecuted and were prosecuted for the most heinous crimes in Northern Ireland.

A total of 300,000 service personnel served in Northern Ireland—there were 27,000 of them at the height of the troubles—and 1,441 human beings who we, as a nation, asked to serve and protect our interests, perished. They died. Three hundred individuals died as a direct consequence of engagement with security forces, but that does not mean 300 murders. It is important to make that point. It does not mean that 300 people were murdered at the hands of the state: 300 people died engaging against the state. They were legitimate deaths—deaths that arose out of conflict and out of those individuals who we asked to defend us standing on the frontline and defending us as best they could.

[Emma Little Pengelly (Belfast South) (DUP)]

I thank my hon. Friend and his colleagues on the Select Committee for the huge amount of work they have put into the report and its conclusions. Does he agree that there is a stark difference between someone who went out with murder on their mind to hurt and to kill in the pursuit of terrorism, and the brave men and women of our security forces and armed forces? They went out night after night and day after day to serve and to protect, and some were involved in difficult operational decisions with very tragic outcomes. We should be protecting them, as opposed to a terrorist on the loyalist side, a terrorist on the republican side, or somebody in the armed forces who went out with the intention to murder. That is not what this is about. It is about protecting those who are honourable and who went out to serve and protect.

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[Gavin Robinson]

I agree most fundamentally with my hon. Friend. She has been engaged for almost a decade in the policy matters and implications of legacy issues in Northern Ireland. I pay tribute to her for the work that she has done. These are not easy issues at all.

I am not saying that those 300 deaths were murders or unlawful, but that should not mean that they are immune from investigation. I say that most clearly: they should not be immune from investigation. I will quote from the “Who guards the guardians?” report led by the hon. and gallant Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) on the inquiry into the Iraq Historic Allegations Team:

“With the prospect of investigations into British deployments in Afghanistan and Northern Ireland, the Government must prove both in private, but especially in public that in adhering to the pursuit of justice and the rule of law, it does not lose sight of its moral responsibility and its commitment to the Armed Forces Covenant with those who have served.”

I was disappointed that the Government dismissed those lines.

Given what we have attempted to do in Northern Ireland thus far in dealing with the legacy, this report barely surmises that the overall process of investigations into fatalities in Northern Ireland has been deeply unsatisfactory. The instability of investigatory bodies, the limited resources and manpower provided to them and the continuing question marks over their independence have delivered a vicious cycle of investigation and reinvestigation that fails service personnel, their families and the families of those who died.

I respectfully suggest to the Minister—the Chair of the Select Committee should know my views on this as well—that dealing with this issue through the prism of Northern Ireland does not work. As parliamentarians who stand up in this national Parliament and ask individuals to put their lives on the line for our protection and our security, we should not look at this issue through the prism of Northern Ireland alone. A consultation is fine, and I have nothing against people submitting their views, but the principles with which we are engaged go far beyond the Northern Ireland context. I am not asking for anything that would be injurious to investigation or to upholding the rule of law.

When I say that, I am acutely aware that there are relatives of victims of the Ballymurphy massacre sitting in the Public Gallery—relatives who have sought for years to achieve truth and justice for their loved ones for that incident, which took place over a number of days in August 1971. I say very gently—this applies to their case and to many others in Northern Ireland—that the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of justice are two noble pursuits, but one does not always lead to the other. Someone can have truth but not get the justice they seek; someone can have justice but not get the truth they think they know. That is the mix that we deal with in Northern Ireland, but a statute of limitations would not, in our view, change the ability to get an investigation or to get closure, or remove the state’s responsibility or what it has to do to be article 2 compliant.

I disagree with the Chair of the Select Committee about this. The year 1973 was a watershed. That was when the investigatory process in Northern Ireland was fundamentally changed because the impartiality or the suitability of investigations had been questioned. The state can have confidence that where there was an investigation post-1973, that process was robust and article 2 compliant. I acknowledge that the Ballymurphy massacre predates that, and I do not stand in the way of any victim who seeks to pursue justice for their loved ones.

It is wrong to say that a statute of limitations would have to be extended to both state and non-state actors. We propose a statute of limitations on the basis that the state has discharged its duty. This is not immunity. This is not state immunity. This is not protection for a class of people. This is the state saying, “Where there has been an investigation and nothing came of it, we will move on after a defined period of time.” That is why looking through the prism of Northern Ireland is wrong in this context. This will apply in four years’ time to Afghanistan, and in five or six years’ time to Iraq. A 20-year statute of limitations could apply to armed conflicts throughout the world, provided we do not deviate from international standards. I do not accept that this has to be all-encompassing.

I draw a distinction: the Government in London created conditions that were preferential for the perpetrators but seemingly did nothing for the protectors. If we are looking for equivalence in the system, we need to look further than the two-year early-release scheme, although that is a key part. There is a distinction. Two serving members of the security forces were in prison at the time of the Good Friday agreement and did not benefit from the two-year release scheme. The perpetrators of heinous paramilitary acts in Northern Ireland kept no records, have no files and provide no honesty or truth in a process that could lead to justice for the loved ones of their victims, be they members of the security forces or not. That is another clear disparity.

If you had asked the Northern Ireland parties to agree to an on-the-runs scheme, they would have asked you to run on, but the Labour Government did produce an on-the-runs scheme. They went out of their way to give comfort to those who had committed heinous paramilitary acts that they would not be pursued for prosecution. Our state—this country and its Government—has given no protection to the people it asked to engage on our behalf. It has given no protection to security forces personnel who served in Northern Ireland or in other conflicts, but it was prepared to give odious on-the-run letters to paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.

John Downey is a famous example. He killed 11 members of our security forces in Hyde Park and seven horses associated with their work. When he was brought to the Old Bailey, he produced an on-the-runs letter and said, “I have an assurance from this state that I will not be prosecuted for my actions.” John Downey walked. There is no parallel between the way our state protects the people we ask to protect us and its casual, laissez-faire protection of paramilitaries.

The legal evidence that the Committee received was interesting and compelling, but most importantly—albeit there are different views, ambitions and perspectives on the Northern Ireland issue—our expert witnesses agreed that it is entirely in the UK Parliament’s power to enact a statute of limitations. We call on the Government to do so as a matter of urgency in the next Parliament. That is the nature of our report. That is what we ask for from our Government. Although there will always be different ambitions, different tactics and different approaches in Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland is but one part of this process. The Government must decide whether they are prepared to redress their approach to legacy issues and to our service personnel and start protecting those who protected us.

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[Dr Julian Lewis]

It only remains for me to express my gratitude to everyone who has taken part in the debate. I hope that any onlookers will realise and accept that we are dealing with the most difficult of issues, and are trying to do everything that decent people with good intentions can do to arrive at a fair conclusion.

I am grateful to those who have spoken today. I am grateful to colleagues such as my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who have been highly active in this field in the past but could not be here today, for writing in support. I am grateful to the Minister, not least for making crystal clear that the sentencing Act does indeed apply equally to the military and to terrorists going on trial.

That said, it remains absolutely unacceptable that service personnel will have to go through the sort of ordeal that Dennis Hutchings is going through. It seems to me that there are only two ways to prevent that: getting rid of the international law that requires such matters to be investigated in the way that it does, and having a statute of limitations. The international law, namely the Human Rights Act, says that if we have a statute of limitations, it must apply to everyone. I see my good friend the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) dissenting from that proposition, but that is the testimony that we were given by legal experts. If there is a way in which we can do what the report does—that is, support a statute of limitations for service personnel and analogous organisations, such as the police and the security agencies—without incurring a breach of international law, I would like to know what it is, because the evidence that we were given was that we could not.

[Gavin Robinson]

I realise that it is probably improper for me to start a new debate during a concluding speech, but it depends on whether there has been an article 2-compliant investigation or not. If there has not been, the right hon. Gentleman is right; but where there has been, the option of a statute of limitations is open.

[Dr Lewis]

As I say, we sought advice, and the advice we got was that a statute of limitations can be brought in, but there has to be—or have been, as the hon. Gentleman says—an investigation. There has not always been such an investigation, so unless or until we can bring in such a statute, or can get out of the provisions of the Human Rights Act—no one seems to want to do that—we face the prospect of people like Dennis Hutchings being forced to go through a process, at a late stage in their life, that most fair-minded people would regard as unacceptable and that is unlikely to lead to a conviction.

I did not expect for one moment that we would solve this problem today, but I hope that we have clarified the issues, and have focused the Government’s attention on what needs to be done, so that we do not end up with our soldiers having to worry about not only warfare but lawfare.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Seventh Report of the Defence Committee, Investigations into fatalities in Northern Ireland involving British military personnel, Session 2016-17, HC 1064, and the Government response, HC 549.