Armed Forces: Historical Cases

Debate between Gerald Howarth and Jeffrey M Donaldson

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. As I said, countless others were seriously injured and left to bear the mental and physical scars of this reign of terror.

It is evident that little effort has been made to bring to justice those responsible for the heinous crimes committed by the terrorist organisations responsible for 90% of the deaths during the Northern Ireland troubles. Yet enormous resources—hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money and countless hours of valuable police time—have been devoted to hounding the security forces: to vigorously pursuing investigations against veterans of the armed forces and retired police officers.

The Chief Constable did establish the Historical Enquiries Team that sought to re-examine the unsolved murders in Northern Ireland, but it could review only the previous police investigations and lacked full police powers to renew the investigation of these killings. It was eventually wound up, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland established a new Legacy Investigation Branch as a temporary measure until wider agreement could be secured on the legacy issues.

Today, the PSNI Legacy Investigation Branch devotes a wholly disproportionate level of its resources to the investigation of killings linked to the security forces and hopelessly inadequate resources to the thousands of unsolved terrorist murders. Recently, two retired veterans of the Parachute Regiment, aged 67 and 65, were charged with murder in connection with the shooting of IRA commander Joe McCann in Belfast in 1972. That follows the decision to prosecute a 75-year-old veteran of the Life Guards who has been charged with the attempted murder of a man in County Tyrone in 1974.

While the families of thousands of innocent victims, including the police officers, soldiers and prison officers involved in more than a thousand murder cases, wait in vain for some action to be taken to investigate those crimes, the police are devoting resources to investigating the small number of killings linked to the state.

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way; I apologise for not having been here at the start and for not being able to stay for the whole debate. I salute him and his colleagues in the Democratic Unionist party for securing this hugely important debate.

The right hon. Gentleman has just mentioned the disproportionate number of investigations of former soldiers and police officers. Is he aware that the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland has issued what is effectively a fatwa to news organisations across the United Kingdom? If they have the temerity to make any criticism of Mr McGrory, they will be served with legal proceedings. Does that not illustrate the attempt being made by some in Northern Ireland to ensure that they get a soldier in the dock for something that happened 45 years ago? It is completely immoral.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

It is important that we all recognise and respect that we do have freedom of the press in Northern Ireland. The facts, some of which I have outlined, speak for themselves. Many in Northern Ireland wonder why the justice system is so focused on what the state did, and devotes so little of its energy and time at what the terrorists did.