Northern Ireland Veterans: Prosecution

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Louise Jones]

I have said—the hon. Gentleman can read back—that scaremongering has been spread by people who should know better. They know fully the details of the legislation and the context of Northern Ireland and have gone out to these veterans and said, “There’s going to be lots of malicious lawfare against you if this Act is repealed”, when everybody here knows that is not the case at all. They are pushing a cynical political agenda.

I and my colleagues who are veterans are vehemently opposed to spurious prosecution, to dragging people through the courts where there is absolutely no case to answer and to malicious lawfare. I cannot repeat that enough. I do not want to see a single veteran who has not committed a crime in any sense being hounded. Op Banner was an incredibly complex campaign. I find abhorrent the idea that any veteran should be at risk of malicious lawfare simply for doing their job on a very difficult operation. I call on the Secretary of State to explain how we will protect any veteran who is accused of any wrongdoing in Northern Ireland.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Surely the hon. Lady has come to the crux of the point, which is that no Minister has so far been able to give us that reassurance. She sincerely states her desire not to see veterans subject to lawfare, but they have not had that reassurance. Whatever the inadequacies of the current legislation, it provides protections, and we have no reassurance that they will not be removed.

[Louise Jones]

All I have heard is a very strong defence of the Act as it currently stands. I more than welcome a discussion about how we can move forward and repair what several Members have already said are the inadequacies in the current Act. That is the key point: there are inadequacies in the current Act.