Northern Ireland Veterans: Prosecution

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)]

Today, we speak on behalf of our veterans and the 176,000 members of the public who have so far signed the petition to give veterans protection against the vexatious legal pursuit of our brave heroes. Last week, when I raised this in the House, the Prime Minister dismissed it as “political point scoring.” He is wrong; it is a matter of justice, a matter of ensuring that those who risked their lives to protect our citizens during the troubles know that the state stands behind them.

The Veterans Commissioners for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales—not naive people—issued a joint statement last week in which they said:

“Inconsistent application of justice—particularly where it revisits incidents already thoroughly investigated—serves only to retraumatise veterans and undermine public confidence.”

I agree with that statement entirely. It is exactly consistent with the views of every veteran I have spoken to, and I have spoken to a rather large number of them since February, when I first raised this matter.

Getting this right is not just a matter of historical justice. The legal witch hunt will not end in Northern Ireland; it will cast a shadow over every future conflict that our armed forces engage in and undermine their abilities to defend us. I am a strong advocate of human rights. I think I am the only person in the House to have defeated Governments from both sides, both in the House and in court, on matters of human rights. I take those rights extremely seriously, but this issue is driven more by politics and its exigencies than by human rights.

Take the inquiry process, which both my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) and the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Jones) referred to. The Secretary of State will tell us later, but I imagine that by reinstating the inquiry process, the Government believe they are addressing the implied article 2 right to investigate purportedly unlawful killings. I imagine that is what they are trying to do. Indeed, The Guardian this morning, as we have heard, referred again to the Secretary of State claiming that the Government are protecting the right to investigate 202 murders of British Army soldiers. Really?

I wonder whether that claim comes with an undertaking to take witness statements from the 200 terrorists who committed those murders—who, incidentally, I say to the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire, were given pardons by Tony Blair as part of a peace process that began some 40 years ago. I think 423 were released from prison with pardons, and approximately 200 so-called “on-the-runs” received comfort letters. That is not this Act—that is then, yet it continues to exist now.

The Veterans Commissioners continued:

“There can be no moral equivalence between those who served in uniform to uphold peace and the rule of law, and those who sought to destroy it through acts of terrorism.”

Again, I could not agree more. The largest group of people killed during the troubles, by a vast margin, were murdered by paramilitaries, to use the current euphemism for terrorists. They were killed by terrorists. Every single one of those 2,000 people killed was an unlawful killing, to use the phrasing of the coroners courts these days. We do not need a court to establish that. How many of those IRA murders will be subject to inquiry? On the current listing—we have 33 listed—just two such cases, out of 2,000. That is because the major driver for these inquiries is the IRA-Sinn Féin effort to hide their own barbaric acts behind a freedom-fighting façade, trying to rewrite history with themselves as the heroes and the British state as the villains. That is why battles such as Coagh, Clonoe and, very likely soon, Loughgall feature so large in the demands for inquiries and the prosecution of long-retired, innocent British soldiers. All three of those actions were humiliating defeats for the IRA.

Let me be clear: all of the IRA members who died in those exchanges—so-called “victims” in this context—were actively in the process of committing atrocities. They were trying to murder innocent people. At Coagh, they planned to murder an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment officer. At Clonoe, they attacked the Coalisland police station using an armour-piercing machine gun in an attempt to murder the officers inside. At Loughgall, they drove a bomb-laden digger to blow up a police station and were armed and ready to murder any survivors. All were armed, dangerous and intent on murder. Many of them had killed before, making them a fatal risk to our soldiers—a risk our soldiers had to cope with in split-second decisions. Those are the people we will put on trial if we allow them to lose their protection that we ought to be giving our veterans today.

Look at the individuals involved, starting with Coagh where the inquest heard about Michael Ryan. Ryan was probably responsible for many murders; I can cite two. He shot two UDR officers—one in front of little children at a crossing, the other in front of the officer’s 13-year-old son. That is the sort of people we are dealing with.

As for the IRA’s greatest defeat, Loughgall, the weapons recovered at the scene had been used in over 40 previous murders—there is no doubt about that. Of the IRA members there, McKearney and Arthurs were both involved in the Ballygawley police station attack, which killed a further two policemen. James Lynagh—nicknamed “The Executioner” by the Royal Ulster Constabulary—was believed to have been involved in more than 30 killings, including the cold-blooded assassination of the 80-year-old Sir Norman Stronge, who was largely blind and deaf, as well as his son in front of him.

As for Patrick Kelly, who was the leader of that attack, he led the self-styled East Tyrone brigade, which is believed to have killed around 250 people before Loughgall. By the way, he also took part in the second attempt to assassinate brave UDR officer Glen Espie, who is sitting behind me in the Gallery. He fought off the assassins on two occasions—he was shot twice and fought off IRA assassins twice. If they had not been stopped, there is no doubt that all of these killers would have continued their psychopathic campaign of murder.

The IRA’s campaign of violence was indiscriminate and extended far beyond the island of Ireland. I say to the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire that the number was not 722 if you include the police officers and UDR officers. If you include them, 1,073 servants of the British state were killed in the course of defending innocent civilians from those murderers. The IRA is trying to equate the British Government’s actions with that psychopathic behaviour, but of course nothing could be further from the truth.

There is ample evidence of the Army taking enormous risks to arrest rather than take the often safer option of killing the terrorists. Consider the arrest—not the killing—of the South Armagh sniper. He killed seven people, but he was arrested and not killed. Consider the arrest—not the killing—of the killers of Captain Westmacott. They were arrested—not killed—by the rest of his patrol. Even today’s Daily Mail mentioned the rescue of Bernadette McAliskey. There was an attempt to kill her by the Ulster Defence Association. British soldiers rescued her even though she was effectively a political arm of the Irish National Liberation Army.

The clearest demonstration of our real strategy is that, while 1,073 British forces, soldiers and policemen were killed by republican terrorists up until 1994, 145 paramilitaries were killed and 428 were taken prisoner. That means that around three or four were taken prisoner for every one killed. Seven British soldiers or policemen died for every IRA person who was killed. That tells us the strategy and it tells us what the IRA is trying to reverse.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend marvel at the remarkable restraint shown by British soldiers, no matter where these officers or personnel were from across the UK, in dealing with this and never once stepping over the mark in regard to these cases?

[David Davis]

Absolutely—the phrase I would use is “heroic restraint”. Under those circumstances, restraint means putting their own lives and the lives of their comrades on the line. That is what was going on there, that was the decision that was being taken, and that is what is being challenged today. My right hon. Friend is right about that, and that restraint was institutional. It was not simply heroic soldiers, although of course it was that as well. The yellow card system demanded restraint and issued warnings of proportionality.

Every time a British soldier killed a paramilitary, it was subject to rigorous judicial scrutiny, and when that process failed we ensured the matter was properly investigated. Remember the Saville inquiry, which cost £200 million, took 12 years and consisted of 5,000 pages. What other country in the world would review its own behaviour in that way? I am not going to actually give all the answers, but Members should consider in their own mind whether some of our allies might not have gone quite so far to give everybody justice.

Our soldiers were held to the highest standards of law, yet our Government are rewarding that by effectively threatening them in their retirement. Remember: we have been talking about human rights. That is not a proper reflection of their human rights. They are human beings too, and they have human rights. We should remind ourselves that human rights are founded in natural justice. They do not spring out of the air; they are founded in natural justice. In this process, there is no natural justice for our brave veterans nor, frankly, for the real innocent victims of the troubles. The process gives neither.

The Government are understandably struggling to find a solution, and the Secretary of State knows that I have some sympathy for his position. Let me tell him the criterion for success, because it is very simple. The Government must completely remove the threat of prosecution from our brave veterans who have served their country well and who have already been through the judicial review of every action they took. If the Government repeal the legacy Act without a robust replacement—that is the key point—we hand the narrative back to those who seek to rewrite history. I accept that mistakes were sometimes made, and where they were, those responsible must be held to account. That has been done. But we must not allow politically motivated lawfare to dismantle the very capabilities that make our armed forces precise, lawful, effective and among the best in the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Ballinger]

I would like to hear more from the Secretary of State about the protections that veterans will be given, one of which, I understand, is that no veteran will be asked to travel to Northern Ireland; rather, they can give evidence remotely, which is important. There does need to be more on protections, but—[Interruption.] Let me finish. It is not acceptable that we have an Act that has been rejected by victims and the families of veterans and found to be unlawful, as well as being unacceptable to many members of the parties in Northern Ireland.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I want to make one thing very clear: the vexatious pursuit of veterans is the key here. Some never finally made it into court, but they were pursued; some died before they got to court. It is not a good comparison to say that only one was actually found guilty, when so many have been pursued vexatiously from start to finish. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman understands how it feels to be pursued—to have to go to Northern Ireland, to have to come back, to be arrested by the police and then taken away. That is what was wrong with the legislation that existed previously.

[Alex Ballinger]

The right hon. Gentleman is right. The nub of the matter is that we must ensure that veterans have the right protections and that they are not taken through additional tests, but we have to change the legislation, because it was unlawful. We have no choice. It has let down victims. The new legislation that we are putting in place will involve deep co-operation with the Ministry of Defence—I note that the Minister for Veterans and People is here—to ensure that every protection that is available, within the law, will be provided to veterans. I am sure some of that will be outlined in the Secretary of State’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I am grateful for your tolerance, Mr Mundell. I start by saying to the hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster), and one or two others on the Government Benches, that to accuse people like myself who served in Northern Ireland of supporting the legacy Act and then demeaning ourselves by apparently attacking others is utter nonsense. We are after one purpose and one purpose only: to find a way to protect veterans who have been pursued through the courts in a vexatious manner and had their lives destroyed in their latter years. That was the sole purpose of my support for the legacy Act. Even though I had my doubts about it, I supported it for that reason. There was nothing else on the table to provide support for those veterans, so I really take it ill, and the hon. Member for South Ribble demeans himself by attacking people on that personal basis.

[Emma Lewell in the Chair]

This is an issue about inconsistency, and it covers all previous Governments. The problem is that we were originally involved in the law of armed conflict, which settled these issues, and we have had a collision with the Human Rights Act 1998, which has changed everything. The real point is that there is no moral equivalence between people who set out to kill, maim and destroy in a democracy, which happened in Northern Ireland, as the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) laid out, and the British servicemen who were ordered to go to Northern Ireland. They went out of their duty to protect the citizens of Northern Ireland against a violent and destructive insurrection.

I have to tell anybody with the idea that there is some kind of equivalence here—that if we cannot proceed against IRA terrorists we have taken them out of the equation—to go back and find out about when we pursued IRA terrorists through the court. There is no evidence. There were no records kept. They know that very well. If anyone thinks they will get 400 witness statements from people who know they are protected by the lack of evidence, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) said, they must be living in a different world from the one that I am living in.

The reality is that the only people who will be prosecuted, unless this Government do something to end that process, will be the veterans. Even if they are not prosecuted and eventually found guilty, the persecution and the chasing of people who served their country ruins their lives and makes them worry for the rest of their lives.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

That point cannot be overstated, because many Northern Ireland veterans already suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health problems. I speak as a vice-president of the mental health charity Combat Stress. The very idea that there are people who are nowhere near a prosecution or potential prosecution but are now haunted by not only the trauma of their service but the possibility that they will be dragged to a court and exposed in some way, with their families saying, “Daddy, did you really do something wrong?”—it cannot be overstated how utterly brutal this is. It is a deliberate campaign by those who are trying to bring these prosecutions.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I agree with my hon. Friend: that is what is really hanging over us. If nothing is done and the existing Act is repealed, we are left with the single problem we started with: how do we protect veterans from the vexatious persecution that has been going on? I have lots of respect for many Government Members, particularly the Veterans Minister. He knows very well that that is their interest. I say to them simply that they cannot repeal the Act without replacing it with protection for the veterans who served their country.

I served in Northern Ireland. I did not ask to go to Northern Ireland. I went out with my regiment, the Scots Guards, and we served, I think, pretty well in Northern Ireland, but we did not want to be there—to be spat at by people in the United Kingdom and wonder, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) said, what was coming around the corner next. We put up with all that in the United Kingdom. It is a unique experience—it is not like going abroad to fight a war. Being on the streets of the United Kingdom, carrying a rifle and trying to protect those who are also under attack from those who would will their destruction is something very peculiar, yet my soldiers and many others acted with the most phenomenal restraint. Provocation was there all the time, but they acted with the utmost restraint. I know of no other country whose soldiers would have ever done that, no matter what their background was. I am immensely proud to have been one of them. We should stop demeaning each other about politics in this. This is about protection, and we should be talking about that.

I lost a very good friend in Northern Ireland. It is pretty awful, really, when I think back to what actually happened. Robert Nairac was kidnapped. He was tortured for a long time. We know not what happened to his body, although we may guess. He was executed after having escaped—that much we do know. No one from the IRA who committed that atrocity will ever, I suspect, be held to account in any court of law. That is the injustice of this process. His parents died never knowing where his body was, and his family today still do not know. Talk about injustice—that is injustice.

[Alex Ballinger]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his service. I agree that that is a gross injustice. Would he support a new investigation into his friend’s death, if new evidence were to emerge, and does he appreciate that the existing legacy Act would prevent that, which is one of the reasons it needs to be repealed?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I was attacking equivalence. The reality is that if we get rid of the legacy Act right now, we will go back to a one-sided process where veterans will be pursued but nobody in the IRA will come in front of the courts. Many of them have these ridiculous letters of comfort given to them, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) said. That equivalence is a distraction. I want to see those people prosecuted, but are we going to get witness statements from people who have run to and hidden in other countries? I doubt it very much.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

The only likelihood of ever finding out what happened to Captain Nairac’s body would be if somebody came forward to the truth and reconciliation body, which is part of the legacy Act, in return for immunity, and told people where it was. There will be no other way of finding out.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I was going to come to that point. My right hon. Friend guessed what was on my mind—not that it was that deep for him to get to it. That was the whole reason why, in the end, even though we had our doubts, we supported the legacy Act: because we thought that, on balance, there was at least the likelihood of getting to the bottom of many unexposed cases, and of the deaths and violence that took place, knowing full well that those from the IRA will never be prosecuted for it and we will never know otherwise.

The Government cannot proceed unless they are able categorically to clarify that legislation will protect veterans from the vexatious pursuit that has been so much in their minds and worries throughout this period. If we cannot give them that—if the Government cannot legislate for that—then there is no purpose in getting rid of the existing Act. That has to be the point. The Government may not like it, but they must face this reality: there cannot be pursuit of veterans if previous inquiries, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington said, have cleared them of whatever the charge was before. This repeat process that has been taking place, on absolutely no evidence whatever, is what has caused all the worry for our veterans.

If we care about our veterans, we should not rush to change the existing legislation until we can confirm protection for these brave men and women who served their country so loyally, on behalf of civilians in Northern Ireland. If we cannot find a solution, it is ours and the Government’s duty not to tamper with what exists, for fear of destroying the one protection we have given those veterans.