Armed Forces: Historical Cases

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

I beg to move,

That this House acknowledges the service and sacrifice of the armed forces and police during Operation Banner in Northern Ireland as well as in other theatres of conflict in Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan; welcomes the recent decision to close down the Iraq Historical Allegations Team; and calls on the Government to take steps to ensure that current and future processes for investigating and prosecuting legacy cases, whether in Northern Ireland or elsewhere, are balanced and fair.

On behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends, I am delighted to move this motion in the name of the Democratic Unionist party. Let me say at the outset that our party holds veterans of our armed forces and those who have served in the police, not only in Northern Ireland but across the United Kingdom, in the highest esteem. We have always sought to use our parliamentary time to raise issues that are of concern to those people; I am glad to do so again today. I welcome the opportunity for this debate, and I thank all Members present, including the Ministers from the Northern Ireland Office and the Ministry of Defence.

Although policing and justice issues are now devolved to the Northern Ireland Executive, the legacy of our troubled past remains a matter for this Parliament and the UK Government to deal with. Our motion refers to other theatres of conflict, including Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan, and I pay tribute to all those who served in each of those operations, especially to those who died in the service of our country. I know that other right hon. and hon. Members will wish to refer to those people. I hope the House will forgive me if I concentrate mainly, and with good reason, on the situation in Northern Ireland.

I remind hon. Members that Operation Banner was the longest-running military operation in the history of the Army. During the period known as the troubles in Northern Ireland, there were more than 3,500 deaths, of which more than 2,000—some 60%—were murders carried out by republican paramilitary terrorists, mainly from the Provisional IRA, while more than 1,000—some 30%—were carried out by loyalist paramilitaries. British and Irish state forces were responsible for 10% of the deaths, almost all of which occurred as a result of entirely lawful actions, when soldiers and police officers acted to safeguard life and property and uphold the rule of law. In fact, a member of the security forces in Northern Ireland was three times more likely to be killed than a member of the IRA. If we contrast that with Iraq, for example, where terrorist insurgents were three times more likely to be killed than members of the armed forces, it sets the Northern Ireland situation in context.

Let me restate for the record that paramilitary terrorists were responsible for some 90% of the deaths in Northern Ireland—on both sides of the border, that is—whereas 10% of the deaths are attributable to state forces. Those deaths include more than 3,000 unsolved murders arising from our troubled past. What a terrible legacy that is—one of pain, loss and a deep sense of injustice on the part of the victims and their families.

Let me be clear that there can be no moral or legal equivalence between our police or armed forces and those who were members of illegal, criminal terrorist organisations. Let us contrast how the two have been treated. It is a well accepted principle that in a democracy no one should be above the law, yet—as will become clear from my remarks—there appears to be one rule for those who serve our country and another for those whose objective is to destroy it. Unfortunately, the legacy issues were not adequately addressed, never mind resolved, in the deeply flawed Belfast agreement of Good Friday 1998. Instead, in that agreement the Government of the day agreed to release early from prison those prisoners sentenced for offences linked to the troubles in Northern Ireland and who were members of a terrorist organisation on ceasefire and supporting the peace process.

In effect, the terrorists, who were found guilty of crimes including murder, were released from prison after serving only two years in jail. They included, for example, the notorious Shankill bomber, Sean Kelly, from the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds). Kelly was sentenced to nine life terms in prison for the murder of nine innocent civilians on the Shankill Road. He served just seven years in jail—less than one year for each life he destroyed.

In addition, in September 2000, beyond the terms of the agreement, the then Secretary of State, now Lord Mandelson, announced that the Government would no longer seek the extradition of those Provisional IRA prisoners who had escaped from prison, including several who had escaped from the Maze prison in my constituency in 1983. They included convicted terrorists such as Dermot Finucane, brother of the late Pat Finucane and former head of the Provisional IRA southern command, and Kevin Barry Artt, who had been convicted of the murder of the deputy governor of Maze prison, Albert Miles, who was shot in front of his wife. What an appalling atrocity! They also included Liam Averill, convicted of the sectarian murder of two Protestants, who escaped from the Maze prison dressed as a woman in 1997. Their extradition was not sought by the Government of the day. In addition, perhaps up to 30 Provisional IRA terrorists have been granted the royal prerogative of mercy and allowed to go free.

In 2001, the then Labour Government sought to extend the concession further so that an amnesty would be introduced for all members of terrorist organisations on ceasefire. In a letter dated 4 May 2001, the then Secretary of State, Dr John Reid, wrote to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair:

“In the Hillsborough statement of 8 March we accepted publicly for the first time that it would be a natural development of the Early Release Scheme to discontinue the prosecution of pre-Good Friday Agreement offences allegedly committed by supporters of organisations now on ceasefire.”

In the same letter, Dr Reid made it clear that the legislation to provide for that amnesty

“should exclude members of the security forces from the amnesty arrangements, though we should not underestimate the difficulty of holding this line in Parliament in the face of an inevitable press campaign.”

You bet, Dr Reid! We opposed it vigorously and stopped it in its tracks. I am confident that this Government would never consider such a concession to those who have committed murder on the streets of Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

Note that an amnesty was offered—an amnesty was put on the table for terrorist organisations while members of our security forces were to be excluded, just as they were excluded and ignored in the agreement of 1998. Dr Reid was certainly right about the opposition that he would face to such a reprehensible scheme.

But things did not stop there. A secret deal was then done between the Northern Ireland Office and Sinn Féin, to the benefit of Provisional IRA terrorists who were still on the run—fugitives from justice. They were wanted for questioning about serious terrorism-related offences, including murder. Letters of comfort were issued by the Northern Ireland Office to each of those terrorists, sometimes delivered by the postman Gerry Kelly from North Belfast, informing them that there were no warrants in existence and that they were not wanted in Northern Ireland for arrest, questioning or charge by the police. The issuing of those letters by the Northern Ireland Office resulted in the disgraceful situation of an alleged IRA member, John Downey, being able to escape conviction in the courts in London for the murder of four soldiers in the Hyde Park bombings of 1982. I could go on, but it is important that we focus now on the sacrifice of the security forces—of those who served our country.

According to the Sutton Index of deaths during the troubles in Northern Ireland, 520 members of the regular Army, Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and reserves, and veterans, were murdered by terrorists during Operation Banner. In addition, 243 members of the Ulster Defence Regiment and Royal Irish Regiment, and veterans, were murdered by terrorists. Some 325 members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and other constabularies, and retired police officers, were murdered by terrorists. Twenty-six prison officers and former prison officers were murdered by terrorists. That amounts to 1,100 men and women in the service of the Crown who were murdered by terrorists, and countless others seriously injured and left to bear the mental and physical scars of this reign of terror.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is speaking powerfully about the victims of terror. One of the victims who is not counted is my uncle, who now sits in the other place. He was attacked brutally by IRA men while representing our country in Brussels. I understand why the right hon. Gentleman mentions the statistics, but they hide so many scars. Victims are hidden because they are not listed, yet they bear those scars today, even if they were unharmed physically.

[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.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I am following the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks closely, as ever. Does he agree that the end result of all this is that Sinn Féin is winning the war, by which I mean that it is managing to shift public opinion so that, somehow, the troubles become an issue to do with the actions of the British state and not to do with the murderous barbarism of terrorism during that period? Would he also say that it is having some measure of success in that endeavour?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Although the IRA did not win the war in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin is trying to win the propaganda war and rewrite the history of the troubles. Let me absolutely clear that, for our part, it will not be allowed to rewrite the history of the troubles in Northern Ireland.

As I have said, it is evident that the current resources devoted to legacy investigations are heavily skewed towards investigating what the police and the Army did, and that not enough is being done to address what the terrorists did, despite the fact that they were responsible for more than 90% of the deaths in Northern Ireland and other parts of the UK. It is wrong that the full powers and finances of the state are devoted to prosecuting the men and women who stood on the frontline in the most difficult of circumstances to defend the entire community and uphold the rule of law.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

My right hon. Friend is delivering a powerful speech. A number of veterans groups have been organising events over the past few weeks to highlight the problems that we are highlighting today. One group attempted to organise a peaceful demonstration and the peaceful laying of a wreath in Londonderry only a couple of weeks ago, but it was forced to cancel as a result of threats from dissident organisations. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that compounds the problems that he is highlighting today in Parliament?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

There are some in Northern Ireland who talk much about respect, equality and discrimination; yet the same people were silent when it came to the violent threats made against some veterans who simply wanted to exercise their civil liberty to march to the Cenotaph in Londonderry and lay a wreath in remembrance of their comrades—some respect and equality there. Some people in Northern Ireland politics speak with forked tongue.

When we add to all these things the fact that legacy inquests and investigations by the Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland are laying bare the modus operandi of the counter-terrorism operations by the Army and the police that brought the terrorists in Northern Ireland to their knees and helped to secure the relative degree of peace that we enjoy today, we should all be concerned. Our national security and the security of every UK citizen is put at risk when we allow the operations of the security forces to be exposed in this way through the legal system. We must bear in mind that there is a continuing threat. A police officer was targeted by Republican terrorists in County Londonderry yesterday, and another was shot while in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North. That terrorist threat remains, yet we are exposing how the security forces counter that violent extremism and terrorism. We can be sure that putting soldiers and police officers in the dock while the terrorists walk free is an expediency that will cost us dear in years to come if we do not do something about it now.

[Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is highlighting a critical issue that I hear about from young and older armed forces personnel and from those who consider joining. The pressure and risks of serving our nation and the long-term impact that that could have on personnel and their families decades down the line is preventing people from signing up and encouraging others to leave earlier than they otherwise would.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I thank the hon. Lady for her timely intervention. She is absolutely right that this is not only affecting the morale of those who serve at present but acting as a huge disincentive for recruitment to our armed forces. Who wants to put themselves in the frontline in such circumstances, whereby these young men and women will be betrayed a few years down the road because of so-called human rights lawyers? It simply is not right, as is being realised—rather belatedly—with the welcome decision to close down the Iraq Historic Allegations Team. Consider the damage to the morale of our armed forces and the consequences this has had, with a marked downturn in recruitment and retention. While so-called human rights lawyers get rich with the lucre of returns such cases can bring—mainly from the public purse—the men and women defending our country on the frontline find it hard to avoid a sense of betrayal. I have heard that from many of them. All right-thinking people should rail against this.

The Stormont House agreement reached between the Government and political parties in Northern Ireland made it clear that there would be no amnesty for terrorist-related crimes, and it proposed a new set of institutions to deal with our troubled past. Let me be clear that this party stands by the Stormont House agreement. We stand by our commitment not to accept an amnesty for the terrorists. We endorse the institutions proposed under the agreement, including a new historical investigations unit that would have full police powers, and would take over the work of the PSNI’s legacy investigation branch and the responsibility for reinvestigating the unsolved murders linked to the troubles in Northern Ireland. We welcome and support that. The sooner we can get that new institution up and running, the better for everyone, especially the innocent victims. However, the Stormont House agreement has not yet been implemented due to an impasse that has arisen between the Government and Sinn Féin over national security.

It is a ridiculous state of affairs that the political party linked to the largest terrorist organisation that is responsible for the most murders during the troubles has a veto over the implementation of a policy that would give the innocent victims access to proper investigation and the prospect of justice. In a democracy, this is surely not right. It cannot be right that Sinn Féin is being handed a veto over a proper investigative process into the murders of the people who were killed by the Provisional IRA. It is a nonsense. Sinn Féin talks about respect and equality. Well, then, let us have some respect and equality for the innocent victims of the IRA, and let us see the Stormont House agreement taken forward and Sinn Féin’s veto swept aside.

[Tom Elliott (Fermanagh and South Tyrone) (UUP)]

I apologise that I will not be here for the end of the debate, as I have to attend a constituency event this evening in memory of the Enniskillen bomb victims. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that there is a need to build into the proposed historical investigations unit a process that allows an investigation into the cases that have already run through the Historical Enquiries Team, otherwise those people will be left with nothing other than a review, and not a new investigation?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support for the institutions proposed under the Stormont House agreement. At present, in fairness to the victims and families who have waited a long time, the proposal is that the historical investigations unit would pick up where the historical inquiries team left off in chronological order. It would be wrong to go back to the beginning and start again, leaving the people who have already waited many years having to wait even longer. Nevertheless, if there is new evidence or there are new evidence-gathering techniques with the potential to lead to a prosecution in the cases already reviewed by the HET, of course we believe that the HIU should examine them. We have no objection in principle to that happening. We believe that all innocent victims in Northern Ireland should have access to justice and be treated equitably and fairly.

It is important that the Government now proceed with the Stormont House agreement and get on with publishing the draft legislation to give innocent victims and others the opportunity to comment on the proposals, so that at last we can begin the process of implementing what has been agreed and the focus will no longer be solely on what the state did. That will shift the focus and address the issues already raised in the House about the attempt to rewrite history, because the IRA and the other terrorist organisations will be put under the spotlight. What they did will be examined and brought to the fore.

It is wrong that our retired veterans of the military and the police have to spend their latter days looking over their shoulders, still waiting for the knock at the door, while the terrorists who skulked in the shadows and destroyed countless lives on the streets are left without a care in the world about the prospect of being pursued for their crimes. That simply is not right. The terrorists must be pursued and held accountable for their crimes. We will therefore vigorously oppose any attempt to grant an amnesty to any terrorist organisation. The time has come for the Government finally to do something to protect the men and women who served our country. They were not provided for in the 1998 agreement, while the terrorists were. Special provision was made for the terrorists in 1998, in the form of the early release scheme, and other concessions have been made since, as I outlined earlier, but nothing has been done for those who served the Crown. That is wrong and needs to be addressed.

The Government must therefore give urgent consideration to introducing a statute of limitations for soldiers and police officers who face the prospect of prosecution in cases that—this is very important—have previously been the subject of full police investigations. Let me clear about that: we are talking about cases that were previously the subject of rigorous police investigations relating to killings and deaths that occurred before 1998. The Government need to look at this. It is wrong that our veterans are sitting at home wondering whether a third or fourth investigation will take place into their case simply because some hot, fast-thinking, “make a quick buck” human rights lawyer in Belfast thinks it is a good idea to reopen their case. That is what is going on.

We believe therefore that this matter has to be addressed. We can no longer ignore it. Certainly, we on these Benches have not been ignoring it. We believe not only that a statute of limitations should apply to Northern Ireland and Operation Banner but that consideration should be given to other military deployments, including in Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan. This is not an amnesty, as each case will have previously been the subject of a thorough investigation; rather it is an appropriate and necessary measure to protect the men and women of our armed forces from the kind of witch hunt years after their retirement that has left many feeling that their service to their country is neither respected nor valued.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his generosity in giving way. I hope that he will forgive me for mentioning that I published a paper with Policy Exchange, entitled “The Fog of Law”, in 2013 that addressed many of these issues, of which he is touching on the essence. We are talking here about human rights. What really do they mean? Surely, they are the rights of people to live in peace and dignity, not the rights of some to persecute those who have tried to protect others.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his valid intervention. He is absolutely right, and we appreciate the work he has done in this field and his commitment to his former comrades.

[Tom Elliott]

Just to clarify, would the right hon. Gentleman’s proposed statute of limitations cover police officers in Northern Ireland as well? I should have said at the start that I welcome this debate and thank him for bringing it to the House.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. The answer is yes they certainly would be, because the police are not covered by the provisions in the 1998 agreement or the concessions made to the terrorists—and neither should they be. We see no moral or legal equivalence between the armed forces and the police and illegal criminal terrorist organisations. We do not want them to be treated the same. We believe that our police officers, soldiers and veterans should be treated fairly, but they are not being treated fairly.

I repeat what I said in a recent debate in Westminster Hall, when I referred to terrorist atrocities committed in Northern Ireland and across this United Kingdom. They include the Kingsmill massacre, McGurk’s bar, the La Mon hotel bombing, Bloody Friday in Belfast, the M62 coach bomb, the Birmingham pub bombings, the Narrow Water atrocity, where members of the Parachute Regiment were cruelly cut down in cold blood, Droppin’ Well, the Grand hotel in Brighton, where the Provisional IRA attacked our very democracy, Newry police station, the Enniskillen war memorial, the Lisburn fun run, the Ballygawley bus bomb, Shankill road, Greysteel, Loughinisland, Canary Wharf, Omagh and many others that I will not list but that were equally atrocious. No one can ever sanitise this horror and inhumanity. No rewriting of history will allow the exoneration of the evil men and women who went out to commit these atrocities in cold blood. These were acts of terrorism, and they can never be regarded as anything but.

I support the efforts to bring a real and lasting peace to my country. My comrades and colleagues here, some of whom served in our armed forces and some of whom have seen constituents cut down in cold blood, want to see a meaningful, lasting peace in Northern Ireland. We want that for the next generation, as well as for our own, but as a former soldier of the Ulster Defence Regiment, proud to have served in that regiment, the largest regiment of the British Army, which fought alongside other military units, alongside the Royal Ulster Constabulary, with great courage and at a huge cost, during the longest-running military operation in the history of the British Army, Operation Banner, I believe we owe it to those men and women to protect them.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Is my right hon. Friend disturbed by the comments attributed to Justice Weir, who is looking at some of these legacy cases, in which he talked about the UDR as having been set up simply to prevent its members from doing worse things in society?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I am a former member of the UDR. My father served for over 25 years in that regiment. My brother also served in it. Comrades I patrolled alongside were cut down in cold blood by the Provisional IRA. I feel deeply insulted by the suggestion from a Justice of the High Court of Northern Ireland that somehow the raison d’être of the UDR was to keep people out of trouble. My only motivation was to stop trouble, to bring to book those engaged in trouble and to protect the community, including Mr Justice Weir and all those who were the targets of terrorism.

My party is not prepared to stand back and see our former comrades vilified. We are not prepared to stand back and see the security forces and the police hounded for serving their country. Standing in the gap between democracy and tyranny, they defended us; now, we must defend them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I acknowledge with deep regret the attempted murder of a police officer in Derry yesterday, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan). I apologise for my hon. Friend’s non-attendance today, and for the non-attendance of my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell); they are both in Dublin at the Good Friday agreement committee. In fact, the Exiting the European Union Committee is meeting various Oireachtas committees in Dublin today on the issue of Brexit.

It is important that I, on behalf of the Social Democratic and Labour party, say that we always renounced violence from wherever it came, because violence was always wrong during all the period of the troubles, as it is wrong now. There was never any justification for that level of terrorism, violence and murder, because all it did was leave pain, destruction and mayhem—it took us so many years backwards— but there was an opportunity through the Good Friday agreement, which is perhaps where I disagree with Democratic Unionist party Members. We have come together, with respect for political difference, on power sharing and working together on the issues that matter to the people.

I hope that, on the far side of this election, there is an opportunity to restore the political institutions and that there will be parallel negotiations to deal with the outstanding issues that seem to drag us down and to give people excuses, both in Sinn Féin and the DUP, not to allow the institutions to be fully functional. I say to all of them that the people on the doorsteps over the past few weeks say, “We want political institutions. We want faith in those institutions. We want them working, and we want them delivering for us.”

Health waiting lists are spiralling out of control; education, budgets have not been agreed for schools on a rolling three-year programme; and we need investment in our economy, our jobs and our tourism. Young people want to see hope, they want to see a future and they want to see a reason for remaining in Northern Ireland.

The SDLP agrees that the processes on investigations, prosecutions and legacy cases must be balanced and fair. The way in which we deal with the past in Northern Ireland must be shaped and guided by terms set by victims and survivors, with truth and accountability to the fore.

All the parties in Northern Ireland agree that amnesty should not be the basis for dealing with the past—that was the subject of the Haass negotiations and the subsequent Stormont House agreement. There are a number of ongoing inquiries, but they are in the form of inquests, as opposed to the pursuit of possible prosecutions. Prosecutions, like inquests, bring closure and justice to families, as with the ongoing case of Loughinisland, which the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) mentioned. The people involved were my neighbours and friends, and some of them were indirectly related to me. They still await justice. The Police Ombudsman’s report has been published, and it refers to a significant element of collusion by the then Royal Ulster Constabulary. Those issues need to be addressed, and there needs to be closure for the families, because truth and accountability are particularly important.

I also think of the families of Whitecross—the Reavey brothers—and of Kingsmill, where many men were killed. All those people, right across the community, deserve justice. Many soldiers and many policemen were also killed, and I think of what happened to the Ulster Defence Regiment men on the Ballydugan Road in Downpatrick back in 1990—I remember well seeing the smoke rising from a large crater in the ground on that Monday morning, with some six men dead. I remember my predecessor going to the scene and, as with Loughinisland, what he saw should never be repeated.

I firmly believe that no one in this House, or outside it, should be above the rule of law, and we must remember that. The rule of law must prevail, which means that the Government have to be careful. I say to the Secretary of State and his ministerial colleagues, both in the Cabinet and on the Front Bench, that we must support the judicial system and ensure that it is respected.

The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), has mentioned the PSNI’s statistics, which I have seen, and I would caution that the assistant chief constable, Mark Hamilton, who has direct responsibility for the matter, said on 2 February:

“I do understand that there is a public perception that there is a disproportionate focus on military cases but they form part of what we are doing… I have a full team”—

the four teams—

“who are doing reviews against a list of cases, at the minute, none of those are military. I’ve a full team working on the On The Runs review and that doesn’t relate to the military at all.”

That is a cautionary word. We must take everything proportionately, and we must ensure that there is fairness and balance in everything.

Ultimately, we must ensure, as the Secretary of State said at oral questions, that the election campaign is conducted in a manner that allows for the speediest return to partnership government. I question—I say this also to the DUP—holding this debate during an election period. Does that impinge upon the purdah period? I see other elements, with Sinn Féin Ministers making announcements. I was once a Minister during an election period, so I know that making such announcements was not possible in previous years.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

The timing of this debate was agreed with the Government Chief Whip long before there was any sense of an election in Northern Ireland, and long before the election date was set. As Members of Parliament, we should not be impeded in carrying out our duty to represent the people who elected us to come here because there is an election to a devolved Assembly, any more than the hon. Lady’s colleagues, who are in Dublin today to take part in political activity in another jurisdiction, should be impeded.

[Ms Ritchie]

I note what the right hon. Gentleman says, but I will conclude because I realise that other Members want to speak. We respect and uphold the inquest system. We make no apologies for that, and we defend the current system when the Government make any attempt to move against it for their own convenience. I felt that the Prime Minister was particularly partisan yesterday, especially in an election period when we need to be even, balanced and fair.

I look forward to the other side of the election, when we have the political institutions up and running and when we have the parallel negotiations. We need no interregnum. Work needs to continue, and we need to be seen to be delivering for people with a sound Government.