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.

Northern Ireland Assembly Election

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

Absolutely. I can give that assurance to my hon. Friend, because Northern Ireland has seen so much success in terms of foreign direct investment; I believe it is the region with the greatest foreign direct investment outside the City of London, which underlines the huge potential that I see and the huge ability for Northern Ireland to continue to flourish and do so much more. We absolutely will continue to underline that message.

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

May I echo the comments made by the hon. Member for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell)? He and I, and many others in this House, have worked hard to bring the peace process to where it today, and we have taken risks, and I despair of where we are just now. May I say to the Secretary of State that if he is going to sit on his hands for the next six weeks and do nothing about the current crisis, he can forget getting devolution up and running three weeks after an election? I support the suggestion made by the hon. Gentleman, for which there is cross-community support: let this Government get on with holding the public inquiry on the RHI scheme that Sinn Féin has blocked.

[James Brokenshire]

The Government will continue to do all they can to support the parties in finding their way through to a resolution. As I have indicated in answers to previous questions, I remain open to considering issues that command cross-community support in order to find answers and get to the root of the issues in respect of the RHI inquiry. I will continue to hear the points that are made on a cross-community basis because, ultimately, whatever is done must command confidence and support in Northern Ireland if it is to be successful.

Northern Ireland: Political Developments

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

There are no amnesties. We have been clear on that in relation to the “on-the-runs” scheme, and Lady Justice Hallett’s report concluded in 2014 that these things never amounted to an immunity from prosecution. But my right hon. Friend makes a broader point about the need for a proportionate and balanced approach to legacy to ensure that all aspects are investigated properly, rather than by looking at one side rather than the other. That is precisely the approach that can be taken forward through the Stormont House agreement.

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

We will have a debate later in Westminster Hall on this very subject. May I say to the Secretary of State that if we are going to have more talks, let us deal with this issue once and for all? It is unacceptable that veterans of the armed forces who served the Crown are waiting on the knock at the door, while the terrorists walk free.

[James Brokenshire]

I know the interest that the right hon. Gentleman has taken in this issue of legacy over many, many years. I agree that it is totally unfair that the alleged misdeeds of soldiers and former police officers should be investigated, while perpetrators of terrorist atrocities are ignored and their victims forgotten. It is precisely that part that was reflected in the proportionate, balanced, fair and equitable stance taken in relation to the Stormont House agreement; this is why we have been continuing discussions on that very issue and why I am determined that we will move to a public phase so that we can take that forward.

Stormont House Agreement: Implementation

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2017 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered implementation of the Stormont House Agreement.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I know you have taken an interest in these matters over the years. I welcome colleagues who have taken time out to attend the debate, including the Minister. I look forward to his response.

Although policing and justice issues are now devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive—at least for the next few weeks—the legacy of our troubled past remains a matter for this Parliament and the Government of the United Kingdom to deal with. Let me remind colleagues that, during what we call the troubles in Northern Ireland, there were more than 3,500 deaths, of which more than 2,000—60%—were murders carried out by republican paramilitaries, mainly the Provisional IRA. More than 1,000 murders were carried out by loyalist paramilitaries, amounting to 30% of the overall total. British and Irish state forces were responsible for 10% of deaths during the troubles, almost all of which occurred as a result of entirely lawful actions, where police officers and soldiers acted to safeguard life and property. Let me restate that for the record: the paramilitary terrorists were responsible for some 90% of the deaths in the troubles, and state forces on both sides of the border for 10%. I want hon. Members to hold that statistic—that fact—in their minds during this debate. I apologise to colleagues, because this is a very complex issue and I need to take some time to go through the background and the issues we are still dealing with in Northern Ireland.

There are some 3,000 unsolved murders in Northern Ireland linked to our troubled past. What a terrible legacy that is—one of pain, loss and in many cases a deep sense of injustice. It is a well-accepted principle that in a democracy no one should be above the law and yet, as will become clear from my remarks, there appears to be one rule for those who have served our country and the Crown and another for those whose objective was to destroy it. Unfortunately, those legacy issues were not adequately addressed, never mind resolved, in the Belfast agreement on 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, in support of the peace process. In effect, the terrorists who had been found guilty of crimes including murder were released from prison after serving only two years in jail. For many of them, that was the limit. They included, for example, the notorious Shankill bomber, from the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds). Sean Kelly was convicted by the courts in Northern Ireland of the murder of nine innocent people in a bomb explosion on Shankill Road in Belfast. He was sentenced to nine life terms in prison, but under the terms of the Belfast agreement he was released early, having served less than one year for each life that he destroyed.

In addition, and beyond the terms of the agreement, in September 2000 the then Secretary of State, Peter Mandelson, announced that the Government would no longer seek the extradition of Provisional IRA prisoners who had escaped from prison, including several who escaped from the Maze prison in my constituency in 1983. They were allowed to return home; they were no longer sought to be brought back and put in prison, where frankly they belonged. They included convicted terrorist Dermot Finucane—the brother of the late Pat Finucane, about whom we have heard a lot in the past—who was the former head of intelligence and the head of southern command of the Provisional IRA. He was a very senior figure in the Provisional IRA, and he escaped from prison and was allowed to return home. Kevin Barry Artt, who was convicted of the murder of the deputy governor of the Maze prison, escaped and yet was allowed to return home without having to go back to prison. I could go on with the list of the concessions that have been made to Sinn Féin and the IRA over the years in relation to those who were convicted of, or are alleged to have committed, very serious crimes.

In 2001, the then Labour Government sought to extend that further to introduce an amnesty for all members of terrorist organisations on ceasefire. On 4 May 2001, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Dr John Reid, wrote to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and said:

“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.”

Crucially, Dr Reid went on to say that the proposals, which would be enacted into legislation,

“should exclude members of the security forces from the amnesty arrangements”.

In other words, a terrorist who had committed crimes, including murder, before the 1998 agreement would be granted an amnesty, but a soldier or a police officer alleged to have committed an offence would not be the beneficiary of such an amnesty. Thankfully, through parliamentary opposition, that reprehensible scheme was defeated and the secret deal that had been done was thwarted.

But it did not stop there. Having been frustrated in that attempt to bring in an amnesty for terrorists, the Government of the day did another secret deal, issuing letters to paramilitary prisoners and suspects wanted for questioning about terrorist offences to say, “You may now return home. The police will no longer question or arrest you in connection with offences committed before 1998.” We did not know of the existence of that scheme, and it was only finally exposed when John Downey was brought before the courts here in London on charges linked to the murder of four soldiers in the Hyde Park bombings of 1982. What happened? Downey produced his letter—that “get out of jail free” card—and the courts threw out the case against him. He was allowed to walk free, without being prosecuted for the offences he is alleged to have committed.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

When I was serving in Northern Ireland, my regimental band was blown up in the Regent’s Park bombing on the same day. A few hours later, I took a patrol out in the New Lodge area of Belfast, as the news of the bombing was coming through. The soldiers under my command showed unbelievable restraint in the face of taunts about that terrorist incident. Does the right hon. Gentleman understand the feelings of the people who showed that restraint, day in, day out, only to see now a one-sided judicial process that could take people of that era—people of my age and older—into court for alleged crimes committed during that period?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

Yes, I do understand entirely the strength of feelings. I have many comrades with whom I served in the Ulster Defence Regiment in Northern Ireland, and they are daily subjected to headlines in our local newspapers such as “Off the hook” over pictures of convicted terrorists. The hon. Gentleman can imagine how my comrades feel too, having put their lives on the line to bring some of those people to justice. Similarly, members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, who went out to investigate the crimes, now find that the people they put behind bars can walk free, some of them as the result of the use of the royal prerogative of mercy.

As the result of a report prepared by Lady Justice Hallett into the on-the-runs issue, the Secretary of State of the day, the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs Villiers), told the House of Commons in a statement in 2014:

“The Government…will take whatever steps are necessary, acting on the basis of legal advice and in conjunction with the police and prosecutors, to do everything possible to remove barriers to future prosecutions.”—[Official Report, 17 July 2014; Vol. 584, c. 1041.]

She was referring to the future prosecution of terrorists. Since that statement was made, I am not aware of a single terrorist suspect being brought before the courts in Northern Ireland in relation to those matters. The Secretary of State also identified 36 priority cases highlighted in the Hallett report. Those were to be the subject of a review by the legacy investigation branch of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Will the Minister tell us in his response what has happened to those 36 priority cases that were to be reviewed? Are the suspects still wanted for questioning, or have they been told, “No, you’re okay, we don’t need to talk to you”?

I want to highlight a case that I find particularly appalling. Kieran Conway is a self-proclaimed member of the Provisional IRA from Dublin. He claims that he was a senior intelligence officer at the time of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings, in which 21 innocent people lost their lives. Conway asserts that he is aware of the identity of some of the IRA members involved in that mass murder, but he has refused to disclose that information. In addition, Conway admitted that he had been involved in a number of shooting incidents, perhaps as many as 100. He claims that a number of British soldiers were killed in some of those shooting incidents that he witnessed.

Kieran Conway is so confident that the UK authorities will not pursue him that he has written and published a book setting all that out and putting it in the public domain. Not only that, but he has appeared on the BBC “HARDtalk” programme, openly boasting of his involvement in those crimes. Has Kieran Conway been arrested and questioned about the claims he makes in his book and has broadcast on other media? No, he has not—far from it. Today, Kieran Conway is a solicitor in Dublin, who acts on behalf of so-called dissident republican suspects in the Special Criminal Court. Imagine the conversations that Mr Conway has with his clients—“Don’t worry, boys. One of these days the Brits will cut a deal with you too. Just keep on doing what you’re doing, just like I did, and I’m walking the streets and advising clients how to evade justice.”

Soldiers and veterans look at all of that and they think, “What is going on?” We know is going on: veterans of our armed forces are getting the knock on the door early in the morning. They find a large number of police officers outside their homes; their homes are invaded and searched. The veterans, sometimes just out of bed, are marched off to a police station, subjected to cross-examination and interrogation about crimes that occurred sometimes 20 or 30 years ago. Those are the men and women who served our country, who put themselves on the frontline and who were prepared to go out and face the terrorists; today, they are waiting again for the knock at the door.

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

I hesitate to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, because he is making a powerful speech, and I congratulate him on it. Given the number of years that he has cited—20, 30 or 40 years—does he agree that if we accept this principle about harrying and pursuing members of the armed forces, then there is no reason to stop there? Some of my constituents who served in Cyprus and Korea, or even further back, are saying, “In the fullness of time, perhaps we will be questioned about what we got up to, under the rules and norms of today rather than those that applied at the time.”

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

As a former Minister in the Northern Ireland Office, the hon. Gentleman worked with me and others on such legacy issues, so he is well aware of the background to the situation. He is absolutely right. Earlier in the main Chamber, some of our colleagues made the point about what impact this might have on our ability to recruit men and women into our armed forces today. Would not a young 18-year-old looking at a career in our armed forces think twice about serving a country that might let them end up in the dock, simply for doing the job and protecting the community? That is a huge question that we need to ask of the Government. What is going on?

[Danny Kinahan (South Antrim) (UUP)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on bringing the debate forward and on making his points so powerfully. Does he agree that evidence that is 20, 30 or 40 years old will be hard to rely on? We should be putting cases away unless there is new evidence. What really bothered me was that when I met a member of the police the other day, he said, “There are new ways of looking at evidence.” If there are new ways of looking at evidence, there is a threat that we will look at everything again. We simply cannot do that. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, himself a veteran, for his intervention.

Let me remind hon. Members of the price that our security forces paid in Northern Ireland for the service that they provided to our country: 520 Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force regulars, reserves and veterans murdered by terrorists; 243 from the Ulster Defence Regiment and Royal Irish Regiment, or their veterans murdered by terrorists; 325 from the Royal Ulster Constabulary or other constabularies throughout the United Kingdom and retired police murdered by terrorists; and 26 prison officers and former prison officers murdered by terrorists. That is more than 1,100 men and women in the service of the Crown who were murdered by terrorists, alongside countless others seriously injured and left to bear the mental and physical scars of that reign of terror. That is the legacy of the service provided by the men and women of our armed forces and police services in Northern Ireland.

Evidently, little effort has been made to bring to justice those responsible for those heinous crimes. I repeat, because it bears repeating: 90% of the deaths in the Northern Ireland were not caused by the Army, the police or anyone connected with the Crown; they were carried out by illegal terrorist organisations. Yet where is the pursuit of those people? The victims of these crimes cry out for justice. Where is the justice for them?

The Chief Constable, in fairness to him, established the Historical Enquiries Team, which was tasked with re-examining all the unsolved murders connected with the troubles in Northern Ireland. To a certain extent, that was a paper exercise. The team’s only remit was to review the previous police investigations; it did not have police powers to pursue investigations. When that team was wound up, its role passed to the legacy investigation branch of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which is where it currently sits. The reality today is that 90% of the resources of the legacy investigation branch—I stand open to challenge on this—are devoted to investigating 10% of the deaths during the troubles, and 10% of its resources are devoted to investigating 90% of the deaths. Where is the equity in that? Where is the fairness in a system that produces such a result?

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

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this very timely debate. Does he agree that there is no comparison between former service personnel who served in Northern Ireland, who may in the vastly distant past have been engaged on patrol when whatever happened—whether it was an oversight, a misjudgment or a split-second decision—resulted in injury or death, and whose actions account for many of those 10% of deaths, and the deliberate, premeditated murders of the terrorists? That is what annoys and angers many personnel who served in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that well-made intervention. Two former members of the Parachute Regiment have recently been charged in connection with the shooting of an IRA commander in Belfast in 1972—one Joseph McCann from the Markets area of Belfast. Those two veterans are aged 67 and 65. A 75-year-old veteran, who previously served in the Life Guards, has also been charged with the attempted murder of a man in County Tyrone in 1974. Those cases will soon appear before the courts, yet people do not, when they open their newspapers every day, see the terrorists who are responsible for the vast majority of the murders coming before the courts.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman knows why I was not here at the start of the debate, and I am grateful to him for his courtesy. Does he agree that exactly the sorts of cases that he cites are having a chilling effect on men and women serving in the Army, who look at that opportunity for a career and say, “Why on earth would I do this?” Can he also tell us why this is happening now? My understanding is that these cases were properly identified and investigated at the time. Why is there partisan pressure now to reopen what was dealt with quite properly in the past?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Lady is an experienced former Minister. She has only just arrived. The debate is very over-subscribed; we will probably be down to two minutes for the six or seven Members who wish to speak.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I will move to my final point, Mr Pritchard, which I feel is important, but I will first address why this is happening now. I think it is because we have had a number of inquiries, which resulted in the creation of the legacy investigation branch. For example, cases linked to the Saville inquiry have been re-examined, cases have been referred by the coroner in Northern Ireland that were previously referred by the Attorney General, and cases have also been referred by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland to the legacy investigation branch. A combination of all those things in recent years has resulted in what we are now seeing. I agree entirely with the hon. Lady’s point.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that despite the imbalance that he has well documented, Sinn Féin are still not happy? Indeed, the crisis in Northern Ireland is driven by their desire to get even more soldiers in the dock and even more security documents in the open, so that they can rewrite history. The Government ought to resist the blackmail that the people of Northern Ireland and the Government here at Westminster are being subjected to by Sinn Féin.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, to which I need not add.

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

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that many people who died in the troubles—all murders and killings were wrong—who were not members of the armed forces were innocent civilians? I can think of many of my own constituents. Will he relate that to the Stormont House agreement, which this debate is supposed to be about?

[Danny Kinahan]

rose—

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I will take one final intervention.

[Danny Kinahan]

I just want to make the point that Corporal Major Hutchings, whom we heard about earlier, was today refused bail to go on a cruise with his wife so that his health could get better. That shows the lopsided nature of what is going on.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that further intervention. The hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) is absolutely right about the murder of the innocent. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) said, republicans are trying to rewrite the history of the troubles. They want to portray the security forces as the bad guys, and they want to be portrayed on the side of good. But let me be clear: whether it was the massacre at Kingsmill, McGurk’s bar, La Mon, Belfast’s Bloody Friday, the M62 bombings, Birmingham, Narrow Water, Droppin’ Well, the Grand Hotel in Brighton, Newry police station, Enniskillen war memorial, Ballygawley, Shankill Road, Greysteel, Loughinisland in the South Down constituency, Canary Wharf or Omagh, no one can ever sanitise the horror, the inhumanity and the sickening murderous depravity of those acts of terrorism. They cannot rewrite the history of what they did to the people of Northern Ireland and others.

Two years ago, we reached an agreement in Stormont about the legacy issues and several new institutions were proposed, including an historical investigations unit that would have full police powers to revisit the unsolved murders. The main impact of the establishment of that unit would be that the murders committed by the terrorists would finally be subjected to proper scrutiny and reinvestigation, and the innocent victims that the hon. Member for South Down referred to would have the opportunity to have their cases re-examined to see whether there was the prospect of prosecution and people being brought to justice. I accept the point that the hon. Member for South Antrim made about getting evidence for cases from so long ago.

The Stormont House agreement is there. There is currently an impasse between Sinn Féin and the Government on national security. Sinn Féin are demanding that this Government fully disclose in the public domain everything that happened, which would mean that if the Special Air Service had carried out an operation in Loughgall and shot members of the Provisional IRA who were exploding a bomb outside a police station, all that the SAS did—all the rationale, all its modus operandi and all the military planning that went into that operation—would be out in the public domain. How could we ever counter terrorism again if we put in the public domain the very methods that we use to detect what is happening and safeguard life? It is a nonsense that a former terrorist organisation should have the right to demand that a lawful Government put that information in the public domain.

The Government must hold the line on national security; further, they should act now. They need to proceed with the Stormont House agreement. They need to implement the historical investigations unit. We have waited long enough. It has been two years since the agreement. Why are we allowing Sinn Féin a veto over the investigation of the murder of innocent people, soldiers and police officers? We owe this to those people and their families. I urge the Minister: please, let’s get on with it. Let’s do the right thing. Let’s investigate these murders. Let’s give the people the opportunity for justice.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I will be very brief. I thank the Minister for his response and thank other right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to the debate this afternoon. Let me be clear, Mr Pritchard. As a former soldier, like a number of colleagues who have spoken, I am not prepared to stand back and see my former comrades vilified and hounded for serving their country and standing in the gap between democracy and tyranny. They defended us, and we must defend them. Peace is a noble cause, but when peace means the denial of justice and becomes the oppressor of the innocent, it is less noble.

I can do no better than quote the words from a tribute poem written by Shane Laverty, who was 10 years old when his 18-year-old brother, RUC Constable Robert David Laverty, was murdered by the Provisional IRA on the Antrim Road in Belfast on 16 July 1972. He was sitting in a patrol car, travelling down the road. I finish with this:

“Remember me. For I cannot pass this way again and memories are all you can have. Unlike those who put me here. Was it I who broke the law or they? Yet they live to fight another day.”

We owe it to Constable Robert David Laverty, his family and all those who served our country as police officers and soldiers to stand by them, to stand with them and to ensure that there is proper, proportionate justice.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered implementation of the Stormont House Agreement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I think that we have made significant progress. Considering the position this time last year, there have been important steps forward, but there are still additional steps to be taken, including the establishment of an independent fiscal council to publish an annual report on the Executive’s finances and to give further assurance on progress.

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

May I associate myself and my colleagues with the tributes paid to Austin Hunter and to Danny Murphy?

Will the Secretary of State give an assurance that he will not allow the Stormont House and “Fresh Start” agreements to be unpicked? Crucially, in relation to legacy issues, will he hold fast on national security and not allow those who want to rewrite the history of the past to do so?

[James Brokenshire]

I am very clear on the need to continue to make progress in relation to Stormont House and “Fresh Start”. There have been significant steps forward. Equally, though, I will not be party to a rewriting of the issues of the past, and that is why a proportionate approach is required.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I entirely agree. There are very strong relationships and connections between An Garda Síochána and the Police Service of Northern Ireland and other UK Government agencies. Those have been and will continue to be really valuable and we are determined to maintain them.

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

A number of institutions have been established for discussing these matters with the Government of the Irish Republic, including the North South Ministerial Council and the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Will the Secretary of State ensure that those are the bodies through which discussions take place, and not some ad hoc arrangement?

[James Brokenshire]

The right hon. Gentleman rightly highlights the structures that have been in place since the Belfast agreement, such as the North South Ministerial Council and the British-Irish Council, which will meet again in a few weeks. They are really important and valuable structures that can and will be used in supporting the negotiations ahead; there is of course the new Joint Ministerial sub-committee as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Villiers]

I would agree, and that is exactly what is happening. The new joint agency taskforce established as a result of the “Fresh Start” agreement enables exactly that kind of operational co-operation on cross-border crimes such as fuel laundering, human trafficking and drug smuggling, and I welcome the progress that has been made on that.

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

Does the Secretary of State agree that is really important that cross-border crime should be tackled as part of the follow-up to the panel’s report on paramilitary activity? It will continue whether we are in the European Union or outside it, and it must be tackled head on.

[Mrs Villiers]

There is absolute determination on the part of the Governments of the UK and Ireland and the law enforcement agencies of both countries that we should continue to do everything we can to co-operate in countering the terrorist threat and the criminality associated with terrorist and paramilitary groups.

Northern Ireland (Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan) Bill

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Tom Elliott]

I have not seen the option of veto exercised to a great degree with other appointments, so I would have concerns about whether that would work in this case.

By and large, there was a degree of support for the historical investigations unit director possibly being appointed by the Policing Board, but if that appointment was to be made by another independent body, we would be quite happy to consider that. In fact, the Ulster Unionist party initially proposed that the decision should be made by an independent body, not the Policing Board. The proposal to use the Policing Board came from another political party and we said as a compromise that that could be an option, which seemed to engender support.

That is our view. I should have thought that it would have received broad support, but perhaps that is wrong. In general, I think it is important that we try to move away from that political appointment process into a more independent one, because clearly we are dealing with very sensitive issues and material, so it is important that we have people of the right ability and calibre. The Policing Board has a track record, I know, and although I take the point made by the hon. Member for South Antrim about members of Sinn Féin being on the Policing Board, it has appointed the past three Chief Constables, the past three Deputy Chief Constables and a significant number of Assistant Chief Constables. Clearly, the board has done a lot of work on the appointment process for significant police officers and high-profile police officers, so I would argue that as they are well-versed in making such appointments the process might have been better and more independent if they made the decision rather than just the First Minister and Deputy First Minister.

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

We are unable to support the proposition behind amendment 1. We are not against the concept of moving towards greater independence for such appointments, but in the context of getting a political agreement that was not possible, as the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Tom Elliott) rightly acknowledged. The Stormont agreement therefore gives the responsibility for making the appointment to the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister. I listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said and would echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson)—East Antrim, not South. We have not yet redrawn the boundaries in Northern Ireland, although we are going to.

We have two difficulties with the proposal to use the Policing Board. May I say that having served on the Policing Board, I fully support it as an institution. It does a good job on the whole question of accountability in policing. Our objection is not on the basis that the Policing Board is somehow deficient, but the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone revealed his true objective and motivation when he talked about the suitability of the Deputy First Minister to be involved in this appointment because of his alleged past in the IRA.

I have a lot of sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but the difficulty I have is twofold. First, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim rightly pointed out, we have three Sinn Féin members on the Northern Ireland Policing Board: Gerry Kelly, Pat Sheehan and Caitríona Ruane. At least two of those members have past convictions for IRA terrorism, so passing responsibility to the Policing Board does not resolve the difficulty the hon. Gentleman refers to, in terms of victims and survivors of the conflict in Northern Ireland having a problem with anyone from Sinn Féin being involved in the appointments process—a concern I have much sympathy with.

I depart from the hon. Gentleman on the second point made by my hon. Friend, on the question of the veto. The current arrangement that gives us a veto in the office of the First Minister over who is appointed is surely a far stronger safeguard to ensure that the people who are appointed to this very sensitive role are people that the victims and survivors community can have confidence in. If we go to the Policing Board, there is no such veto. Indeed, the political influence on the Policing Board is outweighed by the independent influence. I emphasise that I have nothing against the current structure of the Policing Board; I am merely making the point that if you want to exercise a degree of accountability on this issue and ensure that the people who are appointed to this very sensitive role are appropriate for that role, having a veto gives you the leverage to ensure that that happens, whereas if you pass it to the Policing Board you lose that veto.

For those reasons, we will not be able to support the amendment.

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

I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I rise to speak in support of amendment 7.

On Second Reading, I said that we must cast our minds back to the reasons for the independent reporting commission. This all emerged in the violence and terrorism of last year when two people lost their lives: Gerard Davison at the beginning of May, in the Lower Ormeau and Markets area of south Belfast; and Kevin McGuigan, somewhere in that same location. As a result of those deaths and the breakdown of relationships around the Executive table, we had negotiations on the Stormont House agreement. During those negotiations, the SDLP circulated papers to the three Governments and all parties on a whole enforcement approach, and a whole community approach. We believe that the answers and the solution must come not only from Government and from political parties but from the wider community. There must be a buy-in to a solution, to the eradication of terrorism, violence and antisocial behaviour and to an upholding of democratic principles. We also believe that, although “Fresh Start” was designed and managed to be a two-party deal, there should have been all-party work on the membership of the independent reporting commission. How can the work of that commission and its mandate, which includes the Irish Government and Dublin representatives, be reconciled with that approach by Sinn Fein?

During the Second Reading debate, I asked the Secretary of State to say precisely what new moneys would be made available to the National Crime Agency and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, when those moneys would be released and what the split between the two would be. That set some of the background for our amendment. Like the Ulster Unionist party, we feel that the credibility of the independent reporting commission would be enhanced if it involved the Executive more widely rather than just the First and Deputy First Ministers. We believe that it is not a Policing Board matter, which is why we have specified that the two members will be appointed by the Justice Minister in consultation with the First and Deputy First Ministers, subject to Executive approval, hence providing the transparency and accountability that are required in this particularly vexatious issue. All of us on these Benches are agreed on one point. We want to see an end to violence, paramilitarism and terrorism. Above all, we want to see the upholding of democratic principles of government and in the wider civic community.

I support our amendment 7 in this group.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

In following my hon. Friend the Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) in speaking to our amendment, I want to deal with a few of the points that have been made about this group of clauses on the independent reporting commission.

At the original Stormont House talks in late 2014, the SDLP proposed that the agenda should include paramilitarism and organised crime. It did not take the murders that subsequently happened to tell us that that was still a serious issue that should not be ignored in any serious negotiations. Unfortunately, we were not supported by other parties, who seemed to believe that that would somehow not be a problem. So we are now addressing an issue that other parties chose to ignore. Whenever the murders happened last year, a political crisis was created over issues that parties chose to ignore and then dramatically tried to advertise.

[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

The hon. Gentleman will forgive us if we take his comments as tongue in cheek, given that we were told after the Good Friday agreement in 1998 that these problems were all being dealt with, and the agreement was a comprehensive approach to resolving the issues relating to our conflict in Northern Ireland. We are still dealing with them 18 years later so he should not point the finger at those of us who warned in 1998 that the agreement was deficient in that regard.

[Mark Durkan]

Without getting drawn too far away from the subject of the Bill, none of us pretended that the 1998 agreement would absolutely solve the problems or dissolve any of the paramilitary organisations. We committed to a framework for decommissioning and a number of other changes. We consistently supported the existence of the Independent Monitoring Commission to deal with the questions of ongoing paramilitary activity. In this House, whenever the previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), announced that the IMC was being wound up, some of us said, “You are taking away the monitoring commission because Sinn Fein has made a political issue of it, but the issue of paramilitarism has not gone away, and it will come back.” We pointed out that something like the IMC would end up being needed. That is exactly what happened last year.

Some of us have been consistent about recognising where there are problems and that they need to continue to be addressed. We were right about the questions arising when the IMC was wound up with no procedure to deal with ongoing concerns. We were right to say that the issue needed to be addressed in the Stormont House agreement. We were right in the proposals that my hon. Friend the Member for South Down has described when we said that we needed an enforcement approach and a whole community approach to secure an end to paramilitarism, as well as all the other changes that were needed to achieve a wholesome society. We were the only parties that advocated such proposals. To an extent, some of the sentiment of that is reflected in the agreement, but in a highly edited, partial and incomplete way, and that is why we have tabled our amendments.

We used to have an Independent Monitoring Commission that reported. Now we have an independent reporting commission. The legislation does not seem able to say “monitor”. The “Fresh Start” agreement refers to the term “monitoring”, but for some reason “monitoring” is not in the Bill. It is as though the legislation has carefully avoided saying anything that the commission will actually do. So we have to look at the “Fresh Start” agreement to see what the commission might actually do. For some reason, it is avoided in the lengthy clauses of the Bill.

The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson) said that under the “Fresh Start” agreement the appointments, as well as the one appointment by the British Government and the one by the Irish Government, were to be made by the First and Deputy First Ministers. They were not. The hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Tom Elliott) is correct. The “Fresh Start” agreement said that the Executive shall nominate two members. Therefore, our amendment is consistent with what is in the “Fresh Start” agreement. It says that the appointment should be made, rather than by the First and Deputy First Minister, by the Justice Minister after consultation with the First and Deputy First Minister and in agreement with the Executive. So our amendment is more consistent with the “Fresh Start” agreement than the clause or the right hon. Gentleman’s amendment.

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[Ms Ritchie]

A number of Members, including the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon), who raises this issue again through her amendment, have asked questions about the content and policing of the pledge and undertaking. That was done on Second Reading by my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), as well as by the hon. Lady, who has enunciated her views on the principle again today.

I shall speak to my party’s amendments. Amendment 10 refers to paragraph (e) in schedule 4 to the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and clarifies that Ministers are already subject to a requirement to act in accordance with all decisions made by the Executive and the Assembly. Amendment 16 deals with clause 8, inserting the words “others, including” in the reference to MLAs. The provision might seem small, but it is central to the whole-community approach that will be needed to tackle paramilitary activity. It would compel Members of the Assembly to work with civic society in Northern Ireland, reflecting our approach during the Stormont House agreement of having that community approach to ridding Northern Ireland of paramilitarism.

I agree with the hon. Lady that paramilitarism has been a scourge and a cancer in our society, right across the community, and we want rid of it, but we also believe that there must be adherence the best democratic principles within our elected institutions. Our reference in amendment 15 to the Nolan principles would ensure that this progress and political action on paramilitarism extends to MPs, councillors and all in public office. Having the First Ministers make their pledge orally at a sitting of the Assembly would publicise a cross-executive commitment to a society free from the blight of paramilitarism. In our papers for the Stormont House talks, we advocated a community approach, stating:

“Political parties ought to be showing coherent and consistent shared standards which recognise and repudiate nefarious paramilitary interests and involvements. This should reflect a shared approach which is about rooting out paramilitarism and its trace activities, not just singling out particular groups or given parties.”

Our amendments would clarify the terms of the pledge and undertaking and avoid further misinterpretation or a tension between different parts of the pledge and undertaking. As I have said previously, the duty in the Bill to

“support those who are determined to make the transition away from paramilitarism”

is vague and could be misinterpreted as supporting someone or a group that is determined to someday move away from paramilitarism. The SDLP is in favour of support for transition away from paramilitarism, but wants to ensure that that cannot be used to cover tolerance for paramilitary activity, for which there should be no tolerance. Combining what are currently two distinct precepts of the pledge and undertaking into one would reduce that risk.

I have direct experience of this issue. As a former Minister in the Northern Ireland Executive, on Tuesday 16 October 2007—I remember the date exactly—I cut off funding to the conflict transformation initiative following advice from the then Chief Constable, deputy Chief Constable and others that the Ulster Defence Association was engaging in criminality. Maintaining that funding would have been construed as supporting paramilitarism, not transition, however determined the UDA was to do that someday.

Like the hon. Member for North Down, we have concerns about the policing of the pledge and undertaking. Any progress on tackling paramilitary activity is undermined by any suggestion that there are no consequences for non-compliance. I note that the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) was making soundings in our direction. I hope he will see fit to support our amendments on sanctions in relation to the pledge and undertaking.

We envisage that the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints and the Northern Ireland Assembly Commissioner for Standards would receive any complaints relating to breaches of the pledge and undertaking. Both could avail themselves of the services of a pledge adjudicator on a case-by-case basis, if that was felt to be appropriate. The whole purpose of our amendments is to ensure best compliance and conformity with good democratic principles, and that we have a total move away from the scourge of paramilitarism that has been in Northern Ireland society for far too long.

[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

We support amendment 6, which was tabled by the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon). There is much merit in what she says. When we ask Members of a legislature to give an undertaking that they will behave in a certain way and abide by certain principles, surely there should be some sanction when they breach those principles and their undertaking. We are not asking hon. Members—neither is the hon. Lady—to prescribe what the sanctions should be. We merely want to ensure, as is our duty as the sovereign Parliament, that the Standing Orders of the Northern Ireland Assembly reflect the need for such sanctions. It is our duty to legislate for this element of the Stormont agreement, and we believe that what the hon. Lady has proposed is sensible and prudent. This is a question of not just the politics of all this, but public confidence in the Northern Ireland Assembly, its operation and those who are elected to it.

We talk about a fresh start. We have Assembly elections on 5 May. The Members who will be elected to the Assembly for the first time after that election will be required to make this undertaking. I think that that is the appropriate moment when the Assembly should be saying that we can have no more of a situation in which some people may have been ambivalent in their attitude towards paramilitarism in the past. Everyone has to be very clear about where they stand and it is important to have the undertaking. It is also important, for public confidence and for the accountability of our public representatives, to have a sanction. It is for the Assembly to prescribe that sanction, but it is for this House to ensure that the requirement for that is in Standing Orders. We will support the hon. Lady’s amendment.

[Mark Durkan]

As my hon. Friend the Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) said, the SDLP has tabled several amendments on this issue. I take on board what the Minister said in an attempt to give a “prebuttal” of our amendments, and I will come on to amendment 6, which was tabled by the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon), when I speak to clause 8.

We have tabled amendments 8 to 12 to clause 7. The Minister tried to say there would be no tension in interpretation between different parts of the proposed pledge of office. Proposed new sub-paragraphs (cf) and (cg) of schedule 4 to the Northern Ireland Act 1998—

“to work collectively with the other members of the Executive Committee to achieve a society free of paramilitarism”

and

“to challenge all paramilitary activity and associated criminality”—

could well find themselves in tension with another Minister’s understanding of proposed new sub-paragraph (cj), which is to

“support those who are determined to make the transition away from paramilitarism.”

My hon. Friend the Member for South Down described the situation in which she found herself. She tried, as stated in proposed sub-paragraph (cf), to

“work collectively with other members of the Executive…to achieve a society free of paramilitarism”,

and she was told at that time, “No, it’s in your Department. You do your own thing. You make that decision.” She then acted on the basis of, as in proposed sub-paragraph (cg), challenging

“all paramilitary activity and associated criminality”

only to find herself undermined by other members of the Executive, who said that they were actually discharging the requirement of proposed sub-paragraph (cj) as supporting

“those who are determined to make the transition away from paramilitarism”.

That issue ended up in the courts, so there is already proven experience of exactly the contradictions and tensions that can exist between these things when they are different bullet points that can be quoted separately. This is a recipe for confusion, nonsense and obfuscation.

We also need to recognise that people will interpret various parts of the pledge differently. Will the Minister tell us whether denying something as paramilitary activity breaches the line in the pledge to

“challenge all paramilitary activity and associated criminality”?

When someone turns around and says, “Oh no, so and so is not engaged in paramilitary activity or associated criminality; they are a good republican,” does that mean they are in breach of proposed sub-paragraph (cg)? Is that a failure to challenge? Is denial a failure to challenge, or can denial exist alongside the commitment to challenge all paramilitary activity, because someone can say that as paramilitary activity and associated criminality is not defined by anybody else, it is what anybody wants to define it to be? This touches on a point made earlier by the hon. Member for South Antrim (Danny Kinahan) on the earlier group.

Clause 7 is wide open for misinterpretation and misapplication, which will lead to people being scandalised. It will not avoid us being in exactly the sort of crisis situation we had last year. In the aftermath of a horrible crime and comments that the Chief Constable could not avoid making, we then had political difficulties. The terms of the pledge of office and the undertaking are meant to avoid our being back in that situation, but they will clearly fail to do so. That is why we have tabled our amendments.

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[Mr Wallace]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is totally wrong to equate the two. I believe that the remedy for that is in the Northern Ireland Assembly, which is where the power to amend the definition of victims lies. I urge the Assembly always to keep at the forefront of its mind the fact that the two are not the same, because that will go further than us, as a Government, imposing that change.

[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I beg to differ with the Minister about this. Many victims and survivors who were affected by the troubles in Northern Ireland neither reside in nor came from Northern Ireland; in fact, they may even be the Minister’s constituents. Given that hundreds of soldiers who were injured or killed in Northern Ireland came from Great Britain, that police officers came from Great Britain and that civilians were injured in Great Britain in acts of terrorism committed in connection with the troubles, to suggest that the definition of victim and survivor is a matter to be dealt with by the Northern Ireland Assembly misses the point. Victims and survivors came from all over the United Kingdom, so it is for this Parliament to determine who is a victim and survivor.

[Mr Wallace]

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says, and I do not disagree with a large part of it, but the Bill deals with the “Fresh Start” agreement—the Stormont House agreement—in so far as it applies in Northern Ireland. I am sure that there will be further opportunities to redefine “victims” as that term would apply in the United Kingdom. Under the previous Government, the Ministry of Justice did a lot of work to ensure that the criminal injuries compensation scheme did not extend to burglars, robbers and everyone else who had managed to claim against it when they had perpetrated a crime. Precedents in United Kingdom law, or certainly in English and Welsh law, make that difference clear. I hear loud and clear what the right hon. Gentleman says, and I hope that there will be opportunities to address that in future legislation, but today we are considering this Bill, which is a consequence of the “Fresh Start” agreement.

New clause 4 would establish the implementation and reconciliation group, which is one of four new bodies to be established as part of the Stormont House agreement. The others are, as we had hoped, the historical investigations unit, the independent commission on information retrieval and the oral history archive. Members will be aware that the Government continue to support the establishment of all those bodies and the other measures in the Stormont House agreement. However, for reasons that I will set out, we do not agree that it would be a positive step to move ahead with the IRG in the absence of the other bodies and measures. The IRG and the other measures to deal with Northern Ireland’s past require cross-community support in Northern Ireland and must be dealt with as part of the package of bodies and measures proposed in the Stormont House agreement.

As I have mentioned, the IRG is an integral part of the four bodies proposed in the Stormont House agreement. The Government have committed £150 million towards the establishment of those bodies as part of our commitment to help Northern Ireland to deal with its troubled past. The design and implementation of the bodies was considered as part of the intense negotiations during the “Fresh Start” legacy talks, but the establishment of the IRG and the other legacy mechanisms could not be agreed at the time. The Government continue to work on making progress on the legacy strand of those negotiations. As is set out in the Stormont House agreement, the Government support much of what was proposed. The IRG should receive and commission reports; it should promote reconciliation; it should be appointed by Northern Irish political parties, the UK Government and the Irish Government; and it should have a chair of international standing who is nominated jointly by the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister.

As Members know, there have been a number of previous initiatives aimed at addressing the legacy of Northern Ireland’s troubled past, and they have all recognised that it cannot be reduced to a one-dimensional issue. No single approach or solution will work in isolation; a concerted and multifaceted approach is required. The Stormont House agreement makes it clear that the four legacy bodies are intended to constitute a package of measures to deal with the past, each addressing a different dimension of this difficult issue.

I suggest that establishing the IRG on its own would not ultimately promote reconciliation, although that is a key function of the body. I say that because the proposed new clause ignores many of the ingredients acknowledged by the political parties in Northern Ireland as integral to dealing with Northern Ireland’s past. Those ingredients must address the suffering of victims and survivors, facilitate the pursuit of justice and information recovery, and be balanced, proportionate, transparent, fair and equitable.

A significant criticism that victims have raised with us regarding the current approach is the piecemeal nature of how legacy matters are dealt with. I do not think that we wish to perpetuate that through a piecemeal implementation of the legacy institutions. The IRG, as an integral part of the Stormont House agreement, can realistically be implemented only in parallel with the other legacy bodies, and it is clear that progress on the whole package of legacy mechanisms must have cross-community support in Northern Ireland.

I recognise the views of UUP and SDLP Members about new clauses 2 and 3. Indeed, I sympathise with the sentiment behind the measures. On the face of it, reverting to the pre-St. Andrews agreement method of electing the First and Deputy First Ministers might be a welcome change, because that involved an overt demonstration of cross-community support. However, to accept the new clauses would be to turn back the clock to before the St Andrews agreement and the subsequent legislation, which is the basis on which devolved government was restored in 2007 and continues to this day. The reality is that such changes would need to be supported on a cross-community basis, but that has not happened. The purpose of the Bill is to implement the Government’s commitments under the “Fresh Start” agreement, and the proposals go beyond that agreement.

I am concerned that if we made changes to the institutions without cross- community support in Northern Ireland, we would risk destabilising the political process in Northern Ireland, damaging the substantial progress that we have made and diverting attention from the challenges and opportunities that Northern Ireland faces. Our priority in supporting devolved politics in Northern Ireland must be to implement the “Fresh Start” and Stormont House agreements, and we are taking another step towards that with this Bill. I recognise that this matter has been considered in the past. The same amendment was tabled in the other place during the passage of the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill in early 2014, but the Government could not support it then. I am afraid that, for the same reason, we will not do so today.

I have outlined the reasons why the Government will not support new clauses 1 to 5 and amendment 2, and I urge hon. Members not to press them to a Division.

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[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

We welcome the passage of the Bill. We are a signatory, as it were, to the Stormont agreement. We want to see its implementation. Equally, we want to see the implementation of the Stormont House agreement. I echo the sentiments of the Secretary of State, particularly in relation to the bodies that will deal with the legacy issues—the historical investigations unit being prime among them.

Every day, I talk to constituents, victims and survivors in Northern Ireland. There is a deep sense of frustration on their part that the media are full of the whingeing of Sinn Féin about what the state did and what the Government did. The stark statistics speak for themselves: 90% of the killings carried out in what we call the “troubles” were carried by out terrorist organisations. Some 60% of those killings were carried out by republican terrorists. There are 3,000 unsolved murders linked to the troubles in Northern Ireland, yet we have the absurdity of scores of police officers reviewing the killings known as “Blood Sunday” in Londonderry and not a single police officer looking at the equally bloody Sunday in the constituency of the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Tom Elliott), when the Provisional IRA exploded a bomb at the cenotaph and murdered many innocent people. Today, not a single police officer is being deployed to investigate those responsible for that murder.

Looking at that situation, we can understand why ordinary people in Northern Ireland are left deeply frustrated. Ninety per cent. of killings get little or no attention, yet the focus is constantly on what the state did, constantly on what our brave soldiers did and constantly on what our brave police officers did. In many instances, the killings carried out by the state were entirely lawful and legitimate, and carried out against terrorists engaged in acts of violence and terrorism. They were often in self-defence.

We have inquests. We have investigations. We have inquiries. We have hundreds of millions of pounds spent on investigating what the state did. The innocent victims are not only not getting the attention they deserve; they have to accept—they do not accept it; “endure” is perhaps the word—a definition of “victim” that in law equates them with the perpetrators. That is something this House ought to address. There is no consensus in Northern Ireland on the definition of “victim”, and I do not think the Northern Ireland Assembly is likely to agree one in the near future. There was debate on this in the Stormont House discussions and it has been discussed at length in the past. I presented a private Member’s Bill in this House to change the definitions of victim and survivor. I tabled amendments to the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill. My party has tabled an amendment to this Bill, as has the Ulster Unionist party. We still do not have a change to the definition of victim and survivor.

The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) is right to say that this matter goes beyond the people who live in Northern Ireland. It includes many who served in Northern Ireland, and the victims of the Birmingham, Manchester, Canary Wharf, Bishopsgate and Guildford bombings. There are many instances of terrorist atrocities carried out by republican terrorists here.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

Does my right hon. Friend believe that the injustice was further compounded earlier this week, when the Legal Aid Agency refused to support the just quest of the families of the Hyde Park bombing for civil support in their pursuit against John Downey?

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[Mr Donaldson]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. The other day I was in the lift with Lord Tebbit and I asked after his wife. I think of the Brighton bomb—the Conservative party knows this all too well—which was a blow to the heart of British democracy if ever there was one. I think of Lord Tebbit’s wife. I think of others who died in that attempt by the Provisional IRA to blast British democracy.

As Lord Tebbit himself asked, why is the man who planted the bomb being equated with the victims of the Brighton bombing? With the greatest of respect to the Secretary of State and the Minister, I say that this is not a matter just for the Northern Ireland Assembly; it is a matter for every Member of this House of Commons. We all have constituents who served in Northern Ireland, and many of us have constituents who died or were injured there. They are all victims and survivors. The Minister himself would come under the category of “survivor”, yet he is equated with the very people whom he lawfully was seeking to bring to book and who were holding Northern Ireland to ransom.

My final point concerns an amendment of ours that unfortunately was not debated this afternoon. I disagree with the Minister. The military covenant is not being fully implemented in Northern Ireland. I will send him copies of responses I have had from Departments in Northern Ireland specifically stating that constituents of mine who have undertaken military service cannot benefit from the military covenant because of section 75. I will share that correspondence with him so that he can see our frustration at hearing Ministers deny there is a problem. We, as Members representing constituencies in Northern Ireland, have constituents who served in our armed forces who are not getting the full benefit of the military covenant because of section 75. I hope he will understand our frustration.

[Mr Wallace]

I share the right hon. Gentleman’s frustration. That is why, when I was appointed, instead of waiting on areas like mental health, I went around the problem, approached Combat Stress and said, “What’s important to veterans and victims is outcomes and getting a service. I’m not too fussed who delivers it. I just want to get the service delivered to them.” I hope that is partly why we have got where we have with Combat Stress, but I am happy to listen to other areas of frustration and see what we can do to deliver the service.

[Mr Donaldson]

I entirely accept what the Minister has said. I have nothing but admiration for his efforts to ensure that veterans of our armed forces living in Northern Ireland receive the support they deserve. However, I have had constituents say to me, “I have returned to live in Northern Ireland, and the military covenant tells me that I should have access to medical care on the same basis as other residents of Northern Ireland, as if I had lived in Northern Ireland, but I don’t”. The covenant says not that there should be special advantages, but that veterans should not be disadvantaged by virtue of their service. In reality, veterans in Northern Ireland who return to Northern Ireland are being disadvantaged by their service. They go to the bottom of the waiting list, instead of being placed in the list where they would have been had they been ordinarily resident. That is what the military covenant should be doing for veterans, but it is not currently delivering. We will be happy to meet the Minister to discuss how we can overcome this difficulty and ensure that the military covenant delivers.

We welcome and support the Bill and the Secretary of State’s ongoing efforts to conclude the other elements of the Stormont House agreement. We stand with her on issues such as national security, and we hope that we will see this matter through to a successful conclusion. We all owe it to the people of Northern Ireland to do so.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. It might help the House to know that, because of the time available for the following debate and because of the great importance of the business being discussed by right hon. and hon. Friends from Northern Ireland, I do not intend to move the following motion, in the hope that the Backbench Business Committee will allow me to bring it back before the House when we have more time to discuss it.

Northern Ireland (Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan) Bill

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

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

I pay tribute to the Secretary of State and the Minister for all the work that they and their teams have done to bring forward this Bill. Having been involved in much of the negotiations in the past, I can say in all honesty—we should always give credit when it is due—that the Secretary of State has gone way up in my estimation for the clear stance that she has taken on issues both in the public domain and privately around the negotiating table. She has done so with great clarity and that is something to be welcomed from a Secretary of State. She has also been ably supported by the Minister.

I pay tribute to Mark Calway, who worked for my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson). I had the pleasure of meeting him on several occasions as he took an interest in Northern Ireland. I know that my hon. Friend and his team will feel his loss very deeply, and we extend our sympathy to him and to Mark’s family.

Tackling paramilitarism is an important element of this agreement, and it is long overdue. As a party, we have pressed time and again for the paramilitaries to leave the stage. At times I have heard their spokespersons in the media talk about their big contribution to the peace process, but they have delivered little by way of the necessary steps. For far too long, they have been begrudging about the action that the paramilitary organisations need to take. They have continued to straddle the fence between democracy and the rule of law on the one side, and continued involvement in criminality and at times, sadly, in murder on the other.

One reason for the political crisis in Northern Ireland last year was precisely to do with this continued involvement by members of paramilitary organisations in criminal activity and in carrying out murders. As the hon. Member for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell) reminded us, those murders took place in his constituency. We need to be absolutely clear that there is no room for ambiguity, for grey areas or for straddling the fence between the rule of the law and involvement in criminality and paramilitarism. The people of Northern Ireland deserve better, which is why it is vital that we continue to pursue this agenda, and the Stormont agreement marks a significant step in taking it forward.

[Lady Hermon]

The right hon. Gentleman condemns paramilitarism, whatever shape or form it takes—loyalist paramilitaries as well as republican paramilitaries. In that connection, will he put on record his thanks, and the thanks of many people, to the Police Service of Northern Ireland for completing yet another search for the remains of Lisa Dorrian, who disappeared 11 years ago, and was murdered by those with loyalist paramilitary connections? Her family have never had her returned for a Christian burial, and tragically her mother died broken-hearted earlier this year. I would be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman condemned equally loyalist and republican paramilitaries.

[Mr Donaldson]

The hon. Lady speaks of the individual, personal and family suffering of the victims of paramilitary violence. Let me make it clear that when, as a party, we refer to paramilitarism we mean paramilitarism across the political divide. I had the pleasure of taking the Secretary of State and the shadow Secretary of State to Lisburn to visit a community project in my constituency. We have worked hard with people who were previously involved in paramilitary activity to enable them to complete the transition to what is now purely community development work, and those communities have been transformed as a result. For example, the Old Warren in Lisburn in my constituency has been transformed as a result of the transition of people previously involved in loyalist paramilitarism to purely community development. I commend the Resurgam Trust in Lisburn and its leadership for what they have done to transform that community by enabling those people to make that transition. I assure the hon. Lady that that is precisely the kind of effort that needs to take place in Northern Ireland.

It was one of the tragedies of conflict, and our troubles in Northern Ireland, that families not only suffered the loss of a loved one but were not able to mourn properly, because their loved one’s remains had not been returned to them. The family of Lisa Dorrian are a case in point, and we hope and pray that one day they will at least have the dignity of being able to bury the remains of their loved one. I appeal to those who know where Lisa Dorrian’s remains are to give that information to the police. I appeal to them on the grounds of basic Christian principles: even those involved in such wrongdoing should see that it is the right thing for a family to be able to have some degree of closure and have their loved one’s remains returned to them.

The Bill makes provision for the establishment of the independent reporting commission, which we welcome. The commission will report annually on progress on ending continued paramilitary activity, and we hope that it will shine a spotlight on republican and loyalist paramilitary groups that continue to engage in criminal acts and acts of violence. That will apply in Northern Ireland, but one of the important provisions in the Bill is that it will also apply in Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland. In recent times, we have seen the effects of paramilitary gangster-type activity in Dublin, which is unacceptable, and we must all co-operate to ensure that such activity is brought to an end. I hope that the good people of the Republic of Ireland, who go to the polls shortly, will think long and hard about who they elect to their national Parliament and where they stand on questions such as the special criminal court and the need to bring to an end paramilitarism, gangsterism and criminality, wherever they develop and emerge.

We welcome changes to the pledge of office for Ministers in the Northern Ireland Executive and, crucially, a new undertaking to be given by all Members elected to the Assembly after May that will commit them to non-violence and to supporting the rule of law. No such undertaking has been required in the past, even though an undertaking is required of councillors in local government. The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) is absolutely right: we need to be sure that it is not just a question of a paper exercise but that sanctions are in place so that if Members breach that undertaking they can be held to account. I assure her that we will examine the Standing Orders of the Northern Ireland Assembly to see whether such a sanction exists. If it does not, we are prepared to introduce and support an amendment to the Bill to ensure that provision is made for such a sanction.

The hon. Member for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell) and others have made reference to things that are not in the Bill, and it is a matter of regret that we cannot yet legislate for the provisions of the Stormont House agreement dealing with legacy matters. The Democratic Unionist party supports full implementation of the Stormont House agreement. We are doing nothing that holds back implementation of the agreement. We are all aware that implementation has not taken place because of a stand-off or impasse on the question of national security. Here I differ from the hon. Gentleman. He talked about victims, but I am interested not just in the victims of the past but in ensuring that we do not have more victims in future. When we take action that compromises the security of our people and brings into the public domain the manner in which the security forces operate to counter terrorism we put people at risk in Northern Ireland. We put lives at risk, and we create the potential for future victims in Northern Ireland, because sadly not everyone has signed up to the peace process. Not all paramilitary organisations are on ceasefire. People out there today are targeting others—in my own constituency, in the past couple of weeks there have been two instances of prison officers having to leave their home because of threats from dissident republican organisations.

Knowledge and intelligence have, thankfully, prevented attacks from going ahead, which tells us that our security services continue to operate to prevent loss of life and prevent further victims from being created. I would say to the hon. Member for Belfast South and the Social Democratic and Labour party that, yes, we want the maximum disclosure that is available, but we also need to ensure that the security of the people we represent is protected. Yes, we want processes to be in place for innocent victims of terrorism to enable them to have access to information and justice and a degree of closure. At the same time, we must not compromise the ability of the security forces to protect the community in Northern Ireland and prevent further victims from being created in future.

On the national security issue, no democratic party should give cover to Sinn Féin on this issue, because we know that what their game is. It is about rewriting the history of the troubles. The reality is that 90% of all the killings that occurred in the troubles were carried out by paramilitary organisations. However, if we look at the media coverage, read the newspapers and look at the amount of money spent on investigations and inquests, proportionately far more of that resource goes on the 10% of deaths attributed to the state. Many of those deaths were the result of the security forces killing people who were engaged in acts of terrorism, but far more emphasis is put on those deaths than on the 90% of innocent victims murdered by paramilitary organisations.

[Mr Gregory Campbell]

I agree with my right hon. Friend on the 90% versus the 10%, but it now appears that in some instances where the Provisional IRA carried out atrocities there is an attempt by Sinn Féin to blame those in the security forces, the police and the Army. The abysmal audacity of some people knows no bounds, beyond even what my right hon. Friend described.

[Mr Donaldson]

My hon. Friend is right. We constantly hear the Sinn Féin mantra that it is not just a case of 90% versus 10% of killings, but that the state was somehow responsible for directing many of the paramilitary-related deaths. No one with any rational thought in their head will fall for that nonsense from the republican movement.

There is now an investigation resourced from outside Northern Ireland into the actions of the agent known as Stakeknife, Freddie Scappaticci from west Belfast, in which the emphasis is on the killings that he allegedly may have been involved in, but the question for me is who was directing Freddie Scappaticci? Who was giving the orders to Freddie Scappaticci to carry out the internal investigations of alleged republican informers? It was the IRA army council, some of whom, as we know, are now senior political figures in Northern Ireland—the very same people who point the finger at the Secretary of State and at the Government. However, as I said recently in a radio interview, far more fingers are pointing back in their direction when it comes to those issues.

[Ian Paisley]

The audacity of Sinn Féin and the IRA in this matter needs to be highlighted. It affects not only Northern Ireland cases—we have the case of Loughgall—but cases involving murders on the mainland, such as the Birmingham case. Now there is an attempt to blame the security services in England for the Birmingham bombing. It is atrocious. We have to nail this one, and nail it true.

[Mr Donaldson]

My hon. Friend is right. We apply the same standard to republican-related murders and loyalist-related murders. The idea that the Ulster Volunteer Force, for example, would be exonerated from the Loughinisland killings in the constituency of the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) because of allegations of collusion is just as perverse and absurd as the idea that the IRA would be exonerated from the massacres and murders that it committed in the past. The same applies on both sides.

In conclusion, we want to see progress in dealing with the legacy issues. We want to see the historical investigations unit established, with full police powers to investigate the unsolved murders. I talk to the innocent victims, and as they look on at what is happening, they feel that they are not being given a fair crack of the whip, an opportunity. We must move matters on. In the interim—I raised this before with the Secretary of State—the First Minister, Arlene Foster, has supported the call for the resources already set aside for historical investigations to be allocated to the legacy investigation unit of the PSNI so that that money does not come out of front-line policing in Northern Ireland.

The PSNI needs to continue to deal with current crime and with the current terrorist threat, so we do not want to see the police budget depleted by the continued drawing down of resource for the investigation of legacy cases. Those need to be investigated, absolutely, but we hope the Secretary of State will listen to what the Chief Constable and the First Minister have said and allow some of that resource to be freed up and transferred to the PSNI to enable it to do more to help the innocent victims of terrorism.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Villiers]

My hon. Friend’s predecessor was a great parliamentarian, and I am sure the whole House will join her in thinking sadly of the atrocity that led to his death. The UK Government strongly support the programmes in Northern Ireland designed to build a shared society, many of which impact on schools and colleges. As a way of addressing the remaining difficulties, it is vital that we do all we can to break down past divisions so that sectarianism becomes entirely a thing of the past in Northern Ireland.

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

The Secretary of State will be aware that, sadly, there was no agreement on how to move the legacy issue forward, but money has been set aside, particularly for the proposed historical investigations unit. We have 3,000 unsolved murders in Northern Ireland. Will the Secretary of State at least make some of that extra resource available to the PSNI’s legacy unit to enable it to re-examine some of the pressing cases? People are getting older and they deserve justice.

[Mrs Villiers]

As the right hon. Gentleman points out, the UK Government have committed significant sums to support dealing with the legacy of the past as we have in relation to shared society projects, to which I referred earlier. Our starting point is that the £150 million for bodies to deal with the past is intended for new bodies such as the historical investigations unit or the Independent Commission on Information Retrieval, but we remain open to a dialogue with the Executive on whether it would be possible to use any of those moneys in advance of those new bodies being set up. It is vital that they are set up.