Legal Aid: Birmingham Pub Bombings

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) on bringing this issue to the Chamber. He and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) passionately presented the case of the victims of the Birmingham pub bombs.

I am here today not because I am from Northern Ireland but because, like my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), I have empathy with and a real understanding of the victims’ families. In my constituency, there are many people in a similar situation, whose lives have been torn apart by evil men. The victims had no sin and no guilt, but were in the wrong place at the wrong time. While the world seeks to brush over the atrocities of the past, and people—at least in New York—seek to rename St Patrick’s day after the unrepentant terrorist Gerry Adams, the families of the 21 people murdered by the Birmingham bombs daily pay the price in sorrow and tears. The hon. Members for Birmingham, Northfield and for Birmingham, Yardley spoke with passion and belief. I am sure everyone in the Public Gallery is proud of them and of all Members who are here to support the case of the victims’ families and make sure it is well made.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, in her passionate and compelling speech, told us about the victims of the Hillsborough disaster. Let us be quite clear: we all wanted them to get legal aid, but we also want the families of those who were killed in the Birmingham pub bombs to get it. Those families see single parents where once there were two; mothers at their child’s graveside, against the natural order of things; little girls walking down the aisle without their father; lives half-lived because huge parts have ripped away—all because IRA men decided to make their point by choosing that place at that time. That is my concern, and that is why I am here today. When the hon. Lady secured her Adjournment debate, I went along to support her, not because I intervene in them all but because I agree wholeheartedly with what she was trying to do. I am here to do the same thing again.

Those families seeking justice should not have to fight so hard in this day and age. When I think of the public money that was spent on the Bloody Sunday inquiry into an incident in which 13 people died—I am in no way trivialising those families’ heartache—and see a bill in excess of £195 million, I am flabbergasted. I cannot understand the rationale for not allowing the families to seek justice through the legal aid system. I make that point about the Hillsborough inquiry and about the Bloody Sunday inquiry.

Do the lives of those 21 people not count enough? Is it simply that the wrong people were killed? Do we run a two-tier system, in which some people are entitled to legal help for justice and closure while others are not allowed that support? I hope we do not. I am putting the Minister on the spot, but we look to her with concern, and we request a positive response. That is not the system I signed up for. I believe in real equality—hon. Members know that. Everybody aggrieved by the troubles deserves the same time, attention and support.

I read an article that said that although the application of the families of the victims of the Birmingham pub bombs for legal aid was turned down, the black cabbie rapist has accessed £166,000-worth of legal aid. Am I the only person who sees something wrong there? We all do. He got an obscene, disgraceful amount of legal aid. I am really lost for words sometimes when I try to understand how the system works. I stand by people’s right to have legal support regardless of whether they are innocent or guilty, but it hurts to see these families denied access when there is no question of guilt. I understand the system, but understanding it does not make it right. The fact is that this is wrong.

I say respectfully and gently to the Minister that I am looking to her to make it right and ensure this case is reassessed. For too long, the victims of IRA atrocities have had to fight for the recognition that their families are important. This fight for legal aid is yet another example of salt being poured into wounds that cannot heal because they are not allowed to. Reopen the inquest, hear the evidence, do the right thing by those people, who have done no wrong. Please—for those victims and the victims of terror at home, enough is enough. I want to send this message to those families: they are not being asked to drop the case while watching the perpetrators and masterminds being celebrated, lauded and, in some cases, almost canonised and made into saints. The families of the victims of the Birmingham pub bombs deserve at least as much help, support and consideration in their quest for justice as those affected by other troubles-related murders.

I support the families’ quest and that of the two MPs who have spoken and those in the Public Gallery who are here to request legal aid help. I am sorry for the price they are paying and the grief they continue to go through. I am sorry that they are not getting the support they should get without question. They are not alone; I stand with them in this House.