Jim Shannon
Main Page: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)Department Debates - View all Jim Shannon's debates with the Northern Ireland Office
(1 day, 10 hours ago)
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Hilary Benn
The right hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. Societies around the world that have faced terrible conflict have each taken their own path to try to find a way forward. The release of 400 prisoners in the two years after the Good Friday agreement was a very bitter pill to swallow for many in Northern Ireland, but I support that step—it was nothing to do with me at the time—because it was the right one to take to enable the Good Friday agreement to be reached. I say to the right hon. Gentleman that I have met people, including the family of a member of our armed forces who was murdered by the IRA, who expressed to me their bitter opposition to the immunity provisions of the legacy Act.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The sharpened tension in Northern Ireland is palpable after the ruling. The day after the shooting, the Provisional IRA issued a statement boasting that the men were in the East Tyrone brigade and on active service. Mr Speaker, you and I know the Bible, and it is very clear: live by the sword, die by the sword. If you live by a machine gun that you use to shoot a police station, you die by a machine gun—that is the way that I see it. For right-thinking people in Northern Ireland, and indeed throughout this United Kingdom, to be told that the use of lethal force was not justified flies in the face of common justice, and feeds the feeling that the judiciary are not just complicit but active in their rewriting of history. What can the Secretary of State do to rectify that situation?
Hilary Benn
The findings of the coroner in this case stand for themselves and are on the record, and all of us are able to read them. In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s direct question about what the Government are doing, as I indicated to the House in my answer to the right hon. Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis), the Ministry of Defence is, of course, giving very serious consideration to what the coroner had to say.