Investigation of Veterans

Debate between John Penrose and Mike Penning

Thursday 16th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

The Northern Ireland letters of comfort, as I have already said, do not stop prosecutions under the latest legal guidance. Therefore, we have to come up with something that gets us to the point that the hon. Gentleman is trying to illustrate, but it must have a different legal foundation to it. I wish it were simpler. I wish that it were not the case, but it is and we have to take the world as we find it. That should be an explanation about why it is hard, but not a satisfactory justification for not trying and not getting there, and not getting there soon.

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

May I say to the Minister of State that I have every sympathy with his position at the Dispatch Box? I did exactly the same and had exactly the same advice, which was fundamentally wrong, when I was in the Northern Ireland Office as well as in the Ministry of Defence. Like many colleagues, I served in Northern Ireland. When I came back, I was given a general service medal. I was on operations. To us, peacekeeping there was no different to peacekeeping anywhere else in the world. That is what British Army soldiers do. To stand here and say that there is a legal difference between a soldier going on ops in Iraq, Cyprus or anywhere else in the world and a soldier going on ops in Northern Ireland is fundamentally wrong, and I challenged and challenged and challenged that advice. How on earth have we got into this position where we will not defend our own soldiers because of some technicality that we were not on ops? We were on ops and we were defending the public and our guys were killed. I will not have terrorists mentioned in the same breath as British soldiers.

[John Penrose]

I could not agree more. My right hon. Friend rightly points out that he has stood in my shoes on this issue. I am sure he is absolutely right that, to anybody serving in Her Majesty’s armed forces—whether they served in peacekeeping operations or not, and whether they served in Northern Ireland or in other parts of the world—the practical effect will feel the same.

[Sir Mike Penning]

I was given a medal for it.

[John Penrose]

As my right hon. Friend rightly points out, he was given a medal for it. The only point on which I would pull him up is that, although the practical effect may feel the same, the legal underpinnings—again, I appreciate that he contested this—are different. Although we may wish that were not so, it is so. Therefore, we have to come up with something that will withstand legal challenge. As my right hon. Friend for Rayleigh and Wickford rightly pointed out, there are people out there who will try to knock legal holes in any answer that we come up with unless it is legally robust. We have to acknowledge the legal difference and find an answer that works, even though we are trying to get to the same answer in each case. If we cannot do that, we may come up with something that sounds great when we announce it, but that will get legal holes knocked in it; and that would mean that we were not protecting our veterans in the way in which everybody here wants us to do.

Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) (No. 2) Bill

Debate between John Penrose and Mike Penning

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 5th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

So I am giving the hon. Gentleman responsibilities that he never had to bear. Let me also mention to him that a Command Paper is currently available in the Library which gives a very detailed breakdown—it is well over an inch thick—of the way in which money has been spent in Northern Ireland during the financial year that is about to end. There is a huge amount of detail, but it is backward-looking. While it is helpful and, I am sure, welcome to all Members to ensure some degree of accountability, I think that all of us, including the Secretary of State, have agreed that we all hanker after a better process than this, but also that the fundamental and central problem is the lack of a functioning Executive in Stormont.

I was delighted to hear the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), clearly say that he did not think direct rule is justified at this stage. He is also right to say that, because of that and because of the shortcomings we have all been enunciating, there is a tariff for political failure at Stormont: I think that that was the phrase he used. The Chairman of the Committee quoted a reference to the “slow decay and stagnation” that is happening in Northern Ireland politics as a result, but rightly levelled the balance a little by referring to the restoration talks efforts made by my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, and—again, rightly—was positive and full in his praise of both the Northern Ireland civil service and the NIO, and their unstinting efforts to do a professional job in an extremely difficult and increasingly challenging political environment.

[Sir Mike Penning]

Can I, in all fairness, challenge the Minister on the way he congratulated the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) in relation to direct rule? If direct rule is not the answer today, when will it be and, if it is not the answer soon, why?

[John Penrose]

A number of Members have said today that they would regard it as a last resort. I agree because we have to be incredibly careful about what we wish for here. We have to be extremely cautious about the notion of starting to take the drug of direct rule because it very swiftly leads to a very difficult and very precarious political position. I say to my right hon. Friend that there is a process laid out in primary legislation passed by this House—the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018—that says we have, first, five months and then, potentially renewable, a further five months in which to find a consensus and get an Executive re-established at Stormont. At that point, to answer his point about “If not now, when?” there are statutory obligations on the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland that will require decisions to be made at those various different waypoints, but it is extremely dangerous and extremely difficult for us all to prejudge, or indeed to wish that those talks, stuttering though they are, but attempted though they definitely are, should not be given enough time to come to a sensible conclusion. I think everybody has been clear that that is what we want them to do; we want them to be successful if they possibly can be.

The SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), was of the same mind. He spoke about a paralysing political stalemate in Stormont that must not become the new normal, and I agree.