Northern Ireland Budget (No. 2) Bill

Johnny Mercer Excerpts

Money resolution: House of Commons & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 9th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

I thank my right hon. Friend—I will call him a Friend—who makes an incredibly important point. At that dinner, a number of former members of the Royal Anglian Regiment made the point that they were trying to encourage and recruit young people. Can they really do that when those people might go into a theatre of war and act in accordance with orders, the law of armed conflict or the law of the land, but be arrested many years hence?

I do not know what the answer to this dilemma is, but I do know that very many people out there are incredibly angry and very worried, and they are looking to this Government to come up with constructive, innovative and workable solutions. If we do not do that, we will not be forgiven in a hurry.

[Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)]

Thank you, Sir Lindsay, for calling me in this debate. This is a deeply personal issue on which I have worked for some time. I welcome the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon).

I am cognisant of the fact that there are real issues with what has been put forward—I do not dispute that for a minute—but I echo what my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) said. If I was still a soldier watching this place, or if I was a veteran watching this place, I could not help but go away thinking that this place still—still—simply does not get it when it comes to what we owe those who have served.

This issue is nothing to do with some of the things that have been mentioned tonight. There has been a crassness to the terminology at times. I in no way speak of the Chair of the Defence Committee, because we have been tumbling around these terms and I would understand that from him, but there is the idea that we have conflated the idea of an amnesty with that of a statute of limitations. They are fundamentally and critically different, yet they have been interposed as if this is some sort of game or legal language that we have to get around to ensure we do right by our servicemen and women.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

On that point, does my hon. Friend not agree that it was unfortunate that the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman kept on inappropriately using the word “amnesty”?

[Johnny Mercer]

That is exactly what I am talking about.

Before I came to this place—I have spoken about it before, so this will not be a shock to anyone—I really struggled with the inauthenticity I saw from both the Government and Opposition Dispatch Boxes. Incidents such as the one that has just been referred to serve to highlight that. Up and down the country, there are people watching this who are veterans of Northern Ireland, of Afghanistan, like me, and of Iraq. They will be thinking, “Have these guys got my back? Do they really get it when they can’t even get the terms right? Does that give me the confidence that the Government will apply themselves to ending this ridiculous charade of prosecuting our soldiers? I’m afraid it does not.”

What happens to the amendments after I have finished speaking is up to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks, but I have to lodge again my profound and personal disquiet with the Government’s policy. I feel a personal shame with regard to the historical allegations issue. I feel that I am part of a Government who are essentially promoting a cowards’ charter when it comes to looking after our servicemen and women. My right hon. Friend talked about how he made a political decision to close the Iraq Historical Allegations Team. I worked on that issue for a year before he did that. Every single civil servant and lawyer in his Department told him it could not be done, but he took the executive political decision that he was elected to make and closed it. We need some of that political courage to be brought to the issue in relation to Northern Ireland.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I apologise for intervening because, characteristically, my hon. Friend is making a very good speech. We serve together on the Defence Committee, which is now looking into this matter. We heard at today’s Defence questions that the Ministry of Defence is now looking into this matter, too. Does he agree that we are not going to give up on this? We are going to keep coming back debate after debate, motion after motion. We are going to harry the Government, on behalf of the veterans, until they do the right thing and provide protection for those who protected us.

[Johnny Mercer]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. I must say that when I started the process on IHAT, I found it a pretty lonely experience. That has now changed significantly. There are people in the Chamber who have campaigned on the Northern Ireland issue for a long time and it is deeply heartening to see the support this issue has got, certainly among Conservative Members. I thank him and others who have been here for much longer than me who have provided me with that support; vice versa, I have given any support that I have been able to give.

The problems with this process are so well known. It is late and I do not want to send everyone to sleep by going into them, but this process does not work for anybody. It does not work for the soldiers who are being investigated or for the families in finding out what has happened. The idea that it does is, I am afraid, for the birds.