Northern Ireland: Political Developments

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I know that the hon. Gentleman has raised on a number of occasions this point about the nature of the devolved settlement and the legal structures that are in place. There may well be the scope, in due time, to have that wider debate, but at the moment we are about the here and now—about getting the devolved Government back up on their feet again and seeing parties engaging in such a way that an Executive can be formed under the current structure. That needs to be where our focus lies.

[Sir Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

In supporting and sharing the vision that my right hon. Friend so passionately advocates, may I bring him back to the previous question and suggest that if intransigence continues for long enough, there may come a point for some fresh thinking, and that local government in Northern Ireland, to which he briefly alluded at the end of his statement, might play a larger role?

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend raises an interesting point about the role of local government, which has continued to make progress and is fulfilling increasing responsibilities. I am sure that over time that should be encouraged further. However, it is now about getting the Executive in place to be able to support this work, and that is where all our efforts must lie in the short term.

Armed Forces: Historical Cases

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I absolutely recognise the sense of justice, and the sense of the need for justice, on all sides, which underpinned what my hon. Friend said. Yes, there are meticulous records. There are meticulous records of the investigations of terrorists, which should be looked at properly. That is part and parcel of what I am saying about the establishment of the historical investigations unit. The terrorists were responsible for 90% of all deaths in the troubles, and any investigative processes have to reflect that.

[Sir Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend, who is being most tolerant in taking interventions, accept that if 10% of the people who were killed were killed by the security forces—bearing in mind that the other 90% of killings were all murders—even if as many as one in 10 of the killings by the security forces were murder, which is exceptionally unlikely, the proportionate rate would be one in 100, not one in 10?

[James Brokenshire]

That is exactly why the Stormont House agreement had at its heart the messages that I have already delivered of fairness, balance and proportionality.

The case load of the historical investigations unit will contain some of the most notorious atrocities that resulted in the deaths of our armed forces, such as those at Warrenpoint in 1979 and Ballygawley in 1988. The HIU will look at cases in chronological order, meaning that each case will be investigated in the order in which it occurred, so that there is no prioritisation of some cases over others.

Any legislation that establishes the HIU will include specific tests that must be met in order that a previously completed case is reopened for investigation. Specifically, that will mean that new and credible evidence that was not previously available to the authorities will be needed before the HIU reopens any closed case. We are also looking at ways to ensure that when prosecutions do take place, terrorists are not treated more favourably than former soldiers and police officers. The bodies will be time-limited to five years to ensure that the process is not open-ended, thereby helping Northern Ireland to move forward.

Turning the Stormont House agreement into detailed legislation has been and continues to be a long and necessarily complex process, but a great deal of progress has been made in building the consensus that is necessary to bring legislation before the House. I believe that with hard work on all sides, the outstanding areas of disagreement are entirely bridgeable.

In September, I signalled my intention to move the process to a more public phase. I had hoped that that would have taken place by now, but a continuing lack of consensus and then the political situation at Stormont have delayed it. However, I remain committed to giving the public a say on the proposed bodies and to building confidence in them from across the community. I want to take that forward as soon as possible after the Northern Ireland Assembly election a week today, so that we can make progress quickly.

Any approach to the past must be fair, balanced and proportionate; it must have victims and survivors at its heart; and it must be consistent with our obligations to those who served and, in so many cases, sacrificed so much to bring about the relative peace and stability that Northern Ireland enjoys today.

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[Sir Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

I congratulate the Democratic Unionist party on their motion. I particularly congratulate the right hon. and gallant Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson), not only on his eloquent words but on his gallant service—along with several of his parliamentary colleagues—as a part-time member of the Ulster Defence Regiment, which was far the most dangerous regiment in the British Army in which to serve.

I am deeply conscious of the pressure of time and the fact that so many Members wish to speak, so I shall be very brief. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Sir Henry Bellingham) presented such a strong case in making points that I wished to make that I shall briefly echo two or three of his points before dealing with the other aspect of the motion.

Corporal Major Dennis Hutchings, when he served in the Life Guards, was by chance in the same squadron as a close friend of mine, an officer commanding one of the other troops. My friend says that Dennis Hutchings was one of the best senior NCOs with whom he had ever served, and he is absolutely astounded at the way in which this man has been treated. A constituent of mine, who has written to me in the last fortnight, is being investigated in connection with events that occurred in 1976, 41 years ago.

I listened carefully to what was said by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. I have huge respect for him and I understand the considerations that he has to balance here, but I ask him to understand that while there is no Conservative Member who does not believe in the rule of law—we all believe in it—integral to the rule of law is confidence in the criminal justice system. The problem with trying to pursue soldiers in the same way as we pursue former terrorists is that, in most cases, there is no prospect of finding new evidence after all these years. Key witnesses have died.

The point about parity is not just the fact that it is morally repugnant to compare killings by the security forces, unless there is real evidence that they were criminal, to killings by terrorist organisations, but, as several other Members have pointed out, the practical fact that the other organisations we were up against—the paramilitaries on both sides—did not keep records, so there is not the same scope for pursuing them.

I firmly believe—my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk made this case so strongly that I shall not waste the House’s time by repeating it at length—that the only way to resolve this situation is to establish a transparent mechanism that will ensure that no case can be pursued to the point of charge without clear proof that new evidence has been uncovered. Unless that new evidence has been uncovered, it should not be possible to raise fresh cases after all these years.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

My hon. and gallant Friend is making a great speech, and I thank him for letting me intervene. I am increasingly worried, because 38 years ago I gave my word to two men under my command who had been involved in a fatal shooting that if they went to court having been charged with manslaughter and were found not guilty, they would never hear anything again. I gave my word, and it looks as though my word may not be worth a fig if this continues.

[Sir Julian Brazier]

I am grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend. Many Conservative Members share the view that a transparent procedure to show that fresh evidence has emerged should be required for any case of this kind to be pursued.

Let me now say something about the other aspect of the motion and about some of those other operations. The difference between the operation in Northern Ireland and the other three operations to which the motion refers is that we were in Northern Ireland as aid to the civil power. In Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan, at many points there was very little civil power; in fact, at some points there was none at all.

My right hon. Friend the Northern Ireland Secretary stressed, just after mentioning IHAT, the importance of upholding the law. We have to be clear, however, what we mean by the law when dealing with these other operations. The fact is that when a force has just captured a city, as we had in Basra, there is no civil law, as was the case then. In conflicts throughout the 20th century, it was always accepted that only one law matters on the battlefield: humanitarian law, grounded in the Geneva convention. In the past 15 or 20 years, there has been a creeping process whereby a second form of law—human rights law—has started to be introduced into the picture. When I served on the Select Committee on Defence, a number of organisations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, deprecated that. They made it clear that humanitarian law, which is tried and tested for protecting the interests of the vulnerable, should be the law that applies.

On IHAT, I ask the House to think about two questions. First, why did no other country—all countries in the west claim to uphold the rule of law—choose to set up a body like IHAT? Secondly, what exactly did we expect our soldiers to do in the very dangerous circumstances that applied in a number of the cases, which are likely to survive the IHAT process and go forward, in those months after we captured Basra, when, effectively, there was no police force and no rule of law? We had large numbers of dangerous people around, and we were dealing with rioting, looting and so forth. Some colleagues might have read the recent account of how the Americans dealt with one looting problem: they shot two or three of the looters and a potential riot was supressed. There was never any question of any follow up for that.

We have to realise that in such circumstances, while we can have humanitarian law in the background and rules of engagement and so on, a young officer with a very small number of soldiers in a dangerous situation and seeing vulnerable people threatened might have to make split-second decisions that would not stand up in a court of law in any context anywhere within the United Kingdom. Trying to retrospectively establish such rules, with human rights law being substituted somehow or other into the picture for the old, very clear and simple principles of humanitarian law, has exposed members of our armed forces in a way that many of us find unacceptable.

I want to end by making two points. First, while I was delighted by the way my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland stressed the importance of Mr Shiner being struck off as a lawyer, it seems to me to be extraordinary that there has been no criminal prosecution. When we look at what the Solicitors Regulation Authority—which I have hitherto regarded as the most toothless of all professional bodies, from my own constituency casework—has found against him and realise what that implies for our armed forces, it is extraordinary that he has not been charged, and I very much hope that he will be.

My final point is about the operations that our armed forces are involved in today. The Government made a pledge that if we were involved in further combat operations, we would derogate from the Human Rights Act, and we are now engaged in two operations. We are increasing the number of soldiers in Afghanistan, where the mission has turned from a purely support mission back towards increasingly being a combat one. At the same time, we are very heavily involved in the bitter fighting in Iraq and we have airmen regularly bombing areas. We have the most accurate bombs and the most failsafe systems—civilians sheltering in an area being bombed by the RAF are safer than those sheltering in areas where any other air force might be operating—but the RAF’s activities in the attacks on Mosul and so forth could nevertheless threaten civilians. We do not talk about it in this Chamber, but some members of the special forces are also involved. What protection is in place? Why have we not derogated from the Human Rights Act for those two theatres?

I want others to have the opportunity to speak, so I will end by saying that I wholly support my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk and those Members on the Opposition Benches who are calling for an end to the pursuit of veterans unless serious new evidence emerges in Northern Ireland, and I believe we owe more to the troops engaged in operations elsewhere today.

Legacy Issues: Northern Ireland

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

I will come to that in a moment. Dragging veterans—people in their 70s and 80s—out of their retirement to face trial when most of the evidence has long since disappeared is a fundamental breach of the military covenant.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

In that context, may I mention Corporal Major Dennis Hutchings? He served in the same squadron as a very dear friend of mine—an extremely brave soldier. A terrorist was killed in an incident in which three soldiers were involved. He is the only one who is still alive. How can he ever have a fair trial?

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

My hon. Friend anticipates what I am coming on to.

In the Province, 1974 was an incredibly difficult year. A large number of people—just under 300—were killed. It was a very tough and challenging year indeed, with a number of serious incidents. Colleagues will remember the M62 coach bombing, when 12 people were killed by the IRA. They will remember the Provisional IRA bomb that exploded outside the Houses of Parliament, injuring 11 people and causing extensive damage. They will remember the Guildford bombings, carried out by the IRA, and the Birmingham bombings. During that summer in the troubled Province, the Life Guards—one of the most senior regiments of the British Army—were deployed to Armagh, Dungannon and Cookstown. They had a very tough tour, with predominantly young soldiers on the frontline who were under a great deal of pressure but at all times behaved with the utmost professionalism.

I want to look at the Army report of some incidents that took place around that time. The report states that the threat level against the Life Guards in the areas around Dungannon and Armagh was particularly high. All patrols had been warned to take special care. A number of shooting incidents involving the Life Guards had occurred close to Eglish, and it was generally believed that the unrelated non-fatal shooting of a soldier from the Life Guards on 4 June was in direct retaliation to an arms find in that area. The same day, a Life Guard foot patrol surprised a group of young men who were in the process of transferring weapons into a car in the village of Eglish. The patrol was fired upon, and an exchange of fire took place. Three men were arrested, and a quantity of arms and explosives were recovered. At least three gunmen escaped.

During that particular incident, Corporal Major Dennis Hutchings, to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) referred, was mentioned in dispatches for his exemplary bravery and leadership. Two days later, Dennis Hutchings led a patrol of four men in a follow-up operation aimed at locating further arms caches near the village of Benburb. They chanced on John Pat Cunningham, who was challenged to give himself up—he was behaving in a suspicious manner. The patrol believed they were threatened. They opened fire and, as we know, John Pat Cunningham was tragically killed. It transpires that he was not a terrorist but an innocent civilian. It was a tragic case of mistaken identity.

That incident was investigated fully by the Life Guards. It was investigated by the military police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Director of Public Prosecutions. The four patrol members were completely exonerated and cleared, and the regiment believed that was the end of the matter. If we fast-forward to 2011, Dennis Hutchings was staggered and flabbergasted when he was investigated by the PSNI historical inquiries team. A comprehensive investigation took place at the time. He co-operated fully and was told, after a short period, that no further investigations would take place because there was no case to answer and the whole matter could be closed. He specifically asked whether that was the end of it and was told that it was, so he went back to his retirement, to his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and got on with his life.

We now fast-forward to April 2015, when there was a dawn raid on the corporal major’s house in Cornwall. By then he was in very poor health. He was arrested, taken to Northern Ireland for four days of questioning and then charged with attempted murder—of course, a charge he vehemently denies. After 42 years, there are no witnesses left. The three other members of the patrol have died. There is no forensic evidence. There are no weapons left.

I was certainly taught at law school that one of the key tenets of criminal justice is the need for credible, current and corroborated evidence. It is beyond belief that he has been charged. There is no conceivable way he could ever receive a fair trial without proper evidence. These charges fly in the face of all the basic rules of criminal justice. We are seeing an outbreak of revisionism. We cannot simply revisit cases from 42 years ago and try to reinterpret them through the prism of the 21st century, with its emphasis on human rights.

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[Kris Hopkins]

I recognise the right hon. Gentleman’s point. This issue of proportionality is really important and that is why the Secretary of State and others have sought to find a mechanism, because the present situation creates the challenges that people are talking about at this time. We need to find another way that brings proportionality to the system and enables people to feel justice on both sides of society.

[Mr Brazier]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has been generous in taking interventions. I welcome his last statement about looking for a new way forward, but does he accept that although the decision to prosecute is independent, the manner in which it is carried out—raiding the house of a great-grandfather with police cars, thus giving away his address and all the rest of it—can be commented on? Indeed, we just had comments on the Met from our right hon. Friend, the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, a few minutes ago in another context.

[Kris Hopkins]

I expect the police to always maintain a high standard when they go to arrest somebody, and I am sure that every Member here would as well.

I want to talk about proportionality. As has been pointed out, 90% of victims were as a consequence of terrorist interventions. The proposals that are out there, which the Secretary of State would like to consult people on, are around how we ensure that those accused, from both the state side and the republican side, are brought before the courts and examined in a proportionate way. The proposals are that each case would be examined chronologically. There will be a conclusion within a period of five years, to give people some closure and some idea of timescale.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I wonder how long in front of the bathroom mirror that one took. The point is this. There are two things that would not be right: the first would be to hold an in/out referendum now—I do not think that is the right approach—and the second would be to rule it out for all time. I have no idea what the hon. Gentleman’s party’s policy is.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that central to any reforms of banking must be, from the point of view of ordinary punters, two things: first, the proposals which we are already working up to ensure that people can move their accounts quickly, cheaply and easily; and secondly, an absolute guarantee that Governments will never again bail out banks?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes two very important points. On the first point, about people being able to move their bank accounts, that will be in place later this year. On the issue of bailing out banks, we need to put in place mechanisms so that banks can fail without calling on taxpayers to support them. That resolution regime, which for 13 years was left untouched by Labour, has been dealt with by this Government.