Northern Ireland Troubles: Legacy and Reconciliation

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising that point. If he will bear with me, I will come very directly to precisely that point a little later in my speech.

It is the Government’s view that there is both a legal necessity and an imperative for us to act, and this remedial order is the first step in that process. The remedial order will remove two key effects of the provisions of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 that were found by the courts in the Dillon case to be incompatible with our human rights obligations.

One of the main reasons for the failure of the legacy Act was its attempt to grant immunity, including to terrorists who murdered, in cold blood, soldiers and civilians in Northern Ireland and in towns and cities across England. In fairness, it probably seemed reassuring to veterans, and it was almost certainly reassuring to terrorists who had committed those acts, but it was a false promise that protected no one. It was never commenced, which is a very important fact. It was rejected by the courts as being incompatible with our legal obligations and, as a result, it was never implemented. No one ever got immunity, and while it may remain on the statute book, in practice it does not exist.

Nevertheless, while the Act has not been commenced, for many families any uncertainty about their loved ones’ killers being granted immunity has been a deterrent to coming forward to seek answers from the independent commission. There has also been opposition from some who served in Northern Ireland, because immunity undermines the rule of law that they were seeking to uphold.

David Crabbe, an Ulster Defence Regiment veteran who sits on the victims and survivors forum, said of immunity:

“The vast majority of veterans living in Northern Ireland did not want or feel as if they needed this protection. It was viewed as a perversion of the law, that went against the ethos of what those who served stood for, and what their role was in preserving law and order.”

And it was not only a false promise; it created a false equivalence between veterans on the one hand and terrorists on the other, and it still technically sits on the statute book today.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

May I remind the Secretary of State—I know that he knows it, as he has heard it from me and others many times before—that there is nothing about creating a false equivalence between the two? Everybody is equal before the law. If anything created a false equivalence, it was the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998, which said that no matter how many murders a paramilitary had committed, and no matter how many illegal acts, if any, a soldier had committed, neither of them would ever serve more than two years of a sentence. That equivalence is there. It is not moral equivalence; it is equivalence before the law, and the 2023 Act did not initiate it.

[Hilary Benn]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right when he describes the provisions of the 1998 legislation, but as he knows, that policy, along with the rest of the Good Friday agreement, was supported by just over 70% of the people of Northern Ireland in the referendum. It was a very bitter pill to swallow for many people in Northern Ireland, but it was a price to be paid for peace.

The point I am making in relation to this remedial order is that the last Government chose to legislate to give immunity to veterans and to terrorists on the same basis. The noble Lord Dodds said of the legacy Bill—which, by the way, he described as “rotten”—that it

“basically elevates terrorists and perpetrators of violence above their victims. That is fundamentally wrong.”

That is why we are bringing forward this remedial order to remove those provisions on immunity that have done so much damage to trust in Northern Ireland. Doing so will provide clarity and certainty ahead of the wider, significant reforms contained in the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill.

The remedial order will also remove the bar on troubles-related civil cases that stripped UK citizens of their right to seek redress. Section 43 of the 2023 Act left some 800 troubles-related civil cases involving the Ministry of Defence untouched.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Burghart]

No, I do not acknowledge that. I have met victims, and people whose families were heavily affected by terrorism, who supported our legislation.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

It is often said, and rightly, that what is very important is that families should find out the truth about what happened. Which scenario makes it more likely that families will get the truth after all this time? Is it a scenario in which people can be prosecuted on either side, and therefore have an incentive, if they are guilty, to conceal the truth, or is it a scenario such as existed under the legislation introduced by our Government, whereby people are much encouraged to tell the truth about what happened because they know that they will not be punished if they do so?

[Alex Burghart]

My right hon. Friend has very succinctly summarised the central argument behind the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023: drawing a line does not mean covering up the past; drawing a line was an opportunity to open the past in a way that the adversarial system was never going to allow. Incidentally, I do not believe that the adversarial system will bring justice for very many people. We must remember that the peace process concluded in 1998, which is 28 years ago, and the troubles, by most reckonings, are deemed to have started in 1966, which is 60 years ago. We have recently seen the case of soldier F, in which one of the longest public inquiries in British legal history presented the most forensic evidence that could be imagined, but the court was unable to reach a conclusion. This means that the chances of any prosecution reaching a conclusion are very limited.

That does not matter, because for many veterans it is the process that is the punishment. We saw that in October last year, when a former SAS veteran, who was accused of having behaved wrongly in 1991, was dragged through the courts. Eventually, the judge in Belfast said the case was “ludicrous” and should never have come anywhere near him, but that individual had been pursued for four years. There are many such cases. If the process is the punishment, the fear of the process is a punishment for so many people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Burghart]

Yes, my right hon. and very learned Friend.

The truth is that, if one looks back at the debates on the Human Rights Act, one can see that the purpose of section 10 is to make sure that the Government cannot use a remedial order—an incredibly powerful tool, a statutory instrument that can strike down primary legislation—unless the case is fully decided. In this case, it clearly is not; it is open. That is why the Government are acting ultra vires.

Let me return briefly to the remarks made by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), who represents the best part of the New Forest.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Oh!

[Alex Burghart]

I meant to say, “the joint first best part of the New Forest”.

The Secretary of State has invoked the Joint Committee on Human Rights, but it is my understanding that when it wrote its report, it was unaware that the Northern Ireland Veterans Movement was being heard in the Supreme Court, and I rather think that that may have had a profound effect on what it wrote.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

In the limited time available, I shall try to address a few of the basic issues, including those on which I intervened earlier.

It became fairly obvious towards the end of the Secretary of State’s remarks, as a result of questioning from my colleagues on the Opposition Benches, that although there was much in his speech suggesting that he had to do what he is doing today, he is really doing it because he wants to do it. It was in the Government’s manifesto that they were going to repeal the legislation, and he is seizing the chance to strike it down at the first possible opportunity.

Sometimes one gets into a position of almost wondering about the futility of entering into a debate. Forty years ago, I used to debate against the same people again and again over the question of whether Britain should one-sidedly give up its nuclear weapons. I would often put forward an argument that countered something that they had said, they would have no answer to it, and then I would go into the next debate and they would say exactly the same thing over and over again, and I would have to put forward the same argument, and no one was getting anywhere. I feel like that over this point about the supposed equating of service personnel with IRA and other paramilitary terrorists. A few moments ago, the hon. Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) said, “There is no moral equivalence between these people.” Nobody in this debate is saying that there is any moral equivalence between these people. What we are saying is that everybody is equal before the law.

Let me remind the House what I said in Westminster Hall on 14 July last year—six months ago to the day last week—during a debate covering all these subjects. I pointed out that in April 2017 the Defence Committee had published a report, on a consensus and cross-party basis, entitled “Investigations into fatalities in Northern Ireland involving British military personnel”—(HC1064).

In the inquiries that led up to the publication of that report, we took evidence on 7 March 2017 from four professors of law: Philippe Sands of University College London, Peter Rowe of Lancaster University, Kieran McEvoy of Queen’s University Belfast and Richard Ekins of Oxford University. All of those professors agreed that it was possible and legal—regardless of whether they wanted to do it or not—to have a statute of limitation, provided that it was accompanied by a truth recovery mechanism. That is what the legacy Act, which is now being struck down, brought into effect.

The legacy Act has a very good chance of surviving further legal scrutiny. It is no argument to say that it has been discredited just because the Government and their supporters do not like it. The truth of the matter is that we have to give immunity to everyone or to no one. If the price of giving immunity to our servicemen is that we give it to terrorists too, then it is a price worth paying.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Veterans will have heard the honeyed words of the Secretary of State at the start of his speech today, when he talked about the debt of gratitude we owe to those who served in Northern Ireland in very difficult circumstances. Yet this order is all about removing protections that would have been available to those very veterans against what is a continued terrorist campaign conducted not through guns, not through bombs and not through killings, but through the courts.

I have heard many people on the Government Benches say, “Oh, we’ve got to uphold the rule of law.” That is totally naive. This is not about the rule of law in Northern Ireland; this is about the abuse of the law by those who cannot accept that they lost in their terrorist campaign, who want to rewrite the history of that terrorist campaign, and who want to put the blame on the forces of law and order who stood between the citizens and the murderers and the criminals.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the people on this side of the argument who oppose what is happening today, do so not because we do not wish people who did wrong to face justice, but because we know that these cases will almost certainly fail, just as the case against Soldier F failed? As my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) said, the punishment is the process. People will be put through unnecessary hell before they are acquitted. That has nothing to do with justice.

[Sammy Wilson]

No, it has nothing to do with justice.

Although the Secretary of State and others today have argued that this is all about helping victims, innocent victims will not get any justice through this system, because it comes down to who holds the records. When cases go to the courts, there will be no documentation to bring from IRA campaigns and activities. Members should read the book written by Austin Stack, whose father was a prison officer in Portlaoise and who sought for 20 years to get justice. One line of the book that stands out is when Gerry Adams eventually took him to meet some of the IRA commanders, and in the car on the way there he said, “Don’t expect too much, because we don’t keep records.” That is the problem. The state kept records, but the IRA and the terrorists did not keep records, so the cases are going to be one-sided.

The Secretary of State told us today that, as a result of this measure, 200 new civil cases will be opened, 120 of them against the MOD. The statistics have shown quite clearly that most of the murders were carried out by paramilitaries, yet most of the civil cases will be taken against the MOD. That is because there is a deliberate campaign to rewrite history. The vast majority of people who take forward these cases want to ensure that they get a case into court, drag out all the information that is available—held by the state—and get a result that paints the picture that the IRA and the terrorists were the wronged parties.

If anything, this does not give comfort to victims but only rubs salt in their wounds. That is why this remedial order is wrong. It will present the chance to rewrite history, and it will lead to huge costs in compensation claims. As has been said, it will also be a warning to people who we call to serve this country in future that this tactic might be used against them. That is why this is bad.

The Secretary of State knows that he did not need to bring this measure forward. My right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), in his excellent speech, laid out the reasons why that is the case, so I will not go through them. Why is the Secretary of State going through with this? He knows the results, so why does he pursue it? I can only assume that he puts the adherence to the ECHR above the interests of veterans and victims, and that is a disgrace.