Northern Ireland Troubles Bill

Katrina Murray Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 18th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)]

Kilsyth war memorial bears the names of the men of the town who lost their life in foreign wars—men whose service we recognise and remember every year on VE Day, VJ Day and Remembrance Sunday. On one face of that memorial sits a single, solitary name—a name set apart. The difference between that name and the others is stark. This son of Kilsyth also lost his life in the service of his country, but in his case he was killed by the Provisional IRA. In a town where his family still live and where his school friends are marking their significant birthdays, his name on that memorial is a reminder that his life, and the ultimate sacrifice that he made, will not be forgotten.

Just 2 miles down the road live another family. They, too, lost a loved one—a cousin, killed in an ambush by loyalist paramilitaries in the ’90s. I have known about the military deaths for a long time. They were one of the first things that I found out about as I became a candidate. I discovered the other one when we met families as part of a Select Committee visit to Belfast. One of the family members we met said, “I know your area. I spent summers there. My cousin lives in Kirkintilloch.” It reminded me of exactly how strong the links are between my part of the world and Ireland.

With a name like mine, I should recognise that there is a strong connection, but we are completely intertwined. It means that we know those families who lost loved ones during the troubles. We know the lack of answers that they have had, and the grief that still endures and is still raw. In the Select Committee inquiry, it did not matter who we spoke to among victims, survivors and families, because the message was the same. They told us about their loved ones and the brutal ways in which their lives had been taken, and they told us again and again that they wanted legislation that respected them, treated them with dignity and took them seriously. They wanted answers, and the previous Government’s legacy Act did not deliver that. It rode roughshod over the wishes of families, victims and survivors. It made promises to the armed forces that it could never deliver, and the mechanism that it created, despite the intentions of all the people working within it, inspired little confidence that families would be treated with the dignity and seriousness that they deserved.

I welcome this Bill, because it puts families at its heart. It recognises that the victims and survivors are the people this legislation must serve. It recognises that members of the security forces are also victims and survivors. It builds into the process the need to reflect and to stay engaged with those families. Across the board, those experiences have not necessarily been good. Where there have been inquests, they have been nothing more than tick-box exercises. They spoke to us, and we heard of anger, frustration and despair. It was the first time we had heard those stories, but it was not the first time that they had told them, because they have been saying it for decades upon decades in the hope of change. I thank every single one of them for sharing those stories with us.

The other part of this legislation that commends it is the fact that it recognises that if Scotland is a village, Northern Ireland is an even smaller one, and everybody is interrelated. The Bill builds on the best aspects of Operation Kenova, which is one of the big strengths in making it work. Like any piece of legislation, the Bill is not perfect, but it is a necessary and long-overdue step in the right direction. For the sake of those victims, survivors and families, we cannot afford to get it wrong.

Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over Extension)

Katrina Murray Excerpts

Carry-over motion
Tuesday 13th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart]

My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was pointing out to the hon. Lady and the Minister for Veterans and People exactly the sort of problems that the legacy Act was designed to solve. There was obviously a cut-off point—[Interruption.] As I am sure the hon. Members know, the legacy Act had a cut-off point, and cases that had already started were not caught by that. I am giving an example of similar cases that will now come about because of their legislation.

As Philip Barden KC wrote in The Spectator this week, the Government’s attempts to solve this issue, and the Government's proposed protections, are wholly inadequate to the task. They fail on their own test, because the Bill and the Government’s amendments “will permit repeat investigations.” Earlier, the Secretary of State raised the use of the word “essential”, and talked about new evidence. As Philip Barden pointed out,

“Any lawyer worth their salt can find new evidence.”

This might sound like a high bar, but it is an extremely low bar.

All the while—throughout the year and more in which we have been dealing with this legislation—the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery, set up by the legacy Act, has been doing its work. A few weeks ago, ICRIR published its first report, which laid out the details of Mr Rory O’Kelly’s murder by the IRA in 1977. That was an information-recovery exercise which concluded that no perpetrators were ever likely to be identified, but it still provided answers to questions that have haunted Mr O’Kelly’s family for half a century. His daughter described, in extremely moving terms, how the report had moved the family into a

“space of serenity and light, all anger taken away”.

Yet just as ICRIR has started working as intended, the Government are to reprogramme it into what two generals have described today as essentially a criminal investigations body, charged with collecting evidence to a criminal standard, although we know that the chance of prosecutions is incredibly unlikely. Those who work in ICRIR are desperately concerned that that will lead to a massive increase in their workload, with no increase in funding, and that it will inevitably mean long delays and distraction from the core information-recovery exercise, which was intended to be their central function. Those on the Government Benches may not want to take from me the case that I am making against this Bill, and I understand that, but they should take it from the retired generals and soldiers who have repeatedly spoken out.

[Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is talking a lot about veterans and the roles of those veterans. My concern is for my constituents who served but never got to be veterans because they did not survive their service in Northern Ireland. What those families want is the truth, and they want a truth that is undebatable. Does he not recognise that we should be talking about the victims and the survivors, rather than trying to make this a false dichotomy? There is more than one level or tier of victim.

[Alex Burghart]

The hon. Lady speaks powerfully on this point, and she is absolutely right to say that many victims were people who served. I was talking about the way in which ICRIR works and is now being seen to work. Regardless of who was killed, it can be used by victims’ families in order to assist in the information-recovery process, and one of the advantages of ICRIR is that it is a non-adversarial system that has already started to enable families to find out things they did not know before. The hon. Lady is absolutely right: that process is very valuable, which is why it was put in the legacy Act by the previous Government.

I hope that Labour Members, and anybody in the House who is thinking of supporting the continuation of this legislation, will listen to the two retired generals who wrote today that the Government should stop pretending that their amendments offer veterans meaningful protections. The consequence of continuing down this route will be that some men who served decades ago, like soldier B—not soldier B himself, but men like him—will spend years in the jaws of vexatious litigation, that victims will not receive the justice that they are being promised by this legislation, and that many more veterans will continue to live with the nagging sense that those using lawfare may come for them. They are already being punished by the idea of this legislation.

Northern Ireland Troubles Bill

Katrina Murray Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Monday 19th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger]

We are very familiar with that argument. I do not think this is the time to have that debate, but I am confident—and there has been a lot of learned advice to this effect—that it is totally possible to withdraw from the ECHR while maintaining our obligations under the Good Friday agreement.

[Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)]

It gives me great pleasure to speak in the debate. On the whole, the debate has been wide-ranging, honest and balanced, recognising the complexity of this matter. I do not want to repeat what has been said, but I thank the hon. Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) for his honest and personal account, which reminded us that everybody—regardless of our background and the roles we have played—reacts as a human being. Regardless of the circumstances we have lived in and come to this debate from, when we are scared, we can react differently at times. Nobody should be held to account for being scared.

We have talked a lot about WAVE and the other victims groups. Many survivors and family support groups have given evidence and lobbied, whether in the past couple of weeks, over the past year in which we have been debating this Bill, or before that. They are people who come from very different perspectives, with very different backgrounds.

However, all of those people have given their time and talked about their experiences, their trauma and their families’ trauma. They have said how they are trying not to pass that trauma on to the next generation, but the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren cannot help but experience what their families have lived through, because of everything that we carry with us. I thank them for every time that they have addressed us and every time that they spoke to those who came before us. I hope to God that they never have to come back to this place after this Bill is passed to do it again.