Victims of Libyan-sponsored IRA Terrorism: Compensation

Laurence Robertson Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) on taking an interest and having the motivation to introduce this debate and on the excellent way in which he presented his case. He spoke about fairness being the priority and the overriding concern of many hon. Members.

I thank the Minister for appearing before the Select Committee on two occasions to bring us up to date. He is obviously very engaged in this matter. I know that he not only sympathises with the victims and their relatives, but empathises with them. When he appeared before the Committee he demonstrated that he cares about the issue, and I thank him very much for that.

When we discuss the importance of this debate, we receive a lot of evidence from victims and their families, both orally and in writing. If anyone doubts the pain that has been caused to people in this country by Libyan-sponsored terrorism, they need only read, for example, the evidence submitted by Mr Colin Parry, who, following the attack in Warrington, had to make the heart-wrenching and unbelievably difficult decision to turn off his child’s life support machine. I will not read through all the evidence he submitted, but I urge hon. Members to read it on the website. It describes why we are all so concerned about what happened. We cannot bring those people back, of course, but we can try to recognise the pain of their loved ones—that is the first step—and then try to bring about some compensation for them or their communities.

We have received evidence from Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Tony Blair said he did not raise the issue and it was not raised with him. Gordon Brown set up the reconciliation unit, which tried to move things on. We have two problems, as the Minister told the Select Committee. He talked about the difficulty of dealing with the Libyan Government when they are not a stable Government. Perhaps he will bring the Chamber up to date with the position there now and tell us whether he believes it can be moved on, now that things have moved on a little in Libya.

There is also the question of frozen assets, which the Select Committee discussed. I understand that something like £8 billion or £9 billion of frozen assets sourced from Libya are held in the United Kingdom. I do not know whether the result of the vote that the country rightly made on 23 June will change any aspect of that. The Committee has been told that those assets cannot be touched. I do not know whether Brexit, when it comes about, will challenge that decision, but perhaps the Minister will bring us up to date on that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) said that some people have received some compensation, but very little. Presumably that was through the statutory compensation scheme, which was set up for such victims, but as my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk pointed out, it is uncertain—and, I think, doubtful—whether that money came from Libya. That is where the money should come from, because we hear of a foreign state that was not only encouraging, but physically supplying a terrorist organisation in this country to kill our own citizens. If Libya wants to become a serious constitutional country in the future and leave its pariah status behind, it must pay compensation for the people they have murdered in this country.

We need to move this situation on. It has been going on for a long time, as we all know. The victims and relatives are getting older; some will have died. I know that the situation is difficult and that diplomatically it might be difficult because we are trying to encourage Libya to move on, but it cannot move on without first clearing up the past. I therefore ask the Minister to continue to do everything that he is doing and possibly try to push our Government that little bit further to bring about, first, recognition of the pain and, secondly, the compensation that our British citizens are due.