Queen’s Speech

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and I congratulate the two noble Baronesses on their superb maiden speeches, which were a delight to listen to.

I welcome the overall thrust of the Queen’s Speech, and I thought the Minister was extremely impressive in laying out for the House exactly what the programme entails. I want to concentrate on that part of the Speech that referenced Northern Ireland veterans. I would like to give it a cautious welcome, with some concerns. When I was in the other place, I was the founder of the all-party veterans’ support group, which has now become a full-scale APPG. I took a close interest in the Dennis Hutchings case, and I declare an interest because I have met him a number of times and know him well. As noble Lords will probably recall, Dennis Hutchings was serving in Northern Ireland in County Tyrone in 1974 and was part of a patrol that resulted in the killing of one John Pat Cunningham. The case was fully investigated at the time; there was absolutely no question of any of the soldiers on patrol being charged, and they were told to get on with their military careers.

















Fast-forward to 2010 and the Historical Enquiries Team, when these soldiers were investigated again, including Dennis Hutchings. He was told once again that there was no case to answer, that his case had been thoroughly investigated, and that he should get on with his retirement and enjoy the rest of his life. Eight years afterwards, in 2018, he was arrested in a dawn raid and has been charged with murder.

Obviously, that case is sub judice, but I can refer in detail to the Joe McCann case and the two members of the Parachute Regiment, Soldiers A and C. This case involved a notorious and wicked IRA killer. Soldiers A and C were charged with murder. The case was expected to last at least six weeks. As noble Lords will know, the case folded after a matter of days when the judge ruled that evidence gleaned from the original investigation and from the HET was not admissible. We now know that the former deputy head of the HET actually recommended that there should be no prosecution because no new evidence was available. Frankly, it is staggering that this case went ahead.

I am very concerned, because we are told that there are more than 200 cases in the pipeline involving veterans in Northern Ireland and that a number of them will go to prosecution quite soon. We know about the soldiers who have been charged as a consequence of involvement in the Bloody Sunday killings and the recent Ballymurphy inquest. I am concerned that no one has mentioned the impact on the lives of these soldiers and the fact that very few of these prosecutions will probably now have much chance of succeeding.

This leads me to the commitment in the Queen’s Speech on Northern Ireland veterans. The details are fairly sketchy, but HMG have made it clear that they are looking at some form of amnesty or truth and reconciliation commission. I am very nervous about this, because it would certainly imply at first instance some form of equivalence between soldiers and police officers doing their duty and those terrorists who had one sole aim in life: to go out there to maim and kill. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, and in particular the noble Lord, Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown, in his typically passionate way, pointed out that these soldiers and police officers had no alternative: they were doing their duty, whereas terrorists did have an option.

I suggest to the Minister that there is a way forward that does not involve new legislation. In future, the Attorney-General should sign off all future prosecutions. There should be an override for the UK AG in terms of national security, so that every single case, be it terrorists who killed or soldiers involved in killings, would have to be signed off by the Attorney-General. Victims would know that these cases would not go uninvestigated and soldiers, veterans and police officers would be able to sleep at night knowing that unless there was compelling new evidence they would not be prosecuted.